A tale of stored credits (Fan short story)

[Finkelfantomen]

Summary: A tale of two friends working for the corpus in the storage department, while hoping for fortune. How can you accumulate wealth if you work on ground floor?

 

A tale of stored credits.

 

Chapter one: What's in the box?

If you ever got the chance to visit a Corpus ship then the word to describe it would be shiny. Shiny like a freshly minted coin. There was no place for dirt in the palace of profit. There would be no stain on the coin to take the mind of the shiny. The shiny was important! And it was the foundation of the Message.

The Message was clear and ever present on every Corpus vessel, and thus on this one too. Everyone can achieve profit! Everyone can grow in status and leave their history behind! No matter who your mother or father was, or where you were born… the road to success and wealth was already laid at your feet! The Corputian dream was waiting for you!

The dream was broadcasted at regular intervals through the ship speakers to reinforce the Message to those in service of it.  “Accumulate worth and you can buy your future.”, “Dream of profit, and make profit for the dream.”, “Thu shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, it is not enough. Set your standards higher than them!”

Two dreamers were Maximus Repono and Gesturum Pontus, currently working in the storage department. They were not living the dream… yet. But they could would one day! But at present they were walking down the corridor of storage area C:12. They came to stop by a large metal door. It was the first of many in this corridor, and it was also shiny and clean.

“Sooo… time to check out the stock here then. What does the datasheet say?” The one who broke the silence was Maximus Repono, the slightly taller of the two. Apart from a few inches on the top the two looked identical. But that was protocol when wearing the same uniform and polishing it to the same standards.  

Gesturum flicked an almost casual finger towards the paper-thin screen he held in his left hand. It sprung to life and started showing an expected inventory list of locker C:12:1. “Full of canned rations for soldiers class one to seven” he said. “Expiration date is coming up so we should flag it to be used to equip the crew for Monday’s assault mission. I got a list from the captain which we need to tick off before Sunday evening.”

“Righty o.” said Maximus. He checked a small screen left of the door and tapped it twice with his finger just to see if it changed. It did not. “Temperature is a bit high for this kind of stock. But it will hold until Monday. Let’s just hope the assault doesn’t drag on so the food goes stale. We don’t want to endure another Montezuma’s revenge at battalion level in the middle of a firefight. The boys down at Clean and repair where not smelling right for a month after that.”

“Yeah. And they didn’t exactly like it when they returned a lot of equipment to us for re-storage and we kept commenting the stock with “missed a spot”.” Gesturum replied.

Maximus agreed and continued. “Clean and repair… They got no sense of humour. They’re just ¨why did you have to get a bullet hole in this helmet¨. Or… ¨Oh looks like I’m working overtime again since some silly sod accidentally fired his Penta while doing maintenance. And now it’s up to ME to recycle what’s left of the uniform.¨ They can never see the funny side of it. That’s why they are stuck down there forever scrubbing Grineer parts of whatever comes in”.

“Not like us!” said Gesturum with some excitement in his voice. “Were going places!”

“Right.” said Maximus and checked of the storage container on his list. The happy sound of “blu-blop” affirmed his command. “Our time is coming!” and after a slight pause he added “When is it coming?”.

“Soon!” said Gesturum. “I have already worked myself up from second level cleaning crew down at the mess hall, up to the loading docks department, and have recently been promoted to storage inspector class two. Not three or four but two! I am living the dream!”

“Right.” Maximus said again. He liked that word. It cemented a sense of agreement, but still laid the opening for a “…but… there is still a bit of ascension before we reach the top notch, the nobles sofa, the shiny thingy in the coffer. I mean, I’ve also reached class two inspector. But it took me 10 bloody years of chopping coal in the Venus mines. It wasn’t until my supervisor by accident got a mining pick stuck to his head…”, Maximus barely looked guilty, so it probably was an accident, “So I got the chance to pick up the pick, no pun intended, and was deemed good at organising things. I was quickly promoted to storage overseer and worked my way up from there. But I can say I have added my bloody shares of numbers and ticked of more lists that Parvos Granum got credits (ok not exactly, but at least more than he would like to spend on things he doesn’t like). And still I live in a barrack with fifty five other storage workers, smelling their “dreams” every night.  So, I mean… how long will it take us to get to the shinies for real?”

“What we need, my friend” said Gestrum and made a dramatic gesture with his hands, “Is a creative idea that will propel us to the frontline of profit! Something that will make us take a quick leap of fortune! For example, the last time I spoke to my distant cousin Debitum Initus he said he had an idea that he felt secure enough to present to the board, and he was sure it would be a success and rapidly accelerate his ascension to wealth! Though I haven’t heard from him in a while I am sure his ambition still is a bright shining star leading him towards prosperity! But that is exactly what we need. One good profitable idea!”

They paused as the ships speakers glared out an alarm. “Attention all personel! A Tenno has entered the airlock!”

The two friends looked at each other, shrugged and moved on. The Tenno was probably targeting the prison cells or some big muck like Lieutenant Squiddlyfinger or something like that. Apart from a random locker opened here and there, no record existed of a Tenno ever raiding the storage bay area.

The two friends stopped walking. They had come up to the next big storage door. C:12-2.

Maximus took the small screen from Gestrum. Then he held it up against the big door. The inventory list came to life, but only displayed one line. “None of your business.”. “Oh” he said. “This is a board member level clearance. We can’t do much more than tip off that the storage unit itself is there and there is still a door barring entrance to it.” He put his right finger on the screen and ticked off “Door still there.” Then he continued talking. “I wonder why they have secret storage compartment. I mean we are set to account for everything stored here. But how can we do that when the big shots tell us to not do our job?”

Gesturum replied. “Well my cousin Gary once got a board members storage unit opened by accident. He said it was filled with experimental Moa robots.”

“Why would he keep experimental robots a secret?” Maximus asked. “I mean, I know why they would like to keep something like that a secret from the Tenno or the Grineer. But from us? We are the ones making sure the bigjob got as many Moas as he thinks he does when the time comes to make use of them. Hiding them from the likes of us does him no good does it? It’s not like we go out drinking with random Tennos on Fridays and spill corporate secrets?”

“Weeell…” Gesturum added a slight dramatic pause, a technique he had learned from his cousin Debitum, “They weren’t technically Moas and more a sort of Moan-as… Let’s just say they were designed to let the board member indulge in activities that usually create more little board members, but with the Moan-as that last part was not a side effect that could be achieved.”

Maximus thoughts bounced like a ping pong ball between his neurons until he froze and replied with a simple “Oh… so you mean they were designed to…”

“Yes.” said Gestrum.

“Oh... Not to shoot lasers at enemies, but to do the opposite of shooting which is…”

“Yes.” said Gestrum.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

There was a short and slightly embarrassing pause when they realised that they had gotten stuck in a voice-loop that could have been suitable for the Moan-as, but wasn’t really giving the conversation a push forward. Then the speakers broke the tension when it once again shouted out an alarm. “We are taking heavy casualties! Reinforcement needed in sector Bee-two immediately. Bring heavy weaponry!”

 “Soooo…I wonder what’s in locker C 12:3?” Maximus said and once more they took the short trip to the next door trying not to return the conversation to the previous subject.

Gesturum also felt the need to change the subject, so he shared a thought during the short promenade. “What if we could save up and buy our own Phasmin mine in Orb vallis? Could start from the bottom with a few miners and then work our way up? I’ve always considered myself a well organised human resources manager.”

“Weeeell  I dunno really…” said Maximus. “Standard protocol there is to use debt-bonds to get miners. And I like my credits as much as the next guy, but I don’t really like swapping and using people as if they were credits.”

Gesturum pondered it for a few seconds and then he said “I agree there. Somehow “debt-bonds” doesn’t ring with the Message. For some Orb vallis seems to be a place where you work yourself down instead of up. But there must be some way we can make our fortune just with our own hands!”

 

They stopped by the next door. Gestrum held up the small screen close to the door. When it came to life he said “Oh this is a history locker. It is stared with ancient, and I mean ancient, technology. Parvos knows why they’ve kept it. Sometimes looking back at the past helps you planning for a better future I guess.”.

“What’s in it?” Maximus wondered.

Gestrum felt a sense of pride since he knew something about this and gave it his all trying to explain it. “Oh, things like Bitcoins, Dogecoin, Manchesterarium and other digitally produced and “self invented currencies” that were rendered obsolete when void-chip computers were invented. The old digital currencies apparently relied on each “coin” being unique and that it could not be duplicated or “same coin sold/traded multiple times”. Voidchips killed them tho. When a transaction was made by a voidpowered computer the currency was at some times suddenly both here and there at the same time. And in other occasions it never appeared in point B but disappeared from point A anyway.  So people lost their trust and faith in the virtual money, and the cryptocurrencies as they called it went down the drain and became obsolete. People who had invested their whole savings in an abstract monetary suddenly saw it vaporise into nothing.”

“What?” Maximus said, “So money just turned to not being money because people didn’t think of it as money anymore?”

“Er..ehum… yes I think so” Gestrum said, realizing he perhaps didn’t really have the depth of detail about the subject as he thought. “It is different from the old quantum theory, which is now obsolete too anyway, in which you have to study a phenomenon to see in which state it decides to be. Void theory for example states that you can ask a question and then show that you probably already had the answer for that yesterday.” He tried to sound reassuring but internally the spectre of doubt was starting to rake him with its claws. “But you got to have the element Voidinium present when you state the question! If you’re out of Voidinium you won’t get any answer. That is unless some Voidinium decides to appear by itself, and then you might get an answer without having stated a question. Powerful stuff that Voidinium. Especially when a polished bit Is squeezed into a computer chip to turbocharge it.”  He invented the last part himself and felt rather proud of it! It also felt completely logical since it backed up his conclusions from before and thus must be true, or else he was wrong and he was having none of that today. “So, when we decide to invest in the future, my friend, it is paramount that we are certain it is a stable one. Risk is ok, but blind faith in unproved areas is not. As Parvos Granum said: “Play for profit, don’t pray for it.”

Maximus bobbed his head slightly and then asked “But our current monetary system of credits is also a digital and not physical creation. How can that be safer than the old digital currency?”

“Ah yes, it’s down to the duality of Voidinium. The old currency had a safety that made it impossible to make copies. But when Voidinium chips made that possible they were out. Our credits have a much better safety protocol!” Gestrum said.

“How so?” Maximus wondered.

“Because our credits can be copied as much as you like, but then the original get instantly destroyed by the Voidinium factor! And if someone copies that then the copy of the original gets voidinised, etc.” Gestrum knew he had really lost it by now. But by stubbornly still sticking with it anyway he hadn’t at least lost It all. And that was important.

Maximus stared at him for a while. “How come you know so much about old currency?”

“I told you I have a distant cousin that’s an accountant. You cannot participate in family reunions without picking up some random bits and pieces of interest.” Gestrum replied.

“Oh. I mean Ok!!!” Maximus did his best to quickly alter his first response. His subconscious seemed to have a tough time letting go of the idea of Moa-nas. “Let’s move on to the next unit, shall we then?” But after a few steps he paused and said “Could we use Voidinium to our advantage? Perhaps we could make one mine into two mines and get double profit. And then we could sell the two mines before the Voidinium turned it into two non-mines?”

“That’s now how it works!” said Gesturum somewhat irritated. “It could also turn into an un-mine that would take back everything that had been mined.”  The irritation in his voice could mostly be pinned down to the fact that he had to keep inventing stuff so he could explain something that he in reality really could not. Perhaps there was a pinch of Voidinium in himself?

Once again the speakers blurted out an alarm. “Sister Granita of Parvos just went down! The Tenno is tearing us apart. Send more soldiers to section eight! And a Clean and Repair down section seven. Bring shovels, cleaning gear and disinfectant!”

“Those dudes at Clean and Repair are in for some overtime again!” Maximus said. “Yeah. More profit for them. If they had a sense of humour then they could realise they are mopping up their way to fortune!”  

They arrived at the next storage unit. It was a door like all the rest, but with the exception that it seemed to have been reinforced. Gesturum now held the flat little screen in his left hand. “Interesting. This seems to be a prisoner containment unit. Not one of those placed at the prison holding cells, but a regular storage unit reinforced according to some bigwigs specifications. I’ve seen one of these before, but it was a long time ago and it was, as I understood it, not containing an important prisoner for the Corpus cause.  More likely it was important for someone important to keep this prisoner hidden away from the rest of the Corpus. Perhaps keeping the competition locked up in secret. Safe but not revealed. “

“Does it say anything about what’s stored in there?” asked Maximus.

“Only a reference to the origin of what’s packed in there. It says something about Omicron Persiey eight?” Gesturum replied.

*BONK BONK BONK!* Something inside the containment unit banged what sounded like a huge fist against the door. A dark raspy voice penetrated the steel and reached into their ears. “Hello? Let me out of here at once. I have a planet to conquer. Yours! Oh my wife will never let me hear the end of this if I fail another planet invasion….” That last sentence had lost its potence at the start and then trailed off into sobbing sadness at the end. Maximus and Gesturom looked at eachother and then quickly tip toed to the next unit.

“But what if we could get a small Electric crawler farm on Deimos? I heard there could be great profit in creating a landing craft station where the ships could be ecologically charged? That could be our ticket out of here?” Maximus said as he continued to dream and adhere to the Message.

“That could work” Gesturum responded, “But my sister in law Tatiania Augere told me, on last years Pontus family reunion, that she had met a scientist once stationed on Deimos. I think his name was Latrox Une. She said that his earlobes had tiny tentacles wiggling on them. And that when someone at the party told a joke that made him laugh, she swore that she heard a second mouth laugh out loud from his “rear end”. That place is dangerous to spend a prolonged time at…”

“Now that you mention it…” Maximus added, “I don’t think I need more tentacles. Zero is good enough for me. Too bad though. I think that this “ecologically crafted” trend is finally catching on. We could have benefitted from getting into the market at an early stage.”

“Yeah.” Gesturum responded, “But the ecology of Deimos is what scares me. So I rather not start delving in that area of business. Ecology is a scary thing if it gets out of control. I don’t want my body to be ecologicalized by the Deimos natural selection.”

The big ships speakers once again sprung to life. “Warning! Platoon 43 eliminated. Tenno near rear control centre. Osprey count critical. Moa count critical.”

“Rear control centre.” Gesturum said and continued. “That’s in the other end of the ship.”

“No worries for us then.” Maximus filled in. “He, or she, should be near it’s goal and then be off this ship and trouble us no more.”

They stopped  by the last storage door in the corridor. It had the numbers C 12:5 neatly painted by it’s side. Other than that, and not being reinforced for keeping Omicrons safely tucked away, it looked like the rest of the doors locking up the storage units.

Maximus held up the screen to sync with the unit. “Doh.” He said and turned to Maximus. “This one seems to be broken. It should have contained some void research material. Strangely enough no mention of Voidinium though, not at all. Just some artifacts found in void space.  But it seems broken. It just changed to report that there is no storage unit at all here. Even the door before us doesn’t exist according to the inventory list.”

Gesturum responded with a voice that tried to sound arrogant but could not hide every little nuance of insecurity wrapping around it. “But of course it won’t mention Voidinium. Do you know how expensive that stuff is? Also it’s a corporate secret. I might have to kill you for just mentioning it. Well, I won’t since you’re my friend. But I might have to kill the next person you tell.” He hoped that was enough to make him not bring out Voidinium again. He was really running out of ideas for future explanations here.

Maximus grabbed his identity card and placed it on the lock of the door. Then the door opened with the sound of “Psssshc-ch-ch-chhhh-“. The two friends peeked inside. It was an empty storage container.

“Well, it might be broken but it’s still here. It’s just empty!” Gesturum said, as if he had discovered a new universal element and wanted to tell the world.

Maximus took another peek into it. Then he said. “I want to try something.” He pulled a small credit card out of his chest pocket (the worst place to keep them since Tennos always aimed at the heart first). “Your talk about Voidinium made me curious on how we could benefit from it. So, I’m gonna try a little experiment.” Then he tossed his credit card into the unit and closed the door.

Gesturum was quick to, in a rapid pace, point out his lack of responsibility for whatever was about to happen, or more specifically probably Not to happen. “Well as you said it said nothing about Voidinium on the data sheet, and without it nothing will happen, everyone, well everyone who knows some higher ups secrets, knows that you need Voidinium, and pure such, not the diluted stuff bought at the black markets of Venus, to get the effect of Voidilsatiation! So if this is just a broken unit and no Voidinium then all that will happen is that your card will still be there on the floor. And that is what we can expect since there was no mentioning of Voidinium. We need Voidinium!”. He stopped and finally got to inhale some air again.

 If they had dropped a single string of hair, it would have made a deafening sound when hitting the floor. Such where the silence when the door opened. Even the door was catching on that something dramatic was happening so it swung open like it had it’s hinges greased up every day in anticipation for this moment. On the floor of the unit there was two identical credit cards.

“By the Shinies!” Maximus said.

Gesturum casually tried to wave it away by saying. “Well of course considering the volatile nature of Voidinium there is a chance that this could happen anywhere in the universe if you just where there at the right place and in the right time…”

Maximus quickly closed the door and opened it again. Now there where four credit cards on the floor.

 “We-ell you see…” Gesturum started. But then he gave up and said “Try it again!”.

Maximus closed the door and opened it. Eight credit cards were placed on the floor. “This is it!” he said. “I only had 30 credits on that card, barely enough to buy us both a cup of coffee. But a pile of them…”

The two friends stared at each other for the fringe of a second. Then the door opened, closed, opened, closed, opened…

A minute later they stared at a huge pile of credit cards. Each one stocked with 30 credits, but together enough to make the friends pulses go *ca-ching ca-ching ca-ching-a-ding.”

“This is it” Maximus said excitedly. “This is our time, our chance! We can ditch this awful existence and roll off this ship in our own shiny cruiser set for destination wealth and fortune! No more answering to the big mucks or bowing to the top folks. We can be the top folks now Gesturum! We are in the money now!!!”.

Gesturums eyes glimmed like diamonds. “There are 20 big synthetic bags stored in locker 1177:8. Counting in the size of the cards each bag could carry about one million credits….”

They both broke out in a maniacal laugher.  “Awhahahahahaha!” Then they closed and opened the door a number of more times and then just stood in silence watching the mountain of wealth in front of them that was ever increasing. They stood still in silence, awed by the future that awaited them.

The speakers once again broke the silence. “Warning! The Tenno has destroyed the coolant cells and made the ship core go critical. Total elimination in two minutes.”

“What the fuuu…” both screamed in unison, and in harmony. (A Fufu is a strange and rare birdlike creature living in the Orb Vallis)

“Where are the bags?” Maximus screamed?

“Locker 1177:8 is in the west end of the ship, approximately one kilometre from where we are, and by far more than one minute away.” Gesturum screamed back.

“What the fuuu…” Maximus almost sang as an opera aria. “What do we do? What do we do?”

“There’s an escape pod down the hall. Grab what you can and let’s leg it!” Gesturum yelled, totally out of pitch from Maximus opera.

They quickly filled every compartment they had. Pockets, helmet, underwear, and then ran of in the direction of the pod. Behind them the speaker blurted out numbers. “Fifty eight, Fifty four, Fifty three… ” For men being used not having to worry about the pace of their steps, their legs proved to be fast learners in the department of survival evolution.

A few seconds later they reached the escape pod and threw themselves in, spilling credit cards all over the seats. “Punch it!!!” Maximus yelled. Gestrum hit the palm of his hand at the big red button labelled “Good buy”. A sad pun made to raise some morale for those trying to survive, but in reality it had the opposite effect. With a *Wroosh” the escape pod ejected from the main vessel. A few heartbeats later their previous location became a very bright shining and hot place.

“By Parvos shiny sphericals! We got out at the last second!” Gesturum exclaimed.

“Yeah.” Maximus replied and continued with “Aaaaand… we got some credits with us. And all the evidence of our little “event” blown to smithereens.”

The two friends looked at each other and said as one “This can be our time to profit!”. They started counting.

“I managed to grab 3300 credits” said Gesturum. “I got 4200” replied Maximus, “And I started the day with 30!” They both smiled.

“Ok” said Gesturum. “We don’t know if this pod will be picked up in space or where we will land. But at least we got a budged to get started on. I estimate we might be able to rent a small hand driven cart for at least a month for this sum. If we both work shift we could double our investment before it’s time for another rent payment.”

“That’s a start and would give us time to come up with another good idea!” said Maximus. “That and counting in that were still alive is a good reboot for us working towards fortune again.”

“It is, isn’t it?” said a cheerful Gesturum. Even a small investment could be turned into big profit. And considering they just escaped a burning inferno and still had some cash in their pockets the future was looking shiny!

A new adventure awaited them. If you were alive there was always a chance for fortune! And fortune would be in the palm of their hand again! Parvos be praised! They just hoped that the fortune would be in their grasp for more than a few minutes this time.