Chapter 6: Nina’s declassified: Alien survival guide

The flash of light dissipated, leaving Noah standing in a familiar alleyway, located about 150m from the carpark where he was shot. Noah turned around to ensure that the case was clear, promptly bringing out the ‘borrowed car’ from his inventory.

Standing in the alley in a fancy red suit would attract unwanted attention in this area, so Noah quickly made his way out. Using his card as a phone, he called the police and notified them of a car with a broken window sitting in an alleyway.

A few minutes after he left, Noah saw a police car making its way down towards the alley. Ok now that that’s settled it’s time I go and buy some sugar… or a lot of sugar.

After catching a bus to the closest shopping centre, Noah entered a grocery store and promptly bought half a shopping carts worth of sugar and a bag of table salt. The rest was filled with regular groceries, he was after all, a growing boy who needed his milk.

He picked up a bunch of cheap jars to store the rejuvenating gel, with three different lid colours of white, gold and silver. He didn’t need a lot, only enough to attract enough attention as a sample. Despite upgrading his brain capacity, Noah hadn’t figured out how he could start selling his new product to the people of Earth. If he suddenly came out with such a miraculous product, how could he explain to the public… and more likely the government, how he was able to create it. He had no doubt there would be massive media attention once word of the gel spread. Women have a six sense when it comes to beauty after all.

Noah was stuck with a new problem, and this wasn’t limited to the rejuvenating gel alone. Anything he brought from the void would be considered exotic at the very least. If he suddenly brought a cure for cancer or something, He wouldn’t be able to escape questioning, or he might even be targeted by governments, companies, criminal organisations… or a combination of the three.

As Noah dwelled on the subject, he left the store and walked with his heavy shopping bags down a supply alley next to the shopping centre. He got a few weird looks from people as he grunted, pushing the heavy shopping trolly up a ramp and behind the shadow of the two tall buildings.

Once out of sight, he stored everything in his inventory and got ready to head back to the void. “Ok card, take me home please.”

…

“Umm, is everything ok?”

…

“You know I can see those ellipsis, right?” Noah sighed.

A name.

“A name? Ah, yeah I guess calling you card is a bit rude.” Noah scratched his head awkwardly. Although he mentioned giving his card a name before, he didn’t have a proper one in mind at the time. Noah paced in circles in the alley, trying to think of something that fit his cards personality. “Speaking of names, why do you want me to give you one? Wouldn’t you rather give yourself one?”

I have a designation given to me by the void, it’s the same as your universe’s designation. But I don’t have a “name”.

“Well since you have the same designation as the Universe, doesn’t that mean you are somehow related to it? Though I guess calling you Universe doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Since I found you on Earth, and you have the same designation as the Universe… If that’s the case, how about Gaia? She’s one of the Greek primordial deities, supposedly the great mother of all creation if I recall correctly.”

Gaia huh. The ancient mother, creator of life, the OG milf. Yeah, It’s not bad.

“I’m just going to ignore that last one” Noah cringed, as he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Despite my many misgivings about this, I look forward to working with you from now on Gaia. Now that that’s sorted, can we head back to the void?”

Light enveloped Noah, the now empty alley remained, leaving only the background noise of the busy shopping centre.

As Noah returned to his cabin, he was quick to notice the film of weird void space time had largely dissipated from his front door, no longer feeling like he was walking through a clear barrier. He also noticed an unread message with an attachment from Mr Agar containing a rejuvenating gel fact sheet, and an apology for not giving it to him earlier, explaining he was too excited and forgot. This provided information on mixing ratios for the different effect levels of the gel.

Noah walked through the living room and into the kitchen, under the sink he grabbed three large pots. He quickly brought out a pen and marked each pot with medical, premium, and basic.

The medical pot was to be filled with gel saturated with sugar. That means 2kg of sugar per litre. While this would use up a lot of sugar, the amount used on a person would be low, the gel can be spread very thinly and still work well, according to the extra info Mr Agar sent over. Noah decided to sell this mixture to hospitals, where they can use the concentrate for treating severe burns and skin defects like severe eczema, as well as dilute it for more minor injuries. The concentration of sugar required for treating injuries like third degree burns was high, as the gel had to heal three layers of skin.

The premium pot was for makeup and skin care. According to the fact sheet from Mr Agar, he recommended that, for significant results for beauty only 100g of sugar per litre was necessary. This would be potent enough to make an old woman look 30 years younger than she is, if applied regularly. The basic pot only had 25g of sugar per litre and would still perform significantly better than any normal skin care product.

Once the pots were full of the required ratios of sugar and water, Noah grabbed out some gel and placed it in the pots, he carried them outside under the sunlight and watched as the golden gel took over the sugary water. Once the pots were all filled with gel, Noah sprinkled in some salt and tested the treated gel by adding some more sugar and noticed no further expansion.

Noah stepped back from the three pots now filled with gel, pulled out his stockpile of jars and arranged them in front of each pot. White lid for the medical gel, gold for premium and silver for basic. “Ok, now all that’s left is to scoop in some gel for each type. They’re 100ml jars and each pot is 50L so I have enough for 500 of each type, but for samples I’ll take 20 of each. I don’t even have enough jars anyway.” Noah continued to mutter to himself as he set off on the boring task of manually filling each jar.

Noah stretched and fell onto his back, his body surrounded by jars and his hands covered in gel. His body ached from sitting upright and filling jars for the last half hour. He grabbed some of the medical grade gel and rubbed it into his lower back, the pain slightly alleviated, it would take a while for the gel to work its magic.

Before putting the prepared samples into his inventory, Noah took out some of the medical grade gel and rubbed it under his chin, it was a passing thought, but he wanted to know if the rejuvenating gel had the potential to grow hair, which could be used as a selling point for balding men. To his surprise it worked fairly quickly, as after the gel was absorbed into his skin, Noah felt a very fine stubble beginning to form. Checking back to the fact sheet, Noah found a section that indicated the gel’s effects varied slightly for races with multiple sexes, meaning women wouldn’t have to worry about growing beards, but it could help men grow back lost hair. Though he wouldn’t admit he only tried this because he thought facial hair would make him look more manly. If Mr Morris saw him, he would certainly approve.

Noah stood up and placed the filled jars and remaining pots of gel into his inventory and stretched. Now that he had his product samples prepared, he needed to find an appropriate way of selling them to his fellow Earthlings.

However, by this time it was getting late, and Noah decided to tackle the problem in the morning. Returning to his computer inside Noah went online to the void net and after messing around for a while, he came across a web page titled, ‘Void trading for noobs (Hurt your feelings edition)’. “Nina? Is this the same person Eva mentioned?” Noah clicked on and read the post on the main page.

“So, you think you’re hot shit right? I mean, you’ve made it to the void, and if you’re from a less advanced world you must be feeling overwhelmed and maybe a bit too excited about the many opportunities you’ve been given. You might be thinking, I must have been chosen by God to be able to come to the void! This is my true purpose! Now for those religious types, just chill out and read on. For the idiots who arrive here and try and form a slave harem or defeat a demon lord, go to therapy please. Well I guess you could call Shades demons, but that’s a whole ‘nother ball game and you’re too green to worry about that. And before you ask why I’m talking about niche cultural phenomenon you thought were exclusive to your world, let me remind you that there are… as far as we know, infinite universes, and you’re not unique. There are religious fanatics in most worlds that arrive here and how likely is it that your religious system is correct? As for the slave harem idiots and lolicons, well if anything is a universal constant its gross sexual fetishes. Now what does this have to do with void trading? Well, nothing much really, this is just a PSA I’ve started putting out because as a humanoid species with animal features I’m sick and FUCKING tired of weird assholes trying to invite me to their pathetic 1 man harem! AND NO, I DO NOT WANT A COPY OF YOUR BIBLE!”

Noah sat there staring at the screen, the tone of the author was so passionate he could feel years of mental anguish seeping into every word. He felt bad that whoever wrote this suffered enough to feel the need to place a PSA in front of their posts. And this wasn’t even the whole thing. The rant continued for 30 pages…

Skipping through the PSA that contained enough curse words to give a nun a heart attack, Noah finally reached the actual start of the post.

“Ok, now that I’ve got that off my chest for the umpteenth time, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of your situation. People who come here often make the mistake of bringing some super advanced technology from the void and back to their world, only to be questioned by whoever is in charge. For less advanced societies that could mean being burned at the stake, to more advanced societies it means being imprisoned, interrogated, or maybe dissected. Luckily few casualties have arisen from such situations as they can just teleport back to the void. But I’m sure dear reader, you don’t want to make the same mistake. So, what do you need?”

Noah nodded, while he wasn’t too worried about being dissected by the government, if he brought back something too crazy, he might be targeted by criminal organisations, so he needed backing and protection.

“Yes, dear readers, you do need someone or something to protect you in your endeavours. For those of you from civilisations of magic origin click the link below for a more specific tutorial there. Keep reading for those from tech worlds. Ok so let’s go over my favourite. I like to call it the fake alien approach. Now, you need a few things for this, first is a disguise. You obviously wouldn’t make a very convincing alien if you looked the same as everyone else. Now, for a limited time only I am offering discounts on my worlds advanced genetic engineering services. For 500 credits I can turn you into whatever you want, though there is a period of adjustment. Now I’m sure most of you don’t have that much cash so what I can offer is a wrist mounted device that will make you look like another species; the hologram can be touched as well so you don’t have to worry about being discovered. This will only cost 5 credits. Now that my shameless self-promotion is out of the way, the second thing you need is a spaceship. I mean what alien doesn’t have one. Down below is a link to a friend of mine who refurbishes them and is happy to loan out ships as long as you can show him a cool technology he hasn’t seen before. I’ll leave what you show him up to you but make it as weird as you can for a better chance. This is a public post so I won’t go into details here but I’ll give you some extra tips if you message me about it.”

Noah clicked on the provided link and found a page called Rusty’s space scrappers. The front page filled with a poorly cropped photo of a hairy dwarf looking man in a pose as if he was trying to bash the camera person in the face, his glowing, futuristic, wrench held in the air. Rusty looked to fit the typical grumpy dwarf stereotype pretty well. Noah went back to continue reading the article.

“Once you’ve got your fake or real alien disguise and a ship it’s time to make contact. Now you would know your world the best, so choose a country that won’t try to lynch you when you make contact. If you have an organisation actively trying to contact “aliens” then go to them. And the last thing you need is a cover story, I recommend calling your “home world” the void as you won’t have to bend over backwards having to stay on top of your lies. As a word of advice, just act as if you are a tourist, find fun things to do and see, enjoy the attention of governments, and stay in the public eye, as it will make it harder for you to be targeted, and for privacy just come back to the void. Ezy Peazy. Make friends with governments that oppose each other so you have a backup if one decides to target you. I’d also recommend avoiding giving your world advanced weapons at the start and focus on more peaceful technology like medical treatments or renewable energies. This is because people in power can get greedy and if you upset the balance of power too much, you might just find yourself starting a war. Well, that’s all for today’s topic, tune in tomorrow when I review the top 50 ultra spicy sauces sold in the Void.”

Noah liked the article before clicking away. He went to the websites home page and bookmarked it, glancing over to the top left and saw it was titled, Nina’s hole… “Don’t think dirty thoughts Noah, it’s just a name… nothing sexual about it, hole probably refers to a dwelling or a home… yeah let’s go with that.” With that, Noah tucked himself in and went to bed, he would deal with his fake alien plan in the morning.

Pfft, Nina’s hole. I like her.

“Don’t even start Gaia”.

[Nina’s hole]

“LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!” A high-pitched yell echoed out of a hole in a cave. Nina sat on a slime bag with a computer on her lap wiggling and giggling like a schoolgirl, her fox ears flapping back and forth. After hundreds of articles Nina finally got her first like in over a year. She used to be pretty popular for her posts, gathering a lot of traction. However, she started getting approached by annoying weebs and bible salesman and after a few months of that she exploded.

In a caffein and alcohol fuelled rage, she typed up her PSA until she passed out. By the end it was mostly gibberish and cursing. However, she put in so much time into it she stubbornly placed it before every article she wrote. At least the PSA worked, though it scared away all her readers. However, this time someone actually bookmarked her page and liked her post, meaning they had read the whole thing. A smug sense of pride welled up within her.

“Well I was pretty happy with how that one turned out” she mumbled as she clicked on the name of the person who liked her post.

“Noah Valentine huh, let’s see what he’s like… in a totally non stalky way.” Nina had a lot of time to spare… Meanwhile Noah felt a shiver down his spine, briefly waking him from his slumber.