“Yes, sir, Moss, with this new frameshift drive, you not only will be able to jump farther, you’ll be able to enjoy The Achillies Corporations’ proprietary Supercruise Overdrive(tm), which will get you from planet to planet in a fraction of the time!”
The salesman slapped the struts of the Back Bacon Express as if he was telling me just how much Lavian Brandy this ship could carry, even though it was my ship.
“It’s Mister Foote, to you,” I corrected.
I didn’t doubt his claims. I’d read all the articles and had seen the test footage. Now that these new SCO-capable frame shift drives were being pushed to market, it was only a matter of time before I had to see the results for myself.
I was not looking forward to it.
I was not happy.
I sighed, sensing the inevitable close in around me.
“I can see you’re not convinced,” said the salesman. “I’ll set you up with a test drive. We’ll swap out your drives, you set up a credit deposit, take it for a spin, then come back and let me know what you think. I guarantee you’ll be happy with the results.”
“I severely doubt it,” I grumbled.
***
I jumped to a nearby system and locked on the nearest orbital station.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Here goes nothing.”
I’d linked the new overdrive to my the booster on my normal thrusters. Didn’t see a problem, they were mutually exclusive as to when they could be used.
I pressed the button.
Even though there is no sense of acceleration in Supercruise, the parallax shift that happened sent me leaning into my seat like I’d strapped myself into an old school rocket.
“Warning, acceleration exceeding safety limits!”
The computer hadn’t even finished her warning before I overshot the station and almost went through the planet it orbited.
I blinked as the ship slowly decelerated. My heart finally stopped trying to imitate a hummingbird.
“Jeeeze!”
This drive was going to change everything.
And that was the problem.
***
“So, what do you think?” the salesman asked with a big smile.
“I think you just made my life a whole lot more complicated, that’s what!”
He looked confused. “I don’t follow. You don’t want it?”
“You don’t get it, do you? I have to get it. I don’t have a choice in the matter.”
He still didn’t grasp my beef with it all. “If it’s about cost, we can finance…”
“It’s not about cost. I could buy a dozen of those things if I wanted. Hell, I’m surprised you’re not undercutting the Sirius models, but why would you? Yours is better in every way, you don’t need to. Just ring me up for a class 4A and put my old one in storage, all right?”
The salesman didn’t want to argue, but he just couldn’t let his curiosity go. “I just don’t… why are you angry? Won’t this make your job easier?”
“Sure.”
“Won’t it give you an edge over your competition?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, for about two days before everyone else has one. Come on, who are you fooling? This is a competitive business. By the end of the week everyone who is anyone with have an SCO drive. Nobody’s going to have an advantage, only a big disadvantage if they don’t get on the SCO train. Time bonuses will be altered to match expectations, market growth to distant binaries will no longer be a pain in the ass to reach, the markets will shift a bit, but not for long.”
“So why–?”
I rolled my eyes. “Look. This Keelback is equipped with what used to be a top of the line Class 4 drive. But to make it competitive, I needed more. You ever heard of Felicity Farseer?”
The salesman shrugged.
“Yeah, of course you haven’t. She’s recluse and a genius. Got a planetside base in Deciat where she likes to tinker with engines and frameshift drives. I spent two months wining and dining that woman to squeeze out every advantage she could out of it. Do you have any idea how much random crap that woman needed? Raw materials? Rare FSD signatures? Proprietary components from a half dozen different ship types?”
I took a deep breath.
“Now I have to do it all over again! I just paid you a million and a half credits for the privilege of going around to a dozen systems junk collecting, and then junk trading, just to try and get the right kind of junk so Felicity can make my Keelback here slightly less of a piece of junk, just so I can end up exactly where I already was in terms of being competitive. You get me? You just gave me the gift of grind. Thanks a frickin lot!”
“Call Me Moss” is not set in the Get Lost universe, per se, but the game that inspired my love of the genre: Elite Dangerous (which is where the screenshots come from). Writing little bits like this is just one way I get in the right mindset for the next big adventure in my world. Consider this Moss as being from an alternate universe 😉
What we have to go through to be competitive. Poor Moss!