Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2 (7 page)

“Wow,” he muttered, looking around. Instead of a blank, white rectangle, his apartment was now much more interesting. Next to the window-into-space that he’d installed, and facing it, was a sunken, horse-shoe shaped, deep brown leather couch. The top of the couch seat was level with the mahogany clad floor. The couch surrounded a round, copper fire-pit.

“Light the fire,” he said, and the pit sprang to life with a blue gas flame. The couch took that entire part of the room; it was as wide as the room and, thus, the window. It looked like it would hold fifteen or twenty people.

He looked behind him, to the wall opposite the window. It was now taken up by a floor to ceiling, wall to wall, backlit fishtank; judging by the inhabitants, salt water. He looked closer at the fish. Improbably small great white sharks, no more than six inches long, shared the water, benignly it seemed, with other deep sea inhabitants of a similar scale. A single, foot and a half long blue whale surfaced near the ceiling, blew, then plunged underwater chased by a pod of tiny dolphins. Duncan smiled. He could watch this thing all day long.

He looked to the front wall. On either side of his entrance, a series of black and white cityscapes hung. The first an oblique view of, he thought, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings in Manhattan. Another was a dizzying top down view from what he presumed was the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. He didn’t recognize the others. He would have thought them incongruous in the setting of a space station; but they worked. At least, he thought they did.

That was it for his front room, but, he thought, apart from a place for me and my friends to sit and some cool things to look at, what more did he need?

He moved to the door to the smaller room, looked through. It had been made into a bedroom. Another full wall window into space took up the far wall, while most of the rest of the room was taken up by a large, much larger than king sized, bed. Four poster. Sheer sheets of some kind of white, see-through fabric hung from the three sides not used by the massive headboard.

“Do people really use beds in this game?” he wondered, amused. He moved to the one other piece of furniture; a georgian wardrobe that matched the bed. He opened it. A standard in-game storage space for whatever weaponry or armor he cared to keep there. It was empty.

Duncan returned to the main room, hopped down into the couch and sat, looking over the fire pit out into the stars. He brought up the game wiki over the window and began reading on interior decoration.

“How did they do it so fast?” he muttered. The answer was quickly forthcoming and, Duncan thought, should have been obvious. The various apartment layouts could be created with the decorator tool, expensive naturally, and stored, as blueprints. All they had been required to do to fulfill their contract was to look at his design request, choose one of their stock blueprints, do the same for the other decorations they’d built - the couch, fire pit, fish tank and bedroom suite - then come into the apartment and set them. It probably hadn’t taken them more than a few minutes after they’d received the bid. Still it looked great and he left them a five star, glowing review.

He reopened the decorator’s page and started a new series of requests. He asked for, and didn’t see any reason why they wouldn’t fulfill, a series of custom build jobs. He described, in detail, what he wanted from each room. He asked for plain, undecorated spaces, but each meticulously described as to their dimensions, as well as the location of any doors. He also requested that this contract be filled via blueprint only. He would, he said, do the placement himself.

He’d need to purchase a decorator tool to do the placement. He was fine with that, but he didn’t want to spend the time to learn how to use the CAD interface to actually architect the spaces.

Duncan paused, partway through drafting the email.

“
Clive,”
he said,
“am I right to assume that I can place apartments within my space station?”

“
Yes, sir,”
Clive answered.
“You can build most facilities available to colony owners, including apartments. The cost is determined, in this case, by the square footage.
”

He continued with the email, explaining that he understood the odd nature of this request and he had also read and understood the placement requirements. He assured them that the contract was to be considered as-is and that if he found himself unable to use the blueprints, he would in no way seek to get a refund. He also added that they were free to keep and sell the designs they built for him as part of their blueprint database. It was best, he thought, to forestall as many questions they were likely to have before work began; he had enough ‘clarification’ emails to deal with in his day job, he didn’t want to worry about that in the game.

He sent the email then leaned back in the couch, looking once again past the space traffic to Kepler 22B and the stars beyond.

Duncan smiled yet again, happy with his purchase, then turned, got up from the couch, and left, returning to the space station. He was, he thought, glad that the game designers had allowed the ability to go from station to station, for a fee, of course, provided you had already visited them both. He made a mental note to take the Shepherd Moon on a grand tour of all of the various stations; West Coast America, South America, Brazil, Australasia, the Japanese and several other Pacific Rim locations, the Russian, European, African and, of course and likely first, the Indian. He wondered if any other player had as yet established a foothold in all of the various stations.

Duncan re-entered his station control room and was startled. Waiting there was Phani, standing unmoving, with his arms crossed over his chest, his palms flat against it, angled toward the opposite shoulder. He reminded Duncan of a vampire in his coffin, only standing. That’s when Phani startled him again. He spoke.

“Hello, Taipan,” he said in accented English, “there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, if you don’t mind.”

Chapter 11

Phani Mutha looked to Taipan as the American stood in the station control room; the station now named ‘Shepherd’s Crook’. That had confused him. He didn’t understand the reference. He knew the ship, the Shepherd Moon, had been named for the station itself; disguised as it was as a shepherd moon in the ring around a blue gas-giant planet. But he didn’t understand ‘crook’. He looked it up online, and was startled. Concerned.

“Are we to be villains,” he asked Taipan, “criminals or thieves?”

The American tilted his head sideways, confused. “What do you mean?”

“The name of the station,” Phani responded. “Are we to be ‘
crooks
’?”

Taipan laughed, and Phani was glad the American was not able to see the flush of embarrassment that burned his neck and face, shaming him.

“No,” he said, still laughing. “A crook is also a kind of staff. A staff with a curved end; used to control sheep. Used by a shepherd.”

“Ah, I see,” said Phani, still embarrassed.

“No,” said Taipan, suddenly serious. “I apologize. I didn’t consider that it might be confusing to others. I’m sorry.”

Taipan seemed to realize Phani’s discomfort. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “I only named it on a whim. We can change it.”

“No,” said Phani, mollified. “It’s a good name,” he laughed, “now that I understand it.”

“Good,” said Taipan. “Hey, I’m glad to finally hear your voice!”

“Me too,” laughed Phani, “I found an inexpensive microphone and speaker set for my computer. I believe it will be beneficial to both our current and future business dealings. Which is what I’d like to discuss with you, if you have the time.”

“Yes, please.”

“Thank you,” began Phani, “I have been doing some reading. Some research. There are,“ he said, “at this point in the game, no full player colonies. At least not that I’ve found.”

Taipan nodded, “I haven’t heard of any. Just a few feeder colonies that might one day grow into a full colony.”

“Among the toolset available for colony administrators,” Phani continued, “are facilities for crafting. For creating not only the means to create standard weapons and armor, and other game items, but there is the possibility, with access to the right recipes, to create items that are not currently available. Being the first to market with these items would be, I’m sure you will agree, very profitable.”

“That makes sense,” said Taipan. “And you think we should invest in some of those facilities for this station and go into business.”

“Yes,” said Phani. “If you were to provide the capital needed to purchase these facilities, I would provide the labor and resources required to make the items. I would also handle the sales.”

“And what would our relationship be, in this business,” asked Taipan.

“Equal partners. Equal share of the profits. Does that seem equitable?”

Taipan seemed to think for a moment.

“Clive,” he said, “give Phani access to my bank account, as far as purchasing equipment for this station.”

Phani entered the bridge of the Shepherd Moon. After he and Taipan had begun working out a purchasing plan as well as budgets, the American had left instructions for him then left the game. Phani would, on this run to Eta Bootis, scour the Canis Arcturus stock for any recipes that looked promising, and base his first facility purchase on that. Taipan had pointed out that making a decision on what facilities to buy was premature; until they knew what they could make, there was no point in buying any crafting equipment.

He brought the ship online, and rose from the docking spot near the rear of the hanger. As the ship hung in front of the hangar door, Phani ensured that the area outside the station was clear of contacts, and then he enabled the cloaking device.

“Open the hangar doors, please,” he said, reaching for the navigation screen where he laid to a course for Eta Bootis. Once the doors had opened, he carefully engaged forward thrust, taking the ship into space, “Close the hangar doors, please.”

After ensuring that the doors had closed, he engaged full speed to his first waypoint, the L4 jump point that lay on the shepherd moon’s orbit, ahead.

As he traveled, Phani brought up the public sale and auction listings, to familiarize himself with the various recipe offerings in preparation for making his first purchase from the private Canis Arcturus shop. He made a few, short, notes on the notepad he kept next to his computer, then opened one of the cold bottles of beer he’d bought before this gaming session and took a long drink. Setting the bottle down, he picked up the rapidly dwindling pack of cigarettes on his desk and lit one, thinking.

He knew, whatever recipe he decided to buy, his market was likely to be the Americans - they had the most money; or, at least, they seemed most willing to spend their money in the game. He looked up to the louvered shutters on his window, currently being pounded, yet again, by the season’s monsoon; he could smell the mildewed humidity from Pune’s streets. Whatever he decided to make, he thought, it had to be something that the American’s would want, it had to be cheap enough that they could all buy it, and it had to be expensive enough to make him rich.

Phani heard the navigation tone, saw that he’d reached the L4 point, reached to his keyboard and initiated the jump.

The Shepherd Moon jumped into Eta Bootis near the Canis Arcturus space station. As on every previous flight, Phani was instantly surrounded by a phalanx, an escort, of destroyers that would accompany him to the station and then escort him back toward the jump point. The station hung in what looked to be the Lagrange 3 point for what, Phani assumed, was the Werewolf homeworld.

The L3 was one of five Lagrange points in space where the gravity from the planet and the star, Eta Bootis, precisely equaled the centripetal force required for a smaller object to move with them. In addition to providing a jump point, these ‘bumps’ in the gravity wells allowed a fairly stable orbit to be maintained for little or no energy cost at those locations. While the four other Lagrange points were around the planet Eta Bootis 2, the L3 point was on its orbit line completely opposite where the planet now was.

What that meant was that in jumping to wherever the L3 point was, the Shepherd Moon was always the furthest away, on the planet’s orbit line, that it could be from the planet; and the star Eta Bootis was directly between them. Even if he’d wanted to violate the free passage treaty and scan the Werewolf homeworld, the bulk of the star made that most difficult.

Phani shortly arrived at the station, decamped and entered it. He rapidly sold off the mineral load carried by the ship, then replaced it with ore purchased from the Werewolves; then he switched past the other goods and certificates for sale and selected the recipes screen.

Recipes were like blueprints, but used to manufacture items through a colonization based facility. As there were no player generated colonies, as yet, operational, he hoped to be able to initiate and corner the market in a variety of objects. He began scrolling through, reading the names of the various recipes and their required facilities.

The Flora I facility seemed targeted for freshly terraformed worlds. He scrolled through various grasses, flowers and flowering plants; the plant-life that would take newly mineralized soil and give it something to bear, something to minimize erosion. It would take, he saw, several Flora facilities, operating, he assumed, in stages, to get to the ‘kings’ of plant life; the larger trees up to and including the redwood. He wondered if alien plants and animals could be seeded. If so, he saw no evidence in this, admittedly limited, listing.

“Flowers might be a possibility,“ he mused, “as something people might want to place in their flats.” A flower shop, though, didn’t feel to him like the right choice. He made a mental note to return to the idea if nothing better came up.

He moved on to the fauna listings, the most basic of which were coral and the soil-aerating and plant-pollinating Fauna I through to the lions, tigers, sharks and bears; the tops of the various food chains. He didn’t see anything that he thought he could make any money off of. At first. Then, near the bottom of the list, he saw it; he knew what he had to buy. It would require one of the highest level, and thus most expensive, fauna creators, but he was sure that it was the right decision. He selected the entry, ‘
Domesticated Animals
’, and pressed the ‘buy’ button.