Transporting the fuel was mercifully easy. Rhea's silent running ensured that the sensors used by the police couldn't pick us up, combined with some high-altitude flight. The delivery point was another industrial building that lay on the outskirts of a residential area. Another remote mech suit did the same process but in reverse. All Sumeragi and I had to do was go out onto the walkway and accept the payment in cash.
The blue-collar manager who we were helping out was extremely thankful for our help, and threw a tip on top of the three-thousand dollars we were originally promised. He also said that he was going to forward us to some of his friends if we were looking for more jobs like it. I accepted his offer and told him that our inbox was open.
"Almost enough to make me feel like a good Samaritan," I quipped later that day.
Sumeragi and I had decided to finally go and buy some new clothes with our cash. These stuffy corporate uniforms were wearing on our patience. We dropped by the bar and asked where we could find the shopping street, to which we were helpfully given some pointers about where the best deals could be found. I'd never have found this small backstreet without him. There were several different stores on offer where the planet's workers could spend their hard-earned cash on necessities.
We'd split the money evenly, putting some away for the essentials that would come afterwards.
Despite being teleported over a thousand years into the future – the stylings were much the same as what I was used to. Every taste and eventuality was covered by the selection, but there was a general bias towards heavy-duty clothes that could keep the rain away. Sumeragi was looking through the shop windows in search of something she liked. Sumeragi did like to dress nicely from what I remembered of her appearances in the show.
I, on the other hand, liked to wear unassuming stuff.
One of my worries was doing things the way I wanted to do them versus following what everyone else expected of me. It wasn't so much that I objected to trying something new, but I consistently feared a scenario wherein I was mocked or criticised for changing. I stared through one of the windows with her and considered the reality of my situation.
Sumeragi and Rhea didn't know everything about me. I could get a fresh start and project the image I wanted to project without worrying about it. But it would all depend on what was available to us. I followed Sumeragi into one of the stores and started digging for something that caught my fancy. Sumeragi was a woman on a mission though. She knew exactly what she wanted and where to find it.
"Strange how they don't sell swimsuits here," she commented.
"I can't imagine going to the beach on this planet," I replied.
"Maybe not, but you could wear them beneath your normal clothes to make the weather manageable."
Sumeragi was something of a swimsuit aficionado. She claimed to have owned a fairly large collection of them back in her own universe. Celestial Being was always flying across the globe for missions, and Sumeragi often took on the task of greasing wheels and rubbing elbows with rich donators and supporters. Exploiting her sex appeal (of which there was a lot) by using a fashionable one-piece was a favourite strategy of hers.
It hurt some people to acknowledge – but lust was an excellent way to pry open a stuffed wallet. Showing some skin was hardly the most morally dubious thing she did while commanding the force anyway.
I gravitated towards a rack of various practical jackets. They'd serve me well when I needed a lot of pockets, so I grabbed a pair in different colours and threw them into a cart. I also found some pants and shirts to wear for less urgent situations. I wasn't expecting a wide selection in the first place but even that low bar wasn't being vaulted. It seemed as if I was doomed to wear something similar to my usual wardrobe. The few esoteric items on display weren't to my taste at all.
Sumeragi was having a better time of it, and her first batch was much larger than mine. Once we were done with the first store, we travelled to some of the others and took a look inside to see if they had anything interesting. Sumeragi's eye was drawn to a selection of suits and dresses.
"I think you'd look really good in a suit, professional."
I didn't disagree. Wearing nice clothes was a good way to feel more confident. One of the suits on display reminded me of one I wore to my cousin's wedding. It was a deep navy blue on top and bottom, with a white undershirt, a golden-coloured tie, a brown leather belt and matching loafers. The interior lining of the jacket was jazzed up with a colourful, almost tropical floral pattern that alternated between red and green.
"I'm not applying for a job."
Sumeragi shrugged, "You never know when you'll need some formal clothes, and we have the spare cash to buy something nice." The formal clothes in question were on a deep discount. They were out of season, destined to be thrown into a landfill and forgotten as 'new' designs came around to inhabit their former place. Much like the suit I wore to that wedding – which only cost me forty pounds combined.
Confidence wasn't a bad thing. We had the money to spare, so we took a selection of them and threw them into the cart with the rest. It was a good enough wardrobe for both of us. There wasn't much space for extra sets of clothes in the cabins on the ship, and the storage area wasn't the ideal place to keep fragile items. Each crew member was given a small footlocker at the base of the bed, but the other bunks were left uninhabited. More room for us!
"Happy?" I asked.
She hummed, "It's fine for now."
We headed to the counter and paid for everything using our dirty criminal money. There was a time when cashless transactions all but eliminated traditional paper and coinage, but the difficulties in transmitting signals over such a long distance between planets meant that they had a comeback on colonized worlds like this. Nobody wanted to wait three months for their transaction to go through. It must have been a nightmare for businesses selling perishable goods; the opportunities for fraud were ripe. Open a door – and someone was going to exploit it.
"Being able to buy my own clothes again feels great," Sumeragi said as we headed further down the shopping street. Our arms were already overloaded with too many bags to carry comfortably, so we wouldn't buy anything else before dropping them off back on the Pariah.
"A little bit of normality goes a long way," I concurred.
"But this weather is severe."
"I'm used to the rain, I'm British."
"Funny – but the British Isles don't have weather patterns like this."
They did sometimes. Some of the summer storms were getting rather fierce before I was brought here.
"Where are you from again?" I asked.
"Spain, but I didn't spend much time there versus joining the military and Celestial Being."
Now that she mentioned it, there was a slight accent to her voice that pointed in that direction.
"I'll remember that when we run into a Spanish speaker."
"Please don't. I'm very rusty."
We continued to talk casually about our old lives while exploring the rest of the shops on offer. Sumeragi was a very talented conversationalist, she had to be while rubbing shoulders with the people who'd decide the fate of Celestial Being and the world at large, but she wasn't just saying these things to assuage me. I was so deep into getting to know her that it was easy to forget that Sumeragi was fictional.
Well, the version I was familiar with was.
But this Sumeragi was 'real,' she had experienced and perspectives that were never given space in the original anime. There was only so much time in each episode to push the plot forward, so humanizing the people involved in it was a challenge. Sumeragi kept surprising me with new stories about her youth, her time in the military, and the early days of being in Celestial Being. It was then and there that it finally occurred to me – Sumeragi wasn't just a cut-out made from a story I already knew.
The conversation took a darker turn as he hid beneath a canopy while a rain front passed by.
"You already know about my partner, don't you?"
I noted the solemn tinge in her voice, "I do."
"And to think that most of the people in Celestial Being had no idea. I kept it from them."
"That's understandable. It hurts to lose someone close to you."
Sumeragi wasn't put off by that knowledge, "After dismantling the A-Laws, I realised that there was still a long way to go. More life to live – more people to meet. I couldn't keep running away by staring at the bottom of an empty bottle. I was happy to fight for a cause that I believed in. I was even ready to die for it. It was a big change from wanting to see the end…"
I nodded but offered no verbal response. What could a normal guy like me say in these circumstances?
"If you're worried that I don't trust you, I do. I've got a good measure of what kind of person you are already, Lewis."
"And if I have a dark secret?"
"Who doesn't?"
She would probably find my dark secret extremely concerning, if Rhea hadn't modified her attitudes to make her okay with brainwashing, anyway. Some further digging into the logs that she provided me gave a detailed account of every individual goal of the process. She was supposedly fine with manipulating someone's personality now, alongside polyamorous relationships. These changes would take time to become internalised in her head but soon she'd integrated them and see nothing amiss.
"You don't look convinced," Sumeragi said.
"I never saw myself as a trustworthy guy, to be honest."
"Believe me when I say this – being in such close quarters with someone for months on end is the ultimate proof of their nature. The impressions you form after the first few weeks don't change. If you were going to do anything bad, it would have already happened."
Way to make me feel like a piece of shit. I tried to not let the irony of that statement affect my expression. The last thing I wanted was for her to start needling me about why I looked like I was sucking on a lemon.
The rain stopped.
"We'd better get back to the ship before a storm rolls through and ruins all of the shit we just bought."
Sumeragi nodded and followed me.
-----
The moment we stepped back onto the ship, Rhea was speaking to us through the speakers.
"Good morning, Captain. I would recommend clearing the message inbox soon."
I placed my bags down in the airlock to sort later, "Why? How many messages did we get?"
"Since our previous client spoke highly of our services, we have received thirty-three separate offers of employment from small businesses around the planet. Ten additional requests have been forwarded since you left. They are offering a variety of rewards for our effort, including discarded parts and cash."
That caught my attention, "What kind of discarded parts?"
"Some of the clients are offering unused machinery in place of payment. Of particular interest is a man who has a close relationship with the owner of a nearby ship graveyard. He is indicating that he is open to paying with salvaged sections from the ships. We may be able to obtain more living and working space for the Pariah from parts that others would find worthless."
Nanomachinery sure was convenient. We could integrate sections from other ships, even if they were never designed to be compatible. It sounded like just the thing we needed to get the Pariah up and running again.
"Earmark that one for later, Rhea."
"Done."
Sumeragi and I spent an hour finding places to store our new clothes, trying some of them on to make sure that they fit. During that time I considered our next move. We had enough cabin space for a few more crew members as things stood, and there wasn't anything important that was missing from the ship that made living on it harder, but we also had enough food to last for a very long time. The water was recycled with such efficiency that we also didn't need to buy any of it externally or increase our storage.
The biggest issue I could see on the horizon was claustrophobia. I was already starting to get sick of being confined into such a small area. This was the emergency cabin and the core of the ship, intended to be used in emergency situations. It was small, cramped, and not welcoming or comfortable. A new area that we could use as we pleased and decorate with some comforts would do wonders for our morale.
Sumeragi was completely consumed by arranging her clothes so I was the first one to get back to the bridge. I sat down in my chair and opened our inbox to check on the messages that Rhea notified me about. Several more had been thrown onto the pile since her initial alert. It looked like our services were in extremely high demand. This transportation problem was a huge drag on the planet's economy.
It was a mixture of water and fuel jobs, with differing rewards depending on the distance and quantity needed. Most were offering cash in increased volumes now that the demand was higher, while others were looking to offload unusable machine tooling as a replacement. Without a workshop space they wouldn't be of much use to us.
The pinned email was the one that Rhea spoke about. A man was looking for a fuel delivery and was willing to pay in discarded ship parts. To anyone else, they would have been unusable, valuable only for their scrap potential. The Pariah was different. The nanomachinery could transform those old, rusted compartments into perfectly usable chambers. I exited back out onto the main menu and blinked the stars from my eyes as ten more messages appeared as the page refreshed.
"This is getting a bit out of hand."
"The volume of job offers is increasing rapidly. We can only accept so many of them."
"How many could we manage in a day?"
"Allow me to calculate the optimal route."
Rhea took ten seconds or so to piece together an itinerary, which appeared on the map screen above my head. "This route is the most efficient. It will allow us to complete six jobs in one day, for a monetary return of one-hundred-twenty-thousand US dollars."
That was a lot of money, but still less than they'd have to pay using one of the big companies.
"Alternatively, if you wish to accept the contract from David Jones, we will cut that number to four. This will exchange fifty-thousand dollars into a compartment for the Pariah."
"And me and Sumeragi don't need to do much to make it happen."
"That is correct. These facilities all offer automated loading and offloading systems. Could I ask you to accept them?"
"I am afraid that is in direct contradiction of my programming."
I sighed, "I'll have to do it manually then."
"May I suggest recruiting a lead communications officer? While I am capable of managing internal systems, the precision and detail of interacting with others is better handled by a human. I am also incapable of interfacing directly with messages that are connected with illegal conduct. I have already earmarked several candidates from the list you provided me."
I pulled up Rhea's selections and perused the options. It wasn't a glamorous position and most shows I'd seen passed over roles like this, leaving them as background characters. There was only one girl on my mind at that moment. Ruri Hoshino – the deadpan girl from Martian Successor Nadesico.
She took on a lot of responsibilities on board that ship, including the communications between pilots and the bridge. Her ability to interface with the ship would be of limited use without replicating the technology utilised, but she was highly intelligent and capable despite her young age. She was also the most high-profile character available. The rest of the selections were minor roles from various bridges across the genre. The original Macross was heavily represented, for example.
I grabbed Ruri's profile and placed it on the desktop.
"Her."
"Ruri Hoshino. Genetically modified human interface, highly intelligent, and experienced in handling intership communications and management."
"Right. That's why I picked her."
Rhea had one last thing to clarify with me before she made any moves using the displacement core.
"Captain, I would like to offer you a new methodology by which we can recruit and modify our new crew members."
"Which is?"
"If I may, I can ensure that our recruits are unconscious upon arrival and immediately transfer them into the medical bay for conditioning. I have also built a new 'pliability' module that should help them adjust to life on the Pariah."
"On top of the other changes?"
"Yes, Miss Hoshino will become enamoured with you after a few weeks of contact."
This was pretty fucked up.
"And you don't see the problem with her being twelve?"
Another pause – this occurred whenever Rhea's programming was having an argument with itself.
"I cannot refuse a direct order from the Captain. Ruri is essential to our mission."
"You didn't answer my question."
And again, silence.
"Rhea?"
"As an artificial intelligence, I hold no stance on the morality of such a relationship. From my perspective – it is a profoundly immaterial factor."
I considered putting it off and telling her to find a Ruri from the Nadesico movie, where she was fifteen instead. That would mean a delay in finding her and completing the conditioning. That was no less illegal or messed up really. What Rhea was proposing was to fully conceal the nature of the conditioning process from our crew, brainwashing them before they were even aware of the possibility.
In the face of that, bringing Ruri over wasn't so great a crime.
My greedy, Id controlled side came out. I snapped my finger, "Fine. Do it. Bring her here, knock her out, and put her into the tube."
This was the 'me' that Rhea had seen through her emotional analysis. A man who didn't much care for rules or regulations in practice, only held back by a mask of anxiety and social contract. There were people out there who broke the rules and got away with it on a daily basis and for the purposes of much crueller acts than this.
"Very well, Captain."
A loud groan ran through the structure of the ship as the core powered up and started to generate vibrations. Sumeragi stepped onto the bridge, "What's going on?"
"We're bringing a new crew member on board. I hope you don't mind."
"What kind of crew member?"
"A young girl, genetically enhanced, extremely intelligent. She should help round us out and provide technical expertise."
Sumeragi was surprisingly okay with the idea, "Alright, but we might have to go and get her some clothes."
I completely forgot about that.
"Yeah – maybe so. Let's run down there later and get some stuff in her size."
"I will take the measurements for you," Rhea offered.
Sumeragi didn't even question why Ruri was going to be unconscious on arrival. She must have assumed that she was knocked out before she arrived on the ship. In truth, Rhea injected the chamber with a gas mixture that was designed to incapacitate her. While Sumeragi was busy catching up with the messages – I snuck out and helped bring her to the medical bay.
"I don't know if she's really light, or if all of that spacewalking has made me stronger."
She was a spitting image of the girl from the series. She had violet hair, golden eyes and pale skin. She was still wearing her distinctive orange uniform when she arrived in the chamber. I placed her down on the bed and started to remove her clothes so that we could throw her into the tank and fuck with her head. I swallowed the guilt that came with seeing her naked and propped her up in the glass chamber.
"Ready?"
"I will handle it from here Captain. I will also give her some privacy by locking the door."
I stepped out after making sure that there were no problems with filling the tank. It would be a solid week before the girl was ready to be a member of the crew. The physical modifications were less stringent for her because she was already genetically enhanced, but the mental changes would still take a significant amount of time. While Rhea was working on that we were going to complete as many transportation jobs as possible in the timeframe.
Sumeragi was already half done with organising the requests when I got back.
"Rhea and I have responded to several of the inquiries and scheduled deliveries for the next five days. We should be able to cover a majority of them thanks to her pathway. I couldn't have done it better myself."
I was still reeling from throwing a twelve-year-old into the brainfuck chamber.
"Great."
"And what about our new girl?" she asked.
I thought up a quick and convenient lie; "She was pretty beat up, so we've had to put her into the medical wing to heal." Sumeragi, again, didn't question my excuse. She nodded along with it like nothing was suspicious about that statement.
I put my mind off of things and focused on the job at hand.
"Rhea, take us up. Let's go and get paid."