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“Now my absolute favorite,” Apollonia said, her voice slurring slightly. “Is the Shark Hole series!”
“Oh scram it, is that the one with a black hole full of sharks?” Jaya asked, laughing.
“Space sharks. But yes! It’s fantastic, everything you want in a terrible movie.” She started to count on her fingers. “It makes no sense, the acting is terrible, the effects are terrible, the writing is terrible, but man is it fun!”
“I have not actually seen any of them,” Jaya said. “I only know them by reputation.”
“They’re so bad, you have to see them. All your concerns about real life just disappear when you watch someone get eaten by a flying space shark in a black hole. Trust me.”
Jaya tilted her head. “I’ve always wondered; are there just so many space sharks that their mass caused the black hole, or did they simply fall in and could not escape due to the curvature of space time?”
“Well in the first movie they seem to imply that it was their own mass, like further in near the core there’s even bigger, more massive sharks, which is why they can’t risk them all escaping . . .”
“But a black hole is a point object, it doesn’t really have a ‘deeper’ part,” Jaya pointed out.
“. . . But in movie three they explain that the space sharks were banished to the black hole by an ancient race of aliens they fought a war against.”
“So the sharks are intelligent?”
“Sometimes,” Apple replied. “Depends on the movie.”
“I’m afraid I have never seen anything so goofy to suggest in return,” Jaya said, still chuckling. “I think I mostly watch documentaries or historical series.”
Apollonia reached up and patted her shoulder. “I forgive you.”
“Forgive me?”
“For being boring as hell.”
Jaya almost snorted her drink and then began to laugh, unable to control it for the longest time.
Apollonia glanced around, seeing new people entering the bar, more wearing an olive-green uniform she recognized as Glorian. There were stares between them and the Craton Response officers at their own table, but the latter seemed to shake it off quickly.
It made Apollonia’s sense of alarm grow, but the Glorian officers found their own table and sat down, loudly demanding drinks, and the moment seemed to pass.
Jaya had stopped laughing, and as Apollonia looked back to her, her eyes were glued up on the screens above.
“Big savings for the mid-summer sales event, exclusives brought to subscribers on Your Pocket Watch, sign up and save 20% on a 12-month sub! Today’s top deals are on home fabricators, starting with the mid-range Extruder 4400 by SleppCo. While it’s a Sepht manufacturer, and I don’t normally recommend alien devices, it’s got an excellent internal service area . . .”
“Needing a new fabricator?” Apollonia drawled, trying to hide her smile.
“I’m just amazed,” Jaya said. “How quickly we revert when our material conditions change.”
“What?”
Jaya shook her head, tearing her eyes off Your Pocket Watch and the amazing deals they were continuing to offer, all while plugging a monthly subscription for even more savings.
“In the Sapient Union no one wants for anything. Some people leave all of that, heading to the fringes of space – like here – where there are fewer laws, fewer people, less development, and therefore a lower stage of production. Rather than simply pushing through and developing their productive forces into full socialism or communism in a few generations they . . . simply revert to private property. It’s not universal, of course, but surprisingly commonly.”
She gestured around. “And here, of all places. With Gohhi’s strategic placement, it could have developed in half a century. Instead it is stuck in stasis, owned by a handful of wealthy lords who glut themselves on the labor of those below them, telling them they’re free because they can privately own a crumb of space while facing the constant threat of poverty and death. And those exploited drink it down like addicts and keep scrambling for crumbs.”
Jaya grinned, her eyes sparkling, and Apollonia realized the woman had gotten a little drunk. “It makes me wonder – back during capitalism did some people actually long for feudalism at times? I can’t imagine it, yet I wonder.”
She shook her head and took another sip of her drink. “We’re still so much full of the flaws that nature instilled in us.”
“Speak for yourself,” Apollonia said. “I feel like I’m at least 50% plastic from all the weird synthesized cheese I grew up on.”
Jaya laughed. “Well, I suppose that begs the question what natural even is?”
“Dark!” Apollonia replied. “These are your drunk thoughts? I didn’t expect to hang out with a philosopher.”
“I do get more talkative when I drink,” Jaya agreed. “One reason I drink so rarely.”
Other Terrestrial 
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