When I awoke the next morning, it was to bird song. And when I say birdsong, I mean ravens. They like to brawl with each other over popular food areas, and it’s normally quite a raucous event. So to the fond screeching of the campground raven gang I rose to face BuyMort afresh with a heavy sigh. It was there, waiting for me, with a new screen.

“At BuyMort, we make dreams reality.” The words hovered in front of me before a countdown began.

Before we continue, I should explain something about BuyMort. One of its more . . . vicious habits. BuyMort sells things to you in your sleep.

Whatever you happen to be dreaming about, BuyMort will understand as a request. It only allows the use of half your morties account, but it wants to make you happy. A little gift, from you to you. Go ahead, you deserve it. So, when you wake up, BuyMort delivers your dream purchases. I should have gotten more stoned the night before. Never dream when I’m stoned.

A pod hovered into Phyliss’ trailer and a rainbow beam warped in a surprise. At first glance, I thought it was Molls, but no. No this was a totally different woman from the same species. Her body was much shorter, and she didn’t have white scales.

She slithered out of the rainbow beam wearing very little, a garish red bra and tight latex miniskirt to match. The snake woman looked around with a slight grimace and crossed her arms with a shiver. Then she looked at me, and a very practiced smile that didn’t reach her eyes settled in place on her features.

“I must be your dream come true,” she sighed. The snake woman’s arms reached quickly for her skirt and she unzipped one side of it.

“Woah!” I jumped up, finally realizing what was happening. “No! No thank you, I am so sorry, this is all a total misunderstanding!” It was six-o-clock in the morning, and I had accidentally ordered a snake woman prostitute. Dammit BuyMort! Or . . . maybe dammit me?

My face went beet red as she stopped stripping mid-way, bent at the waist. She did have a waist, I noticed with no inconsiderable amount of shock. Thighs, even. She wore what looked like lace panties around her hips and between her thighs. They didn’t cover much, and I got a particularly detailed look.

Mostly by accident.

They were intact, fully. Very familiar equipment. Disturbing. So many questions of how and why rolled through my head as the snake woman pulled her skirt back up and zipped it again.

She looked relieved, and not at all surprised. “No worries pal. Happens all the time. Sorry, but you know BuyMort don’t do no refunds. At least you didn’t have a nightmare, right?”

I nodded dumbly as she pulled up her own BuyMort interface. I could tell by the way her serpentine eyes glazed over as she focused. She muttered the words, “transaction complete,” and closed her storefront. The snake woman crossed her arms and leaned against Phyllis’ counter. She was far thinner than Molls, and her scales were a dull green and black color.

I scrambled to my jeans and hauled them on over my metal underwear. The blush was receding finally, and I realized I still knew almost nothing about Molls or what she was here for. “Hey,” I said from the back room, buttoning my jeans. “Can I ask you some questions?”

She raised an eyebrow line at me. They didn’t seem to have any hair, so it was just the ridge of scales above her eye, but the effect was the same. “Sorry,” I started, raising my hands. “I’m just new to all this and confused.”

She nodded her chin and flickered her tongue at me. “What day is this?”

I narrowed my eyes and turned my head slightly, pursing my lips. “Um . . . Tuesday, I think.”

She chuckled, a throaty sound, and then gently shook her head. “No, I mean how many days has BuyMort been on your planet.”

I nodded in understanding. “Oh, yeah, this is day two.”

Her eyes widened in understanding. “Ah. Yeah, dream day. That figures.” She looked around a little and nodded again. “Yeah, I’ll talk a bit. Waiting on my pod anyway. What do you wanna know?”

“What are you?” I immediately begged. It wasn’t even a question, just a demand to know. She laughed.

“My species is called the Nah’Gh. We have been part of BuyMort for around 4300 years now.” She spoke casually, and rolled a hand as she finished, looking up to remember the time span. Then she crossed her arms again and looked to me for more questions.

I was stumped, and simply stared at her for a long moment. Finally, she cocked her head to look at me and I had one. “Why are your bodies so . . . much like ours?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “BuyMort planetary services are generally categorized into species types. There’s plenty of beings out there that are a lot more like me than you. I’ve even met some who don’t have arms at all.” There she paused and looked at me as if I was in on some secret with her. “I cannot imagine a snake without arms, can you? So bizarre.” Her pod flew in then and she shuddered again. She glanced at me again and lifted her eyebrow ridges in a question.

I stood and stared at the pod. It entered the room and cast a rainbow beam over a portion of the trailer’s living room. Then it held there, stationary and waiting. She was leaning toward it, and still looking at me expectantly.

“Oh! Uh, no. I can’t think of anything else. Thank you though!” I nodded at her and smiled, trying my very best to be polite.

The Nah’Gh woman turned and slithered toward the beam but paused and turned back to me. “Hey, leave me a five star review, please. It’s really helpful. Even if we didn’t . . . you know. BuyMort doesn’t pay attention to anything but the stars anyway. I’ve been Therizze.”

With that, and a shrug, she slithered into the beam and vanished. I followed the trajectory of the pod flying away and noticed Phyllis peeking over the torn edge of the RV. When she saw me notice her, she ducked. The whole RV jumped as the mech thumped into place on the deck outside again.

I swung into her husband’s leather jacket and exited the Shasta. Phyllis was on the deck, pretending to be busy opening two boxes BuyMort had delivered. “Good morning Phyllis,” I said.

She pretended not to hear me, carefully using a bladed extension of the mech to slice the flesh tape. Once it was off the boxes and set aside, she carefully opened the first. It had a signed picture of Bing Crosby, which she delighted at and carefully set on the small table between chairs that we used for drugs and tea.

The second box held a large rubber comb. It looked like something out of a cartoon and was soft to the touch. Phyllis grimaced at that and tossed it over the railing into the garden, where a small flock of ravens was fighting over the goop that had ejected from my starfish turbine the day before.

“I should have sold that stuff.”

Oh well. Phyllis was looking at me again and pretending she had just noticed me.

“Oh good morning Tyson, dearie.” She smiled widely. “Did you have a pleasant rest?”

“Shut up Phil, it wasn’t like that,” I grumbled and moved over to my chair to flop down. There was still a partial joint in the ashtray, and it was tempting, but I decided I had to keep my head clear for a while yet today. While I sulked at Phyllis, I pulled up my BuyMort screen to see how much that short conversation with a Nah’ga prostitute had cost my morties account.

I had 43 morties left. My lip curled and I instantly began attempting to protest the sale. Screens telling me that BuyMort had a strict no returns policy appeared. Even toward packages or services purchased while asleep, the sale was considered fair.

See, the conscious mind and the subconscious mind are considered two separate but equal customers, with equal rights to the BuyMort account. I was informed the only account limitation available was to limit my morties spending to half while asleep. I was not pleased but selected the option anyway. Better than nothing.

I noticed Phyllis staring at me and grinning, so I sighed and faced her. “What?”

“Nothing. That new tenant is a pretty thing, huh?” Phyllis was nothing if not persistent. And judging from the half burnt joint in the ashtray between us, and her blood shot eyes, consistently operating with lowered inhibitions.

“Look, Phil. I had a dream, okay? Can’t help that. I did not do anything inappropriate.” I scolded mildly, one eyebrow raised as I pointed.

She became very serious and nodded, pursing her lips, and placing a raised metal finger in front of them. “Yes, of course. Nothing inappropriate. You two just spoke, in all likelihood.” The laugh in her voice was obvious, but her helmet clanged into place anyway. I could hear giggling from inside the mech.

“I can still hear you laughing Phil, you jerk! We did just talk, she said this kind of thing happens all the time.” I took a deep breath after finishing and just sat there with my arms crossed. Well, as crossed as the starfish would let them be anyway.

The helmet slid open again and Phyllis looked at me. She had managed to stifle her giggles, but when she saw my sullen appearance she chuckled again. “Oh don’t take it so personal dearie. Nobody cares who you bang.” She reached for the joint on the table between us and lit it with a fat blue spark from her mech’s fingertips. After taking a long drag, she reached to offer it to me. I shook my head.

“I gotta work Phil, no doubt Mr. Sada will call soon with some bullshit or other to deal with.” I nodded my thanks at her. “But maybe later, yeah?” My stomach rumbled and I looked around. “Hey, you don’t have anything to eat in there, do you?”

She nodded, distractedly. Her TV was already on and demanding her attention as she smoked her joint. “Of course, dearie. Should be some oatmeal in the cabinet above the sink.”

I went back in to make some breakfast and remembered the Nah’Gh woman and her request. So I stopped at the counter, after pressing the button to awaken Phyllis’ electric kettle. Nothing happened so I went to try the stove. I had to light it with a match, but the propane was self-contained.

“Guess we lost power last night, Phil!” I shouted to be heard. She nodded and ignored me, so I went back to my task. I drew some water from the tap, but it spluttered and coughed after it gave me a little. That might become problematic.

Whatever, I got enough for my oatmeal.

All Phyllis had was those disgusting paper packets of dried oatmeal, the ones with the little dehydrated fruit chunks in it, so I grabbed two peach and set them aside. It was the least offensive of the flavors available. I shuddered at the banana packet.

Then I set the water to boil and leaned against the counter to wait, pulling up my BuyMort interface. I went to the recent transactions section again and mentally focused on the area to leave a review. This also allowed me to scan through the other reviews, which made me blush. I decided to leave something simple.

“Helpful and friendly. Many thanks.” Then I hit the five star button with my mind and sent it to post with the rest of her reviews. It made me wonder what kind of power that system held over her life for a moment, but then my water was boiling.

I made a quick bowl of the nasty oatmeal glop and ate it out on the deck next to Phyllis. As soon as I took my first bite, my psychic phone began to burn. It didn’t ring, it just got hot in my jeans pocket.

I took it out and dropped it on the table, to see the face in the fog appear again. “Call from Mr. Sada,” it announced. I shook my head, my mouth full of cheap oatmeal. “Very well. Available but unwilling to answer.” And the fog faded away.

“What? No!” I grabbed the phone and pressed the button. Fog filled the screen again and the face glared at me. “Don’t tell him that!”

It sneered, “too late,” and vanished again.

I sighed and set the phone down. After another bite of oatmeal, it began vibrating on the metal surface, making a horrible clanging sound as it jumped back and forth. I grabbed it and looked at the face in the fog again.

“Urgent call from Mr. Sada.”

The face was glaring at me again, and the way he said ‘urgent’ made it sound more like ‘pissed off.’ I sighed and nodded.

“Begrudging acceptance,” it said, and turned down that tunnel again. The side of its head stretched and formed into the walls of a tunnel of fog around the edges of my phone, and then Mr. Sada was glaring at me instead of the creepy face.

“What the fuck Tyson! You answer your phone when I call!”

I drifted for a moment, suddenly dragged back to my childhood. Sitting at a thousand desks, while a thousand angry phone calls were made by a thousand shouting authority figures. All while I and another, usually much larger, boy were bleeding and staring daggers at each other.

“Tyson!” He shouted again, reinforcing the memories. I shrugged out of it and shook my head.

“I was eating breakfast, I didn’t mean for the psychic thing to insult you.” I lifted a spoon of oatmeal to my mouth as punctuation.

“Right, whatever son. Just answer next time, this is important shit.” He picked up his phone and carried it to the window, where he pointed it outside. Doofus was lounging in the shade, a small metallic drone hovering nearby. He was also shaved bald.

“What the fuck did you do to my dog, asshole?” Mr. Sada sounded pissed. He looked pissed too when he turned the camera back to face him.

I quickly stifled my laughter and smile and put on a serious face. I frowned and shrugged. “I didn’t do anything with him. Dogs got BuyMort too, Mr. Sada. He’s probably just learned how to shop for himself.”

Mr. Sada nodded with a scowl as I spoke. “That makes sense, shit.” He leaned out the sliding glass door. “Roofus, stop shaving yourself!”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s hot, dude. What do you care anyway?”

Mr. Sada glared at me again and scowled. “He’s fuckin’ ugly now.”

Phyllis chose that terrible moment to interject. “Oh so what if he’s ugly, you’re far uglier.”

Mr. Sada turned bright red and glared at me. I did my very best to put on a stern face and shake my head.

“Phyllis! Be nice!”

I shook my head at her and then turned back to my boss.

“Sorry Mr. Sada. Anyway, what’s up, what do you need?”

It was at that moment I saw a waist high version of myself made out of clay run into the room, carrying a scrap of what looked like flesh-paper and holding Mr. Sada’s belt knife. The strange, but familiar creature jabbered something incoherent, and then ran away again. As it went, it tripped and fell, picked itself back up, and then immediately fell again, landing off camera.

“What the hell was that!?” I shouted at the phone, but Mr. Sada just glared.

“I didn’t do it on purpose, you give me some fucked up nightmares, son.” He shook his head at me.

“Me?” I was sitting up straight now, oatmeal forgotten. “Did you dream-buy a little version of me to do your shit work?”

Mr. Sada narrowed his eyes and froze for a minute. “. . . no? Whatever, you’ll see them soon enough.” He shook his head and refocused. “Get over here, Tyson, I need you to go deliver this BuyMort rental agreement to the new tenant. Get her to sign it and bring it back. Easy job.”

I looked at the strange pad he had thrust out to me. It was translucent plastic and words floated over it through the air. I found that as I stared at it the words bulged to the perfect size, scrolling through my vision at exactly the same speed as I read them.

YOU THE RECIPIENT PLEDGE TO PAY A SUM OF 100 MORTIES A MONTH FOR A PLACE OF RESIDENCE AS DESIGNATED BY THE MORTBLOCK OWNERSHIP. THIS CONTRACT COMES WITH A NUMBER OF STIPULATIONS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ THEM NOW?

No, I shook my head. I pulled my eyes away from the plastic and glared at Mr. Sada.

Yeah, easy job if you have shoes. Asshole. Finally, I just sighed and agreed. “I’ll be over right after breakfast.”