DEBT COLLECTION IN [00:4..00:3...].
Through the rent gaped User NightSnack's enormous, lamprey-like maw, a swirling vortex of darkness and eager stars. A long, proboscis-like tongue, glittering with saliva that was pure liquid debt, snaked down, slurping at the leaking nostalgia in the air.
From the periphery of the crumbling bubble, a grey tsunami hit. Mr. Fin, moving with impossible speed for his size, rammed the breach. The impact wasn't a sound, but a feeling—the gut-deep crunch-grind of tectonic plates being forcibly realigned. NightSnack's proboscis recoiled, but not before taking a savage, psychic sip.
The gelatinous blob's pseudopod, still manacled to my wrist, snapped taut. Its surface warped, displaying not just time, but the spiraling, awful math:
[BP DEBT ACCUMULATION: 1,247 AND CLIMBING].
The extracted vanilla essence in my arms, unstable and screaming with stolen nostalgia, swirled violently. It was pulled from my grasp, not by NightSnack, but toward the fossilized rice pet hovering nearby. The amber monument fractured like an egg hit by a hammer. From within, not golden light, but writhing, fibrous vanilla bean filaments erupted, smelling unsettlingly like kindergarten paste and dental office fluoride.
Then, the memory-scape snapped.
I was back in my bubble, on my knees in the sand, panting. The ten vanilla units were piled before me, shimmering with a faint, desperate light. Proti the blob quivered protectively over them. Mr. Fin stood like a living bulwark between me and the patch of darkness on the bubble wall where my shadow-maw still drooled NightSnack's proboscis, now partially embedded in our reality.
"Night. Stop cheating," I gasped, pushing myself up. My carapace felt brittle, overstrained. "Mr. Fin! Remind him how many Bubblepoints he said vanilla cows cost!" I stomped my foot, sending up a spray of luminescent sand. "I remember it. He said three cows for one Artist-Class organic. That was his first offer."
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin sliced upward through the viscous brine, shadow and water separating with the precision of a guillotine. His tailfin, a weapon of scale and finality, rose and slammed down onto the shadow-maw's still-drooling proboscis.
THWOOOOM.
The impact didn't make a sound so much as cancel all other sounds. It crystallized the residual, half-formed offer—
[VANILLA COW EQUIVALENT: 500,000 BP]
—that hung in the air. The numbers and letters froze into jagged, fractured runes of black ice, then shattered against the bubble membrane like broken glass.
STAUST's display, half-buried in sand, flickered to life, its blue calm, its text pearly and judicial:
[TRANSACTION LOG: USER NIGHTSNACK BID #47 VOIDED]
[REASON: UNAUTHORIZED REALITY-PROBOSCIS PENETRATION. VIOLATION OF ABYSSAL GAUNTLET FAIR BARTER PROTOCOL §7.3.]
The gelatinous blob, ever the clerk, extruded a pseudopod. It slapped a wet, glowing receipt directly onto my clicking chest plates:
[ORIGINAL OFFER: 3 COWS = 1 ARTIST-CLASS ORGANIC].
NightSnack's shadow retracted with a sound like ten thousand yards of the finest velvet being torn in a vacuum. It left behind iridescent scorch marks on the membrane that wept a scent of burnt caramel and irrevocably broken contracts.
"Staust," I said, my voice steadier now. I picked up one tube of memory-reconstructed vanilla beans. It was warm, and vibrated faintly, like a trapped hummingbird. "Do the math for him. How much more did he get out of this trade? He can have one." I held the tube aloft. "Forget about the debt. I need the rest to make vanilla ice cream. One vanilla unit is at least… many, many times more than what the debt was for the demo."
STAUST's pane flickered. The blue field became a swirling chalkboard. Pearly text fragmented into countless, dancing variables and fractal equations.
Glyphs for,
[[MEMORY DENSITY]]
[[NOSTALGIC YIELD]]
[[UNFAIR SIPHON RATE]]
spiraled and resolved. Finally, they coalesced into a stark, glowing conclusion:
[EQUITY ANALYSIS: NIGHTSNACK GAINED 2,470% MEMORY-SIPHON YIELD VS. AGREED BP ADVANCE. DEBT CONSIDERED PAID IN FULL UPON RETURN OF 1 (ONE) VANILLA UNIT.]
The gelatinous blob convulsed in agreement. A pseudopod lashed out like a whip and slapped the retreating shadow-maw's general direction with a wet, final thwack, leaving a glowing patch of text on the membrane:
[DEBT TERMINATION: 1 VANILLA UNIT ACCEPTED AS PAYMENT IN FULL].
The fossilized rice grain—now a bizarre, vanilla-infused heart—levitated to the center of the bubble. Its amber surface, webbed with bean filaments, displayed new, pulsing runes:
[REMAINING VANILLA UNITS: 9]
[BP DEBT: 0]
The runes, unfortunately, still smelled faintly of kindergarten paste.
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin twitched. STAUST glitched, adding a helpful, pearly-white footnote:
[WARNING: MEMORY-RECONSTRUCTED VANILLA EXHIBITS 43% ABYSSAL REALITY DRIFT. CONSUMPTION MAY INDUCE TEMPORARY POLYP OUTGROWTHS OR SUDDEN, UNWARRANTED NOSTALGIA FOR REALITIES NEVER EXPERIENCED.]
The gelatinous blob, upon receiving this information, went into a panic. It extruded a frenzy of pseudopods that slapped at the air, forming frantic, shimmering flowcharts and emergency protocols in the water:
[ICE CREAM PROTOCOL: INITIATING EMERGENCY CRYSTALLIZATION. REQUIRED: MILK? CREAM? SUGAR? EGGS? ABSENCE OF POLYPS?]
It looked from the vanilla to me, its surface a mask of worried, jiggling confusion.
Exhaustion hit me then, a tidal wave of psychic fatigue. Using the skill, fighting the debt, bargaining with a snail-god—it had bled me dry in a way cooking never had.
"I need to sleep some more," I mumbled, my words slurring. My carapace felt less like armor and more like a coffin I was too tired to climb out of. "Proti, guard the vanilla for me. Mr. Fin… wake me three hours before the guests are here." I didn't wait for an answer. I just curled up on the sand, tucking my shrimp-antennae under me, and let the darkness of true, dreamless sleep pull me under.
As I sank, I was dimly aware of the world organizing itself around my command.
The fossilized, vanilla-pulsing rice grain levitated to a spot just above Proti's gelatinous mass. The blob extruded sharp, barbed pseudopods that interlaced into a defensive, lattice-like dome over our precious, unstable ingredients.
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin, a blade of living obsidian, carved through the brine-darkness. The very tip of his serrated tail etched a countdown into the bubble's membrane:
[SLEEP CYCLE INITIATED: 3-HOUR COUNTDOWN].
Each glyph dripped iridescent fluid that smelled of low-tide and the ozone of wet electronics.
NightSnack's shadow-maw lingered at the membrane's edge, a bruise on reality. Its proboscis was retracted, but the whole mass vibrated at a low, aggravating frequency that made the chitin plates of my pajamas ache in sympathy, even in my sleep. It lingered until STAUST pulsed a single, silent, pearly command:
[PREDATOR PROXIMITY ALERT: SILENCED].
The shadow dissipated, not peacefully, but with the sound of a thousand teeth grinding against glass, fading into the void.
Finally, Proti's vanilla-guarding lattice began its work. It emitted soft, sub-harmonic vibrations—a lullaby frequency meant to stabilize volatile nostalgia. The vibrations warped the water around the vanilla units into gentle, prismatic spirals. Each oscillation carried not a sound, but a taste: the ghost of melted ice cream cones from a childhood summer that maybe, possibly, almost belonged to someone. It was a taste of peace, woven from anxiety and duty, in a bubble at the bottom of everything.