While waiting for my swarm to completely search the huge trading station I went to work exploring all that had been scanned into VR. I hadn’t realized just how cool it would be to let my swarm free to inspect and record every last inch of the station. I mean, I knew that whatever I saw I would be able to recall and recreate in VR, it just didn’t occur to me to use my swarm in this manner.

As a result, I now had the entire station saved as a model for me to look over at my leisure inside of my personal VR. It was incredible. I planned on letting my swarm inspect every new place I visited in the future.

I could move so much faster inside VR and as long as I used my Prime Speed Control key I could enjoy my stay on the station without feeling like I was wasting time. Not having any other AI to draw on the power of my habitat’s processing power had returned my key to its full potential.

Sure it was empty without my friends but I only had to wait another day and they would all be back. Back and better than ever with their own upgraded VR modules so that they could each stretch their legs as much as they needed.

“The swarm has located Meditati's module.” Nurse said suddenly, startling me out of my inspection of some cool products inside of a nearby Skii hobby store.

In every storefront, there was a designated area for products that could potentially suit the needs of other alien races on display. It was a smart business model because it drew in other alien customers that normally might not look at another race’s products. This one store had an array of holographic toys, clothing, and images that grabbed my attention while I was wandering around.

While I couldn’t smell or touch anything that had been scanned in passing by my swarm, the detail manifested in the products was astounding and as near to lifelike as I could ever have hoped for. It seemed that the Skii, being mostly sight-based, had perfected the manipulation of light. For someone who had grown up watching the painstakingly slow progression of graphics in video games to witnessing a race that was light years ahead, no pun intended, in terms of details and advanced techniques selling these marvels as trinkets, it just blew my mind.

“Wait! What? Where?” I asked once her words caught up to me. I made a mental note to buy every gadget this store possessed.

While in VR I had assigned Nurse a little avatar to help me to keep track of her. As it turns out she wanted an avatar only of a small floating ant. She seemed to resist me humanizing her further or making her into something that she was not.

Just creating an avatar for her had led to an interesting dialog with her. She had gone so far as to chastise me by saying “In your mind, you think you are being nice to me by attempting to give me an identity, space, and time for myself but my existence is only tied to forever serving my monarch. I don’t need or desire anything. I won’t change and also can't develop a conscience beyond what I understand from your mind. Befriending me will only cause troubles for you as your mind tries to accept me for what I am.”

“And what are you?” I had asked.

“Just what you have already ascertained… a tool without a moral compass. I am neither good nor evil, sane or psychopathic, I simply don’t have the walls inside my mind like you do.”

It was an odd thing for me to think of someone solely as a minion or tool rather than as a person but she would not let my mind entertain even a sliver of what I would normally set aside for friends.

Anyways, I put those thoughts aside and looked at her little ant form hovering to my left next to a frozen hologram of the local Core. Even though Nurse was small she looked like a giant compared to the small model.

“You are not going to like the answer.” Nurse said as she opened a little map for both of us to look at. I zoomed in on the marker and found that it was located off station in one of the remote docking ports. There were tube pathways built to accommodate vessels that either didn't want to enter the domain of the station or were physically too large. The latter seemed to be the case for this massive ship. Meditati's module was indicated to be resting somewhere aboard the huge and sleek structure.

“Wait… she is on an alien spaceship?”

“Yes. And from what I gather they are just about ready to leave. The imminent arrival of a Tela scientist from the local Core has spooked them.”

“A Tela scientist? Was that who the station representative wanted me to stay put for? A Tela scientist and who else?”

“I don’t know the identity of the second trader but I think that there is a high chance that it is another Tela Citizen as well.” She replied as I stared off into space to gather my thoughts.

"I'm going to have the swarm hold the ship where it is. Regardless of the officials of the station trying to bribe me to stay here, my mission is to rescue Meditati first.” I said as I dropped out of VR while willing my roaming swarm to converge on the docked ship. All around the outer edge of the station there appeared to be a barely visible haze that rapidly headed towards the large vessel.

I was aware that I was stealing/liberating an AI that some Tela had created and owned. I was just about to get lost in a loop of thought where I debated how bad or good my actions were when Nurse suddenly bit me.

“Ouch! What the heck was that for?” I asked as I looked down at a little ant that was busy chomping on the outer surface of my suit. Before the two Yelvos guards could see what my sudden head jerk was for, Nurse dissolved the creation and answered me in my mind.

“Focus Kevin. Not everything is tied to your morals at this point. Earth is undefended, this is the Wild West of space where you will get everything taken from you the first chance anyone has, and you have an important mission. We can debate all of the finer points of whether or not freeing a sentient AI is stealing or not later. Here is a quick insight on how things are out here: If you had never found out that M and J were scalping momps off the top, they wouldn’t have considered it stealing. They were just profiting from your ignorance. That is how business is. Corporations create a product for 50 cents and sell it for 50 bucks. They don’t lose sleep over you and how many hours you labored to earn that money. You don’t matter to them.” Nurse told me point-blank. “Just try your best to stay who you are and your friends will support you along the way. That is the best that you can do.”

“Alright, just keep an eye on the swarm and make sure they don’t kill anyone if at all possible,” I said as I turned and looked at my two security escorts.

"Jjjjimpv, this is where I leave you two. I have some things to do and won't be needing your service anymore." I sent before I jumped off the slow and jerky ride and flew up quickly and away in the air.

"But the Traders are arriving in less than an hour…” J managed to send before I sped to the store that I had just been admiring in VR. It was on the way towards the side of the station that Meditati was being held and I wanted to stop by really fast because I didn’t plan on coming back this way again. I found the same Skii salesperson right where it had been leaning boredly against a counter even in VR and opened up a channel of communication with it.

“I want everything you have here that will be afforded by this,” I said as I took out one of the Leva nest billets from my backpack and set it on the counter in front of the Skii.

Luckily for me, the store was empty of customers because the next few moments proved to be quite interesting and I wouldn’t have wanted to explain why it happened to random customers. At first, the Skii didn’t seem interested in what I had laid before it. It simply flapped its black vision flaps at me and around the shop as if I had interrupted it watching its favorite show.

Slowly it reached under the counter and grabbed a little wand-like device in its thin fingers and brought it up and above the billet. The reaction I received after the Skii slowly waved a small material analyzer over the surface of the billet was priceless.

You would have thought that I had set a bomb off in the Skii’s face or just announced that it and its whole stick family tree was set for life. It slapped a panel on the wall so fast that I immediately suspected that I was about to get robbed. The panel on the wall was hooked up to a security system that caused thick shuttered doors to fall into place at the front of the shop, effectively sealing us inside.

I wasn’t worried that this thin stick-like alien could possibly do anything to me, but I didn’t have time for someone to try to waylay me either. I glanced at the panels blocking the shop front and then back at the Skii who had suddenly changed its posture.

It was bowing over its extended hands.

“May this one join you in the light?” came a very high-pitched and rapid question from the Skii bowing over the top of the counter.

“What?”

“Please accept the light of my clan and aid us in seeking more freedoms like this.”

“What?” I asked again. I wasn’t getting a clue as to what this Skii was trying to ask me but it hadn’t moved a hair from its bent-over position. At the risk of sounding like a newly broken record, I simply stuck to the script that I had thought up before entering this strange Skii’s shop.

“Um, look, whatever this will buy, can you deliver it to my ship at this port address?” I asked as I sent over the location and stepped back from the counter.

“It shall be done.” The Skii said before touching the panel on the wall again to raise the security doors back up in place.

You might not believe me but I can honestly tell you that the billet that I had set on the counter had vanished in the blink of an eye. I even had to enter VR to try to see what had happened to it. One second it was there and the next moment it just looked like an empty counter. Either the Skii in front of me could move faster than I could sense, even replaying it in VR while using my Prime Speed Control key, or I had just witnessed some form of cloaking technology in play that I hadn’t noticed being advertised anywhere when I had been browsing the station earlier.

Curious.

Regardless, I had places to be and things to do so I quickly flew out of the shop and past many rather stunned and gossip-filled aliens just outside of the shop. The moment I cleared the security doors they all slammed back in place, effectively locking me outside of the shop.

I didn’t have time to consider if the Skii was trying to escape without delivering what I asked for first, I simply made a note of the location in case I needed to come back later.

“You know what? Never mind, I don’t care. I will extend a branch to this shop and see if they deliver. If not then no harm and no foul. I don’t really care.” I said as I picked up speed away from the shop.

I may have broken some speed limits and set the station security on edge because halfway across the station while at speed I was bombarded by lights and sounds that seemed to be trying to tell me to halt and to wait for law enforcement.

‘No.’ was all I thought and sped on, increasing my speed even further while using my Prime Speed Control key to make sure that I didn’t accidentally run into someone and decorate the walls of the station with their body parts.

After a certain point, I noticed that the station security switched their focus and instead began broadcasting to everyone to get out of my way. This had a desirable effect but it also made everyone in part of the station that I was zipping through to try to get a sighting or recording of me.

It probably wasn’t every day that you had someone turn into a rocket inside the station and move silently at such a high speed while fluidly dodging around suspended walkways, rails, and signs.

It all didn’t matter to me because Nurse had warned me that the engines of the large vessel had begun to power up.

“This is a greeting tunnel that will lead you off station and directly to the ship…” Nurse said as she was navigating for me while using the scanned station map from earlier.

“Or it would if they hadn’t sealed it off,” I said as I noticed that they had dropped the massive barrier door down to shut off my exit from the station.

“Interesting… the signal to close this door did not originate from the normal station control hierarchy. This signal is the same as the one that was trying to damage our ship when we arrived. It seems that whoever it was wants payback and for us to get caught by the security teams that are on their way after us.” Nurse said.

“Poor door. It didn’t do anything to deserve this.” I said with a smug smile as I flew at it while I activated my Last Tunneler’s gloves.

The doors were just a little over two feet thick and seemed to be made from a single piece of one-ply toilet paper judging by how fast I passed through it without any effort.

“Guide some swarm to seal the hole up that I made by using the excess material from the rest of the door as a patch.” I directed Nurse as I quickly spied the large craft that was in the middle of trying to leave the spaceside dock.

It wasn’t moving at all even though the golden thrust panels were pulsing angrily all along the back and on blunt extensions along its body.

“Meditati’s module is near the front of the ship in a box on the deck next to the captain.” Nurse reported as I noticed a lot smaller ship docked quietly in place next to the huge ship.

“Is that the Salvage craft? Oppino’s Salvage I think the name was?” I asked Nurse as I quickly made my way above the larger craft and along the outer edge of the vessel, heading towards the marker on the front.

“Yes, and the pilot is dead. His body is dissolving and his vessel is in the early stages of being destroyed by microbots. It seems that whoever he traded the module with didn’t want any witnesses.” She said without any emotions detectible in her voice.

“And no, the swarm had nothing to do with it. We discovered it after it had happened or we would have tried to preserve life as you directed. At present, I am having the swarm hunt down the microbots in charge of destroying the evidence and I am disabling them in case you need them for evidence later.” She said, setting my mind at ease from the tiny worries that I had felt blossom that she might have had a hand in killing indiscriminately.

I spied a docking port near the front side of the craft and flew towards it. Why did I do that you might ask? Well, the docking port had suddenly started to have blinking lights all around the outer edge as though it was inviting me to use it. Not only that but it had started to cycle its outer doors open for me.

“What a polite murdering villain,” I muttered as I entered the outer hatch and observed as it cycled shut behind me.

One way or another I was about to get Meditati’s module back.