Welcome to Gaia! ::

The bartender raised an eyebrow as he mixed the drink and laid it on the counter, "You obviously don't live here, don't you? So what's your business?"

He asked everybody that, there were no tourists in Aekea, so anybody who wasn't native had some sort of business involvement.

"Durem, yea, I watch the news, son of rich dude comes home and become rich dude himself. Another rich a*****e to plunder Gaia, damn capitalist scum. Most humans around here hate him because he's rich, but I hear he's donating to this order thingy. Somethin' about proving his image. Like I could care. Heard they were helpin' the homeless around here though."

"Vacation," the bartender laughed, only retards would want to vacation here, or it was a really bad lie, "Anyway, I don't trust that guy further than he can be thrown. As far as I'm concerned, he's worst than the rest, a power hungry freak. But I hate anyone who's wealthy, because they all earn it off the backs of the proletarian. I heard his religion is opening a temple here soon. They have people on the street corners agitating for releif for the poor. Big talk in my book, all a bunch of black sheep, seems the bots are really convinced by all the bot liberation bullshit. Meanwhile, the Socialist party is going to hell because of them, that's their real plan. Ya know, you're a good listener, how bout a round on the house?"

"What?"the bartender asked, "Are you saying you think this Yaits fellow is an honest rich man! If this was my bar I'd throw you out. I mean, you'd have to push an elephant that never forgets through the needle of a haystack to convince me of that one! Look, I don't got any proof, but did you see the new Yaits biosomething complex they built in the northern district? They haven't announced it yet, but I got a peek at the insignia they're going to hang up. It's like a big Y with a pentagram around it, really creepy stuff. And rumors have been circulatin' that prisoners & mental patients are vanishing, shipped by the government to work in an abandoned paper mill, and never seen again. Just rumors, mind you, but scary stuff if you thinks about it."

Behind them, a man with two prosthetic arms listened to the conversation, his fist clenching his glass until he broke it against the plastic and metal components. He rubbed his hand against the wood grain of the table before slamming his fist and leaving angrily.

"Joey, you better pay for that!" the bartender called, "s**t, he must of heard us. He's a big fool, an Order supporter. Lost both arms and legs in an industrial accident and was labeled a cyborg by the local government, can't leave Aekea legally. Then his wife went off with another man, never heard from her again except for the divorce papers. He's got a lot of bad s**t in his head."

The bartender pocketed the number with a smile, thinking he had just scored.

As for Joey, he walked casually down the street, hands in his pockets and a nasty scowl across his face. He took a left turn into a dark alley, then a right into another lined with bins of industrial waste. Another man, with a mottled, water marked derby hat approached Joey, and as the two men paced a brown paper parcel stained with oil was placed in Joey's hand in exchange for a thick stack of bills. Then both men went on their way. If Stephanie was still trailing Joey, she would be in the line of vision of the man with the derby, and he would be passing her soon. Joey would continue walking, unaware, until he was back on the main streets.

The man in the derby scowled, no one was supposed to around when his trades went down, nobody. The man was street smart, he knew something was odd about this chick in the back alley but he couldn't put his finger on it. She bothered him.

He grunted through pocked lips, "Don't you belong on the curb," as he passed, but he didn't try anything, just kept right on walking. They were too close to the main street. All she had to do was scream and he'd have more trouble than her life was worth, so he left her alone and put her out of his mind.

Joey was walking the streets with the package sticking out of his coat pocket, there was a noise that sounded like metal rods and machine parts clinking together through poor packing. He rounded the corner into a wide ally. there was an open garage across from a small parking lot jammed with automobiles, some of them wrecked. Inside, there were four conveyers, each holding its own automobile. A heavy bald man in a greasy white apron was pulling a transmision out of a Ford Lumina, there was a tall, gangly man with a shaggy beard writing in the office behind a yellowed glass window, and a short man with long red hair and no shirt leaning listless against the engine of badly dented Kia.

"I got the cooling rods and the nueral connectors," Joey said, "All I need are the high-tensile protein lubricated bearings, the hydralic fluid, and the bio-plastic lining for the skin and the vein tubes."

"Do you want us to keep them here for you until you get the rest?" the bald man asked.

"Thanks, I'd appreciate it, I'll pay you for storage."

"Not a problem," the big bald man said.

(Thanks to Wikpedia for technical data about transmissions.) sweatdrop

"Thanks guys," Joey said, leaving as Stephanie approached, "I'm off to temple, I'll have the rest in about two weeks."



"Did you see a help wanted sign out there?" asked the man the long red hair as he tapped a ratchet against the side of the Kia. He was leaning under the hood, but didn't seem to be looking for anything in particular but an excuse to waist time.

"Maybe she's looking for a good time," said the bald man as he left the Lumina's aluminum transmision case fall onto the straps of a portable lift.