If you believed half of what the manufacturers claimed, your cranial storage would never run out of space. Once you got it installed, your mems would always come fresh and snappy and your KRAM was pretty much limitless.

            But as of a few hours ago, Redcholate knew that was all a lie. Because her cranium was now stuffed so full she barely memmed her own name.

            It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her fault she’d gotten into this unsolid state. All that mattered was that her former boss’d overloaded her cranial storage.

            To make everything worse, he’d stolen all her creds so she couldn’t afford an upgee. Then threatened to mort her unless she fled the planet.

            Her entire life’d fallen apart in less than two weeks. But she couldn’t just give up. Because this was her only life.

            OS, she said.

            No answer.

            Redcholate swallowed down her lumen that threatened to crawl out her throat. OS!

            Several millis ticked by before it answered. Yes?

            How much time do I have until launch?

            Another interminable interval slouched its way across her life before her OS responded.

            Forty-five minutes and twenty-three seconds. It started a T-minus countdown in the lower left corner of her eyescreen. The countdown was laggy, sticking and then jumping.

            She fought her way across the stream of pedestrians hurrying down the concourse of Alessandro City’s spaceport and slumped onto a bench. Opening up her bag, she rummaged through its contents. She needed to find something—anything—to sell.

            There was that non-incorpo bifile extractor she’d just bought to read the mummified thumb… that’d cost her almost three hundred creds. She also had her old data receiver. There was nothing else in her bag except for the dregs: holo lipstick, a half-empty tube of jack sanitizer, and her favorite tank top.

            With a trembly huff, she looked around. The spaceport was a microcosm of Alessandro City itself. Kinda upgee, kinda downgee.

            OS, where’re the downgee forger shops here?

            No answer.

            Her mouth went dry with the beginnings of panic. If her cranial embed went offline—aka full apocalypse—she’d be pretty much useless. As an entrepreneurial intel broker, she’d taken the time to store a few basic mems and licks in meat storage, but that was just in case of reboot. If her embed went offline permanent-style, she’d have to start over from scratch with basically no mems.

            But there was another reason, even more desperate, why she needed new cranial storage. A reason that meant the difference between meat and mort. Redcholate had an intel-bomb in her cranium that was set to go off. And she had to disable it.

            She stood and pushed her way onto the moving walkway.

            A few minutes later she found a likely forger booth. She busted through its door and slammed her bag down atop the waist-high mecha. It was about five degrees warmer inside. And brighter. Chirpy music sifted over her like annoying dust.

            She ignored all that. “How much’ll you give me for a bifile reader?”

            The mecha extended one dainty appendage and she handed the reader over.

            “Eighty-eight credits,” it said in barely a milli.

            “What?” Eighty-eight creds wouldn’t buy her even the tiniest upgee. “I paid three hundred for it just a few days ago.”

            “The perils of the marketplace,” said the mecha.

            “What about this?” Redcholate tried to hand over the data receiver.

            The mecha refused to accept it. “No resale value.”

            Redcholate felt her eyecubes start to burn, lachry-style. She stuffed the receiver back in her bag. “K. I’ll take the eighty-eight creds.”

            Back out on the noisy, crowded, food-booth-smelly concourse, she headed down the moving sidewalk to the hook booths. Here in its spaceport, Alessandro City’s residents were represented in micro. A few dismy shamblers, lots of families on a saved-up-for trip, and some hoitytoits in their sparkly clothing and zhenisaykwa.

            “Last-minute upgrades!” a hook booth blared nearby, “vacation or business. Eyehooks with hypereality-capable recording and 360 degree extrapolation! Perfect for family vacations or sex tourism.” It played a scintillating tune while sparkles of light fountained out of its top.

            She slowed, and the hook booth sensed her interest. It released a cloud of holographic butterflies and created a red carpet of light leading from her feet to its open door.

            “Enter, customer. What is your requirement? Grade A+ services. Guaranteed.”

            “Grade A+?” Redcholate said. “I can’t afford that.”

            “We have an affiliate booth down the concourse,” said the booth. “Grade B-. Proceed fifty meters and it will be on your left.”

            Redcholate proceeded down the concourse to the affiliate booth. Unlike its A+ affiliate, this booth’s plazstik sides were dented, its door hung askew, and its interior lighting was dim.

            “What’s your cheapest mem upgee?” she asked.

            “Welcome valued customer. Today’s special is a TorBit with 1 PB of storage. Only 150 credits.”

            “Too many creds and not enough storage,” she said. “Don’t you have anything cheaper? Non-virgin, maybe?”

            “We are a Grade B- establishment,” the booth said. “We have only non-virgin storage for sale. We do have a suspect Galaxy Pac with 32 ZB of mixed storage. More capacity than you’ll need in fifteen lifetimes.”

            “How suspect is suspect?”

            “This Galaxy Pac was harvested yesterday. It has failed our initial QC and is flagged for destruction.”

            “I’ll take it. How much?”

            “If you accept an as-is contract, we will sell it for 117 credits.”

            She pressed her forehead against the window. She didn’t even have enough creds to buy something flagged for destruction.

            “Love your shoes,” someone said.

            Redcholate turned and saw a kinda cute older lady with puffy white hair. She looked down at her own shoes. They were the live fish microcosm shoes she’d borrowed from her best friend…. She didn’t even mem her best friend’s name. Her embed was useless. For all she knew some of her mems’d been lost permanent-style.

            “Thanks,” she forced out through a dry throat. “You don’t want to buy them for 29 creds, do you?”

            The lady’s face turned sour, and she walked away.

            “It’s just,” Redcholate whispered, “I’m desperate.”

            “If you are not purchasing our services, please move along,” said the hook booth.

            Redcholate straightened. “Sell me that Galaxy Pac. Or I’ll stand here and block your business. You’re just going to destroy it anyway.”

            “My programming does not allow me to function without recouping operating costs.”

            “How much?”

            “Fifty-seven credits.” The hook booth spoke without rancor. Mechas couldn’t feel rancor.

            “Were you able to prime it yet? Has it been scrubbed?”

            “Of course, discerning customer! And disinfected. The DNA is as fresh as a newborn’s.”

            Redcholate checked her flight’s T-minus clock on her eyescreen. She still had almost half an hour. She entered the booth and sat on the chair. No reflexive cushioning, and an annoying bump pressing into the middle of her back. “Just run it through the disinfecting module one more time.”

            An appendage emerged from the mecha and dipped a fingernail-sized object into a small cup of red liquid. “Disinfection complete,” the hook booth said.

            She closed her eyecubes. This was no time to persnick. “K. I’ll take it.”

            Jets of sterilizing fog arose from the floor and leaked out through the door’s imperfect seal. Another appendage emerged from the hook booth and injected local anesthesia into her scalp, then sliced open her cranium a centimeter and installed the freshly-disinfected Galaxy Pac into an empty slot in her cranial embed.

            Ten minutes later she was walking down the concourse, feeling a bit disoriented.

            OS, how’s the Galaxy Pac performing?

            It is operating nominally.

            Move my mems and intel to the Galaxy Pac. Then isolate and quarantine the old storage.

            According to the hook booth mecha, this storage is suspect. If you isolate and quarantine the old storage, I cannot access it in an emergency.

            But if I keep it live, I’m going to mort.

            Her OS didn’t answer. Are you there? Bizzo to be asking one’s own OS if it was there in one’s own cranium.

            Another long milli before it answered. I will move your memories and intel, and quarantine the old storage. Approximate time to completion: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

            At that, relief overwhelmed Redcholate. Her knees trembled and she had to shove past a family decked out for a trip in matching plaid holographic suits so she could slump against the concourse wall.

            She’d just saved her own life.

            Every bad thing that’d happened to her over the past couple weeks made even less sense once her former boss’d explained things. First, according to him, Redcholate wasn’t even a real person.

            Spaceport peds streamed past on the moving walkway, oblivious to her problems. She gave a snorty sort of half-chuck. “I’m a real person,” she said to no one in particular. And no one in particular answered.

            As if being told she wasn’t a real person wasn’t bad enough, she had an even worse problem than that. According to her former boss, someone was hiding inside her cranial embed. The same person who’d created Redcholate as a personality construct three years ago. Who’d used Redcholate to get a certain piece of intel. The same certain piece of intel that’d ruined Redcholate’s life.

            And k, That’d usually be the worst things anyone could learn about their own life. At least it’d been to Redcholate. Until she learned that this person who’d created her and used her was now going to try and mort her.

            This person was named Armintor Vess. And she’d stolen everything Redcholate’d worked so hard for over three years.

            She hated Armintor Vess.

            But in 1 hour and 29 minutes, Armintor Vess’d be incapacitated.

            Redcholate’d just defeated her own creator. Entrepreneur-style.

Five hours later Redcholate disembarked ShuntHop’s shuttle on StarCruise’s noisy, overcrowded, overpriced embarkation planet. A tiny planet whose sole purpose was to serve as the starport hub for the massive cruise line.

            Unlike the concourse at Alessandro City that mostly sold hooks, stall food and other basic necessities, this one glittered with fancy-trou clothing, fragrant food booths that promised no weight gain, and full-service hook spas. Anything a high-spending tourist didn’t need but was ready to be convinced they did.

            Glancing at the price list of the nearest spa, Redcholate gaped. Good thing she hadn’t waited to get her upgee. She’d never’ve been able to afford one here.

            She’d spent the five hours of her shuttle flight starting to catalogue the PB’s of intel the Forger—her former boss—forced into her cranium. Her embed was now stuffed with useless data like the rotational speed of every known stellar object and the designation and description of all multicellular lifeforms on all known planets.

            Somewhere inside all that, the Forger’d hidden the piece of intel Armintor Vess’d been desperate to get. The piece of intel that’d ruined Redcholate’s life in less than two weeks.

            The identity of the galaxy’s worst mass murderer.

            Intel worth a billio creds. At least.

            So even though Redcholate’d only sorted about a hundred-thousandth of the intel she’d received, she hadn’t dared to delete even a single seemingly-useless byte. What if she deleted something only to find the intel’d been suposneaky encoded inside?

            One thing was certain: her new Galaxy Pac upgrade was daebak. Her mems now came fresh and snappy. She even memmed her best friend’s name: Liefe Chinya. And all Redcholate’s data, including the intel tsunami the Forger’d forced on her, took up about .006 of its capacity.

            K, the Galaxy Pac was suspect. And k, she needed to get it replaced yesterday. But for now, she’d just enjoy all the extra space.

            Unfortunately she’d have to enjoy it on a fancy-trou cruise ship, of all places.

            The Forger’d chased her off the planet, and booked her a cruise ship berth. Why a cruise ship? What kinda bizzo point’d he been trying to make? Maybe he’d felt bad for threatening to mort her? No. Feeling bad wasn’t his style. So there must be another reason.

            Regardless, she had no choice but to go on that cruise. She had nowhere else to go, and no creds to get there. At least on the cruise ship she’d have several days to come up with a plan for the rest of her life. And she’d get free food. Nothing cheaper than free.

            She didn’t have a shred of clothing except for the tank top stuffed into her bag, and the lint dress and the live fish microcosm shoes she was wearing. The shoes were Chinya’s favorite, and Redcholate’d kinda borrowed them without asking. She felt maudly for taking them off-planet, but she hadn’t done it on purpose. The Forger’d been about to snipe her asteroid. So she sloggo’d through some of the overpriced shops, being jostled by lots of old farty gas giants mumbling about how excited they were to be going on a cruise.

            She bought a few of the cheapest skirts and shirts—boro things she’d never otherwise wear—ignoring the prominently displayed gowns and other sparkly things. She wouldn’t’ve bought any of those even if she had enough creds. Not that she didn’t like sparkly, but she’d be a piece of pigeon pituitary gland pie before she’d buy a dress at 10,000 creds.

            She delayed as much as she could, but the flukey chance-encounter-with-someone-desperate-to-unload-a-billio-creds-to-a-stranger thingie she was stupo enough to wish for never happened. So she straggled toward the boarding walkway carrying her small day pack and a plazstik bag of cheap clothing.

“Welcome to the Norm Bissonnette, a StarCruise ship,” said a customer service mecha in a baby-bum-smooth voice. Amidst a large group of passengers, Redcholate competed for enough room to stand without touching anyone.

            “Here on the Norm Bissonnette, you are guaranteed to have an old-fashioned experience, just like it was in the dark ages before mechas were invented.”

            Passengers shuffled and breathed all around her.

            “Here, you will be served by real-flesh, with all its vagaries and inefficiencies,” the mecha continued. “We’ll be releasing you to your berths soon. Please note the flashing red lines along the top of the hallway. In an emergency, please follow these lines to the nearest unjettisoned escape pod.”

            An uncomfortable silence fell. Redcholate’s gibs shivered as she considered the possibility of being abandoned in deep space.

            “Cruise ship ports may change without notice at any time,” the mecha said.

            “What does that mean?” a man shouted from the back. His voice sounded burly and insistent.

            “Unforeseen circumstances may force us to reroute.”

            “You better not skip the Sea Babies,” the man said, his comment bolstered by the timid murmurs of many other passengers. Redcholate craned her neck, but couldn’t see who’d spoken.

            “We will of course do our utmost to fulfill your every wish. I have just been notified that you are cleared to seek out your berths.”

            Several millis later, Redcholate slipped inside her giant suite. Fancy-trou. Dinky tables, plush rugs, some sort of bizzo pouf-like things instead of chairs. She sat on one. Squishy, but with astounding reflexive cushioning.

            The door chime dinged.

            “Come in,” she called.

            A young woman in a kelly green StarCruise uniform entered. “You’re here! Drope hair.”

            “Thanks,” Redcholate said, running her hand over her head. “Who’re you?”

            “Your maid.”

            “I get a maid?”

            “Of course. You’re in one of the ulto-luxury suites on this ship. I’m your personal maid for the duration.”

            “K,” Redcholate said. So the Forger’d not only stolen her creds and forced her to go on this cruise, he’d also obvs stuck her in this loops huge room, with a maid. A meatsack maid.

            “Did you see your bedroom yet?” the maid asked. “I’m Digee, by the way.”

            “Heya,” Redcholate said, giving the young woman a lazy salute. “My name’s Redcholate.”

            “Are you famous?”

            “I don’t think so. Why?”

            Digee giggled. “You were an anonymous reservation. They’re usually famous people who don’t want any attention.”

            Redcholate extricated herself from the comfy clutches of the pouf. “So. There’s a bedroom in here?”

            “It’s the best part.”

            The bedroom was massive, with a comically immense bed in the center. “Dedicated tie-in jack,” said Digee, pulling the cord out a little to show her. “Only the ulto-luxury suites have one. Everyone else has to use the pay-per ones in the lounges.”

            “It’s free for me here?”

            Digee nodded.

            “Sweet tacos in a handbasket.”

            “You want tacos?” Digee asked, releasing the tie-in socket. It whizzed as it retracted into the wall.

            “No, it’s just a saying.” Redcholate looked around the room. Thick curtains lined one wall. “What’s that hiding?”

            Digee pulled the drapes back to reveal a large window. It looked out over the spaceport and the other ships in the near distance.

            “We’re—” Digee’s next words were drowned out by a deafening blaring sound.

            “What’s that!” Redcholate cried.

            “Just the warning claxon! Means we’re taking off,” Digee shouted back.

            They watched out the window as the Norm Bissonnette’s quantum entanglement pulley feeler extended out of the hull. It looked like a 40 meter long wrench. The tips of the claw-end expanded and closed several times, until it caught onto the pulley stream. Immediately the uncomfortable feeling of near-weightlessness roiled Redcholate’s lumen. It felt like all her organs were trying to escape up her throat.

            “I hate that feeling,” she said as the ship, divested of most of its weight, began to slowly rise. Using the pulley, ships could zip up and down through planets’ atmospheres without using massive amounts of fuel, or getting roasted by reentry plasma.

            “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.” Digee grinned.

            Redcholate wasn’t worried. She never worried. Not exactly.

            By pressing her nose against the window she could watch the other ships at the spaceport receding into lozenge-shaped carbuncles. Then the curvature of the planet revealed itself, and the nearby sun sparkled into view.

            In eerie silence, the pulley wrench retracted as soon as they passed the planet’s Kármán line. Redcholate puffed a sigh. She was now truly trapped on this cruise ship.

            “Where are your bags?” Digee asked, turning away from the window to smooth the already tidy bed.

            “Out there,” Redcholate said, motioning to the lounge.

            Digee returned in a few millis, holding the plazstik bag and Redcholate’s small day pack. “This is all you have?”

            Redcholate nodded.

            Digee peered into the bags. “But you’re dining at the captain’s table!” she wailed. “You don’t have anything to wear.”

            “No creds.”

            Digee’s head came up in shock, actual tears in her eyecubes. “But all your onboard cred! You have 10,000 creds to spend. You can get something to wear.”

            10,000 creds? She snorted. The Forger’d must not’ve known she’d get 10,000 creds. She could scamp off the ship at the first port, take another one somewhere else. Wait a milli. What if they wouldn’t…. “Can I cash that out?”

            Digee shook her head. “You could buy a really nice evening gown, though.”

            Plumping down on the bed, Redcholate folded her arms across her chest. “No way am I spending a bunch of creds on a roo-roo dress.”

            “B-but the captain’s table!”

            Redcholate shrugged.

            Digee slumped away to hang her new clothing. Redcholate wandered into the bathroom. A giant tub stared back at her.

            “What happens if I’m in the tub when the pulley wrench deploys?” she shouted.

            “Then I have a lot of cleaning to do,” Digee shouted back.

            Redcholate wandered out of the bathroom and tested out the giganticator bed.

            “Do you mind if we squig so I don’t have to ring the door chime?” Digee asked.

            “Sure.” Redcholate authorized a bifile exchange and they pressed thumbnails.

            Bifile received, said her OS, displaying Digee’s intel.

            “Thanks,” said Digee. “It’s StarCruise policy that I monitor your vital signs—”

            Redcholate waved her hand. “Whev.”

            “I’ll come back at o-six-hundred ship’s time to help you dress.” Digee glanced sadly over her shoulder at the closet as she left.

            “K,” Redcholate said. The bed’s reflexive cushioning seemed hyper-aware, almost like it was predicting her movements instead of reacting to them. Kinda creepto.

            She linked her OS to her ship’s account and downloaded her DNA pattern to the doorhandle, then checked her incoming uploads to find a cringy duster from StarCruise called the Norm Newsletter. She scrolled through it on her eyescreen. Smiling captain. Smiling crew. Smiling weird lady with huge ringlets on each side of her face.

            Redcholate was ready to snipe it when she noticed a minuscule haze around ringlet-lady’s picture. Hidden code. She squinted at it, then deployed a standard decrypto. The picture dissolved with a roo-roo sparkle and reformed into a short message: After-hours bar &c. Deck E. Storeroom 398.

            OS, save this intel.

            For a while she sloggo’d through the Forger’s intel swamp. Mindless fact after fact after 1003 fact. She found a treasure-trove—well, what was the opposite of a treasure trove?—that outlined the recent, current or upcoming movements of over 720,000 denizens of the galaxy. She couldn’t see anything special about these people, but couldn’t bring herself to scrub it all. Hidden inside all this uselessness the Forger’d forced on her was the intel the entire galaxy was desperate to get: the true identity of the Butcher. Yes, the Butcher was suposcary and would mort anyone who researched their identity. But how would they know what went on in Redcholate’s cranium?

            She tried sorting the names by different criteria. Location. Destination. Means of transport. And then she had it. A little under half of these 720,000 people had recently disembarked, were cruising, or had booked an upcoming berth on a StarCruise cruise ship.

            Limit to current cruises, she said to her OS.

            She scrolled through the limited data.

            Find only Norm Bissonnette passengers.

            Six people remained:

1. Pihanna Albe

2. Dendra Happenstance

3. Malwig Markhose

4. Bayla Moore

5. Bin Moore

6. Clivenfors Ravert-Syndon

            Way too loops to be a coinkydink. Almost a quadrillion people in the galaxy, so what odds that six other Norm Bissonnette passengers showed up on some random list?

            Obvs it wasn’t random.

            OS, which passengers on this list are ulto-lux?

            All six are ulto-luxury passengers. Bayla and Bin Moore share one ulto-luxury suite. Clivenfors Ravert-Syndon, Dendra Happenstance, Pihanna Albe, Malwig Markhose and you, Redcholate Parise, occupy the other five.

            She was one of only seven ulto-lux passengers? And the other six were on this list?

            One of these passengers must be the Butcher themself.

            “You’re so cut in the braincase, Redcholate,” she said proudly. “So cut.” She’d forged the intel, despite the Forger’s obfuscations.

            But then again he’d given this intel to her so she could find it. So, he’d probs made it easy to cogik.

            “Whev. I found it.”

            Everything was looking better. Now that she’d successfully shut away her creepy creator in her old cranial embed, she should find out which one of these passengers was the Butcher, and blast their braincase.

            But first, she needed a nap. It’d been a long and dreadly day.

            Closing her eyes, she wiggled to find a more comfortable position, only to realize they were all extremely comfortable.

            As she relaxed for the first time in what seemed like days, she felt a kind of itch inside her head. As if a beetle had crawled in through her ear and was scuttling around in her braincase.

            She tried to roll over, to shake her head, but found she couldn’t move.

            The scuttling beetle became restless, more insistent. Except it wasn’t a beetle.

            There was someone else inside her braincase.

            My body, said Armintor Vess. I want it back.

            Redcholate screamed, yet no one but Armintor heard.