Challenge #00267: Learning the Ropes

“We also also learned that anyone ordering in excess of three tons of tapioca, six conifers, and a goldfish should be arrested immediately, and please, please, please do not ask why.”

Every last Ensign asked, “Why?”

This one asked, “What can you possibly do with tapioca, conifers, and a goldfish?”

Lyr turned on hir. “Have you heard of an area called the Glunk?”

“Uh. No?”

“I’ll send you the map co-ordinates,” she reached into the cache-spot she’d prepared without knowing why, that morning. It had a heavy-duty filter breath-mask and an all-purpose polyvinyl bodysuit. “You’ll need these.”

The Ensign took them with increasing trepidation.

“And yes, before you ask, we were able to rescue the goldfish.”

“Did you use your pre-cog abilities?”

“No. Everyone asks about the goldfish. Oh, and don’t disturb the Cleaners in there. They’re very territorial.”

Ze was going to look, if only to satisfy hir own curiosity. Lyr didn’t need to forsee it. Sooner or later, everyone who heard about the Glunk went to look.

It was, after all, one of the few areas of the station that had it’s own, understandably isolated, ecology. And if things went well, it might even be habitable in another eighty years.

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