Rey S Morfin
A Lonely World Where The People Are Blue
Copyright © 2020 by Rey S Morfin
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First edition
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Contents
1. The Planet Yrgg Is Really Lovely At This Time Of Year
2. Home Is Where The Nightmares Are
3. Not Bad For A Terran
4. A Cold, Quiet, and Lonely Type of Folk
5. Where You Belong
6. Te’rnu
7. The Arellian Conspiracy
8. The Face Of The Iyr
9. An Investigation On Trial
10. One Person Can’t Change A Galaxy
“Dear Diary”
11. All This Life Amongst The Stars
12. They Don’t Have Aspirin On Z’h’ar
13. Mechsuits: The Top Trend From Z’h’ar Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2337
14. The Diplomat’s Daughter
15. A Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing
“Crowdfunding For Deaths”
16. The Truth Is In Here
17. Closing In
18. A Brave New Z’h’ar
Epilogue
A GALAXY, ALIVE continues...
Thanks For Reading
The Known Galaxy, with key locations marked - circa 2337
YRGG
THE PLANET OF DUST
Iron Sector
20a-11-2337
1
The Planet Yrgg Is Really Lovely At This Time Of Year
No matter where you go in the galaxy, you’ll find that every planet has all the same issues as there are on Terra. Pride? Check. Wrath? Check. Envy? Check. Well, actually, the Guliens don’t have that last problem, but there’s definitely something weird going on in their wiring. Not that lacking envy is a bad thing, by any means; sometimes I wish I could be like them.
It’s these very problems that pay for my lifestyle. Think your partner is cheating on you? Good chance they are. Got a missing child? They probably got sick of your crap and ran away. Convinced there’s an intergalactic security organisation monitoring your every move because of your research into wormhole technology? Yeah… unlikely, mate, but I’ll still gladly take your money.
Whatever it is, my agency can handle it. And, by “handle it”, I mean they’ll send me to go through the motions of solving the case, and then take their 70% share of the revenue without really contributing very much. Work is hard to come by, nowadays, much less well-paid work, so I take what I can get. Let’s face it, it’s rare that any single person gets to do anything particularly special with their lives. Certainly, most don’t do anything to change the galaxy for the better, even if we aspire to it. Instead, we slave through our work each and every day, just trying to make sure we have enough Units to pay the bills.
It’s on one of these mind-numbing - albeit bill-paying - jobs that our story begins.
My assignment was a tall, beautiful Yrggian, who, according to her partner, was definitely, 100%, not an iota of doubt, cheating on him. Still, that didn’t stop him from hiring my agency to make sure. These wealthy business types had more Units than they knew what to do with… not that I was complaining.
I had been following the target for several days, but she was yet to do anything out of the ordinary. There was no other special someone in her life, it seemed. All she really spent her time doing was going to work, going to the gym, and then seeing her friends for U’kka (where she would lie about going to the gym - she just naturally has this figure, she would say).
Normally, if there really was someone else in the target’s life, I would have known by this point - rarely did they spend more than a few days at a time without getting their fill. That wouldn’t stop me padding it out to a week or so in my reports, of course - I was paid by the hour, after all.
I watched from inside my parked Shuttle as the target left her home. She carried no gym bag, she wasn’t scheduled for work, and she’d seen her mates just a few hours earlier in the day. This, at last, was her doing something new.
She pulled up her sleeve, revealing her Console, from which she summoned a shuttle. As she entered, I quickly programmed my own shuttle into manual overdrive. Without knowing where my target was going, I was going to have to drive it myself. For many, doing such a thing would have been unheard of - but in my profession it was necessary. Perhaps Private Investigators were the last remaining drivers in the galaxy.
Sure enough, the target led me to a new building - one that she hadn’t been to before. I couldn’t immediately determine its function; it looks like a corporate building, but as more and more Yrggian companies were merging, lots of these structures were being repurposed.
I jumped out of my parked shuttle while continuing to survey the building - and failed to immediately notice that the target had turned to glance at me over her shoulder. I began to walk away from her, in the other direction, hoping to throw her off the scent. The target shook her head and continued walking. Presumably, she was content that I wasn’t following her - or about to mug her, or whatever - because she continued into the building. I thanked my lucky stars that she hadn’t paid too much attention to me, and proceeded after her - at a distance - into the building.
There was no doorman in the lobby, but it didn’t matter to the target - she knew exactly where she was going. But instead of moving to the inter-level transmat, she proceeded down the
