It’s cold. It’s also dreary, cold and downright boring. You’re waiting inside the cramped transporter ship tugging you slowly to what’ll be your new home: the Ictnus-class commercial cruiser, home of “amazing 5 star exquisite meals!” and “Amazing brilliant inventive entertainment!” Since when are entertainment facilities on a resort-cruiser supposed to be inventive? You pull out your qPad hoping you can find something to do. You scroll to the games section of your pad – only to find three games – Minesweeper, Pixdraw!©™® Trial version and your HandyMap© indicator. You check it and find that you’re marvellously close to the resort – as much as this comforts you, you also dread the hours of work you’ll be doing as the “official” errand boy. Going back to the menu of your qPad you check your mail, life-sign monitor and random-pointless-statistic™ generator. You are just about to go through all of the IMs you’ve received when your qPad is knocked out of your hands by a surprising bump. The heads-up display on your Ultra-Screen© helmet blinks several messages reminding you of your arrival and necessary precautions you should take when leaving the shuttle. First thing you do however is unbuckle your seatbelt and hack the safety lock on the airlock and seal it impatiently behind you.
You wait impatiently as the pesky red alarm on the roof of the airlock twirls and your HUD goes on about “Fun airlock facts!” The exit flings open and you step out and stretch your limbs. The shuttle arrived early so you have plenty of time to do things before the job commissioner arrives. You ever-so-merrily trod around the spaceport lobby and take in all the “breathtaking sights” that the ads you encountered previously promised. Honestly though, the place is a dump. There’s trash all over the place and the Bio-metallic walls needed a well good scrub. One thing that doesn’t get you down is the sight of a Merry-Go-Store©™ - you absolutely love these things as they nearly always have goofy – and interesting – stock to gawk at. You waddle around the rotary stand and try to spot something you like. Strangely, there’s a small armament on sale, along with several ammunition cells.
Your thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of the Chief Nancy Pantsy© automated assignment droid. It addresses you in that horrible robot voice and chimes, “ICY WEINER, COME WITH ME TO YOU DESIGNATED QUARTERS,” and turns around on its single wheels and heads off towards where it arrived – the elevator.
