Endo-Stellarz:War on the Horizon

Chapter 6: Lunah: Part 2

(Ileen Von Derk - GT 0932 151)

"COMs are fairly important, how would we go without them?" I said correcting my glasses. If we did not have our COMs we could not communicate long distance, access the Endonet - that in itself can be a death sentience, and other useful gadgets. It would be like going back to the pre-space age!

"You won't." Xan said, "I can set you up with a pair of Military-grade COMs." He said as he put two larger and more advanced looking communicators on the counter. "On top of keeping you out of being tracked down by the DLT, these babies have even more features than their civilian grade counterparts."

He picked one up and turned it on, "It's biggest feature is its included EDC system." he pointed to an emitter on the device as he spoke.

"EDC system?" Rolund said.

"You don't know what an EDC system is?" Xan said. "Well an EDC system, also known as an Energy Data Construction System, is a new and modern way to carry your items. The technology is still fairly new and still mainly used in military technologies. It was invented a few decades after the Zeenium Rush of GT 0771, It is only now they have started to be able to manufacture these systems cheaply enough that they have started coming into the consumer market, mainly in weaponry and the DBMs. But I am getting ahead of myself." He said before getting to wrapped up in the history. "I know time is of the essence so I will make this quick."

"The EDC will allow you to digitally deconstruct items and store them digitally, like this." Xan puts a can on his counter as he pushes a button on the COM. Moments later several lasers shot out of the emitter at the can as the can started to disappear as what appeared to be a scanning line removed it from existence. "That's digital deconstruction, now you can simply reconstruct the item from storage to get it back, or you can use what materials you have stored within the system to construct something else, for instance-" after fidgeting with the COM he pushed the button again as a similar set of lasers came out, but this time the scanning line started materializing a bowl of water. "You can reshape or create things with ease that would make the manufacturers of pre-space jealous."

"Oh and before I forget, you cannot deconstruct a living creature, nearly all EDC systems have safeguards to prevent it from happening, but if it were to happen the process would kill the target. Though I've wasted enough time with this demonstration. What colors do you want your new COMs to be?" Xan finished.

"I would choose red, but I don't see any red ones, or well any color other than gray around here." Rolund responded.

"Oh don't worry about that, Red body, gray highlights?"

"While it would be cool we don't have all day."

"I'll take that as a yes!" Xan said as he placed one of the COMs on a desk behind him as he pushed a button on the wall as similar lines appeared around the COM, in a matter of seconds the body color of it went from gray to red.

"Woh." Rolund said as Xan handed him the red COM.

"EDC is cool, am I right?"

"You can say that again." Rolund said, his amazement leaking through his face.

"Now what about you nice lady?" Xan said to me.

"Blue and gray would be fine." I said.

After he gave me the new completed blue COM he instructed us on how to transfer over our IDs and important information whilst not transferring the ability for the DLT to track us. "Well now that you have new COMs, these old ones would make for some nice material in my system." Xan said as he took our old COMs and sucked them into his store's EDC system. "I get some stuff to make into new product, you don't get tracked, and the thing they tracked is as good as gone. Now what was the first thing you needed?"

"Well food-" I started before Xan spurt in.
"We can get your food and water last."

"Ok next we need uh... An extra capacitor for our ship."

"What model is your ship."

"I actually don't know." Rolund said, "I received it as a gift from my grandfather."

"I suppose I should take a look at it so I know what we are dealing with." Xan said.

After a few minutes of Xan looking at the ship Xan said.

"She's an oldie, but still going strong." He held up the old malfunctioning Oxygen Kit. "Though this is a hazard."

"We were planning on getting new ones." I said.

"If that is the case I trust you won't be needing this old thing." Xan said.

"No, you can keep it, it'll free up some space on the ship anyhow." Rolund said as we headed back to his shop.

A little while later we had gathered a Nicke-cell, new capacitor, and new COMs for us as well as a pair of brand new Oxygen Kits! "That'll be 238 Luks please." Xan said.

"Do you accept Nehds?" Rolund said.

"I used to but with the war starting many people fear the Nehd will go useless and inflate so many people have been exchanging them into Luks coinage, but with your new COMs you can carry much more coinage without the hassle of Luks coinage unlike the past making them directly better than the digital Nehd in most cases. I am not sure of the conversion rate at the moment but you can convert your Nehd into Luks at that Auto-Sup vending machine over there." He said pointing down the hall. "Don't worry I'll still have your stuff."

Rolund and I walked down the hall to the vending machine. "How do we use these again?" Rolund said.

"You just put your hand in the initial hologram to expand it. Like this." I put my hand into the small hologram interface as it blew up to the entire size of the vending machine showing many options in the new window.

"Wait wasn't a Luks worth only 28 Nehds a little over a week ago?" Rolund said.
"Well it looks like a Luks is worth 129 Nehds now." I added. "We should exchange quickly case Nehds grow even more worthless." We proceeded to hold both of our COMs up to the machine and told it to exchange all of our Nehds into Luks as we saw the digital numbers in our accounts fall to zero, the machine plopped out a moderately sized pile of coins.

Rolund was about to pick them up with his hands when I jumped in. "Hey don't forget we can just absorb them into our COMs now!" I said turning on the deconstructor as the coins started disappearing into my COM's storage.

"Oh yeah!" Rolund said as he also started getting the coins.

Returning we materialized the 238 Luks we needed and put the other things in our COMs as we headed deeper into the depot to grab some food.

"So what sort of food are we getting? Some of the good stuff? Or are we going cheap?" I asked Rolund.

"You never know when we'll need more Luks for something, especially if we are not making any more, like we are now. So best to go cheap." Rolund said eyeing a food Autosup machine.

"Aren't those like extremely unhealthy?" I questioned Rolund.

"Yes, but they are cheap and filling, once we settle down and get out of this mess I'm sure we can eat like kings." Rolund responded as I fondled with my vest disgusted and not looking forward to the following days.