There Are No Rules
Posted on 26 Nov 2022 @ 8:56am by Brek - Timeless Treasures Art Gallery
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Volchok, Trading Center - Ferengi Space
Timeline: Backstory: 2379, following ‘Not to Mention the Mansion”
1316 words - 2.6 OF Standard Post Measure
Brek had last visited the ‘haunted mansion’ two weeks ago, and he was now watching its complete annihilation. Mr Asax had been true to his words and he was now making a start on the regeneration of this stretch of land. It would be turned into a resplendent swamp. The PR team was already broadcasting such praise as: wetlands were a natural way to filter water and they were ideal for absorbing excess water... etc... etc... No doubt that he, the bean counter, would be asked to manipulate Asax’s cash flow statement with regard to this grand scheme.
“It might stay as a boring pile of bricks for a long time, if your Mister Asax runs out of funds,” Neph said. (Brek grumbled. He had not realized that he had spoken his thoughts aloud.) “It wouldn’t be the first time I see a construction project that falls into oblivion. All is good though. That house had outlived its design life. It had become a visual as well as a mental atrocity. The distant past often stinks. It will poison you if you aren’t careful.”
“It could have been my house.” Brek added, gloomy.
In front of them, three automated excavators moved slowly, almost like a dance, around the remaining walls of the mansion. The demolition was being executed with great precision. The machines knew to hit the house at specific points, and it had crumbled like a house of cards. Only with a cacophony of shattered glass, plaster, timber and bricks, and so much dust! A swarm of locust wouldn’t have created a bigger cloud.
There were also two drones in the sky, circling high above the sorry site. The eyes of Mr Asax, Brek suspected. Making sure that the job was being done in the allotted amount of time, and not one minute more, or less.
It started to rain at that point - a regular occurrence on Volchok - not a nice spring shower, but a sudden wintry downpour that turned everything into a dull grey. One would think that Neph, a native of the planet, would be used to those heavy showers, but he produced a dramatic shrug and proffered that if they stayed there, they would catch their death. A look at the sky, and the drones, intimated that this death might not come solely from a lung infection.
“Let’s go back to civilization, and to a dry place.” Neph insisted. “We need a hot drink. I fancy something foreign today. A Raktajino maybe. Have you ever tried that?” Not for the first time, Neph pulled a reluctant Brek away from the scene. “It’s a strong stimulant. It will cheer you up in no time!”
“A man is buried under that house,” Brek mumbled as he was dragged away and pushed inside the vehicle that Neph had recently acquired: a green ground car that looked like a giant pea-pod, with black windows to conceal its occupants. Only everyone in town knew the owner of that ridiculous pod. “Something’s got to be done about that. An investigation, that’s what’s needed.”
Neph sighed and drove without saying a word, leaving it to Brek to fill the air with feeble notions of justice and reparations. Some ten minutes later, when they were approaching one of Volchok’s secondary docks, Neph finally resumed the conversation. “A hewmon life is worth nothing on Volchok, Brek. It’s time you grasp where you are. This is a Ferengi trading centre, where Ferengi rules apply.”
“What rules? I see none.”
“Exactly. The rule is that there are no rules, except for the urgency of making huge profits. Those who can’t do that - or those who make good latinum but fail to protect their life - they die of unnatural causes. The only alternative is to live as I do, like a rodent. Active yet meaningless. But your unlucky hewmon there... Well, with a mansion like that, he was very much in your face, wasn’t he? Have you given a thought to how he acquired the latinum needed to build that place?”
“Hewmons are not like us Ferengi,” Brek said, voicing a half-baked concept according to which the people of planet Earth were, somehow, better mannered than the sons of Ferenginar.
“Moonshine on the water... When a hewmon is in dire need of resources, they would slit your throat for a bar of latinum, like anyone else!”
All around them, the natural landscape (bogs and wasteland) had morphed into an industrious spaceport with a forest of yellow quay and yard cranes that moved goods to and from a dozen ships lined up on landing pads. Most of them were badly patched up, making their origins difficult to discern, at least to someone like Brek, whose eyes were still unaccustomed to many things.
There was a solid dampness in that place, but it had the noted advantage of being warm and dry. About twenty Ferengi wearing colourful uniforms with name tags and job descriptions (swingman, clerks, lashers) were eating and talking loudly. The ‘plat du jour’ (half price) was in most plates: a Ferengi rendition of the foreign dish called ‘fish and chips’, with the fish replaced by a beetle steak and the chips made of some orange root vegetable. They all looked like they didn’t have a care in the world. Well, it was their world, after all. They might as well feel comfy. At the back of the room there was a solitary blue figure with long white hair and two crooked antennae that pointed in different directions. Brek’s first ever Andorian. He was tall, impressive, distinguished even, Brek thought, and he was wearing a dark blue uniform, with a gold insignia on it.
“Don’t stare at our blue outlander like that,” Neph recommended as they sat at a narrow table made of cheap plastic. “I had an idea he would be here today. His name’s Shrith. He travels to Volchok every two months, as regular as Federation generosity. Been doing that for years, and yet he always seems shocked to see so many Ferengi around.” He ordered two Raktajinos, and with great care he unfolded a grey napkin which, five years ago, might have been white.
“What does he do?” Brek inquired in a whisper. At the back of his mind, he had vaguely registered that Shrith had bowed his head ever so slightly at the sight of Neph’s napkin.
“Well, import-export. What else? He works as an operator for Fastrack Logistix. You need to know that Brek, because the way you’re going, you’ll soon need an escape route, and he is very accommodating when he sees latinum.”
Their coffees arrived, served by a small outlander who walked with a limp. He might be from Bajor, Brek wasn’t sure. “I’ve been here, what, three months? And already you want to get rid of me?”
“Will you tell me that, the first chance you get, you won’t search Asax’s files in the hope of finding what happened to the hewmon from the mansion? Will you tell me that, one night, you won’t go back to the mansion’s site with a shovel, to prospect the land a little bit, in the hope of finding white hewmon bones in the ground?”
“I never said I would do such things.”
“No need to. The curiosity’s written all over your face.”
Brek took a little sip of his coffee. He found it horribly bitter and added three lumps of sweetener in the dark brew. “You extrapolate too much.”
“That’s not a bad survival trait to have, Brek. You should try it sometime...”
