Chapter 4 - Dealing In The Stars
As humans exploit this newfound craving to pry glozz from alien hands, the artist must confront unsettling questions about desire, exploitation, and what it means to encounter another civilization.
In the previous chapter: Vernon boards the ship with naive and optimistic views of a relaxing trip. They are quickly put to rest by the Captain.
Chapter 4
“You are concerned about your glozz production?” Budz asked an aging glozzer who was seated on the examination pad in front of him.
“Healer, I haven’t made more than a blob of glozz in the last week. I used to make a blob two times a day. Something just isn’t right.”
“I am going to do the Healer’s Touch, and find out what is going on, okay?” Budz stretched a tentacle and instantly felt flashes of pain radiate down his extremity all the way to his core. Something is ripping deep down inside of me. Budz thought he could hear the shouts of his body, telling him to curl up into itself. Experience told him, any movement out of this position would be savagely attacked with heated knives slicing at nerves. It was the familiar pain of detoxing off coffee.
Budz placed his slightly shaking extremity on the patient’s head and created a small spark.
“What do you think, Healer?”
Budz replied, “we all know that glozz production decreases with age. So, you can’t expect to blob twice a day, no matter how hard you try. What I felt was a lack of copper, which is an essential part of glozzing. The good news, this is easily curable. All you need to do is spend some time submerged in the Garden’s pool three which is a high copper solution. Do this everyday for a week and you should be back to making a blob every day or two.”
“Thank you, Healer. You have given me such relief. What a privilege to have a knowledgeable Healer in our community.”
The aged Glozzer rambled more praise, but Budz could not hear it over the screaming of his body. The pain in his extremities was striking back; aching, throbbing, and all consuming. His body was rebelling against the current working conditions. Voicing its demands. It wanted coffee. Needed it! And if Budz would not give it coffee it would not work, it would cause pain, it would ruin his life. Coffee! Now!
It was only his last dredges of willpower that kept Budz from hustling out of the Healing Clinic and straight down to the Spaceport, where an off-worlder was sure to have a steamy cup of coffee…for a price, of course.
The coffee pushers only accepted one form of currency - a blob of glozz. At first it was a hard decision. No Glozzer wanted to give away their lifeblood, their soul, their reason for existence. Their world revolved around glozz. Their buildings were constructed with glozz. Their art was entirely glozz. Without glozz, what was a Glozzer?
But, priorities change when coffee is involved.
Budz felt a blob of glozz inside of him, ripe to come out. His natural impulse was to add this glozz to the Clinic expansion. It was normal, expected, and made Glozzers feel good to add a blob to a community building. But, what would it hurt if he only missed a day or two, here and there? Nobody would notice. In fact, he had not contributed any glozz to the building for at least a week, and they haven’t seemed to notice yet. Heck, Budz could probably slide under the radar until this whole project was complete. If he was called out, he could lie. Nobody kept track of every blob added to a building project as big as this.
There is really no reason why I can’t get away with this and drink as much coffee as I can.
“Great work Budz.”
The praise brought Budz out of his internal debate. His mentor Weez was standing in front of him, in place of where his patient stood a few moments earlier. Where did he go? How did I miss that?
Weez wore the proud face of a teacher watching their pupil excel. “Wonderful diagnosis. Often a copper deficiency is confused with a bauxite sulphite poisoning. You have an excellent Healer’s Touch to be able to sense the subtle difference.” His face dropped slightly as he looked at Budz. “Are you feeling okay? You look very tight.”
Budz quickly tried to expand an extremity, loosen up, and appear relaxed, but the pain scorched his nerves. He winced. Luckily, it was not noticed. Weez’s attention had been hijacked by a young Glozzer and his Mother who were leaving the clinic. Weez gave the Mother a container of ointment and the confident words, “little ones’ extremities grow back quickly with no long term effects.”
Budz took advantage of the distraction and rushed out the back door. Over his shoulder he said, “just taking a break, will be back soon.”
He turned left and aimed towards the spaceport.
Thank you, thank you, for reading.
Hopefully, you’ve gotten a good feel for what I’m doing here, and find you would like to get yourself a nice cup of coffee and continue reading.
Till next Thursday then .