Call Me Moss – 7 – The Goop

“Tell me again why I’m hanging around in orbit, while you go sniffing goop, Moss?”

Reese Hatfield was not exactly thrilled playing babysitter for a hundred and eighty tons of Keelback slowly rolling over a planet with an atmosphere so thin that pointing it out was considered astronomical body shaming.

I called her back over the suit comms. “Look, do you want to get paid or not?”

“Oh, sure, my measly two percent. I’m sure all the snot you’re looking at down there is really going help my bank balance.”

Reese had finally figured out what kind of a deal she’d locked herself into working for me, and was still bitter about it. I tried to smooth things over by pointing out all the interesting things we’d be doing, but right now it didn’t seem like I was delivering.

“This isn’t snot. It’s Stratum Tectonicas. A photosynthetic organism that bonds to rocks.”

“So it’s fancy lichen, not snot, got it.”

“Look, Hatfield, this stuff is remarkably resilient, and found on a surprising number of worlds. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“No. Do you?”

“No, but you know who wants to know? Vista Genomics. They’ve taken a huge interest in this rock crud. Do you have any idea how much money Vista Genomics has?”

“No. Do you?”

“No one does. They have that much of it. I just got enough genetic diversity in this genetic sampler dohickey that they’ll pay us nearly twenty million credits for it. Now do you know what two percent of twenty million credits is?”

“Enough for me to shut up and learn to love playing solitaire?”

“Got it in one.”

“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 😉