For an immersive audiobook version of this story (read by yours truly) press the play button above, or press the 🎧 symbol on the Substack app, to listen to the voiceover.
One
Still in his wrinkled GalDelCo uniform of navy pants and collared navy shirt with GalDelCo’s simplistic logo (literally just the stylized letters against a background of the Milky Way) stitched into the breast, Gus stretched, yawned, and noticed that the stale smell of cigar smoke still hung in the air—even though he had emptied out all the ashtrays at the Galactic Pantry in the last Mass Relocator Station they’d stopped at.
The sub-atomic particle filtration system must be on the fritz again, he thought, or that Arcturian salesman ripped me off… He sprayed almost half a can of GalDelCo-brand air freshener—Alvarnian Pine Wood Scent, (you’ll be instantly transported to the forest planets of the Alvarnia System!) Somehow the smell of smoke persisted.
Gus shrugged, resigned to his smelly fate, and smoked a roach that had escaped the ashtray purge while he drank his fresh brewed black coffee—a House Blend of hydroponic beans from the Ridordian Cartel. He savored the rich bold authentic flavor as he watched his target destination slowly grow larger on the viewscreen, which flickered rhythmically with the pulsing rumble of the Long Term Transit Engine at the back of the Thecarian Courier—one of the smallest cargo-class ships in the Galaxy.
The bad thing about the holographic projection ones (as opposed to traditional viewscreens), thought Gus as he watched the cheap thing flickering, was that you couldn’t give them a good smack to make them work again.
It was yet another thing that the old-timers had right.
The small, cramped shuttle’s cockpit was littered with undelivered packages, which made it somehow even more claustrophobic (yes, that was still possible), and the sight of these to-do lists made manifest gave Gus Valentino, a ruggedly-handsome twenty-something GalDelCo driver who looked more hungover than he felt, the subtlest nagging sensation at the back of his mind. It was that nagging sensation that all procrastinators get when confronted with the inevitable consequences of their neglect. But he was quite good at ignoring those ‘sensations’—burying them deep down to be forgotten and mummified in the tombs of his psyche.
Red letters now flashed at the top of the view screen.
Now Approaching: Elysium Banking Station
This will be interesting—I’ve never been to a bank before, thought Gus as he lit a cigarette (a GalDelCo Light), his morning buzz now in full swing—(even though there really weren’t any ‘mornings’ out here in space).
GalDelCo employees were forbidden from interacting with The Banks. He wasn’t sure, but Gus assumed that employees from the other two corporations, Lightspeed Inc. and Star-Mart, were likewise prohibited from any use of (or collaboration with) any bank, banker, or banking station. It had something to do with bad blood between them and The Banks that stretched all the way back to the Corporation Wars.
But Gus hadn’t been paying that close attention during the history lessons at the GalDelCo Training Academy.
He did know, however, that there were those rare occasions when the class-A, priority level delivery drivers—of which he was now a member of their elite ranks—would pick up packages from banks and have them delivered. Private citizens were allowed to use banks still, and if they were GalDelCo Priority™ subscribers then they got what they wanted, when they wanted it. And if the customer opted for the class-A delivery upgrade, there was a no-questions-asked policy and a guaranteed arrival time. Gus’s current job was one of those.
But really as far as jobs went, this one was pretty simple: retrieve a package from vault Y-723 and deliver it to the specified coordinates from the customer-supplied special instructions.
He hadn’t checked where these coordinates landed yet, but they usually wanted the package dropped off at their house, so it was probably some high-end neighborhood on some rich planet near the Galactic Core. Just like all the other class-A jobs he’d been doing lately since becoming a class-A certified driver.
“Darla?” Gus said to the ship’s onboard AI. He forgot why she was called Darla. Dialogue Activated Robot… something?
“Hey, Darla, what’s the package we’re getting here?”
“Checking,” the automated female voice said from unseen speakers in the cockpit. “The supplied description does not specify the exact identity of the item but calls it an ‘heirloom.’”
“How informative,” Gus said, but nothing really surprised him anymore with these class-A jobs. This wasn’t the first ‘heirloom’ that people had paid tons of money to have delivered across the galaxy.
Suddenly the LTT engine kicked off and the shuttle slowed to what seemed like a crawl from the perspective of the small cargo ship as Gus watched the scene of interstellar traffic manipulation unfolding out the holographic viewscreen in the cockpit.
Gus’s ship’s autopilot gave control to the Banking station as its automated docking systems brought in hundreds of ships at once and docked them while simultaneously releasing hundreds of other ships. A thousand must have come and gone every two minutes, Gus thought as he watched in awe at the traffic whirring about and intersecting in seemingly impossible harmony like a dense cloud of insects swarming in a swamp, flying within millimeters but never colliding.
Elysium Banking Station was unbelievably massive! It didn’t really have any kind of distinguishable shape due to the cacophony of turrets, towers, and antennae of all sizes jutting out at every end. Maybe from really far away it would’ve looked like a circle. Or a square. A dodecahedron?
One thing was certain: the place was decked out with more guns and force shields than Gus had ever seen in one place. As the bank’s automated docking systems brought Gus’s little ship into dock, he must’ve passed through about two dozen separate force shields of varying strengths and thicknesses. And the variety of guns and automated laser turrets had more quantity and diversity than the animal kingdom did on the rain forest planet of Barsharr!
Several of the guns were trained on Gus’s ship as it slowly got closer and closer until finally it entered into a small opening in the side of the space station just the perfect size for the Thecarian Courier.
The ship settled down and the airlock released. Gus grabbed the earpiece from the charging station on the control terminal in the cockpit. Alright, he thought. Get the package and lets get going to the destination. Piece of cake.
Using the brand new automatic clothes dewrinklizer he’d picked up with some of the cash from his class-A deliveries, he freshened up the uniform he’d slept in, grabbed his company-approved windbreaker jacket, and then sprayed some cologne (Intensity, by GalDelCo) all over him before exiting his ship and entering the planet-sized bank.
Two
The sounds of the crowd were deafening as a thousand conversations battered against Gus’s ear drums all at once. A fat red-headed woman using a anti-grav walker bumped into him as she pushed her way through the crowd, nearly knocking Gus over, after which he figured he would probably have been trampled to death. A grim image crept into his mind as he wondered if that had ever happened to anyone in this cramped metallic tunnel, filled end to end with stampeding civilians.
It made the cockpit of his tiny Thecarian Courier feel like an oasis of space and leisure. The smell of people had him wishing he’d worn his external scent neutralizer—but then, he was expecting a bank, not a zoo.
Armed robotic guards with glowing red eyes stood watch like soldiers all over, and surveillance scanners dotted the walls every few feet, watching coldly through their mechanical eyes, remembering every face they saw. The show of force was heavy handed and intentional, Gus reckoned. Didn’t want anyone pulling any funny business while in the bank. But these robots weren’t probably half of the military assets in this complex. Just there for intimidation purposes.
Gus followed the dense foot traffic to the main transit lobby, a huge terminal where the foot traffic coming from the docking bays was then sectioned off into manageable lines that slowly inched forward to large shielded desks. He couldn’t make out much more through the chaos as he felt hurried and rather like cattle. A thousand holographic view screens, each of its own dimensions, displayed a unique ad. Amazingly, you could only hear the ones you were currently looking at. Gus stared in astonishment as the line he was in slowly creeped forward.
“Sick and tired of those long flights?” an attractive young woman said in an ad that hovered in the air somewhere far above the crowd. The roar of it slightly died out and Gus could hear her speaking relatively clearly.
She seemed to be speaking only to him but he was sure a ton of other people were experiencing the same thing. “Is your LTT engine just not keeping up like it used to? Try out the new Economy-Class subscription for Lightspeed Mass Relocators! Find a Lightspeed terminal or representative it at your nearest Galactic Pantry.”
Gus looked away. “Can’t find it on the Materializer Catalogues?” Another ad spoke up as his gaze moved to another hologram above. It seemed as though no matter what way you looked there was always an ad talking at you.
Even if you looked to the ground the nearest one would be whispering in your ear. The line moved forward. “No molecular blueprints available for the item you need? Well then have it delivered! Sign up for GalDelCo Priority™ today and have any package delivered to you within forty-eight hours (Standard Galactic Time). Upgrade to class-A delivery—”
The line moved again and the man behind him who smelled of corn chips pressed his bulging stomach into Gus’s side, inching forward until Gus stepped up. “We have it all at Star-Mart!” Another ad told him as he looked to see how close he was to the bank teller.
Pretty close. He was next up. The fat man behind him grunted. Chill big guy, I’m going, Gus thought. He’d have said something to the impatient creep but he was wearing his uniform—corporate wouldn’t be happy that he started stuff (and in a bank of all places). So Gus kept his mouth shut and stepped up to the teller. Not an automated one or a computer either. It was a real live…thing.
“Deposit or withdrawal?” the thing said, in a shrill and artificially amplified voice. It was standing on top of the desk, not sitting in a seat—had to be only about two feet tall. The eyes were completely covered with mechanical lenses not too dissimilar to the ones on the scanners decorating the walls of the bank.
It had a long pointed nose, equally pointy ears, and moppy gray hair that dangled down to its shoulders. Protruding from those shoulders were what had to be the most useless excuse for arms Gus had ever seen—two tiny stubs with little nubby fingers.
The creature apparently compensated for this natural defect with a multitude of mechanical limbs that shot in all angles from some metallic contraption on the creatures back. Every kind of doodad and gizmo you could think of armed the ends of the limbs and all were busy interacting with terminals and contraptions on the desk and walls around the creature.
“Next!” the creature said after Gus had stared for too long without saying anything—it gestured to the impatient fat man behind Gus.
“Sorry!” he spoke up before the fat man could even lift a leg. (Too bad you don’t have an anti-grav walker, maybe you’d be a bit faster). “Withdrawal,” he said.
“Vault number?”
“Uh—”
“Y-723,” Darla said into his earpiece. (Thank you!) but he didn’t say it out loud.
“Y-723,” Gus told the strange little teller. Gotta remember to ask Darla what the hell these guys are, he thought. Can’t be human.
“Hmmmmmm,” the creature said while one of its mechanical limbs shot to a terminal in the wall beside it, it typed away madly for a moment. Then the creature struggled to turn its stubby little legs and large neck to see the screen on the terminal. After what seemed an agonizing few seconds to the little guy, it turned back to face Gus. “That vault is restricted,” it said. “You cannot withdrawal from it.”
“Huh?” Gus said. “There must be some mistake. I’m with GalDelCo—”
“Next!” the creature yelled and gestured again to behind Gus.
“Hold on!” Gus said, feeling the sausage fingers of the man behind him grabbing at his shoulder. Gus did not like getting grabbed and he really didn’t like that man—didn’t need to know anything about him to come to that conclusion. Anyone with that much disdain for hygiene, health, and basic manners couldn’t be that great of a person.
He swatted away the inflated rubber glove of a hand. “Check it again,” Gus said in his best impersonation of a demanding voice. “This is for a GalDelCo Priority™ delivery. I have all of the documentation!”
“Vault Y-723 has been perma-locked,” the little goblin said. “It can never be opened again.”
“Perma what?” Gus said. “Listen, man—if I don’t get that—”
“I would recommend speaking your next words with forethought,” the thing said, pointing one its real nubby fingers at Gus—it had to lean forward to raise its arm and it leveraged the weight on a pair of previously idle mechanical limbs that shot down and slammed on the desk in same movement. “You’re lucky we even let your kind in here at all.”
Gus thought he could here the fat man let out a giggle and his face went red with both embarrassment and a rare anger. He was almost always a laid-back type of guy. But he took the recent promotion to class-A driver more seriously than almost anything else in his life. And class-A meant a guarantee. No questions asked. If he failed to get this stupid package he’d be fired. Or worse. GalDelCo had the tendency to take ‘the customer is always right’ to the extreme.
“Look, I’m sorry for getting flustered there,” Gus said, trying to slow his heart rate with a few deep breaths—(it didn’t do anything). “Can you just check it again?”
“I did not make a mistake,” the thing said. “Artifacts which were deposited during the Corporation Wars, and whose depositors perished in the war, have had their vaults put into perma-lock status. And, per the Treaty of the Shareholders, Article fifteen, section eight: all items in limbo of possession at the time of the signing of the agreements heretofore mentioned, shall have their ownerships reverted to the holder of said item after the period of ten thousand years has come to pass. Until that time, if the original depositor is not available for direct withdrawal, then the item has no official possessor and shall remain in the state of limbo.”
Gus only understood about half of that. But from what he gathered it seemed like they weren’t going to let him into the vault to get the heirloom—whatever it was that was hidden away down there. But he figured he would push his luck anyway, no point in just walking away. “So,” he said, trying now to sound innocent and smart, “we’re all good then? Because since I have the order to withdrawal the uh—deposited item in said uh, ‘state of limbo,’ then per the regulations of uh—the uh, the Galactic Accord of Banking Vaults! that means that I am now the defacto owner of the limbo-ed item. Therefore I retain legal rights to withdrawal it.”
The creature stared at Gus with an expression so distorted that he couldn’t tell if the little thing believed him or was about to press a button that opened up a trap door beneath Gus’s feet.
“Go ahead,” Gus went on with his bluff, “you can look it up if you don’t believe me.”
I think that may have actually worked, Gus barely had time to think to himself before the creature’s expression turned to unadulterated fury. “If you do not exit the line this instant, I will signal the security-bots to vaporize you into dust right where you stand.”
This time Gus could not mistake the chortle from the fat man behind him. “You heard him,” the fat man said in a voice that was more squeaky that you’d have expected. “C’mon! you’re holdin’ up the line! We’ve actually got stuff to do, here!”
With a dramatic spin, Gus turned around to face the fat man and the growing line of hundreds of other bank patrons and (thankfully not making the very rude gesture with his hands that he wanted to make) he gave them a squinty smile that he hoped conveyed his feelings for them. Then he exited the line before he got vaporized.
Three
He pushed his way through a vast crowd of comers and goers until he was again near the entrance of the main lobby, a thousand different ads vying for his attention as he went. “Hey Darla, how hard do you think—” Gus started to say, but he didn’t get far.
“Before you say anything!” Darla spoke in his ear, an artificial imitation of hurried dominance in her tone—the same she always used when she cut him off—“I just, for no particular reason at all, thought that you might want to know: everything that we say is currently being monitored by the Bank’s security systems.”
Gus closed his mouth and didn’t finish his sentence.
Well, this was great. He was in a spot more heavily guarded than probably the fortress worlds of the CEOs, assigned a class-A job (satisfaction guaranteed!) that was locked away deep in its secure bowels, and surrounded by people. Plus he’d just been told off by a freaking goblin.
Could this get any worse? Probably.
Just then someone rudely crashed into Gus, nearly sending him to the ground again. Thank goodness he wasn’t in a place where he was at risk of death by trampling this time! The person, Gus didn’t see who it was because it all happened so fast and he’d been staring at the ground at the time (trying to drown out the relentless sounds of the ads and chattering crowds while he concocted some way out this mess), they’d had to have done it on purpose.
Turning around, trying to figure out who’d done it, he saw nothing but the motion of the crowds moving to and fro. The person had blended in perfectly in a matter of milliseconds.
How rude! He’d been standing well out of the way and the person’s hands had practically groped him up. When you bump into somebody you don’t accidentally spread you hands all over them. It was like they were trying to hold his hand or something.
Actually…he looked down at his hands. He was holding—(what? a stale and crunchy piece of cloth or fiber? Hold on, it was paper, real—actual—paper!) They’d slipped him something. Snuck it right into his hand when they collided with him. They’d done it so deftly he didn’t even notice himself. He looked around again but saw no one looking back at him. Except, that is, for the many scanners whose soulless eyes did look at him. Directly at him. Too many of them.
He closed his fist and decided it was ‘time to leave.’ So he headed back to his ship. But he didn’t really have any intention of leaving.
Four
Back in the cluttered cockpit, the frazzled (and starting to get pretty worried, if he was gonna be totally honest) delivery driver smoked another GalDelCo Light as he read the note again.
I know what you’re looking for. And I know how to get it. Go back to your ship and wait for me. I’ll come to you. Don’t come looking for me. Just wait. I don’t know how long it will take. Have to make sure it’s clear.
Wait.
I can help you.
“What do you think Darla?” he said as he took another long draw and exhaled. His heart pounded in his chest and he debated over whether it was a beer or a cup of coffee that he needed. “I don’t know…” he went on, not waiting for a response. His foot tapped wildly on the metal floor littered with class-F packages, some of which were a month late (and most of which were never going to be delivered, let’s be real).
“Technically speaking,” Darla said both in his earpiece that he forgot he was wearing and over the hidden speakers in the ship’s hull, “I don’t think. But if you would like me to extrapolate on abstraction computations regarding the likely origins of the note or the outcomes of following the note’s instructions, I’d be happy to do so.”
“Yeah,” Gus said, hardly paying attention and rereading the note for the billionth time that hour, “yeah, do that. Run some compilations.”
He analyzed the script on the paper, trying to gain whatever knowledge there was to gain from it. It had been God-knows-how-long since the last time he’d tried to read actual handwriting. The note was only a few lines long but it took him a hell of a long time to decipher it. He wished he could tell if it was written hastily or if it was written carefully but he couldn’t tell the difference. He wished that he could learn something, anything, about who had written it. But it was as effective as staring a blank white wall and trying to discern the meaning of life from it.
“I think it’s a trap,” Gus said, using the dying embers of the butt of his cigarette to light another. “It’s probably written by that weirdo goblin creature. He’s trying to set me up so that he can vaporize me. Or!” he raise a finger excitedly, “you know what! yes, it probably was that friggin fat guy—”
“Neither the Snuuflor bank teller nor the overweight male wrote this,” Darla interrupted. “From my rudimentary analysis I’ve determined that it was likely a human female. Presumably originating from the colonies in the uncharted sectors. That is the only place where textual information is predominantly transferred by hand and on a physical medium.”
“Not bad,” a new voice said.
Gus let out an embarrassingly squeaky and boyish scared squeal as he looked up from the note and turned to the cockpit’s entrance, his arms upraised in a defensive posture. He let his arms down when he saw her, his face going red for the second time that day.
A thin young woman with untidy brown hair that was tucked beneath a short-rimmed tan hat, stood leaning against the doorway that led to the rest of Gus’s ship. She wore dirty and smudged gray overalls and a cropped white shirt with a faded Lightspeed™ logo (that was several generations out of date) printed on the front. Her posture said: “confidence.” But her circumference said: “I could use a couple years of steady meals.” Her sunken cheeks stood out in juxtaposition to her bright blue eyes, crossed arms, and cocky tone.
“Relax,” she said, standing straight, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I knew that,” Gus lied, cautiously eyeing the girl. “You wrote the note?”
She nodded.
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Fiona Tanner,” she said. “And I know how to get you into vault Y-723.”
Five
Something in him screamed at Gus not to trust her, but a louder part screamed at him to do whatever he had to do to get that dang package out of the vault. If you go back empty handed then the managers will space you. Which one is a worse way to go: getting spaced or getting vaporized by robo-goblins?
Her plan was solid—or at least it seemed to be. This Fiona claimed to have a deep understanding of the inner-workings of the bank’s security. At least enough of an understanding to get them passed the robot guards and down to the vault. But, that’s not what impressed him. Gus was pretty sure that he could’ve had Darla figure out a way for him to get to the vault easy enough. But getting in to the vault was what had him stumped.
That’s where Fiona came in.
She claimed to have some scrap of the vault owner’s DNA. She said that’s the real reason that it was still perma-locked. “You really think those greedy little cretins would just leave valuable treasures locked up for ten thousand years? Treaty or no,” she’d said, “they wouldn’t have had the self control to keep themselves from taking it for their own. The only reason most of these vaults remain untouched is because they can’t get into them.”
“What do you mean? They can’t just open them? I mean they—the little Snuuflor guys—they run the place don’t they? So they don’t have the keys (or whatever) to open the doors to all the vaults?”
Though she was at least five years younger than Gus, Fiona laughed at him like a superior—like a cocky teacher. But her confidence was contagious and convincing. And kinda sexy. “Nope,” she said. “The fools designed their own bank too good. Hey, mind if I have one of those?” She walked over and took a GalDelCo Light from the pack without waiting for an answer. She lit it up and said, “The greedy bastards aren’t lying when they say that this Elysium station is the most secure place in the Galaxy. The only way to open those perma-locked vaults—the only reason they’re really perma-locked in the first place—is because you need the DNA of the original depositor.”
“They don’t have back ups somewhere? Seems like that’d be a smart thing to do.”
“Oh, they did. But the Corps blew their gene banks up during the Wars. Now the Snuuflors got no way to enter them. But they don’t mind waiting. They’re greedy as all hell but patient too. They’ll just sit around for the ten thousand years and then collect the ga-jillions in assets when they finally can.”
“So then how did you get the DNA?” Gus asked.
“Look,” she snuffed out the cigarette, “do you want my help or not?”
“But why help me? What’s in it for you? Why do you even need me? Why not just go get into the vault yourself?”
“It’s a two-man job, first of all. And second, what do you think is in that vault? Because there is a lot more than just whatever you are getting, I’d imagine. These vaults aren’t just a drawer somewhere. They’re the size of a whole room. There would be plenty of spoils for the both of us. So are you in or not? We don’t got all day.”
And so he’d gone along. She told him the whole plan. It sounded elaborate and well thought out and likely to get them both killed. But he agreed to it. And now he was about to either pull off the greatest heist in his life or be quickly vaporized by the bank’s robot guards.
At the end of a hallway off the side of the main lobby was a ridiculous looking elevator. It was part rocket-propelled roller coaster and part all-directions mechanical cart with enough room for a Snuuflor and one other person of normal size. It had hundreds of controls that made no logical sense at all. There were at least four different steering wheels and more levers and buttons than Gus could count. At the moment the machine sat vacant, but every now and then a Snuuflor would walk down the hall, striding on its mechanical arms, leading a bank patron. They’d board the ‘elevator’ and be shot down into the bowels of the banking station to the vaults.
He was waiting patiently there, occasionally getting an odd look from the lone security robot guarding the cart. Then suddenly Fiona spoke into Gus’s earpiece via her own encrypted communicator, invisible to the bank’s security systems. “Alright,” she said, “we’ve got one. Vault Y-714. Close enough—we’ll be able to walk from there. Get ready, we’re coming your way.”
Gus’s heart began rapidly pounding in his chest as his eyes darted between the security robot and the end of the hallway. He tapped his foot anxiously and each second stretched on and on. Then he saw the Snuuflor coming, guiding a little old lady who wore a fine purple coat and matching hat, clutching a leather purse in her hands. The Snuuflor gave him a nasty look when they passed him but he didn’t say anything. Then Gus saw Fiona at the end of the hall and he took out his pack of GalDelCo Lights and lit up.
He barely got out a single puff before the security robot stomped over to him and poked a metal finger hard into his chest. “Warning,” it said in a cold robotic voice. “Smoking is not permitted within the station without the use of a personal atmosphere field. Please turn on your atmosphere field or you will be taken from the premises in three…two…” Fiona snuck up behind the robot and jammed something that looked like a sharp taser into its back. The thing instantly short circuited and the red glow in its eyes faded then flickered out entirely.
“Quick,” she said, looking to the cart at the end of the hallway.
The Snuuflor and the old lady had already boarded and the mechanical limbs of the Snuuflor were working away on the controls of the cart. Running at top speed, they barely made it to the end of the hallway before cart dropped out of side. “Jump!” Fiona said and did so, not waiting to see if Gus was following.
He didn’t have time to think.
He jumped into the blackness in front him after Fiona. Then they were falling. Falling down at high speed, air pushed hard into Gus’s chest.
Fiona was a few feet lower down than him and a few feet passed her was the cart which seemed to be traveling down faster than gravity propelled it.
She pointed her whole body down, hands at her side, and suddenly she was travelling down faster too.
Gus followed suit and was amazed at the increase in speed. His cheeks flapped wildly against the wind and he couldn’t close his mouth. He felt that at any moment the cart would shift directions and they would splat into the ground.
The cart started to get closer and closer.
And then Fiona was able to latch onto the back side of it, interlocking her arms around a protruding metal rod that stretched the length of the cart’s rear. Gus willed himself to fall faster, trying to push himself somehow. He caught up and struggled for a moment to lock his own arms onto the bar. He got it just in time.
The cart switched directions and went down a long tunnel which had a thousand other tunnels shooting off of it in a thousand different directions. They passed by too fast to see what was down them. It switched directions again, then again, turning suddenly and hard as if it were trying to shake them off. Gus struggled to keep his grip. Then the cart stopped.
“Here we are,” the Snuuflor said in a screechy kind of voice, “Vault Y-714.”
Gus didn’t even realize he’d had his eyes closed for the last few turns.
He opened them and saw that they were in one of the tunnels. It was dimly lit by soft blue lights overhead. In the center of the tunnel were tracks that the carts traveled on and they were in a depression several feet lower than the walkways on either side of the tunnel. The sounds of the Snuuflor’s mechanical limbs clattering on the tile floors of the walkways echoed all the way down the tunnel.
On either side there were hundreds and hundreds of heavy metal doors lining the tunnel’s walls. Each one had an address stamped above the door. The vaults.
“This way,” Fiona whispered. She’d already dropped to the ground and was further down the tunnel, crouched low. Gus let go of his vice grip on the cart and followed trying to keep his steps as silent as possible. “Here it is,” she said, gesturing to a massive locked door just in front of them. A few minutes later the old lady and the Snuuflor to got back on the cart. They hid in the shadows as they waited for it to exit the tunnel.
“Great, lets get this over with,” Gus said when the coast was clear.
“Alright, c’mon,” Fiona hopped up onto the walkway and stood in front of the door. There was a small screen to the side of the door and a short tray beneath a scanner. That’s where the DNA goes, Gus thought. He watched Fiona, waiting to see what bit of ancient DNA she had. He had about a thousand questions to ask regarding how she got it when all of this was done with. He’d expected some sort of vial or small container, but to his surprise the girl simply plucked out one of her hairs and set it on the tray.
The scanner instantly kicked into life and after a few seconds later, there was a click and thud and then the door slowly opened. A light flickered on inside the vault. It shined down on what seemed to be a motionless person standing in the middle of the room. A pale man with a perfect physique and ideal dimensions. It was nude but had no sex organs and seemed to be sleeping but did not breathe. The room was otherwise vacant—but hadn’t she said this vault should be full of artifacts? He turned around.
“What is… how did you?” Gus wasn’t sure what ask.
“My great, great, great, great, grandfather was a cybernetics master,” Fiona said. “This was supposed to be his masterpiece,” she nodded to the motionless figure in the vault, “or so he claimed in the personal records he left behind. He said he wanted it to be an heirloom. A remembrance of himself for the generations to come. But then the Corporation Wars started and he was worried that one side or the other would use his creation as a weapon. So he locked it away here. Then his business was liquidated—him included.”
They both stood at the edge of the door way, looking at the pristine mannequin. “Check it out,” she said, nudging his arm with her elbow and giving him a devilish grin. “Cell, activate.” Suddenly the mannequin came to life and looked up at Fiona. It’s eyes had a faint white glow behind them.
“So this thing is the ‘heirloom?’” he said. “And you’re what? the heir? So then was it you—”
“You see,” she cut him off, “the Snuuflors won’t let genetic descendants withdrawal items in limbo. Only the original depositor can do it. So there wasn’t any way for me to get ‘Cell’ out legitimately. But I knew I could open the vault, and knew I could get down here. And I also know that the security system scans the vault once every hour. And if there isn’t something similar in size to ‘Cell’ in this vault when the scan happens, then the alarms will trigger. Then I’ll never be able to get out.”
Gus had hardly registered that he was being duped before Fiona had ordered the manlike android to toss him into the vault. “It’s nothing personal,” she said, as the android stepped out of the vault and simultaneously picked Gus up by his shirt and tossed him into the vault like he was a toy, crashing into the ground with a thud. “I think you’re basically a nice person. But there has to be someone in here when the scans go off. Anyway,” she said as she removed the lone strand of hair from the tray and the vault door started to shut, “I’ll be sure to give you a five-star review for the delivery. And of course you’ll be out of there by the end of the ten thousand year waiting period!”
“Wait!” Gus screamed but the door had already closed, leaving him alone in the cold darkness of the vault. He let out a long sigh and then said, “Darla? I’m gonna need a little help hear.”
“What sort of help?” The AI said into Gus’s earpiece.
“Well, I’m sorta locked in vault Y-723. And the only way to open it is with some of the that girl, Fiona Tanner’s, DNA. Like a hair or something I think.”
“What about saliva?”
Gus shrugged. “I guess that would probably work too,” he said.
“There are remnants of her saliva on the cigarette butt in the ship. I will contact the bank staff and see what I can do to get you out of there.”
Gus had a feeling he’d never be welcome in an Elysium Banking establishment ever again. “Hey,” he said, “actually, can you wait until the review comes in for this delivery? I could really use the five stars. And I can hang out here for a little while. It’s not too terrible.”