Her name, according to the flickering bounty feed on his wrist-comp, was Vesper Rhen. Wanted for “aggravated salvage, destruction of corporate property, and leaving a trail of humiliated security droids.” The reward was a small fortune—enough to pay off his berth fees and finally afford real eggs instead of the synthetic green paste that tasted like regret.
Zane, who had survived fourteen pirate raids, three reactor leaks, and one particularly aggressive space-fungus, felt his logic circuits (biological ones) fizzle. He stepped closer.
He was standing in a meadow. A perfect, impossible meadow, right there on the grimy deck of Veridian Station. The sky was a soft lavender. A gentle stream burbled nearby. And Vesper Rhen was there, sitting on a blanket, patting the space beside her. her glowing buttflap is a trap
But humans, and human-adjacent beings, are not rational creatures. The glow was too friendly. Too inviting. It whispered promises of comfort, of rest, of a brief vacation from the grinding horror of space-station existence. And one by one, they kept touching it.
Vesper turned, smiled, and did the pivot. The panel blazed gold. “Come on, tough guy. You know you want to. Just a little tap. It feels like your mother’s hug.” Her name, according to the flickering bounty feed
“No,” Vesper whispered. “Not the beige. Anything but the beige.”
She left him there, drooling and smiling, with a little handwritten note stuck to his forehead: OUT OF ORDER. WILL RESET IN 6-8 HOURS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. Word spread fast on Veridian Station. Within a week, the glowing buttflap became a legend. Three more bounty hunters fell for it—a hulking Brute-Bot, a cybernetically enhanced lizard-thing from the Syrinx system, and a grizzled old marshal who swore he’d “seen it all.” Each one approached from behind, mesmerized by the gentle amber pulse. Each one touched it. Each one ended up on the floor, smiling at a hallucinated meadow while Vesper Rhen calmly looted their pockets, reprogrammed their droids, and used their ship credentials to access high-security salvage yards. He stepped closer
“I have no tactile nerves,” Maura said. “Your trap is useless. It’s just a pretty flashlight attached to your backside.”