Where All Your Dreams Come True!

[Moll Vic]

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They were three days out of Coruscant when Moll finally cornered Jorrynn Plo'fro, as he exited the third level 'fresher of the traveling pleasure station Voluptus. Her face was set in a deadpan expression but the Bothan entrepreneur flinched and looked to either side, hoping there were witnesses about. He recognized the look she was giving him - it was the same one she usually saved for clients she was considering shooting. In the gut. With pleasure.

"Uh, greetings Moll, uh - "

"You changed the sign."

Jorrynn flinched. He was not by nature a creature of confrontation, and the particular set of Moll's fine jaw unsettled him. He shrugged, attempting nonchalance, and replied airlily, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Moll's orange irises constricted until her pupil was a mere dot, then dilated back. "You changed the sign." She repeated levelly.

"I did not, it -"

"You're a lousy liar, darlin'."

This statement sent a cold shiver down Jorrynn's spine. It wasn't so much the words themselves but the tone that went with them - sharp and writhing and so controlled that he wished he had thought to grab a blaster from his quarters. Moll put a hand on the wall beside his shoulder. She was taller than him. Probably stronger, too.

"What," Moll ground out, voice dangerously low. "Sort of hairbrained scheme are you fixin' at?"

Jorrynn swallowed. "I'm not fixing at anything."

"Try again."

"I'm not - "

"You've been scurryin' about like a womprat all week," Moll interrupted smoothly, in the same dangerously soft purr, as if the Bothan hadn't spoken, "Jawin' with management and cashin' in on favours. We've made two course adjustments and I've been hearin' crazy tales about you thinkin' I'm gonna start takin' double appointments. I told you no. Twice. I told you not to change the sign."

Jorrynn scowled and squared his shoulders. "Believe it or not, Moll, my business decisions aren't your personal concern."

The woman slammed her other hand against the wall, making Jorrynn flinch. "Wrong. I am your business, and if you don't change that sign pronto, I'm walkin'."

That got his attention. Moll was the most-requested girl at Carnivale; without her to attract the galaxy's scoundrels and smugglers, profits would never rise above the red. He wouldn't be able to pay the rent, he would lose his place aboard the station and he would have to go back to the dull monotony of a planet-side brothel. Jorrynn gulped.

"But Moll," His voice was almost a whine, not quite a plea. "I don't understand what the big deal is. So you tell a few fortunes, so what? Nothing major, just enough to get them excited and buy extra time in the simulators, raise profits." There was no change in Moll's deadpan expression. Jorrynn switched tactics. "You have a gift, a rare and beautiful gift that could make you wealthy beyond your - "

He trailed off without so much as a syllable from the woman. There was a tightening to her jaw that suddenly made him remember the stories he'd heard, whispered by the other girls and an occasional spacer, about the company that this firebrand had kept before she'd signed on with him a year ealier.

Moll shoved her face mere inches away from his own; he could see every detail on the woman's delicate face and he briefly wondered what she would look like if she smiled. He didn't think he actually wanted to see her smile. He had the feeling that a grin from that face would be followed by absolute, unequivical catastrophe.

Snarling, the woman stabbed a finger into his chest. "Change it. Now."

She held his gaze unflinchingly for a moment longer until he was almost convinced that a blaster-hilt to the side of his temple was imminent. Then, without another word, Moll whirled away and stalked down the corridor, managing to look graceful and intimidating all at once (in combat boots, no less), leaving her Bothan employer to collect himself and imagine any number of horrible outcomes if he didn't do what she said.

Anything he came up with would pale in comparison to what she would actually do, Moll vowed darkly, frowning as she waited for the 'lift.

She needed a drink and a stim and she could get both at the Comus Lounge on level six.

[Darven]

Plagued by nightmares, riddled with diseases and on the run from a vengeful Cathar woman. That was the sum of his life. If you ignored a few other things.... like being gestated in a vat or having accelerated aging, to name just two. But one really shouldn't complain.

On good days, life was endurable. You kept yourself busy - maybe even busy enough not to have time to think. That was preferable.

On bad days you wished you had the courage to end this life. And despaired because you hadn't.

And then there were the endless days of neither being able to think nor care about anything. The days when the drugs took care of you; took away all pain, took away the relentless memories, turned you into a well-functioning machine.

These days were of that latter kind. He knew it was not good, but he didn't want to stop. He didn't want to remember, didn't want to feel. Sometimes, when he upped the dosage beyond anything the last quack he'd gotten these from had prescribed, even the dream was powerless.

The voice of reason that he had listened to all the years of his shortened life (sometimes he liked to call it Sergeant Kal, and wasn't too far off the mark with that) occasionally pierced through the stupor and told him he was turning himself into something even worse than he already was. But what did an addiction matter to a man who was already dead? It was nothing but a rhetorical question now. He had no way of telling how long this ailing shell of a body would still endure - there were no scientific studies that he knew of which dealt with the life expectancy of Kamino clones. Most of his so-called brothers were long dead. And those who stayed alive - he wasn't like them. Couldn't be, because he had refused himself the cure. Because he hadn't felt he deserved it.
Do I feel different now?
It was 12 years now. 12 years of being a misery-guts, a self-absorbed, chronically depressed, emotionally unstable chakaar. But...
No. I still don't deserve any different. I should have died with them.
It wasn't really that life was so bad. It was just that he didn't have any part in it. And it was no use trying to change that. There was no room for anything in his life that others might covet. He didn't have a purpose other than to repent his wrongs for as long as he still could.

But sometimes... sometimes he felt a stirring of something. A singular rebellious spark urging him to live a little, to do something. But it was wasted on him, and he never acted upon it.

Things had been different when she had still been there...
No! I'm not going there! Not thinking about it! Not now!
The drugs were wearing off. And he had been so out of touch with the rest of the galaxy that they weren't only wearing off but soon also running out. And that was a serious problem: he was too far from his usual supplier on Coruscant still and didn't want to face three days of feeling lousy. Besides, it wasn't just the pain killers he needed - he was slowly running out of the other stuff, the stuff that kept him up and alive, too. If he wasn't going to get any of that then they'd be able to scratch his remains off the shabby chair if anyone felt the need to bother this ship, and not because of any fancy weapons. And however much the thought of death was a constant in his life - dying in a chair while flying off into oblivion wasn't something he really wanted.
So what do you want then? Loved ones standing around you while you gently pass away? You don't have any. Not anymore.
The silent unbidden voice was unerring and relentless. With a desperate flick of his hand, he injected the last ampule into the vein on his hand, and ground his teeth. It wasn't instant bliss - it hurt first. He focused on the pain and used his last moments of clarity to search his private database for any possible source for more medication.

There - Voluptus. A kind of space station. He was almost on an intercept course with it; a minor course correction and it was certain to cross the station's flightpath in 4 hours.

Now there was only sitting back, and focusing on the void outside the transparisteel bubble of his ship's cockpit. And slowly, thinking and feeling was moving away, slowly.... slowly... sinking... away....

...

[Moll Vic]

Before she had crossed halfway through the lounge, Sweep Lor, the affable Klatooinian barkeep, had a drink ready for her. They had met some years earlier on Telos in a rehab for glitbiters. The program hadn’t stuck but the friendship did and every so often their paths collided. That they both found Voluptus at the same time had been an instrumented coincidence – Sweep’d taken pity on Moll after the loss of her ship, and had given her a fair price on a ride.
<o></o>
Moll growled and snatched the drink from the countertop. She drained it in one, fell gulp.
<o></o>
“Hard day?” Sweep rumbled, fishing underneath the bar for a bottle of whiskey. Moll grunted. “I take it that means ‘yes’. ‘Nother?”
<o></o>
Moll nodded sourly. Rolling his eyes, Sweep filled her glass and retrieved one for himself. He rarely drank on the job but the present company was too painful to endure without a little relief. “See, this is the part where you say ‘hey, thanks Sweep for trying to make me feel better. Sure my day has been rough, but it’s not your fault. How are you?’.” The alien’s canine features were painted with sarcasm.
<o></o>
A ‘harumph’ echoed from around Moll’s glass and she slouched in the tall seat, body folded as though her spine was melting. There was a steely frown on her face but it wasn’t the usual contemptuous, rage-against-the-Empire glower that usually rested there –this was softer, as close to a pout as the gun-slingin’ courtesan would ever get. “Jorrynn’s getting’ uppity.”
<o></o>
Sweep was unimpressed. “That ain’t news.”
<o></o>
“Keeps goin’ on ‘bout me tellin’ fortunes.” Moll flicked her glass over, and it rolled around the countertop lazily.
<o></o>
“Aw is that what this is about?” The Klatooinian rolled his eyes. “For Frell’s sake –”
<o></o>
“I told him no!” Moll protested.
<o></o>
“You’re insane, you know that, completely –”
<o></o>
“When I say no I mean no. Move on, next question.”
<o></o>
“—certifiable, possessed, absolutely nuts. You actually going to let a little thing like that bug you?” Sweep shook his head. “You got spare parts for brains, kid.”
<o></o>
Moll’s expression shuttered; only Sweep dared to be so condescending with her, and only Sweep managed to actually make her feel as petty as a child throwing a temper tantrum. He righted her glass with a toughened hand and filled it again, silently. He left the bottle beside it. “Gotta get back to the paying customers.”
<o></o>
He slung a rag over one broad shoulder and departed for the other end of the bar. Moll hunkered down in her seat and pulled a stim from an inner pocket of the leather vest she wore. An hour; that gave Jorrynn plenty of time to reset the sign and was just long enough for her to get sufficiently buzzed so she didn’t shoot him for kicks.
<o></o>
Because whatever Sweep said, it was not a little thing at all. Not to her.

[Darven]

Probably one of the greatest benefits of the drugs he was taking was that he was still able to remain focused even though parts of his brain seemed to be switched off. It was affecting the emotional triggers, the subconscious thought processes, the brooding memories of the past. In some ways, it truly would have to be called a "happy pill" - if it wasn't for the fact that it essentially killed any kind of emotion in him.

But he truly was able to function. It didn't affect his reflexes, his natural inbred instincts, or logical thinking. The first half hour was bad - that much was true - but when he got through the terrible sinking and numbing experience of those initial minutes, and his focus returned, then all was good. He felt a kind of peace that was difficult to explain, and that was sometimes utterly out of place in the kind of situations he would find himself in.

Anyway... now...
Now he had to make sure there was more. That numbness was pleasing to his strung-out mind, and it was welcome, and he was absolutely sure he wanted to make certain not to miss it again.

Voluptus was not going to be pleasant. He hadn't been on there before, but had seen enough advertisements on the Holochannels to know that it wasn't a place he would want to visit voluntarily.

The ship computer chimed a warning - he was about to drop out of hyperspace.

And so he did.

Space station coming up fast... quite big.
Almost immediately the Voluptus "Parking Authority" requested his attention. He didn't bother replying in person, sent a message instead. And the language of credits opened him a berth only seconds later.

Very efficient.
20 minutes later, he did almost forget to don his helmet when leaving the ship: only when the ramp had already lowered and he was on his way out did the reflection of a familiar face with a forbidding scar in a piece of shiny metal as he passed remind him of the fact, and hastily he corrected the mistake.

I'm a Mandalorian. But not without the helmet. Sloppy.
And when he passed the door into the station proper, he looked at himself again as he walked by a reflecting transparisteel window. He saw a Mandalorian staring back at him: a warrior in his prime, proud and tall. No doddering old fool.

Good. Now ... drugs.
And he went in search for his contact.