The last drama post I did about Kuma Miko seemed to have gotten some praise, but some wished to see a Hobby Drama post that had consequences outside “people got angry over it”. So without any further delay, here’s a story about a studio that’s close to my heart, one that I’ve backed twice and seen die twice.
Note: This is a fairly lengthy drama, so forgive me if I’m not able to provide all of my sources. Most of the front half of this comes from this video, which chronicles the first half of Lab Zero entirely in Russian.
From Ahad to Mike Z
Let’s start in the beginning. Alex Ahad is a freelance illustrator who, in between other work, had created character designs for a prospective fighting game. Mike Zaimont is a professional fighting game player best known for games like BlazBlue and Marvel Vs. Capcom, but since 1999 had been coding a custom engine in his free time, which he hoped could be used for a fighting game. The two met in 2008, and the two quickly realized that with each other’s help, their dream could come true. In 2010, the two joined the newly developed game studio Reverge Labs. Joining their team was Mariel “Kinuko” Cartwright, a friend of Ahad’s and daughter of a Disney animator who helped animate games such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Shantae; Peter Bartholow, who acted as CEO of Reverge as well as their PR arm; and an assortment of other animators and designers. Their goal: a fighting game in the style of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 with hand-drawn animation that they called Skullgirls.
After obtaining publishers in Autumn Games and Konami (at the time of development the Microsoft required indie devs to have a retail publisher in order to bring their games to Xbox Live Arcade), the team got to work on Skullgirls. Initial impressions were favorful - people liked Ahad’s unique character designs, the fluid animation, and the solid engine Mike Z built - but upon release, there were some concerns. The time and money needed to develop each character meant a starting roster of only eight characters, a far cry from other fighting games (the original MvC had 15 characters in 1998), and due to the team trying to get the game out, there was no in-game move list. Some were also concerned that the cast, consisting entirely of women, was too fanservice-filled, although Bartholow said that the characters were just attractive women who could fight as opposed to characters using their sexuality in battle (Ahad said that sex wasn’t his main focus, he just wanted to have monster girls fight each other). The team at Reverge Labs stressed that they would continue to update the game, with plans to add DLC if the game sold well enough. Good thing nothing could go wro-
Everything goes wrong
Alongside publishing Skullgirls, Autumn Games and Konami had previously published a karaoke game called Def Jam RapStar. Unfortunately, around March 2012, the time Skullgirls released, both parties were at the end of several lawsuits made against them - one argued that Autumn and Konami did not get the rights to some of the songs used in the game, while another claimed that the game was funded with a bank loan which Autumn Games was unable to pay back. The result of these costly lawsuits was that Autumn was unable to pay Reverge the money made from Skullgirls - this led to the entire Reverge team being laid off around July, and the future of the game in the air.
And so, the team decided on a whim to reconvene as a new development studio, Lab Zero Games. At a fundraiser for breast cancer research which included a fighting game tournament, Mike Z revealed the first DLC fighter and promised that new information about her and the team would be posted soon. This would turn out to be an Indiegogo fundraising campaign that asked for $150,000 to develop the first DLC fighter, with more characters promised if people backed enough.
In the end, $829,829 was raised in the campaign, enough to fund five DLC characters, a bevy of stages and voice packs, and other features. It was quickly becoming a cult classic.
The Skullgirls Curse
And so work on Skullgirls DLC was underway. However, a variety of events happened to befall Lab Zero during development, some causing controversy and others just annoying the team. Some dubbed this “The Skullgirls Curse”. So let’s go over some of them:

Paypal Woes: During the Indiegogo DLC campaign, Lab Zero announced that Ahad had created around 30 prospective designs for DLC characters, and that there would be a vote to see which characters would be the two “mystery characters” teased in the Indiegogo campaign. As you would guess, this caused the Skullgirls fanbase to get heated, to the point where some stressed that they would ask Indiegogo for their money back if their character didn’t win. PayPal, who managed the funds for this campaign, was concerned about these threats and put nearly all of the money on hold. Bartholow tried to negotiate with PayPal, and was eventually able to get the funding - once PayPal was given a hefty sum as collateral.
Bad Juju - If you notice on the list of prospective DLC characters, one character is Juju, a character who was designed by Ahad from a fan’s suggestion on a Whiteboard Wednesday art stream. Ahad seemed to like the idea of the character, and kept building her up until she became a legit character in the game. The original fan made a joke on Facebook that he’d like to be compensated for the design, which led Lab Zero to negotiate obtaining the character rights from him. They eventually worked out a contract that would give them the rights to the character, but only if the original fan didn’t reveal it until Lab Zero announced it themselves. The fan then posted about it on the Skullgirls forum the very next day, breaking the NDA immediately and making it so that Lab Zero couldn’t use the character at all.
Don’t be (Red) Cross with me: One of the characters included in the base game of Skullgirls is Valentine. As you can tell, the two biggest features of her character are her being a nurse and a ninja - as such, her costume is decorated with red crosses. This was upsetting to the real Red Cross, which fights hard to prevent its trademark from being associated with violence - as such, when they came to the Skullgirls publisher demanding a change, all red crosses in the game had to be changed to magenta.
#FucKonami: In November 2013, due to Konami barely helping at all with the publishing process for Skullgirls (they refused to greenlight any patch or DLC until Lab Zero tested it itself on their own time and money, they didn’t help with Microsoft’s certification process for Xbox, etc), Lab Zero dissolved their publishing agreement. This led to a massive snafu where, due to the dissolution, the original Skullgirls was taken down on consoles, and Lab Zero had to scramble to get a new publisher on the consoles side and then reupload the game as Skullgirls: Encore. It was a tangled web of issues which the above YouTube video relays, but required certification from both console storefronts and even the Japan storefront, as their publisher there was also coincidentally being dissolved at the same time without Lab Zero knowing.
EVO 2014: During one of the largest fighting game tournaments of 2014, Skullgirls was promised a space for airing their tournament stream by controller distributor Madcatz. Lab Zero and Autumn provided a pot for the tourney, and everything was smooth sailing - until a multitude of delays made it so that the entire time Skullgirls had for streaming was replaced with Tekken tournaments. By the time these issues were fixed, only the final four matches were able to be shown.
What’s the worst kind of ship? Censor-SHIP!: In April 2015, one of the patches of Skullgirls altered the animation of some characters, which according to Lab Zero themselves was because of their own artistic values (while they admitted that panty shots in a fighting game comprised entirely of girls is unavoidable, they didn’t want to go out of their way to show them). As you might expect, this led to a massive onslaught of negative Steam reviews and caustic tweets from people who abhor censorship of any kind. Funnily enough, this brigade started around October, six months after the changes were made, and only via word of mouth - people didn’t even notice there was a change until someone told them about it.
Backer characters: As part of their Indiegogo campaign, some of the highest-paying backers could have their original characters put in the background of some custom stages. Lab Zero warned these backers that these stages would be a casino and a ballroom, respectively, so their OCs should ideally be designed with a formal flair. Some backers did follow this unspoken rule - ZONE, a notoriously NSFW Flash animator who helped work on the DLC characters, made a perfectly formal look for his mascot Zone-tan. As for the others, well...
SonicFox: This isn’t included in the compilation video mentioned above as this occurred way after all the initial Skullgirls drama. Basically, SonicFox is a five-time EVO champion and one of the best Skullgirls players in the world. In May 2020, after Skullgirls was mostly complete, they were given a cameo in Skullgirls’ training stage. Of note is that SonicFox is black, non-binary, and a furry, and the character added to the game was their fursona, who has a trans rights flag in the inside of their jacket you can only see for like one frame. People reacted as you would expect. Also, one of the original backers requested to change their character as they were now transitioning, which didn’t get as much flak, so that’s nice I guess.

So as you can see, Skullgirls had a menagerie of problems and issues during its dev time. However, their Skullgirls curse seemed to have faded away, as they had a new game in store.
If I was Indivisible
Indivisible was a new project of Lab Zero, announced in 2015 as Skullgirls DLC production was nearing an end. Billed as a platformer RPG similar to games like Valkyrie Profile, it would tell the story of Ajna, a young girl whose town is stricken by tragedy and she finds out that she’s a portion of the god of creation, who has grown discontent with the world and wishes to remake it anew. Its Indiegogo campaign focused on Incarnations, party members who came from a variety of cultures, religions, and demographics not usually represented in popular culture. And as you can see by the fact that it got over two million dollars in funding, people were excited to see what Lab Zero could do. They even got enough funding to get Studio Trigger, of anime fame, to create the opening for the game.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Lab Zero without the occasional issue here and there. As shown above, some Incarnations were changed or scrapped during development, which irked some who backed because of that character specifically (not naming any names, but look in the incarnation list and see if you notice any). Backer characters were included again, and although there were more places to add them so they didn’t look out of place, you still had the occasional few that did. Critics liked the art and presentation of the game, but disliked some gameplay issues: the second half of the game became a cakewalk once you progressed far enough, it was a bit of a pain to go from one end of the map to another, especially for side quests, and a bunch of party members simply weren’t complete. Most egregiously of all, the Nintendo Switch version of the game was ported by a different company and released before Lab Zero was even aware of it - which forced them to scramble again to patch it up so it was on par with other consoles.
Still, it was a better situation they were in than when Skullgirls started. They had a legit publisher in 505 Games, people were satisfied with the base game, and Mike Z mentioned how the base game would continue to be refined with gameplay changes, small additions, and guest incarnations from other indie games. NBC even announced that Indivisible would be adapted into a television program for their Peacock streaming service. Things were looking up for Lab Zero.
Everything goes wrong... AGAIN
During the production of Indivisible, Alex Ahad was let go by Lab Zero. Not much is mentioned about it except that he was growing increasingly hostile, making it difficult to work with him, and his art was not meeting the standards for the game. He left, tried to sue Lab Zero, and eventually agreed to a sizable settlement. Mariel became the lead artistic director in his stead, and the art team had to be rearranged to compensate.
Now, as Lab Zero was preparing to transition from being employee-owned, Mike Z was made the temporary head of the studio. In June of 2020, Mike Z did an “I can’t breathe” joke during a Skullgirls livestream just days after George Floyd’s death - he later apologized for this, claiming he was trying to bring attention to the issue. Soon, more people provided proof that Mike Z has had a history of sexual harassment. Kinuko chimes in as well, noting that while she tolerated inappropriate behavior for years, when she talked to Mike Z about it, he blamed her for his actions. She talked with others in the team, who came to the conclusion that Zaimont had treated all of them like this. Some Lab Zero employees resigned on their own, while others pushed for Zaimont to resign. However, as Mike was still head of the studio, he dissolved the studio board and laid off the rest of the staff.
So where does that leave everyone?

Ahad is still doing art on his own, and gets by with commissions and his Patreon.
Kinuko, as well as the majority of Lab Zero, created a new studio called Future Club, which has promised to create new titles with the same art style they refined from Skullgirls and Indivisible.
Autumn Games still own the rights to Skullgirls, and with the help of some former Lab Zero devs, created a mobile version of the game. It’s surprisingly not bad, although it’s of course stuffed with microtransactions. However, they’ve apparently made enough to fund a completely new character for the game for both the mobile and console/PC versions.
After everything with Mike Z, 505 games put out a statement which signaled the end of all development of the game, leaving it unfinished. Mike Z has been suspended from Skullgirls streams and the like, making his future in the gaming world unclear.

There’s probably something I’ve missed in all of this, but yep. I backed them twice, both for Skullgirls and Indivisible. I don’t regret it, and I’m looking forward to whatever Future Club does, but I won’t lie - I’ll always miss what could have been.

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$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)

Galactic Economics 2: Trustworthy

RoyalRoad
First
Next
Jen and Sarah spent the next week doing research. The Internet was filled with contradictory information about monetary theory and economics, and neither of them really had the background to evaluate the arguments that everyone was having.
However, Sarah reminded them both, they didn't need to look at a perfect system, just one that worked. So, they started digging through Wikipedia articles and online textbooks on the history of money and how they came to be.
"Hey, did you know they used to use salt as currency?" Sarah asked as she skimmed through a particularly fascinating documentary about Middle Age East African economies.
"Is this some kind of joke about mining salt?"
"No, it's real, look. And apparently the word salary is from the Latin word salarium for money used to buy salt," Sarah continued fascinated.
Of course, they couldn't use something as simple as salt to represent money. In fact, they couldn't use any commodity either.
Over the last week, one of the alien traders caught wind that gold was extremely valuable on Earth, so they'd brought them in by the ton load. Gold was still useful for electronics and some dentistry, but the price of gold, mostly propped up by its value in rarity, crashed hard.
The problem with currency in galactic trading, as Sarah discovered, was that there wasn't a single commodity that was equally rare in every system.
No, whatever alternative they come up to the laughably outdated barter system had to be built on something far more rare and valuable than gold.
Something that even the most powerful human empires in history have struggled to collect.
It had to be built on trust.
"That's the system most modern currencies are based on," Sarah claimed, "you only accept dollars for work because you trust that you're going to be able to wake up tomorrow and spend it on… everything you need."
"Hmm well, we can't just ask them to take US dollars," Jen giggled. This would be so much easier if that weren't true.
"Why not?" Sarah asked, playing the devil's advocate.
"Well… well, like you said, they won't trust it! I certainly wouldn't if I were a trader! Furthermore, who knows? Maybe they have a printer in their ship that can duplicate money! Maybe we should ask them for that next time we bring Zarko some pears," Jen said, thinking out loud.
"I doubt it. The government keeps a lot of secrets about how they make Dollars , and I don't want the Secret Service knocking on my door," Sarah said. Until this week, she hadn't known that this was one of the lesser known duties of the USSS. Now that she knew it, it made the thought of attracting their attention even less palatable, "you're right. What about digital casino tokens? We can produce something that translates to Dollars and have our own system that tracks it all."
"Sure, that's not too hard to make. We would have a centralized money supply, where we don't trust each end point…" Jen continued on the brainstorm, thinking in terms of the technical system, "ok, so say we make SarahBucks, and peg its value to the US Dollar. One pound of pears would be worth 1.5 SarahBucks, one pound of sirloin steak is 6.99 SarahBucks at Safeway. That still doesn't explain how we'll get people to use it."
"I'm not sure. I need to think about this more," Sarah yawned, tired. "And I hate that name."
They agreed that they were stuck, and that SarahBucks was absolutely a terrible name.
Livermore Spaceport, Earth
A month after the spaceport opening, Sarah noticed that it had become less of a tourist attraction. There were far fewer people standing around gawking at the aliens, and a lot more companies trucking their best-selling products into the spaceport for trade.
After their abuse of Jen's cousin's employee pass got discovered by the spaceport authorities, Sarah and Jen had started placing their own bids on getting into the spaceport through the official channels. Thanks to their existing connections with the managers at the spaceport and a growing bank account of value, they could still get in to continue their lucrative trade for magical alien goods.
A bit of a rich-get-richer type of situation.
The flavor of the month were these Bohor magical air filter machines that aggressively scrubbed the air of… anything you want them to.
The Bohor planet is basically the planetary equivalent of a toxic dump.
Sure, it had biomes; it wasn't a Star Wars sci-fi planet where the entire planet is either a desert or an ice-cold tundra or a forest. But the entire planet had been polluted so heavily by its occupants that it lowered the life expectancy by half before the Bohors found a solution:
They simply filtered their entire atmosphere through air filter machines and then buried the toxins and garbage they got out of it in a very deep landfill, somewhere where very few people lived. Pretty much the kind of solution you'd expect out of a species that created the original problem in the first place.
Zikzik, the alien that was the same species as Zarko, overheard a human asking about their rocket fuel and climate change, and brought in a cargo hold of them.
It was a massive hit.
Earth's climate change problem wasn't nearly as bad as Bohor, but it was relatively simple to program these machines to suck carbon out of its atmosphere and… bury them in a landfill.
At first, few of the human traders bought them, thinking that it was going to be at least a while before the problem became big enough that big governments were going to come to them to try to address the issue, but they had it all wrong.
Soon as word got out this was an option, big companies and philanthropists started lining up at their doors. As it turned out, literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air was easier and cheaper than modifying many of their industrial practices to actually be environmentally green. They didn't need to run more efficient factories to claim to be carbon-neutral; just pump as much carbon into the air in exchange for undoing that by sucking it out of the atmosphere after!
Some bean counters at a think tank in DC predicted that a few more shipments of these air filters will fix Earth's climate problems by themselves in about a decade, so every trader had a waiting list of corporations with PR problems willing to buy them.
Sarah and Jen had a couple vehicle manufacturing companies on their list who were trying to get Bohor air filters to use in lobbying for looser emission standards for their dirty gasoline cars.
Today, there were traders on all the landing pads, and they were all carrying air filters. Zarko's ship was there, and he was loading fruits into his spaceship with an alien looking forklift. Sarah and Jen approached his ship and noticed the truck driver standing there.
"Hey Benny, tempting the poor aliens with cherries this time?" Sarah waved good, grinning and looking at his cargo.
Technically, Benny is a competitor, or at least he drives for a competitor. The massive fruit conglomeration he worked for, Chuckita, had not neglected to notice the massive business opportunity sitting right here as many others have, and are now delivering straight to the aliens in exchange for massive profit margins.
But Benny was a good guy. One time Jen and Sarah were having some trouble finding a buyer for a bunch of legally dubious alien psychedelics. Benny was in his late 50s, not that great with the Internet either, so he'd introduced them to whom he referred to as "my money launderer". Aka, his 22-year-old son, Benny Jr, who had a habit of buying weed and other less than legal items off the deep web. Benny Jr had found a buyer for them within minutes and even generously offered to handle the deal for them to spare them the risk of meeting some psycho hopped up on an alien high in a dark alley somewhere.
"Heh! One of the bat aliens loves sweets but has a low tolerance for sour, so they treat cherries as some kind of an odd challenge fad. They eat a random cherry, and it's either so incredibly sweet they start drooling out of the mouths, or it's a sour one, and they freak out," Benny replied, in a low voice as if he were trying to keep it a big secret. "Zarko showed me a video, and it's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen".
"I think I've seen that one, have you seen the one where they drink wine?" Sarah chuckled at the memory. Alien videos have been a big hit on YouTube. Some human merchants were trading fruit for aliens to take videos of the galaxy. Which they monetized, of course.
"No," Benny's ears perked up. Chuckita doesn't make wine, but if selling wine to aliens was going to be a thing, they were a big supplier of grapes… "Is it gonna be a thing?"
"Well guess what we brought today?" Jen also grinning from ear to ear, and holding up a big carton of low-quality box wine.
"Awww seems like I'm always one step behind you guys," Benny moaned in exaggeration, "I tried to get my money launderer to tell me what aliens would want but all he does is play video games on the Internet, kids these days."
Luckily, Zarko chose this moment to step out to spare them from more good-humored ribbing from the boomer. "Ah Sarah and Jen, you brought the grape wine this time!"
"Yup," Sarah beamed, "and I see you've run out of air filters to trade again!"
"Sadly yes," Zarko tilted his head in shame, "my ship is overdue for a cargo space upgrade, but I haven't found a port that would do it for fruit yet. Next time?"
"Alright! Alright! We'll leave our special wine with you, but you better get us some extra good filters next time!" Jen scolded mockingly. Zarko has gotten a lot more comfortable doling out IOUs since the first time.
"Of course. Only the best for you two," Zarko said with a greasy human smile imitation that almost made Sarah laugh out loud. It reminded her of a ridiculous cartoon sloth.
"By the way," Sarah asked casually, "how much is a spaceship worth on your planet?"
Zarko sobered up his expression and looked at her curiously. It was a question that other humans had asked before. To him, it was a good sign. This meant that they all dreamt of the stars. But he didn't expect such a question from someone as seemingly practical as Sarah. She had a lot of fruit, sure, but fruit doesn't build spaceships.
After thinking for a while, he replied honestly, "ships aren't traded for one single item. My family traded for the parts to build mine for generations."
He pointed at his spaceship.
Zarko proudly explained, "this is the work of eighteen generations of trading. My family was one of the richest on Zeep-zep. For thirteen generations, they traded for each of the parts on this beauty. Then, for the last five, my ancestors traded excess food from the tenant farmers on their land to expert craftsbeings that could put it together."
"Wait, eighteen generations?" Jen gasped. Eighteen generations ago, her family were probably peasants on a farm in Korea or something…
"Yes," Zarko said, looking at them with a little of pity. "After getting the spaceship, my family has traded in it for twelve generations, through civil wars and disasters."
He did some math on his hands, and said, "that's about four hundred of your years. That's why it's very unlikely that you will never go to space."
Looking at the stunned expression on their faces, he tried to lighten the mood. Zarko said mischievously, "unless you're willing to part with some more of your fruit, in which case I'll let you sit in the back seat for a whole route!"
"Hold on, back up, I'm still stuck on the multiple generations part," Sarah said seriously. "You're saying you're flying on a spaceship that started to be built thirty generations ago? That's… about a millennia for us."
"Yes," Zarko answered, "and that's why only thirteen families on my planet have had the privilege of owning one in our long history. No offense, but that's why I think no human will ever own their own spacecraft for at least fifteen more generations."
Something is wrong here, Sarah thought. The budget for NASA's FTL spacecraft was in the hundreds of millions. Yes, for a fruit farmer, that would be many generations of work if all their descendants worked in the same industry. But there were over three thousand billionaires on Earth, not including the tens of thousands of corporations that had assets or market value over a billion. And the prices for the spacecraft would surely go down as time went on…
For a planet like Zarko's to only have thirteen spaceships over generations of their development…
As they were walking away, Benny asked, "have you guys noticed something weird about the way these aliens do business?"
"Yes." "God yes." They said in unison.
"We've been thinking about it for a while, but these guys not having money is a major problemo," Sarah said, looking around surreptitiously, "Zarko and Zikzik keep talking about not being able to find someone who can upgrade their hulls for fruit. And sometimes they come with nothing good, and we're supposed to just drive our fruits all the way back!"
"And if you think about it, if they were human ships, think about truckers who don't own their trucks. We'd have loans or something to deal with the cargo space problems, and they'd be paid for by profits in a few trips," Jen added.
"The numbers he gave us for spacecraft ownership seem insane," Sarah agreed. "Your company could probably afford to order one right now, not to mention hundreds of others. They must all be dirt poor!"
Benny seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one who was thinking this, "exactly! I'm thinking we just introduce them to the concept of Benjamins and solve all their problems and ours. Would certainly make the return trip a lot easier for me if I didn't have to drive all the way to Berkeley for junior to launder all this crap!"
"We thought of that too," Sarah said as Benny pretended to groan again, "but we couldn't figure out how to get them to take money with no intrinsic value."
"Oh that shouldn't be too hard," Benny said, who's clearly already thought through this problem in his head, "we play a little game called good cop, bad cop."
"Good cop bad cop?"
"Sure, it's a mind game the cops play, where they put you in a room-"
"Yeah we know what it is, but how does that help us?" Sarah said impatiently, an idea tugging on her subconscious.
"Well you see," Benny clearly smugly enjoying this moment where he's thought of something that the duo did not, "you two come with an empty truck next time, and you tell Zarko that you'll give him a wad of clean crisp cash, fresh from the bank, for some of his air filters. And when he asks you why he'd take the cash, you just tell him that he can give it to me in exchange for some of my fruits."
"What does that have anything to do with good cop bad cop?!" Jen asked.
"That has nothing to do with good cop bad cop," Sarah chimed in, but the idea was beginning to form in her head, "but it's a good start. We don't want to deal in cash. It's too risky. It could get the feds onto us and there's a bunch of laws around it that I'm not sure about."
"But what we can do is have an internal money system for traders pegged to the US Dollar!" Jen completed.
"Yup, so when Zarko comes back next time, we tell him he has an account with the Bank of Benny, we give him a fancy looking card that has his bank account number and give him a pin code, and we deposit a certain amount of BennyBucks into his account for giving us air filters. Then when you come around, Zarko gives you his card and pin, and gives you BennyBucks for your fruit," Sarah finished.
"Aha. And then I come to you two, say, I would like to convert BennyBucks in my Bank of Benny account to good old American dollars," Benny extrapolated, completing that final step.
"Yeah! We'll just wire you the money and everyone gets theirs," Sarah exclaimed, happy they've finally thought through the loop and gotten someone on board.
"BennyBucks is a terrible name though," Jen said, calming everyone down a little, "and why are we getting so excited over the basic concept of currency? And why haven't aliens figured this out? Maybe it's against some kind of space trading code."
"Who knows? Maybe we just try it on Zarko and see if it works out," Benny said, a glint in his eyes, "and then we expand, galaxy-tically."
"Galactic credits!" Sarah exclaimed, "that's what we'll call it."
They agreed that it was the least worst name that they'd come up with so far. It was boring, but when it came to finances, maybe boring and cliché was a good choice after all.
"Explain again. I am trying to understand," Zarko said two days later as he offloads the air filters he'd promised.
"C'mon dude, for the fifth time," Sarah exasperated, "it's not that hard. We give you a bank account card and have you set up a secret number…"
Jen had spent the last two days coding up a storm. Technically, a simple debit system wasn't that hard, but she had to make a website interface that Benny could go up to and enter his account, Zarko's card information and amount, then let Zarko type in his code…etc. She'd mused that it would have been easier to just do this all in a cloud-based spreadsheet, but that wouldn't scale up if they had more customers.
Sarah had the account cards laminated and designed a logo: the letters GC, for Galactic Credit, and a stylized version of a Milky Way in the background. Part of the value in a trustworthy system is to look official, and you can't get much more official than laminated cards.
"Yes, I understand that part," Zarko said, clearly displaying his frustration on his facial expression as well, "but I don't understand why Benny would give me his fruit for just entering a number."
"Because we have an agreement with him that he'll take it in exchange for fruit!" Sarah was sure this was the umpteenth time she had to explain this, but clearly Zarko was not getting it.
"Is it similar to a debt?" Zarko said suspiciously, as if debt was this dark magic that the humans were performing on him, "I have never heard of this kind of debt before."
"Yes, it's a debt, of sorts," Jen cut in. The last time he had asked this exact question, they'd said no, and that led to fifty other questions and explanations that went nowhere, so nothing could go worse if they said yes-
"Ok. I don't understand," Zarko did his sloth version of a sigh, it was cute, but at the same time frustrating for Sarah and Jen, "But I can try it. I know you two are not trying to trick me. Do I get my fruits before I take off?"
"Yes! You go to Benny-" Sarah started.
"Yes! And that's it. Benny gives you his fruit," Jen cut her off, knowing that this was about to launch into yet another long, long line of questions they just can't deal with right now.
Sarah set up a new account for Zarko, asked him for a 6 digit base ten pin code (thank god Zarko was a ten digit species) which he promptly memorized, and hoping that Jen's prototype website wouldn't fail, showed him how they were "giving" Zarko 40,000 Galactic Credits for 8 Bohor air filter machines into his account ("No, you can't have my iPad. It's on your account card now. Show this to Benny later.")
"Well that worked out great," Benny said as he watched them wire him the $25,000 for his truck shipment of fruit. Though his costs were in the low thousands, he could have easily fleeced Zarko for his full 40k. But they all agreed that wasn't the point, which was to get Zarko to see the benefits of using a currency system abstracted from goods and services.
"Dude, you weren't there," Sarah complained, "I don't understand why he had such a hard time understanding money. Money equals goods. Bing bang boom. It's like these guys don't have the capability for abstract thinking."
"No they definitely do. You can't build spaceships without abstract math and science," Jen said, "but he clearly had a deathly aversion to using money. I think it's tied to some taboo to debt somehow. All the other species must have it because none of the aliens we've met have even mentioned anything close to a real economy."
"Whatever it is," Benny sighed happily, "I'm just happy I didn't have to go home with my truck full of weird alien toys."
"Yup. The next step is to get all the human traders to take credits. At least they'll have no problems understanding the benefits."
Sarah made some calls to the trader licensing office at the spaceport. There she found a manager willing to part with phone numbers and contact information for the other human traders, for an "information fee" of course, and started making calls to the other human traders.
It wasn't easy. Some traders were representatives of bigger food companies, and didn't have all the flexibility to make these kinds of decisions. And others no doubt were thinking of copying their system for their own profit. But they all saw the benefits of a unified network of currency debiting because they've been suffering the same problems that Sarah, Jen, and Benny had been.
Over the next few days, all the human traders agreed to take galactic credit from the aliens, which they knew they could exchange for cash with Sarah and Jen.
"We are officially in business."
In economics, there's a distinction made between different kinds of money. There's commodity money, usually gold or silver. There's representative money, which is currency backed by commodities like gold or silver. And then there's fiat money, which is not backed by any intrinsic value, but rather by government decree, hence fiat.
Galactic Credits fall into some kind of weird hybrid category between representative and fiat money. They're backed by the Dollar, which is fiat money, but also which makes them representative money. This means that the people issuing them, in this case Jen and Sarah, are not supposed to create them without also having a corresponding US Dollar in their bank account.
Of course, Sarah and Jen hadn't signed an ironclad contract with the other human traders that they're always guaranteed to take their galactic credits and exchange for money, so technically that meant that one day Sarah could simply "deposit" a large number of credits in her account and buy all the goods she wanted from Zarko, or potentially the other traders.
That would, however, be slaughtering the golden goose for the meat.
After all, they didn't want to sell fruit or Bohor air filters.
They wanted to sell the concept of money.
"Why would I take this over fruit?" Zikzik sniffed. He was known as a sharp one by all the human traders. If there's any new alien fad coming down the pipeline, chances are Zikzik is the first one to touchdown with a cargo hold full of it.
Unlike many of the other traders, he was fairly consistent in his dealings. This much fruit is for this much air filters. He knows his price, and he lets you know it too. Everyone suspected he kept careful records of all his selling and buying somewhere in his ship, but he's never brought them out. Maybe he just had a sharp memory.
"It's very consistent," Sarah insisted, trying to appeal to his affinity for a stable and predictable exchange, "one pound of fruit today is the same as one pound of fruit tomorrow, and you can deal in fractions."
Completely ignoring that most fruits are seasonal, and price changes, and inflation, she thought, let's start here.
"Fractions, you say?" Zikzik seemed thoughtful, or maybe he's just scratching an itch on his snout, Sarah could never tell with these aliens.
"Yes, fractions," said Jen detecting the slightest bit of opening, "you can trade your air filters for credit. Then you can trade maybe three quarters of your credits to fill your cargo with fruit. The next time you come down here to Earth, you would only need to bring half the amount of air filters as the first trip, combined with the credits you have left, you can leave with a full cargo load anyway!"
Is that how that math goes, Sarah thought, but didn't cut in, as Zikzik seems to be nodding, an oddly universal gesture for affirmation.
"Five eighths of the credits," Zikzik argued, "The air filters are harder to get now because the Bohor are running low, and they need time to make more."
Bargaining! There we go! That's what we're talking about! Sarah almost pumped her fists in the air and gave him a high five, not a great idea given how sharp his claws are as she found out when trying to shake his hands a couple of weeks ago.
"Ok, you would still have to negotiate that amount with each human trader," Sarah replied adding, "but they all deal in Galactic Credits."
They signed him up for an account, gave him a card, and set up his pin code. It had only taken half an hour to get Zikzik on board, which was significantly faster than the hours they'd taken to explain this to Zarko, despite them being the same species. Was it xenocist that she'd assume it was going to take just as long, Sarah wondered.
Looking at the line of traders, she sighed. This was going to be a long day.
Luckily, Zikzik accepting the credits made for great advertising. He was known for being a sharp trader, so if he doesn't think it's a scam, it must not be, right?
Sarah and Jen managed to get two other traders that day onto credits, and one more who was dipping his proverbial toes into the water.
It was a good day.
Jen had been working hard. The Galactic Credits website was now on its 16th major iteration. She'd beefed up the security on it, to make sure none of the other human traders got any funny ideas. Backups became more automatic and frequent, and there was now a rollback and dispute mechanism, not that it was being used yet.
Sarah had also been working hard. She'd been sitting in meetings all day with legal, finances, and now they had a small army of people who were ready to help out if they got into trouble there. Galactic Credits is now officially a tax paying LLC incorporated in the great state of Delaware.
Benny Jr, who had just finished college, had come in as well. He was no good at talking to clients, but he's what the duo would refer to as "street smart". Occasionally, the alien traders would bring in some exotic or ahem, dubiously sourced items, and he would know exactly where to convert that into cold hard cash. On the spreadsheets, his dealings were adding up to a nice fat padding on the margins for Galactic Credits, which to this point, hasn't been making any money other than in the fruit and air filters exchange business.
They were now working out of a rented office in downtown Livermore, with a very nice view of a brick-lined pub that offers numerous craft beers and the old railroad that runs through the heart of town.
Ironically, there's a Bank of America branch across the street, not far from the office itself, the company that had invented the BankAmericard and started the credit card revolution, seemingly oblivious to this new competitor moving into town, literally and figuratively.
They had many brilliant finance experts who were working on something, surely, but established financial institutions are not always great at moving fast and adapting to changing technology. There were many regulations to worry about, and the stakes were a lot higher.
There's something very quaint about the town itself. Some people didn't consider it part of the Bay Area metro area itself, but with the latest BART expansion station they recently built, that's been less and less true.
Now, it was literally the town where the train tracks ended. And where the final frontier began.
For the people in the office, it's also where they dreamt about a new financial revolution in the galaxy.
Some people have critiqued this chapter on the grounds that established financial institutions would have thought of this idea on day one. I appreciate the feedback, but that is a rosy view of the velocity at corporations in my opinion. I've personally worked in some of these companies, and if someone brought up this idea, it would probably have taken at least a month to get the idea through various risk audits and legal reviews.
In terms of technology, much of banking still operates on software that predates the modern Internet. This is one of the reasons why fin-tech startups have been able to beat them on time-to-market, despite massive institutional or financial disadvantages. It's why companies like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Venmo… etc could compete with the incumbents with the development of the Internet.
Sure, an intern in engineering or tools would have a semi-working prototype by week three, but the first line of code would be pushed to production by… month three. A much more likely scenario: some startup beats them to the punch, exactly as it happens here, and the large company offers their founders or investors an obscene amount of money to buy them out.
RoyalRoad
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OBLIGATORY FILLER MATERIAL – Giving thanks edition: Kickin’ around Caracas, Pt. 5

Continuing… (It's Part 6 in the saga, I fucked up. Sorry.)
So, after a few re-fueling and impromptu cigar-purchasing stops in South and Central America, we wheel up to the deserted jetway at LAX.
“Thought we were going to Elmendorf?” I asked.
“This isn’t it?” the pilot replied, feigning worry.
“No.”, I replied, “Looks like California. Fruits and nuts. All around. What’s going on? One minute we’re off to Texas, then Cali, then Texas again, now we end up here at the California airport of the iconic tower.”
“Yeah, it’s confusing enough haulin’ civilians around. But when we get a call from Virginia, we tend to comply without any questions,” the pilot explains.
“Aw, shit!”, I sort of exclaim, “Rack and Ruin called?”
“Yeah”, the pilot replies, “Figures you’d know these guys. They said they were closer to LAX rather than Texas and had us divert here. In fact, you look over there, see that dark blue Chevy? That’s them; and evidently, your ride.”
I tipped the airman from earlier a couple of cigars as he helped me with my gear off the plane and into the trunk of Rack and Ruin’s plain-Jane blue late modeled Chevy. Had to move the Sidewinder Missiles off to one side, though.
“Most honorable Agents Lack and Luin!” I quipped in my faux-racist greeting. “What the hell, guys? I’ve got to get to Japan and get some newly rigidified digits.”
“Let’s see your hand”, Agent Rack asks. “Nasty.”
“Yeah”, I sigh “And with the medicos in South America and their penchant for plaster, I don’t so much have a left hand as more of an ankylosaur tail.”
“Or Thagomizer”, Agent Ruin tittered. “Anyone gives you grief, and one upside the head should set them right. Or dead.”
“You’re a riot, Ruin.” I replied, “But not entirely incorrect.”
We all agreed that I really didn’t need any extra accouterments to make myself look more dangerous. I mean with my severe haircut, stern beard clip, and perpetual ‘Go fuck yourself’ scowl.
“Yeah”, I replied, stroking the aforementioned beard, “I just can’t get that. I’m such a people person.”
After Agents Rack and Ruin finished drying their eyes from laughing what I thought was en extremis, we finally got down to business.
“So, what’s the skinny, guys”, I asked. “New marching orders?”
“No. Not as such”, Agent Ruin said, still sniggering over my ‘people person’ comment.
I see we’re moving. Agent Rack is just driving casually, like Chewbacca when they were waiting to see if the Empire went for that expensive Bothan code.
“Then, what?” I asked, getting a slight bit piqued.
“Well”, Agent Ruin noted, “When you went to South America, you took some of your artillery collection with, correct?”
“You know I did. You even made some snide comments about my personal choice of sidearms and their ‘excessive’ calibers, if memory serves”, I reiterated.
“And if you are proceeding normally, as you always do, they’re all nestled in the trunk of this very car. All cleaned, quiet, unloaded, and smelling sweetly of Hoppe’s Number 9 and WD 40, correct?” Rack inquired.
“Yes?” I cautiously venture.
“Well, ya’ big dummy, do you think they’re going to let you saunter into Tokyo armed like the Third Fleet?” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Um…well…I do have a Diplomatic Passport.” I ventured.
“That’s not going to work this time.”, Agent Ruin said, shaking his head. “They’re tighter than Dick’s Hatband about sidearms. Want to bring in your Rigby SXS .500 Nitro Express double rifle? Not a problem. Sidearms, especially in your alien hunting calibers, nope.”
Well, that’s just….*dandy!”, I reply, semi-put out. “Now what the hell am I going to do?”
“Ever think that’s why Ruin and I are here, now?”, Rack asks.
“And here I thought it was just so you could bask in the warm glow of my fucking wonderful personality. Or that you actually cared about me as a real goddamn human”, I joshed.
“Ummm…yeah”, Rack replies, “There’s no way we can answer that without going on some Deadpool list. “
I agreed.
“OK, here’s the deal: you get your sidearms, ammunition, speed loaders, brass knuckles, Asp, laser range finders, Sap, Zeiss scopes, Kukri, Wisconsin Cheese Whittler, Buck folding skinner, Marine K-Bar, those two ultra-illegal Cheburkov Cobra titanium switchblades...”
“Three. Olga the KGB lady sent me one for Geologist’s Day.”
“Ahem. Those three ultra-illegal Cheburkov switchblades, that Wyoming Speedholer, your MASER Time-Distance Computer, garrote, pocket rail gun and whatever else lethal you carry and deposit it in the iron box in the trunk. We’ll ensure that it’s delivered to Esme post-haste. And by post-haste I mean one of our guys will deliver it personally.”
“Well…I suppose”, I conceded, “But best send someone who’s been to the house recently. I don’t know how much bigger Khan has grown since I left on this little fantasy trip. Wouldn’t want a star on the wall in Langley for someone eaten by a mastiff. Want to see a picture….Oh, bother. That’s right. My phone’s at the bottom of fucking Lake Maracaibo.”
“Good point”, Ruin interjects, “Guess we’ll do a little road trip and deliver it ourselves. Best call Esme and let her know what’s going on.”
“I have no objections to your proposals. Please give Esme this when you see her. I had some luck in the Calaveras Casino and if I don’t send her some mad money. Ouch. She’ll never forgive me for not taking her along to Japan.” I asked.
“But I thought Esme hated Japan? Too crowded and too ‘fussy’, I believe was her estimation.” Ruin asked.
“Yes, but once she saw the Ginza, all bets were off. Shopping the likes of which even Allah himself hasn’t seen.” I replied, slowly shaking my head.
“I see”, Ruin said, “Well, since you’re off to Sapporo, perhaps you can do a recon for Esme on the shopping there.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”, I smiled, “Now I know why I let you guys hang around with me.”
So, as advertised, I am now standing on the tarmac at LAX, basically feeling naked.
“Can’t I keep just one switchblade?” I moaned to Agent Rack.
“Go ahead, if you’re really keen on donating it to Japanese customs”, he replied.
“Fuckbuckets.” I groused.
“There, there now. That’s the usual Dr. Rocknocker of which we’re all so fond.” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Remember, you do have that wallet-sized credit card gizmo from the Company. So you’re not entirely ‘naked’. Think of it as an emergency breechcloth.” He smiled.
“I’d like a larger model if you don’t mind. It’s chilly out here.” I joshed.
After Agents Rack and Ruin stripped me metaphorically naked as they de-weaponized me, they handed me a Business Class ticket to Tokyo, and a pass to the Japan Airlines Hospitality Suite and Lounge.
“So sorry you guys can’t hang around and have a few farewell snorts”, I chided, “But you’ve got a bit of a drive, so best be off before the weather turns to shit.”
“Who says we’re driving?” Agent Rack asked as he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the ready and waiting C-130 cargo plane currently taxiing slowly in our direction.
“Well, in that case”, I smiled even more broadly, “Let’s invite the flight crew to join us. That’ll make the flight home all that much more interesting.”
After near tear-jerking farewell sentimentalities, i.e., “Piss on you”, “Get stuffed” and “Take a fuckin’ hike”; Agents Rack and Ruin, my weapons and the Agency’s plain-Jane Blue Chevy were all nestled snugger than buggers in ruggers in the belly of the thundering C-130.
Now truly on my own, I trudge the hundred thousand or so centisteps to my departure terminal, make a quick recon that my flight’s still slated to go in a generally westward direction, and hightail it to the nearest courtesy desk to ask for a motorized cart to take me and my remaining luggage to the JAL Hospitality Suite.
Hey. I’m old, infirm, and currently among the walking wounded.
Anyone that disagrees risks an Ankylosaur tail club swat or Thagomizer to the skull.
Finally ensconced in the JAL Hospitality Suite, Polo Lounge of course; I was drinking Tokyo Teas (3 oz. vodka, 2 oz. gin, 2 oz. rum, 1 oz. triple sec, 1 oz. Midori, good splash of lime juice, a slight splash of 7-Up (diet, of course), over ice with a lime wheel) with Pabst Blue Ribbon Extra 1844 chasers and Hangar One’s “Fog Point” vodka on the side, hiding from the brutish realities of this foul year of two thousand and twenty-something, Common Era…
I’ve already called Esme and we’ve had a good, long chat. She still managed to give me her shopping list for whenever I find myself bored on the Ginza.
She’ll be shocked when she learns that I’m not going to be in Tokyo long, but have 1st class tickets on the Bullet Train to Sapporo. Still, I’ll probably find myself in Pole Town or the Stellar Place there, trading piles of US greenbacks for locally produced Japanese curios and clothing.
I can hardly wait.
I order another round of drinks, as the wonderful attendants in the Hospitality Suite were bored out of their skulls because of the COVID-induced drop-in customers flying anywhere that requires a hospitality room stay, and I was virtually the only one around. They tried their level best to outdo each other when it comes to Japanese efficiency and friendliness.
After a couple of hours, they ask if I would like something from the grill, as the day chef had “the COVID” and the night chef just arrived. A quick perusal of the menu and I chose a 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse and another round of drinks.
I usually don’t like to eat too much before I fly, but JAL tells me the flight is going to be virtually empty, something like <121 pax, all told, so restroom availability shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
Plus, who am I to say no to a free, blue 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse?
There was a bit of difficulty conveying to the chef through the intermediaries of the hospitality just how I wanted my steak.
“Blue,” I said.
“Brue?” was the reply.
“Rare. Very, very rare.” I continued.
Look of total bewilderment.
I drag out my Personal Language Pro, speak “Steak, very, very rate” into the infernal gizmo, and hand the contraption to the attendant.
“珍しい、非常に珍しいステーキ?”[ Mezurashī, hijō ni mezurashī sutēki?]
“Raw! Nama!” I say, louder than need be.
They toddle off to find the chef.
“How is it sir, that you would like your steak cooked?” he asks.
“Very rare. Just a minute or two per side. Inside still cold.” I instructed.
All I got for the trouble was a puzzled smile.
“Give me the language gizmo…” I type in a few words…
“お尻を洗い、角をノックオフして、ここから出してください”
[O shiri o arai,-kaku o nokkuofu shite, koko kara dashite kudasai.]
“Wash its ass, knock its horns off, and walk it out here.”
“OH!” as the lightbulb pops. “Rare. Got it! Excellent!” the chef laughs and zips back to the kitchen.
Like I always say, I’m nothing if not the international ambassador of amity and goodwill.
“Crack tubes!”
Dinner was fantastic. I do wish I could have somehow mailed the Porterhouse bone back home for Khan. After that hambone incident, he might even taste it.
Finally on the plane, in an almost empty Business Class, the flight captain informs us that we’re headed to Haneda Airport Tokyo and anyone not headed in that direction better ‘haul ass off’ the flight or forever hold their peace.
Late-night international flights tend to be a bit more wooly than your average Chicago to Omaha gig.
Especially when the flight’s damn near empty and we have the next 12 hours or so to be best friends.
We taxi, turn and head into the wind. I’m doctoring up a couple of dossiers and keeping my personal cabin attendant, Luna since there were two of us in Business and two business flight attendants, busy with her trying to play ‘Stump the Geologist’.
“I’ll bet you never had this before.” She beamed and handed me a tumbler of very dangerous-looking brown liquor.
I cautiously sniff, take a modest gulp, swirl and glug the rest down.
“Ohishi Single Sherry Cask”, I say with a muffled belch. “Light. Fruity. An Englishman’s drink.”
“Oh. You knew. Let me try again.” She smiles beatifically.
“I have no objections to your proposal.” I smile as nicely as this crotchety old Komodo Dragon could.
She returns with another flagon of spirits; it smells of obsidian, leather, and earth.
I just had some of this back in LAX. I take a snort, smile, and shotgun the rest.
“Hibiki Japanese Harmony…lovely stuff.” I smile. “A little light for my jaded palate, but I’d never turn it down if it were free.”
“Oh, you win again. Wait. One more.” She smiles and skitters off to the galley.
She returns with another soupçon of some more dangerous brown liquor.
“Here, try this. It will make you very popular at social gatherings”. She smiles.
Sniff. “Splendid.” Snort. Swirl. Smile. Shotgun.
“Kanosuke New Born, if I’m not mistaken.” I smile back. “Very nice. I really do like this one.”
“You too good at this. One more!” she stands and stomps off defiantly. She returns in a trice and hands me the glass.
“Hmm…brown. Light notes of earth, leather, dating your daughter, and Kentucky…
“Beam Suntory, right?”
“You know them all!” she says, feigning irritation.
“And I thank you. Those were all excellent. Now, anything in the dangerous clear liquor category? I asked.
Luna smiled as I palmed off a 20k yen tip.
“Oh, no sir. Wait until we land.” She demurred, referring to the gratuity; which is know is not de rigueur in the Orient, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Just in case we never make it to Tokyo”, I laughed, unknowingly presciently.
We both chuckled about that last line as she tried out various sakes and shōchūs and an actual Japanese ‘White Liquor’ (ホワイトリカー), which were all excellent as was the company.
I tell her that I need to get some work done and could she bring me a tall Rocknocker. After explain the origins and construction of the eponymous drink, she brings me one that must tip the scales at 1 or so liters.
She settles down to an empty seat and I get after the work that I need to finish before we land. I’m about ½ way through my drink when it felt as if the plane hit a brick wall. She quivered and quaked and clutched at herself while I made some comments about the pilot’s mental health.
We dropped like a paralyzed falcon, then just as suddenly, felt like it was an express elevator to Angel’s 11. The plane bucked and shimmied, wickedly. Then we slam-danced right and fell a few more stories. It was like we were in a Mixmaster and the owner was trying out every speed.
The emergency lights in the 777-300ER popped on, and the fasten seat belt sign barked loudly so even sleeping travelers could enjoy the show.
Rinse. Spin. Shudder. Repeat.
Finally, the ride smooths out and we hear the captain on the blower.
“This is your captain speaking…ah, we seem to have hit some uncharted turbulence back there.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious”, I muttered.
“Everything’s A-OK. “ he reports.
“That’s good”, I note.
“But…”
“There’s always the but…” I groan.
“…we have a couple of warning lights for which we can’t quite account. So to just be safe and certain, we’re going to divert to Hawaii, get a clean bill of health and resume this flight once we make sure everything here is hunky-dory.”
There were scattered groans and applause. Add them together and divide by two and the average response on the flight was “Meh. Whatever.”
Except for the other guy in Business, with whom I hadn’t shared two words. He began to absolutely lose his shit.
“Oh, man! We’re so screwed! Mechanical malfunction? What does that mean?” he positively fizzed with fear.
The flight attendants tried to calm him down, to no avail. They basically gave up and said they’d report his misgivings to the Captain.
I motioned over to my personal flight attendant, Luna, and asked if I could be of service.
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled at me, “If you could speak with him. You are so calm, and he is…”
“Losing his bloody mind”, I chuckled as I finished her sentence for her. “Of course, I’ll take a stab at it.”
So, I grab my drink and ease over to my Business Class partner and introduce myself.
“Hey, pal. How’s it going? I’m Dr. Rock, gentleman, scholar, and connoisseur of cigars and things alcoholic. You doing OK?”
He looks at me with an ashen face and his eyes the size of bloodshot dinner plates.
“Yeah. I’m Todd Schotts. I’m flying to Japan for business.” He mumbles
“No surprise there,” I reply calmly and take a slug of my drink.
“But now we’re all going to die. The plane is busted and we’ll crash…” he started off again.
“So, Todd is it? Good. You drink?” I asked.
“Yeah?”, he stammered back.
I asked Luna to make us a fresh batch of my eponymous cocktails.
“OK, Todd, listen up”, I began after the drinks were served, “I have flown literally millions of miles over the last 4 decades. On Aeroflot when it was still the USSR. On TACA (Take A Chance Airways), on Chalk’s in the Caribbean, on Bob’s Verrifast Plane Company in Rhodesia, on regional carriers that don’t even exist anymore. All over the world. Had some bad experiences flying, and me ol’ mugger, this ain’t one of them. This is nothing more than the glitch for this mission.”
I chuckled lightly and complimented Luna on a fantastic drink.
“Yeah…yeah…yeah…but we have to land and check out some lights…” Todd squealed.
“Well now, Todd. It would be rather difficult to do any external assessment while in flight, don’t you agree?” I asked.
“But we’re diverting. We have to land and that adds more risk. We’re going to crash and die!” he was coming more and more unglued.
“I will bet you every cent you have on your person and home bank accounts that that will not happen”, I chuckled.
That took him by surprise. At least it shut him up for a while.
“Look, Todd. This is Boeing’s latest model. They have the most incredible safety record. And if a little clear air turbulence were to be knocking planes out of the sky, don’t you think we’d hear about it as the press went berserk?” I asked.
“But they don’t know what the lights mean! What if one of the engines’s out? How far can we fly on one engine?” Todd stuttered.
Having my fill of a supposedly grown man with inane childlike fears, I calmly replied,
“All the way to the crash site.”
He went white.
“...hope we hit something hard. I don’t want to limp away from this.”
He went limp.
Then I went to my seat and motioned for Luna to prepare a reload.
Of course, 45 minutes later, we land without incident at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, Honolulu Hawaii.
We were told to just wait around until they figure out what the problem if any, was.
They had officials waiting at the end of the jetway to check our COVID status and passports before they let us loose in the terminal.
I asked Luna if she knew this airport. She noted that she did.
“Is there a JAL hospitality room here at this airport? I asked.
“Yes, Doctor. It’s the Sakura Lounge. It is located on the third level above The Local, Terminal 2.” She replied.
“Please notify whoever needs to know that that’s where I’ll be for the duration”, I smiled and handed her my business card. “See you soon, I hope.”
“Oh, Dr. Rock”, she replied, “I am sure it is nothing much. We’ll be back in the air within mere hours.”
“Well then”, I smiled, “Guess I’d better get ready to hoof it to the lounge.”
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled, “No rush. I will call for you a courtesy cart. You are injured, you are Business, you are priority.”
“I love that Asian efficiency.” I smiled back and toddled down the jetway.
At the terminus of the jetway, I show my COVID-clear papers, dates and times of my Anti-Virus vaccine administrations, the letter from Virginia clearing me of all detention, and my red Russian diplomatic passport.
While in the cart, whizzing our way to the JAL lounge, the driver said “Man! You must be some kind of VIP. You were through that welcoming committee in less than two minutes!”
“Me? Nah!”, I chuckled, “Just an old phart of a geologist that they didn’t want to mess with. Not on such a bright, sunny day as this.”
“I see you’re not wearing a mask.” The driver quipped.
“Very observant. There are reasons for that.” I replied.
He careens around a corner and if this were a normal pre-Covid day, I’m certain we’d have killed hundreds. However, the airport, as I’ve come to grow accustomed to, was virtually deserted.
“Yeah? Like what?” he asks.
“Well, Scooter, 1. I have an active and hardworking immune system that I let off the chain every once in a while for exercise. Got to let it know what it’s up against, right? 2. I’ve had all my shots and some that were experimental. They seem to have worked. And 3. I find it difficult to drink and smoke cigars while wearing a mask. However, if you’d prefer, I will mask up. No problem, though it still is optional.”
“Nah, man”, he said, “I was just wondering if you were one of those religious idiots or conspiracy nuts.”
Nope”, I smiled back, “Just another geologist out in the world plying his trade for cash. Y’know, whorin’ around for money.”
He laughs aloud as we skid to a stop right in front of Lounge.
I slip the guy a $20 and ask if he’d listen for the JAL flight I was just on. If we’re going on ahead today, I’d need him to scoot by and putt-putt me back to the plane.
He laughs and pockets the $20 as quick as a mink ruts.
“No worries. I’ll just hang around this area. I hear anything about the flight, I’ll come and let you know.” He grins.
“Good man”, I say, as I hand him my card. “I’m Dr. Rocknocker. Call me Rock”.
“And I’m Kapula Mano, call me Kap” he replies.
“Good man”, I say again, “Hope to see you in a while.”
He grins, floors his electric cart, and peels out at speeds approaching 4.5 MPH.
I wander into the lounge, show my credentials, and am escorted to a post up on Mahogany Ridge.
The bar is very quiet. Besides the bartender, I can’t see anyone else in the darkened and Smooth Jazz-infused drinking emporium.
I order a local drink, a Mai Tai, just for the experience and something a bit different.
It’s served in a goldfish bowl on a stem, bedecked with a slice of lime, a sprig of mint, a stick of sugar cane, a polychromatic orchid, and the obligate paper umbrella.
“Ah. Mai Tai. I will enjoy it.” I said to no one in particular.
One was enough, and I decided to go back to the old standard. Once I explained to the bartender what that was, he made them heroic and enthusiastically.
I’m reading up on a random dossier, making notes in a new file, and puffing away on a Fuentes Onyx double Maduro Churchill cigar.
I hear a slight cough coming from my right, and this here lovely lady, she sat to my immediate starboard and looked at me semi-quizzically.
Not in the mood for shenanigans of any stripe, I give her the obligate Baja Canada nod and tilt of the drink. I return to my dossiers and continue to read and take notes.
“Excuse me!” I hear.
Fearing the worst, either the woman is Karen-oid anti-smoking or a religious fruit-and-nutburger, I slowly turn to face her and reply, somewhat glacially, I have to admit.
“What?”
“That cigar…”
“Here we go…” I mutter, eyes rolling northward.
“Smells exquisite. Could you tell me the brand? My husband would enjoy some like that.” She notes.
Instantly my demeanor switches 180^0.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s an Arturo Fuentes Onyx. Churchill size, or 60 ring x 7” length, double Maduro. Here, take one for your husband. I have an ample supply.” I smile.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. Could I?” she asks.
“Please. I insist.” I smile the best I could given the circumstances.
“Thank you. You’re too kind…umm…Mr….?”
“Doctor. Doctor Rocknocker. World traveler, oilman, and international ambassador of amity, good drinks, and fine cigars. Call me Rock” I said.
“Oh! A Doctor?” she brightens.
“Yes, of Petroleum Geology and Engineering. Not medicine.” I chuckle.
She chuckles back.
“And I am Hella Aaberg”, as she offers her hand for a quick shake.
“Interesting name, Hella. Scandinavian or Old German heritage?” I ask.
“On my father’s side. He’s Finnish.” She replies.
“But I’ll wager your mother is not Scandinavian, correct?” I ask.
“She was from Truk, an island…”
“In the South Pacific, Micronesia. Was she from Weno city?” I asked.
“Why yes. How could you possibly know that?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve been there. Great diving amongst the WWII wrecks. I think it’s actually called ‘Chuuk Lagoon’ or something like that now.” I said.
“That’s right! Amazing. Where else have you been?” she asked.
“Anywhere there’s oil, strife, booze, cigars, heavy explosives and typically long distances from whatever most normal people call civilization,” I replied with a chuckle.
Suddenly, I hear a voice booming out behind me.
“Why don’t you save that rapier-like wit for those musky-fuckers back home, Rocko?”
My expression changes. My eyes pop fully wide open.
“Hella?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“May I ask you a favor?”
“You can ask…”
“Thank you. Now, looking over my shoulder, is there a hulking goon of a person, thin up top, paunchy halfway down with the most ridiculously tiny sized shoes you’ve ever seen for a so-called grown man?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She replies.
“I thought so. Many thanks.”
I spin and launch off my barstool and grab Toivo by the hand. He hadn’t seen my left-hand Thagomizer yet.
“Toivo! You old sumbitch. What the flying fennec fox fuck are you, of all people, doing in Hawaii?” I laughed.
“Just keeping an eye on you, Rock!” he laughed equally as loud.
“No, fucking-A, seriously. What the actual fuck? What are you doing in this actual nice place?” I asked.
“Just headed to Tokyo to conduct a bit of service company business. I walked into the lounge and smelled a foul cigar. I figured it can’t be the venerable Dr. Rocknocker. He’s back at some school up north terrorizing geology and engineering grads and undergrads.” Toivo laughed.
“But there I was. Surprise!”, I laughed and pumped his hand.
“What the fuck, Rock. Now what did you do?” he asks, referring to my Ankylosaur tail club left hand.
“Ah, fuck. Long story. Oh, pardon me. Toivo, this is Hella. We were just talking about the South Seas Islands.” I said.
“Planning on running off together?” Toivo laughs, to the amusement of neither party.
“Oh, and this idiot is Toivo, a man with a congenital foot-in-mouth disorder. He’s mostly harmless.” I noted to Hella.
Greetings were shared all around. Hella made some small excuses and said she needed to depart. I gave her another cigar for her husband, shook her hand, and wished her well.
“Here’s my business card. If your husband has any questions, have him drop me a line.” I noted.
Hella smiled beautifully. She said she would. Then she thanked me shook our hands, and like that, there she was, gone.
“Well Toivo, you old bastard. Don't just stand there in the doorway like some lonesome goddamn mouse shit sheepherder, get your ass over here and have a drink.” I motioned over to my perch on Mahogany Ridge.
“Don’t mind if I do”, he says as he deftly winds his way to a seat to my left, snagging a cigar out of my pocket on the way over.
“You might want these”, I say in an exasperated tone, and hand him my gold Dunhill Hobnail lighter and V-cutter gizmo.
He cuts and fires up his heater.
“What you drinkin’, Rock”, he asks.
“Anything with alcohol, as usual. You know that Toiv.” I reply.
“No. I mean right now.” He clarifies.
“Well, I had a Mai Tai. Very nice if you like fruity, flowery drinks. It’s the locals’ favorite.” I reply.
“Sounds good. I’ll have several. And you?” Toivo asks.
“My usual. The bartender is already apprised of the situation.” I reply.
Toivo smiles the smile of one knowing his sobriety is going to be taken out for a swim. Hell, taken out and tossed into the deep end.
Toivo and I sit there, swapping lies, smoking cigars and sipping at our toddies.
Hell, Toivo was slurping them like a sump-pump during an extra-wet summer.
We chattered about family, work, whether or not Tokyo was going to host the Olympics or if the COVID-boogie man scared everyone off.
Toivo, always one afflicted with TB (“Tiny Bladder”) got up to go to the loo for the third time that hour. He left his pocket organizer on the bar and I swear on a stack of Origins of Species, I didn’t touch it.
I reached over to his vacated seat to retrieve my cigar lighter when I looked down and saw in his organizer a tab that reads “Rack & Ruin”.
“Oh. No. Fucking. Way.” I recoiled as I’d just reached out and petted a 6-foot hungover scorpion.
“One of my best friends? Secretly allied with the Agency? No. Not possible.” I drained my drink and called for another.
“No. No. No. It can’t be. No. No fucking way…” as doubt began to dissolve when I thought back to all those times I had just ‘run into’ Toivo.
“But he’s oil patch as well. That could be chalked up to coincidence.” I ruminated quizzically in my brain.
I quickly reflected back on J.M. Darhower: “Yes, you see, there’s no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents in life. Everything that happens is the result of a calculated move that leads us to where we are.”
She may be the author of the execrable New Adult Sempre series, which Esme likes and I loathe, but she might just be right on this occasion.
Toivo return, lighter in the bladder and good sense. He never even noticed he’d left his organizer out in broad bar light for all to see.
“So, Toivo, when’s your flight?” I ask.
“Oh, man. Was I lucky. The JAL flight to Tokyo from Los Angeles had mechanical trouble and had to divert here. I got a ticket on the plane for that flight, when it continues.
“You mean ‘if it continues’,” I replied.
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Hey! Was that your flight?” he asks innocently. He’s really innocent of fieldcraft.
I decide to have some fun at my old friend’s expense.
“Yep. Hit some CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) and the JAL pilots reported some lighting problem. No apparent ruin to any of the systems. They relay racked their brains to figure it out, but they couldn’t that’s why I here.” I said, waiting for the words to swim upstream in Toivo’s coconut and make some sort of connection.
“Yeah. Double lucky. No problem with the plane and I get to go to Japan early.” Toivo crookedly grins.
“So, no trouble with the plane? Then why haven’t I heard that the flight’s going to resume?” I asked as I pushed a fresh, seriously strong drink to Toivo.
“Oh, must have heard it in the john.” Toivo countered and tried to cover his tracks by taking a huge gulp of his drink and damn near dying coughing.
I pound on Toivo’s back.
“Heimlich time?” I ask.
Toivo signals ‘no’.
“Jesus Christ, Rock. What was that?” he asks.
“Just my usual”, I innocently replied.
“Holy fuck. No wonder you have the reputation of…” Toivo realizes too late that he’s said too much.
“Yeah. They can rack you out. Really ruin a person if they’re not careful.” I reply icily.
“Why, Rock. Whatever do you mean?” Toivo slurred as he realized he’s been caught out.
“The jig is up, you turncoat. You know Agents Rack and Ruin from the agency. Right? You keeping tabs on me for them? You Quisling! You Benedict Arnold!” I almost was on the verge of losing my cool.
“It was nothing. They approached me years ago as I kept being mentioned in your reports. They asked me for some information. One thing leads to another…” Toivo was ready for an Ankylosaur tail club swat to the bean.
“Oh, put your fucking hands down, you asshole.” I smiled and chuckled.
“You’re not mad?” Toivo slurred badly. I had the bartender make him another special drink.
“No, Toivo. Not mad. Just disappointed.” I said, smiling like a Komodo Dragon just finishing up a fortnight-old wildebeest.
Toivo sat there and puzzled and puzzled until his puzzler was sore.
“You’re not going to kill me or anything rude like that?” Toivo asked, half-assedly trying to inject humor into the proceedings.
“Nah. The paperwork’s too ridiculous for me to do another liberation. But, Jesus Fucking Christwagons, Toivo; you could have mentioned it to me. Fuck, I thought we were friends to the end?” I said, dejectedly.
I was really getting through to Toivo. I could tell he was loaded; feeling like shit and massively deplorable.
Great fieldcraft, indeed.
I told him things “are what they are” and that I won’t blow his cover nor his honorarium.
He began to feel better. I often wonder if he was serious about the sanctioning thing.
Then I delivered the strategic missile strike.
“Just remember, Toivo. I wrote your dossier for the Company…”
He swivels to look at me.
“And one for the KGB. Olga says ‘howdy’.” I grin evilly.
Toivo short-circuited at that. Russia is his company’s bread and butter. Now he has the KGB as well as his best buddy looking over his shoulder at every move.
I bought him a few more drinks and continued to needle him about his ’leading a double life’. He was well and truly fuckered when the electric tap-tap driver from before came looking for me to whisk me back to the plane.
Seems it was simply some knocked-out wires on the plane, or slammed bulbs that were generating a false positive, indicating something other than the system that alerts one to something haywire went haywire.
Toivo was pretty much down for the count. I got him sober enough to hand them his ticket and ensure that he was really supposed to be on this flight. Thing was; h e was in Economy, and I was, as always, in Business.
I spoke to Luna, and the plane was going to be even less crowded than previously because some folks could or wouldn’t wait, or didn’t want to go on with the rest of the trip on a ‘damaged’ aircraft, or were just stupid and superstitious.
“Luna, could I pay for the difference between Business and Economy for my less than 100% conscious friend here? He’s had a rough day.” I asked.
“Dr. Rock. Just put him into Business. No one will be the wiser. Luna says so.” As she gave us a grand smile.
“Luna, I owe you. Thanks so much.” I said.
“Now get on board. Your friend looks like he needs all the downtime he can get.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I said and saluted here be best I could which dragging a schnozzled Toivo down the jetway.
I dumped Toivo in a window seat well away from my seat. I know Toivo. He snores like a semi-load of live hogs rocketing downhill locking up the brakes at 88 MPH.
Surprise! There was no one else in Business. Luna looked at me, at Toivo, and gave me a thumbs up.
Whatever I can write to further her career at JAL, she’ll have it before I deplane.
We finally get everyone settled, and with Captain Kangaroo at the helm, we bounced gracelessly off the tarmac, into the warm, tropical Hawaiian air, finally headed for the Land of the Rising Sun.
Toivo was snoring like a chainsaw hitting rusty nails as I worked on the various letters, communiques, and dossiers which needed updating before we reached touchdown. I gave Luna a thick letter with instructions not to open it until we were on the ground and Toivo and I were well off and away into the terminal.
We left Hawaii at 1300 hours, so we should arrive at Tokyo Nareda around 4:00 pm, the previous day. I was so bereft of time and time zones, I couldn’t figure out what time it really was, as judged by my biometric rhythms, so I asked Luna for a stiff drink as I was kicking off my boots and going to attempt to get some kip.
She brought me another liter or so eponymous drink. I was sawing logs by the time I slurped the last swig of that nifty drink.
Suddenly, or later, I have no idea really, some loudmouth drunk asshole from way-the-fuck-back in economy-land toward the ass end of the plane staggered into Business demanding free drinks.
Luna was nothing but civil, and asked him to both shut up and return to his seat. His air cabin hostess, or whatever the fuck they’re calling them these days, will attend to his needs.
“Naw they won’t! They want me to pay for more drinks! I’m broke but I demand more booze! You fucking owe me.” railed the asshole. “I sat at the bar in Hawaii for four hours. Them fuckers charged me an arm and a leg!”
“No, they don’t owe you shit”, I said in a voice that unmistakably loud and clear.
“Fuck you, old man! You stay the fuck out of this!” he bellowed. “Shut up or I’ll do ya’!”
“’Old man’? ‘Do me’? Excuse me. Luna, may I have a word alone with this individual?” I asked sweetly.
Luna shook her head in the affirmative, and I stood up to confront this flagrant asshole.
“Now look, Scooter. You have gone way, way over the fucking line. You are loud. You are abusive. You are obnoxious. And you stink. Plus you insulted a person who is just barely containing his righteous wrath right now. So, I’m giving you one and one only chance to shut up, sit back down before your body spontaneously develops all sort of bruises, contusions, broken bones, and unconsciousness.” I said calmly, evenly, and threateningly.
“What da’ fuck you think you’re going to do…old man?” he screeched, trying to inflate himself into full mammalian threat posture, all 5’ 9” of it.
He didn’t notice Toivo walking up quietly behind him, as Toivo was returning from the head, quiet as a moose.
“Well, Scooter, I am an Air Marshall. Duly appointed, fully trained, and properly pissed off. Right now, I can arrest you, physically detain you, turn this flight around and take you to the Hawaiian police, at your cost for the inconvenience of the entire flight. Or I could arrest you, physically detain you, and turn you over to the Japanese authorities when we land. It’s really your choice. Choose wisely.”
To be continued…⇝

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