We’ve all had ’em; those days when things start off badly and go straight to hell from there. Those are the days we are thankful for the unsung heroes of the universe, the ones who answer the calls for help. A big /salute to all of you!

THE CALL

“Oxygen reserves at one percent.”

Siri was being thorough, but for an artificial intelligence, she was painfully ignorant of the obvious. Drifting through space for the last half hour, I’ve listened to her call out the end of my life one percentage point at a time.

At least I won’t have to listen to another one, I thought dully.

Oxygen deprivation had sunk its claws deep into my brain, tearing neurons away from one another. My ability to think, to reason, hell to even give a shit, had all but unraveled. I heard gasping, knew it was me, but the worst of the pain had faded into haze. One percent. A last breath, maybe two, before I settle into the endless cold.

DING!

The tone had an oddly cheery sound. A dialogue box appeared across my MobiGlas, the words blurry. What kind of sick code guy thinks to toss up a final alert telling you that you died?

DING!

I wasn’t in any hurry to die, but given the lack of alternatives I sure as hell didn’t want the last sound I heard to be some goddamn warning bell. I squinted hard, forcing my eyes to focus. The words on the Mobi resolved into clarity.

Incoming call from Amanda. A tiny bear emoji followed her name like a period. I keyed the call and wheezed out “Hello?”

“Hello sir, this is Amanda with Cloud Imperium Roadside Assistance. Our system indicates that you are having some sort of emergency.”

I blinked, confusion and irritation colliding at the forefront of my brain. I tried to speak but my lungs were moving little more than dank CO2.

“Oh goodness,” Amanda said over the rapid-fire clatter of a keyboard. “You really are in trouble.” There was a nonchalance to her voice, as though she had handled far worse. Keys continued to click until she announced “There.”

Warmth oozed around me. My first thought that I’d lost control of my bladder in some morbidly icky part of the dying process. But my lungs, still convulsing, drew in air. A whisp, barely that, but air. I gulped like a fish, each gasp drawing life into my lungs.

Siri’s voice chimed in, confirming the impossible. “Oxygen at two percent.” Three. Five. Eight…

The haze pulled back from my vision as I sucked in sweet clean air. Elation bubbled up, a balloon of happiness that abruptly popped when a frightening thought flashed across my mind.

“A- Amanda is it? Am I… dead? Are you some kind of angel or something?”

It sounds weird, but alone in the utter silence of space, I heard her smile.

“An angel? Oh, that’s really sweet. No sir, I’m a customer service rep for Cloud Imperium. When you purchased your Avenger you opted for the LTI package, remember?”

The gears in my brain locked up, my mental capacities still far from recovered. “LTI…?”

“Yes sir,” Amanda picked up, incomparably cheerful. “Life Time Insurance. Your policy covers collision, personal liability, workman’s comp in case of a work-related injury, as well as theft, uninsured motorist —“

“That much I understand Amanda.” The Mobi said my O2 was crossing upwards of thirty percent, and with that came a measure of clarity. The clarity that begged me to blurt the question, “But how the holy hell did you just refill my oxygen tank?”

Amanda tutted, as if talking to a small child. “Well I can hardly provide you with premium customer service if I let you die in space, now could I?”

The answer stopped me in my tracks. She has a point, I aquiesced with a shrug, but I couldn’t help but feel she was side-stepping the bigger picture. Before I could re-engage, she cut in.

“So my records show you were on EVA, re-booting a Comm Array. Well that was nice, thank you.”

“No problem,” I muttered, still hung up on the air trick.

“And let’s see, while you were inside the array somebody blew up your ship?”

The memory flashed back, emotion pushing aside the fog of my brush with death. I’d come out of the Comm-Array tunnel, looking for the familiar sweep of the Ninja Penguin where I had parked her under the High-Band Antenna. Only the Penguin was gone. In her place, a cloud of titanium I-bar and white ablative tiles were tumbling slowly out into space.

“Oh sonofabitch!” I blurted, the memory snapping back. “Some damn griefer came by and nuked my ship while she was parked!”

“Ewwww,” Amanda said with a short uptake of breath. “We uh, we aren’t supposed to use the G-word, apparently some of our clients are very touchy about that.” I heard keys clatter once more. “We’ll just log that in as an SDD incident.”

“SDD?”

“Hm,” she said slightly off-mic, as though looking around wherever it was she was working. “Skill Deficit Disorder.” She paused, but only for a moment, then explained.

“Skilled PVP players naturally gravitate to designated PVP zones like Kareah. They are confident in their ability to stand up against other players and enjoy head-to-head competition. PVE players pursue the story side of the game, working together to build things, gather materials or explore the rich lore and solve mysteries.”

Her tone darkened. “Then you have the SDDs. They don’t have the skill to survive in PVP so they fly around in PVE areas shooting parked ships so they can brag about how many kills they racked up.”

Had it not been for the helmet I would have scratched my head on that one. “Wow, that sounds more pathetic than Griefer.”

“Meh,” she muttered dismissively, “they create a lot of needless customer support tickets; ramming parked ships on the flight deck, gunning down people who are on EVA. Law enforcement has stepped up on the problem but,” her tone suddenly lit up “the way I see it, they create perfect opportunities for outstanding customer service!”

She seemed so earnest about the great service thing that I didn’t have the heart to point out I was still floating ship-less in space about a zillion miles from anywhere. It struck me to ask if she could send me a cab when something thumped into my back. Something big.

I popped my EVA jets, wheeling around to see a curved white delta floating silently. The muzzle of the gatling gun sticking out from her nose had prodded me in the backpack. I blinked rapidly, confusion once more running wild down the halls of my brain.

The long black scuff on her port intake. The Quasars hyperball sticker slapped crookedly on the starboard landing gear cover. Oh for crying out loud, the Rico penguin bobblehead super-glued to the dashboard inside the window. This wasn’t just any Avenger, it was MY Avenger.

“The Penguin!” I burst out. I felt like my dog had just come back from the… “awww nooo.”

I’m not one to look a gift-horse in the mouth but my gut twisted when it hit me… my dog was on the Penguin when she got blown up. I can live with whatever magic Amanda did to clone my boat, but my heart couldn’t take the sight of a cloned dog. It wouldn’t be… my dog. I floated up the sweeping nose, peering through the front window. The cockpit was dark, and thankfully empty.

“Is something wrong?” Amanda asked, concern evident in her tone.

“Oh, uh… no. I was just worried that I’d see some kind of franken-dog clone inside.”

A laugh came across the line, the sound so sincere that it pushed aside my growing sense of loss. “Silly, I’d never try to push a fake dog on you.” Her voice trailed off “That would be wrong on so many levels…”

But just a moment later I chafed when the bark echoed over the comm. “Oh c’mon, really? You just said—“ I turned away from the Avenger, not wanting to see a re-pet that looked like Shogun. What I saw behind me was a chunk of wreckage floating just a few meters away. Avenger wreckage; the escape pod that had been my bunk. A big mass of tan, black and rust floated inside, tail wagging madly.

“You don’t need a fake dog when the real one survived the explosion.” There was a gentleness to Amanda’s voice as I plastered my gloves against the glass, Shogun’s wet nose stuck against the opposing side.

“We really make those pods tough,” she added with obvious corporate pride, then mused, “I wonder why they don’t build the rest of the ship out of the same stuff?”

I dragged the pod to the Penguin’s tail ramp, then wrangled it onboard like a Big Benny machine. With the door closed it took just a few moments to fill the cabin with air. I popped the hatch on the pod and Shogun barreled out, bounding up and down between the prisoner cells that lined the Avenger’s aft hold. One big collison later I found myself on my ass, a hundred pounds of German Shepherd sprawled across my chest, lapping at my face like I was a peanut butter sandwich.

A vibration pulsed against the back of my skull; rythmic thudding. I pushed Shogun back and climbed to my feet, eyes fixed on prisoner containment unit 2. Focused now, I realized that the cell wasn’t just vibrating… it was throbbing like a lowrider on Saturday night. I peered in through the viewscreen. What stared back were the eyes of madness. Unblinking eyes frozen wide above clenched teeth.

“Uhhhh, Amanda?”

“Oh yeah. Him.” Dour didn’t begin to describe her tone.

“Him?”

Amanda sighed. “He goes by [L33t_m0f0_2877].” A heartbeat later she added, “The SDD.”

My brow furrowed as I looked back into the holding cell. As much as I wanted to shove the jerk out of an airlock, I couldn’t shake a sense of pity at the most profound suffering I’d ever witnessed. I tossed a thumb towards the viewport. “What’s the deal?”

“Ahem,” Amanda cleared her throat, as if to read a prepared response. “We at Cloud Imperium are dedicated to your customer service experience. It turns out that ‘Leet here is a Class-V criminal and since your records show you do have career service in Bounty Hunting, I thought that a solid payday would help make up for any inconvenience you may have experienced in this… unfortunate incident.”

“As for the throbbing sound,” she paused, as if considering her answer. “Well the Penguin did suffer a lot of damage and while we stand behind our repair work, it may be that a teeeeny tiny problem might have slipped by, oh, like the intercom being stuck on in a prisoner holding unit.”

“And what, dare I ask, is playing over that intercom?”

“Baby by Justin Bieber. At a hundred and twenty decibels.” The glee in her voice was positively malevolent when she added. “Looping. Two hundred and thirty-third play-thru if the counter is working properly.”

A chill ran up my spine. The muffled screams suddenly made sense. “You have a dark side Amanda. Really, really dark.”

She chuckled. “I’ll take that as an indication of customer satisfaction.”

The hatch leading forward opened with a hiss and Shogun jumped up, scrambling quickly into the new bunk. I heard a rapid-fire squeak as his snout emerged from beneath the covers with his favorite hedgehog toy. I shook my head in awe. Customer service doesn’t miss a trick.

The engines spun up and I remembered just how much I loved that throaty rumble.

Amanda shifted back to her professional demeanor. “Course is pre-plotted for Olisar. Not the shortest route mind you, I thought our passenger could use a little more time to consider his life choices. But the gas tank is full and I’ve alerted CorpSec that you are coming in with a Class-V. They’ve got a beautiful new carbine set aside waiting for you. One with a shiny new texture pack.”

I eased into the pilot seat, breathing in the sights and smells of home. I was dumbfounded how with just a bit of care, somebody could take the worst of days and make it the very best. “I don’t know what to say Amanda. This is utterly…”

“Amazing?” she prodded.

“I was thinking ‘bizarre’ but I’ll go with amazing. You are awesome.”

“All part of great customer service sir. Fly safe and thank you for being a Cloud Imperium customer.”

She paused, then added quietly “You will be receiving a Customer Satisfaction survey on your Mobi in the next couple days; if you want to mention that whole ‘angel’ thing, that’d be great.”

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