Chapter 172: Fixing an artificial moon.
Bjorn disappeared from the screen for a moment, to find a Thermaline seed. Meanwhile Sunshine decided that she had some questions for the system.
"Why didn’t you offer me Thermaline seeds?"
[They are illegal host and were banned from distribution fifteen years ago.]
"What makes them illegal? Are they toxic?"
[I will have to scan them to make that judgement. But they were developed by a company that produced five varieties of toxic seeds. The company was closed down and all their products banned from distributions.
There is also the fact that they only bloom for a maximum of three months and die. For that reason, they were not considered desirable.]
For her, that was not much of an issue. She did not need them to bloom forever, just for a while.
Bjorn returned with the seeds and the system scanned them.
[Authentic Thermaline seeds, confirmed.]
"I had these in the back of my house, twenty-one boxes of them. Each box has one hundred sixty seeds. I will sell them to you for two hundred fifty gold coins."
"I..." Sunshine started.
"The original price is equal to five hundred gold coins. I am not even making my investment back!!" Bjorn cried out.
Sunshine waved her hands. "Calm down. I was going to say that I will take them all."
Bjorn sighed. She was glad to get rid of the useless seeds and she was lying; she was getting her original capital back and making a small profit too.
They calculated how much grain Sunshine was willing to offer, along with the mutated monster meat. Sunshine earned fifty-two thousand gold ingots. She deducted the money for the seeds.
After ending the call with Bjorn, she put away the rest of the gold earned from the trade and decided to get to work. There were two thousand thirty job requests pending!!
"No wonder repairmen are needed!" She mumbled. Too many people had too many things that needed fixing. It seemed like her orders would climb the higher she was ranked.
She noticed a job that was marked urgent and swiped her finger on the virtual screen. "Light moon regulator malfunction. System, what is this?"
[A light moon is a small artificial moon that is used to light craters or crevices on worlds that have no natural light in the dark.]
"An artificial moon!" She said cheerfully. "That actually sounds cool. What is it made from? In the third year of the apocalypse, they had spent half a year in darkness. Nobody thought they would ever see the sun again."
An image appeared on the virtual screen and she arched her brows. "It looks like a shimmering golf ball."
[Ten thousand points to fix the light moon. Do you want the job?]
"Of course I want it. This is one of those things that you see in a sci-fi movie and....."
[Preparing to send host through a wormhole.]
"Wait, what?" Sunshine drew her head back.
A snow-white cup floated in front of her face, and she was pulled into it. No warning. No wasting time. She found herself floating just above the ground. In front of her was a round shimmering object whose bottom sat in a crater.
It had holes like dozens of dimples, and they were drooping sadly.
"Don’t tell me that you are throwing a temper tantrum like the rude toaster." She said to it.
There was no response.
"System, is this place safe? Why couldn’t the moon be spent to my space?"
[It cannot fit in the space. Yes, this is an isolated space, so you are very safe.]
"Can I take a picture of myself and the light moon?" She asked. In fact, she wanted to record a video and show it to the kids. Ariel would be the most impressed with this and he would not believe it.
Earl would believe it but he would call her a witch, which was more unbelievable.
Castiel would just ask to be carried, given candy and kissed on the cheeks.
[After fixing it.]
"Okay then," She put her hands on her waist. "Scan it and give me a workable plan. Also, I would love to know how much an artificial moon costs. Find out if artificial suns are sold too and for how much they can be purchased.
If my memory is correct, during the dark days, Cross town had an artificial sun. It was probably purchased by Cassius. Not just an artificial sun but other things too like flowers which had glowing abilities."
[You cannot afford an artificial sun, but I can search for discarded parts of an artificial sun which can be repaired and used to create your own sun.]
"Deal." She said eagerly.
The moon shrunk and she got to work, locating the regulator which was damaged and fixing it. She worked while listening to music and singing to the moon, serenading it with romance ballads from earth.
She did not realize that there was a camera inside the regulator casing. It was streaming her singing to the company which created the light moons.
Sunshine had an audience of thirty people, and they were highly entertained by the odd-looking female who could not hit a high note but still insisted on screeching her way through the songs she was singing.
The audience was mostly employees of a surveillance and monitoring department. They were all dressed the same way, in grey silver bodysuits.
They looked quite human, but they were more hairy than ordinary humans, both men and women. They were also similar in height and size. Nobody was thin and nobody was overweight. Everyone was eight foot tall and weighed one hundred kilograms.
"Perhaps someone ought to tell the repairman to fix her voice first." Someone commented.
"She is female!" Another exclaimed. "A small female."
"You mean short female." Another chimed in.
"I think the point everyone seems to be missing, and the most important one is that she is a female repairman. Didn’t they stop appointing female repairmen five centuries ago?"
Sunshine screeched again and they winced.
"Maybe she is a child. It would explain her small size."
She started replacing the coil and they all winced.
"A repurposed coil!!" Someone exclaimed. "Did she choose the cheap one on purpose? Who put in the request for this job? A master repairman would know that a repurposed coil will relapse in three years."
Sunshine had no idea that her work was being judged. She twisted her waist and whined for three seconds.
"Is she dancing while doing shoddy work?" Someone asked.
Sunshine waved her hand and a yellow can appeared in her hand. "Liquid starlight as fuel." She sung the words over and over in soprano and she floated and poured the liquid all over the round moon.
The employees groaned.
"Once again, she chose the cheap stuff." Someone said. "Maybe she is a poor repairman."
"There is no such thing as a poor universal repairman. It is the highest earning career in the universe. I think she is new, and she does not know her own value just yet."
Sunshine twirled dramatically and said, "And let there be light."
The light moon lit up.
The employees jubilated. They still continued to judge Sunshine’s cheapness and poor singing. They also planned to spread the videos they captured around. They were too entertaining to be hidden.