Pawn shop in space

Glarfax the destroyer kept trying to talk to Jim until it became obvious the stupid being didn't understand him. Sighing in defeat Glar just placed the objects he wanted on the table and gestured to them.

It took a while for Jim to unfreeze. The bat was loose in his hands and resting on the floor, and his mouth was hanging open. The monsters movements helped brake him out of his dumbstruck state and eventually Jim raised his bat up straight to point it at the creature.

“What the…” Jim had to take a deep breath as his words trailed off. Whatever this creature was, it hadn’t yet tried to kill him. It hadn’t even tried to get closer to him, simply trying to speak to him in its weird screamy language. This meant that Jim had a slim chance at survival, one that lay with attempting to communicate back to the alien. This realization however, did not make it any easier for Jim to try and talk to Glarfax. It might not want to kill him, but it still looked like it could do that really easily. On top of that, Jim had no idea where in the space hells this thing had spawned from- somewhere where they ate children most likely. How in the world was even supposed to talk to this thing and not provoke it into eating him? Jim was pretty sure there was some cultural differences between the them. Would it even understand him if he tried to converse with it, it seemed to expect that he would understand it, It seemed to expect him to do something at least.

While Jim was trying to process all this and produce the rest of his sentence, the alien continued to stare at him from across the counter. Jim didn’t know if he was being speciesist by thinking so, but the hulking monstrosity before him didn’t strike him as the patient type. Deciding death from offending the alien was better than death from boring it, Jim just decided to start talking.

“Sorry, uh. How can I help you?” ‘How can I help you’ that’s really the best you could come up with? Life’s on the line here Jim and you’re feeding it the customer service handbook?'

“Unsndsnchshsbsnubs hagshahsdu dumnhgjkiks shhshyyueuijsckds” a string of screamed characters and grunts was his only response, because of course it was.

Tentatively stepping closer to the counter Jim looked at the two objects the alien had put onto the table. “Ah, would you like these objects?” He asked even though it was very obvious the alien wanted those objects.

Looking around the room for a lifeline Jim could see that it was set up like a storefront, although a very disorganized one. The shelves were stocked with similarly ridiculous merchandise as the boxes he had just perused, except there was no more cohesion in the displays out front than was in the storage in back. Jim didn’t know how the alien had even found anything he was looking for in the mess. Or maybe he didn’t, and that was the point of the complete lack of organization, to let the customers see what grabs their eye.

Again the alien shouted to Jim in its incomprehensible language, this time helpfully nodding its head alongside its ‘words’. It continued bruising his eardrums for a while before pausing and staring at him expectantly again. Jim tried to smile at the alien, but his uneasiness made him unable to follow the motion through. The alien saw through his awkward grimace and began to, ‘enthusiastically’ repeat itself, seeing Jim still didn't understand it. It pointed at the objects, then Jim, then itself for emphasis- showcasing some irritation.

Eventually it stoped screaming at him and just started angrily jabbing its finger at Jim over and over again as he still didn’t indicate any understanding. As the alien lifted both of its arms into the air Jim stepped back and held his hands out, shaking his head from side to side. Slowly the alien lowered its arms back down to the desk, growling at him. It screamed at Jim again and this time he was wise enough to begin shaking his head much faster, head movements appearing to be universal gestures. Reading Jim's disagreement the alien tried a different tack. This time its screams became much higher pitch and it started to gesture a lot more with its hands. It made a lot of heaving gestures as if explaining something and it would often rest one hand on the desk, careful to not unbalance itself. To Jim the waving of the aliens spiked arms was nothing less than terrifying, yet he felt like the alien was trying to convince him of something. Its expansive gestures continued until they started reminding him of a used car salesman. After a moments hesitation Jim began shaking his head again, disagreeing with what he believed was a dodgy sale offer.

Glarfax paused mid arm swoop and looked at Jim with disappointment. His countenance dropped, the stupid pink man having seen through his glorious sales speech. Sinking into the counter top as if defeated, Glar reassessed the situation. The store runners eyes still seemed dull and void of intelligence, and yet he had seen through his convincing offer. Lifting himself from his desk Glar opened his mouth wide, winding himself up for another try at haggling for the items. Before he could get moving though Jim shook his head, cutting off his next round of screaming. Glarfax reared up on the desk and slammed his fist down on the counter top, causing it to briefly bend inwards. Turning around and lumbering away from the storekeeper Glarfax shook his shoulders, easing off the frustration.

Jim tried to remain in control of his mental and waste controlling facilities as the alien slammed a massive fist upon the table and sauntered off, spikes bristling, having just been reminded he wasn't dealing with a shady earth salesman. Still he stiffened his spine refusing to be intimidated. The large alien paced back and forth in the space between shelves, coming dangerously close to knocking them over as it executed tight 180 spins. It occasionally glanced up at him from the floor, glaring into his eyes when it did so. It walked strangely, pushing its knuckles into the floor at random intervals in what Jim assumed was efforts to restore balance.

Eventually it vented enough steam to come back to the table, resting back on the desk to make its final offer. It garbled out a final deal for Jim to consider and slammed a flat palm against the table. The increased force behind the blow caused each knuckle on its hand to create a deep indent in the counter that did not seem to be fading. Jim was suddenly nodding along agreeably as it spoke, a considering look on his face. His strong resolve had almost magically faded as it spoke and any thoughts of further haggling had left him. Satisfied with the bargain he had struck and that his head was still attached Jim smiled at the intimidating, but not very merchant minded alien. The deal was still weighted in Glarfax's favor, but Jim didn't know that. Besides, it was about as fair a deal anyone got with Glarfax destroyer without igniting his terrible temper.

Taking soothing breaths as the alien continued to stare down at him Jim grasped the items and pushed them across the desk towards the alien's large fists. He nodded once more, but this time with less coerced simpleton and more earnest dealmaker. Glarfax grabbed his items and nodded solemnly back, then turning to leave as the transaction had been completed. Feeling somewhat bitter about the deal Glarfax the destroyer muttered some choice words under his breath. The soft creature had remained surprisingly resistant to his tactics. He felt the credits leave him and clenched his fists around the key and antidote in annoyance. On his way out of the store he 'accidentally' brushed against rows of shelving, rocking plenty of items loose in what was most definitely not a temper tantrum. He had planets to conquer and peoples to subjugate, he would waste no more time in this swindlers abode!

Jim watched the clumsy alien go, its loping gait causing it to accidentally clip shelves on the way out. The intimidating being had turned out harmless enough after all. It continued to use its arms as it walked out, its deadly body evidently top heavy and seemingly difficult to maneuver. In Jim's mind its movements made the alien look more like an uncoordinated gorilla than a ruthless murder machine.

"Feel free to come again!" Jim called after it as he went, believing it to be no such a bad alien after all. The alien waved a fist over its back shoulder.

Jim's attention was then drawn to the cube beside him. Blue particles had flowed out of the alien after their business was concluded, those particles had formed it. The blue transmissions had floated through the air unnaturally, gathering into a central stream that flooded onto a plinth. The cube was then slowly built out of the stream until it hovered over the circular plinth on top of Jim's desk. The coaster like object held the slightly transparent cube in stasis, keeping it enticingly suspended within view. Jim reached towards the pale blue solid, feeling an urge to poke what the alien had left him. Upon making contact with the cube it broke apart into particles like before. This time the particles briefly swirled around the counter, spreading out in the store air. Then the same rushing happened but with the particles flowing into Jim instead of the plinth. He felt like not all the particles came to rest on him and that some were siphoned off his attire into the floor and walls beside him-although the thin streams were so hard to track Jim had trouble confirming that.

The plinth that had held the cube before was now empty and inert, although it had changed colour into a dark gray from the white it was when holding the currency. After the particles had once again settled, Jim felt as if something he'd lost had returned to him, the slight sensation of a hole being filled. As the adrenaline of the encounter started to fade, the absurdity of the situation started to come back to him.

Before he could think about his situation any more though, the whole room began to shake. Jim had been staring blankly out the window into the blackness beyond, not really processing what he was seeing, but the sudden quake interrupted him. Jim looked down at the floor in worry, the surface under him softly vibrating. He heard the brief sound of jet engines firing and then quickly fading into the difference, the sound of his valued customer fleeing. After those sounds had fully faded into the distance the floor below him transitioned to bucking in earnest. Jim tried to steady himself, stepping forward to grab the counter. However, it was in that moment that the whole room literally jumped, sending him briefly up into the air, causing him to tumble onto his ass upon his landing. Jim started to scream as the shaking got violently worse, the few objects Glar had knocked off the units before leaving swiftly being joined by entire units of shelves themselves. Jim spun on his butt to face the wall behind him and tried to push himself to his feet.

He got back onto two feet and immediately started to stumble again, unable to keep his footing in the pitching store. He careened into the wall he was facing and fell heavy against it. Pressing himself into the walls surface he started to slide towards the metal doors he had originally entered the leaning room through. As he came to press against them they slid open, causing him to hang through the opening as the whole store tilted downwards in the direction of the doorway. Objects began to pile up against the counter and tumble over it, causing all manner of things to bump into him and into both the walls next to him. A few items fell around and off him through the gap. Jim struggled to maintain a one armed grip on the smooth wall as the store continued to tilt, beginning to enter something past a 45 degree angle. Just as Jim's arm began to slip and cause him to dangle precariously over the storage room, the store started to tilt in the other direction and counteract its momentum.

Unfortunately for Jim, it didn't do so quite fast enough. Jim lost his grip before the store was close to approaching flat, sliding down the slope to hit the wall below him. Blue particles steamed from his clothing and he could feel some drift off the sensitive pores on his face. The fall wasn't too painful though as a mass of wires below acted as cushioning for him. What was painful was the sporadic objects rolling over the desk above that fell on top of him. Jim tried to move out from under the open doorway and hissed through his teeth in pain. He had sliced a small gash in his hand by placing it on a sharp metal sheet. Quickly cradling his hand to his shirt Jim carefully picked a handhold to help boost him. The floor was still a beat too steep to stand on so he settled for shoulder barging sideways through debris with his face pressed against the wall to keep balance. He used his uninjured hand to push off the surface and lift his body up as he kept shuffling out the splash zone. Eventually the floor started to flatten out and he leaned back on to it, having avoided the worse of the raining merchandise. Random boxes spilled onto the floor alongside him as he stepped back. Finally the floor underneath leveled, becoming perfectly easy to stand on. Then, the floor kept tilting in the other direction.

"Oh no."

Jim sprinted to the wall opposite him. He was trying to get ahead of the tilt by positioning himself against the surface most likely to become the new floor. He reached the other side of the room and turned around, resting his back against the wall as he panted. He looked back at the now emptied boxes of the room and the flood of items that had fused into one large mass across from him. A few glints could be seen within the mess of material, pointed metal objects winking out at him from the pile. That mass began to move, slowly sliding towards him.

"Oh no." Jim ran towards the doorway while he still could, launching off the wall towards it. After he made it to the desk he slammed to a stop against it. Faced with the view of the shopfront windows he finally registering what he was looking at. The glass windows showed a galaxy of bright planets and glistening stars and swirling nebulas. The view outside being of galactic space. Jim couldn't help but begin gawping when faced with such an incomprehensible sight. The awestruck wonder quickly fled however, replaced by stark terror. Jim started to slip a little as the tilting continued, struggling to brace himself against the counter and turn. Once he'd spun around once more. Jim began waving his arms frantically in front of the doorway, crouching a little so that the stomach high desk effectively braced him. His injury was completely forgotten as he threw his hands in the air like a mad man, pleading with it to close.

"Close, Close!

Close now-close sesame, close sesame!

Please close, Close!

@!&$@@#$ CLOSE!"

The doors did not close, in stead the pointy and huge pile of goods continued to slide closer to Jim and the very fragile glass windows behind him. Jim wasn't exactly an astrophysicist, but it had dawned on him when looking through the store's glass windows that any holes being poked in an airtight building in space was definitely a bad thing. Hence the viscous panic and the pleading with the electronic door frame. Jim did not want all that stuff to crash into those windows and send him hurtling into frigid suffocating space. A prayer on his heart and an ugly expression of despair on his face, Jim gave up on pleading with the door and dove to the side, figuring his begging time was over. He landed on a set of shelving that had flipped over the counter and was now teetering back over the edge. His impact winded him, but it was enough to stop the unit of shelving from tumbling back over the counter. Pulling himself forward with both his hands he moved further onto the shelving unit, pulling his feet out the way of the onslaught of objects. Items began to come falling through the gap, smacking against the desk and bouncing over. More random crap began to fly through the hole as the tilt almost reached 90, tipping towards the storage rooms only exit. Jim grabbed his shelf tightly, as if it could provide any respite from what was to come.

Thuds began to emanate from below, the glass starting to take a battering. The shelf Jim was on started to teeter as the angle of the store worsened. Jim struggled to maintain his grip, his hands sweaty and the one palm bleeding. His whole body clenched and Jim felt his meager muscles strain, all his body not generating much force when it came down to it. Dying knowing he would never live to see 30 was a harsh way to bite the bullet. The shaking of the building started to crescendo and create sounds akin to haunting bellows. The impacts against the glass were drowned out and Jim kept bracing himself for the point it would suddenly shatter. The shelf he was on seemed poised to go over, other units resting upon the counter having already gone. Jim did his best to inch forward, trying to maneuver his upper body onto the desk.

All other sounds were drowned out as the vibration rose. His breathing, the bangs of fallen shelving, even the frantic beating of his heart. Jim pushed himself off the shelving before the teetering worsened and yanked himself onto the counter, the action stretching the skin on his hand and causing his wound to whiten. He yelled in pain and barley even felt his throat make the sound, his whole body was now vibrating at a high frequency. The bellowing of the store was absolutely titanic. Jim slid around on the side of counter and tried to hold on as it began to point downwards. He considered if it might have been better to stand on the glass instead, getting sucked fast into the void of space or quickly knocked out by a blow to the noggin-a better fate then this suspense and eventual stabbing through the windows. The expected depressurization never came though, Instead Jim just slipped further and further off of the counter, the bellowing becoming so loud Jim couldn't think straight anymore. The sensitive nerves in his ears were deadening. Sharp ringing assaulted him and he finally went over the edge, disoriented and unhopeful.

Before he could fall however, something grabbed him. He was sucked against the counter top, what felt like thousands of little teeth latching onto him. The bellowing then left his hearing, Jim knowing it had temporarily deafened him and not that it had stopped. He still felt the harsh sound waves battering him like a physical force. Beyond hearing now the vibrations acted as an attacking force, rattling his teeth and even his skull, shaking his overwhelmed brain into unconsciousness. His whole body went limp against its confines. As soon as Jim was out the humming stopped, leaving him suspended in the air above the near upside down pawnshop.

Eventually Jim awoke, no longer dangling over the abyss. He was still resting upon the counter top and it didn't seem like anything was out of place apart from the light ringing in his ears. The cut on his hand had stopped bleeding and was throbbing painfully at his side, his clothes seemed about as ruffled as they'd been before and his body ached an expected amount all over. Jim got up and shook out, feeling uncomfortable despite the lack of obvious tampering with him. What the hell was all that?

Jim couldn't discern a purpose behind what just happened, which made the whole event all the more concerning. Was the store angry at him or something, was he not supposed to sell stuff to that dude-as if he had had a choice! There was no way the store was sentient though, surely that couldn't be it. But counter had caught him anyways, those teeth had prevented his fall-and the Hungarian throat signing was certainly an experience. Jim rubbed his hand over the counter and felt nothing but a smooth lacquered surface. This was concerning. If the store was angry at him it wouldn't have caught him, that seemed a reasonable assumption to make. Although maybe it just wanted to scare him into not making a mistake like that again, or express its anger but not punish him for his ignorance? Seriously what just happened, no way was this building alive. In light of the singing store and the intervention of the counter Jim couldn't help himself but jump to certain possible explanations. He took a deep breath though and tried to pull back his rampant theory crafting. There was no way this building was alive, that was crazy. Jim looked at the unmarred pane windows that still showcased a very real foreign universe and grimaced. Well how much crazier was it then his current predicament? Clearly not very.

Okay so in the story so far, a living pawn shop has abducted me (with magic) and given me a stock of items to trade with I have never seen before, a suite of facilities I can't access, a child's bunkbed, and a set of customers I have to carefully deal with in order to not invoke its wrath that I can't communicate with. Great. Sounds like a totally believable set of events, nobody here is having a psychotic breakdown.

Jim groaned and then struggled back over the counter, turning his back on the hideous mess of shelves and merchandise the 'magical' pawn shop had elected not to clean. As he walked into the equally disheveled back room Jim resolved to himself that there was no way this pawn shop was living breathing thing, too weird he told himself. Sure he was somewhere south of anywhere deep in the bowels of the ever expanding universe, but come on! There was no way magic, living (vindictive) pawn shops were real. Whatever put him here, Jim refused to believe it had put him in somethings belly! Being in one set of bowels was concerning enough as is.

Stood in the ruined back room of the store Jim heard his stomach grumble. He looked down on it with resignation, he was already feeling peckish before all this space travel nonsense, makes sense that recent events had worsened his appetite. Jim looked up at the fridge with cool steel in his eyes, no other object in the room so boldly inviting his ire. Anger welled up from deep within as he locked eyes with his enemy.

You.

Jim lips mouthed the word as he thought it but didn't vocalize it, The fridge already knew what was up. Jim strode towards the reticent object placing his palms on its surface. He still had no idea what was going on right now, why he was in space and wether or not he had just met an actual alien. But these thought were unimportant now in his mind. Those were whishy washy problems Jim would deal with later, right now there was real business to take care of. The fridge stood in the way of his sustenance, and it did so with disrespect clear in its eyes. Jim began to push and rest, beginning the rocking technique patented by those flattened by vending machines every year. This was serious now, a true death match was called for. A real test between man and cold machine. He would stand here and rock the proud implement until it fell, and when it did it might very well kill him. He would try to escape that final embrace-but if he was unable? So be it. This most pressing need had to be dealt with, and Jim would be damned if he let this thing keep him from his food.

As he kept trying to rock the machine loose from its bindings, it began to break the rules of their death match. Like before the surface started to heat under his hands, except this time it didn't stop at a comfortable temperature. His hands were seared as the heat flashed at a much higher level. Jim tried to yank his hands away from the heat but met resistance, the surface sticking fast to his hands. The sudden pain receded, although the cut on his palm felt aggravated, as the flash of heat faded. The surface had turned back to the normal cool temperatures expected from a trusted, non-malicious metal appliance. Jim pulled his numbed hands away from the fridge, a dull throbbing in them preventing him from being able to properly utilize them for a while. He trembled in shock from the blow his duplicitous enemy had landed.

His trembling quickly turned to the shakings of anger, anger he expressed through a swift kick to the bottom of the fridge doors.

"Stupid fridge." Jim muttered, the defeat bruising his pride, feet and hands in equal measure. Unsure what to do now that his plan had been thwarted, Jim stood for a moment and thought. He tried his best to rest his injured hands while he did so. Eventually, as his hands started to throb not quite as painfully, Jim figured he should try to open the fridge again. No aliens had come along and offered him a lift home, and nobody had woken him from an experimentally induced coma, so he figure he should just go along with it.

He placed his non sliced hand against the fridge tentatively and tried to quickly yank it back again. There was no heat response to his touch but the stickiness grabbed him again. Jim yanked his palm back and the fridge door followed him, swinging open. His hand un-suctioned from its surface once it was pulled past a certain point. The glorious interior lightning shone forth and Jim was shocked as the way opened before him. For a moment he was blinded, the thrill of accomplishment and the light of the fridge overwhelming his senses. Never mind that Jim hadn't really done anything, he had succeeded!

When he came down to from his high the afterglow of victory quickly faded. Pressing his hand against the other side of the fridges surface he pulled open that door open too. An empty interior greeted him. Shelves ran from the top of the fridge over halfway to the bottom. The top shelf was reachable only if he stretched up on his tiptoes and the bottom one only if he bent at the waist or crouched. Below that last shelf lay a sealed glass box. There was no more clear shelves demarking that box and Jim wondered if that was supposed to be the frozen goods section. Crouching down to stare through the glass Jim found it to be empt, as bare as both the selves above it and the void of space beyond. Jim sighed in defeat, a bitter taste in his mouth. It turned out that even in his triumph he was defeated. The cunning fridge had finally 'caved' under his assaults to reveal it hadn't been hiding anything from him at all. Jim slid down the glass box and rested his back against the cold fridge's guts, taking solace in the fact he'd got it open at least.

In the silence that followed Jim quickly found himself without any distractions. He supposed he might start having to face some things about his new reality soon after all. Before he could really get into it though, he heard a scrape come from the wall some where. It sounded like a viewing slot had just opened in a secret door somewhere, like an alien bouncer was about to heavily scrutinize some movie characters before asking for a password to a clandestine bar. Taking the unexpected life line Jim jumped to his feet and closed (slammed) the fridge doors with vigor.

"Now what was that?" he questioned his surroundings, finding himself forming a habit of talking to nobody that he hadn't possessed before. He took a few steps back from the fridge and scanned the wall it was pushed against, as that was where the sound came from. Within the empty wall to the left of the fridge a slot had appeared. Within this slot was a cube, about triple the size of a square ice cube. It was browny/reddish in colour and lightly coarse in texture. Next to it was a long oval bowl with a liquid sloshing inside it. It seemed like someone had slid this stuff into place for him. Was there little gremlins living in his walls? Not exactly sure what to do Jim did his best to grab the cube in the palm of his hand. It was somewhat malleable and felt weirdly familiar in his hand. Tender was what it felt like actually. Jim them cradled the bowl in his injured hand before wincing and setting it on the floor.

"Thank you?" he asked the air again, although thank you was usually more of a statement than question. The slot shifted closed, disappearing as though it hadn't been there in the first place. Jim made a mental note of its location while it was still fresh in his memory in case he needed to find it again. Looking at the object in his hand he clocked that it must have been some sort of meat, the softness had a strange sort of familiarity to him that way. It felt like some blood might come out of it if he squeezed it especially hard but otherwise seemed quite...dry almost. Jim hoped it didn't taste dry, because as far as he could tell this was supposed to be his food. I mean, a cube of meat and a bowl of uuhhhh. What was that a bowl of actually? Jim looked at the bowl of what he thought might have been water with curiosity and a touch of distaste. The surface of the water had a slight slivery sheen but was otherwise quite clear and harmless, still he wasn't sure he was comfortable with drinking it. He didn't really want to risk downing an alien parasite, his aversion to the potential taste and his hate for mind controlling plot lines and making him vary wary of the substance. Jim didn't fell any malicious intent from the bowl though, nor the cube of meat in his hand for that matter. If the store wanted to kill him it could have done so in his sleep, or simply let him crash down into those windows-and if there were creepy gremlin people that wanted to eat him he was sure they would have managed to do that already without drugging him. So really there was no reason to doubt these offerings, he hoped. It was at this point that his stomach rumbled again, letting him know that if he wanted to not eat the food he could- but that he would end up starving to death. Deciding to take the potentially quicker and less painful death he went to put his cube in the fridge. He opened the door with his elbow to spare his pained palm the contact and was pleased to see that the door still suctioned to it. He used his other hand to put the cube on a translucent shelf and was brought to a pause after he did so.

A light began to flash directly underneath the still meat cube that did not extend past its borders. The soft blue light flashed without much urgency. A much more gentle flashing than the nuclear countdown seriousness the flashing of a lot of Jim's more modern devices seemed partial too. The fridge was turning out to be quite chill despite the circumstances (get it). Jim wasn't going to be fooled by its innocent facade though, even if so far he was getting along with it. It hadn't even done that annoying beeping and flashing thing yet that fridges back home did when left open for more than 20 seconds. The soft pulsing under the meat was much preferable to the strobe shows those fridges let off when you had angered them. He picked up the meat and the light under it stopped pulsing, instead falling down through the shelves to rest on-top of the glass cabinet. It was an interesting visual effect to watch, the light dive down through each shelves to come rest upon the freezer surface. Once it was there it shot over to the middle of the cabinet and paused, before vanishing. The high tech display reminded Jim that he wasn't exactly in Kansas anymore, and he struggled to ignore that fact as he crouched to put the meat cube on the bottom shelf. While earth technology had come far since his collage days, designers had still failed to reach this level of sleek and self evident that made things both fun to use, and understandable enough to be universally accessible.

Once he put the cube down about where he reckoned the middle of the shelf was Jim stood up and waited, his bent knees reminding him that occasionally lifting weights did not offer the same benefits as occasionally stretching. A bright grid projected out of the fridge and moved through the cube, scanning it. It didn't take long and the grid only did one swoop before dissipating. Seemingly satisfied a row of options appeared in front of the object. Realizing this was turning into a whole ordeal, Jim went back and retrieved the oval bowl of the floor before it could get dusty, already having to rationalize to himself that leaving it onto the floor was fine in the first place and that no space diseases had crawled into the liquid. He grimaced as he stared at it and tried to convince himself to drink it, his dry mouth communicating the necessity. However, a much better alternative quickly formed in his mind and he placed the bowl down in the fridge to be scanned.

A grid popped up again and went through the bowl. He couldn't tell if the grid moved slower this time, but due to his anxious heart he certainly felt like it did. When the scan was done a row of symbols popped in front of it like before. Jim figured that if there was truly anything poisonous or dangerous in the liquid it would have acted up, at least a little-maybe that was expecting too much from his fridge though. Figuring that both of the food items had been cleared for consumption Jim leaned forward and examined the symbols in front of the bowl. An empty box, something close to a snowflake, a flaring sun, and a flat line all greeted him. Each symbol was next to the other with matching widths. the symbols were quite wide, making it hard for the wrong one to be pressed by accident.

I guess it couldn't hurt.

Jim hovered his finger over the snowflake symbol and its graphic changed. A simulated wind blew through and swept the large snowflake away, bringing with it a tide of falling replacements. The wind stopped blowing in order to reveal slowly falling snowflakes drifting to the floor of the invisible box the symbol was in. Jim kept watching the snowflakes drift through the small space and eventually they stated to fall faster, becoming larger and larger than their predecessors until a single large snowflake fell that took up the whole box. It was the original symbol falling into place again, and after it settled the animation was finished, the graphic returning to normal.

Huh.

A childish grin formed on Jim's face. The other symbols had dulled when his finger hovered over the snowflake but when he moved his finger away from it they all brightened again. Satisfied that he had identified the cold option Jim pressed the snowflake eagerly, not hovering his finger over it this time. The snowflake moved to the center of the space in front of the bowl and all other symbols disappeared, a tide of snowflakes falling and drowning them into nothingness. It expanded slightly and a slider formed on its right side. it had a minus symbol next to the bottom of it and the colour of it started a dark blue that transitioned to a pure white. There was a black bar currently sitting in the middle of the slider around the icy turquoise colouration. on the other side of the symbol was a similar sider, but a colourless unmarked one. Tentatively Jim reached out and moved the bar up and down the coloured slider, leaving it back a little above the middle when he was done. The bar was impressively responsive to his touch and moved without any delays, even when shot from one extreme to another. deciding not to mess with the other slider and just drink the liquid already, Jim pressed the snowflake and excitedly waited for some action.

The display in front of it didn't change, apart from maybe becoming a touch more vivid. The bowl began to gather frost on its under side and slowly stretching his hand over the bowl Jim felt a light cold began to emanate from it. He quickly dragged the slider a little bit higher, increasing the chill while staying mindful to not give himself a brain freeze. Then it was over, the frost on the bowl cleared and the faint breeze Jim felt died down. The bowl was cold, but nowhere near cold enough to be coated in a layer of rigid condensation as it had been before. He picked up the bowl and sipped it, the long oval bowl creating easy access for drinking. He swirled the liquid around his mouth and left it under his tongue for a few seconds. He read in a book once that you were supposed to do that with wild berries you found. You'd coat the underside of the tongue with the berry's juice for long periods without eating any. After two days with no swelling or reaction, they were supposedly safe to eat. Unwilling to wait two days, and assuring himself this wasn't berry juice, Jim held it in his mouth for only a little. Finding no adverse effects to the liquid forming, he gulped it down. It really didn't taste of anything, just slightly sweet water. He planned to wait a bit before drinking the rest, having subdued his thirst. It was a surprisingly quenching liquid and Jim assumed that whatever minerals were within it were a little more heavy than plain H20. It was a touch thicker than Earth water, but Jim figured that was to be expected of unidentified space substances-for them to be different from what he was used to.

After drinking most of the water he placed it back down on the bottom shelf and looked over at the meat cube. He found the same graphics displayed before it and hovered his finger over the sun icon. The display brightened and the sun on it flickered through a series of reds and yellows as it sunk into the bottom of its box. As it finally disappeared into the ground the whole cube darkened behind. Its decent revealed a vibrant world previously hidden by fiery skin. Green grass now littered the ground that lay underneath an open blue sky. A black square lay on the grounds surface, fading into the night. As the bright sky darkened the screen became pitch black, devoid of its single star. Then everything brightened again, the sun had started to rise. It emerge from the other side of the land, once more brightening the landscape. The now much reduced sun began rising in the distance, shedding light on the world.

As it rose it returned towards normal size, continually heading heavenward. The grass on the ground began to wilt the further it rose, and the now backlit black square was smoking. The strobing sun then disappeared again, still flashing through a bevy of fiery colours. Upon ascending the limits of the box it continued to shine light from on above, the strobing in colour now growing in intensity. When it seemed like the light hovered directly over the image a scorched landscape was out spread below it. The grass had died and the ground under it had turned brittle before cracking. The black smoking square had smoothly melted into the earth, molten material fleeing down the cracks in the earth further away from the heat. The surviving tufts of stubborn grass turned finally to ash beneath the glare of the midday sun. The scorched landscape remained for a moment, the whole world at the mercy of the colourful descending rays. Then the sun began to fall, softening its burning gaze. The orb began to descend to the bottom of the screen once more, returning its same full size.

Behind it the ground stopped steaming and ashy mounds stopped smoldering. Shoots of grass began to poke through the ash as a gentle wind blew from outside the frame. The sun continued to strobe through colors, even once turning a startling shade of green. Then as it approached its original position and the land behind it become more obscured, any still visible sky becoming painted with sunset colors. Alternating blazing oranges and reds began to fill the screen before shifting to more exotic pinks, greens and blues as the culmination of the light show. Eventually the colors grew softer and softer, fading into more bleached out shades. When the sun came to sit into its original position and size, it showcased one final roll through of the lightest pastel, whites baring the whispers of pinks, blues, yellows and greens. Then it shone out a bright light that matched the interface surrounding it, the pure white of the other symbols filling the box. When the light faded the countryside behind the sun had disappeared, only a glowing white orb remained. Jim selected the sun option, unsure if heating his food had ever felt so majestic before. The sun moved through the display until it sat at the centre, a flash of white filling boxes and obliterating all the other symbols in their confines.The same sliders appeared on either side of the sun, with red leading into white on the temperature slider instead of blue. Jim didn't really know what temperature he was supposed to heat this meat cube too, but he thought the fridge might have a better idea. I mean surely that scan wasn't just for ascetic purposes- unless this fridge was as bad at delivering the features they promised as modern tech moguls, then he was screwed.

He tried to hold down on the slider and move it to the side but that didn't anything. He held down the slider and slid it upwards without touching the bar and nothing happened either. Tapping it shook the slider and moved the bar to him. Tapping it twice cause the bar to disappear. In its place more strange symbols appeared. two mound of rock next to each other stared at him. After about 30 seconds of him not doing anything they changed into another set of symbols composed of squiggly bendy lines. Deciding to axe this option too he double tapped the interface again. This caused the interface to go blank. and the slider on the other side to disappear too. Instead three words appeared underneath the sun that he couldn't read.. Thankfully these words had symbols under them in turn and Jim pressed the one with what looked like the same smoking square as previous on it on it. He hoped that option was cook. The other options were a melting snowflake a melted square, so he didn't really have much choice in the matter anyways.

The cube was quickly wrapped up by opaque walls on every side, the glass turning thick and cloudy enough to obscure within. Once the cage had formed Jim hovered his hand next to it and felt the heat begin to emanate. After a surprisingly short while the glass receded, revealing a steaming cube sat on a plate that was now a comforting shade of brown all over. Smiling Jim picked up the plate and was presently surprised to feel it wasn't molten at all underneath. Turning around and realizing he had neither chairs nor tables to sit on, he quickly put the plate down again. A few moments later Jim had wrangled a few of the now emptied open top boxes to create a temporary seating and eating arrangement. Satisfied with what he'd created so far Jim grabbed his bowl and plate and placed them before his boxy throne. The boxes were surprisingly firm, not wobbling much under his body weight. Remembering to get up and close the fridge Jim mentally thanked the appliance, it turning out to be much more accommodating than previously believed. To his surprise he found the doors already swinging closed, perhaps detecting his time with it was over.

"You wonderful object" Jim commended, finding himself grinning again. Who knew using a kitchen appliance could be so much fun? Finally understanding some of the love and affection Dads all over the world lavished on their varied grills, Jim sat down with a satisfied smile- ready to dig in to his alien dinner.

His meat cube was still surprising warm and as Jim tore a chunk off with his hands, he found it to still be quite tender too. There was not much grease to be found on his meal, meaning his hands weren't dirtied by his eating methods much at all. Tearing into the chunk he found the first mouthful delightful. The flavor wasn't overwhelming, a simple meaty taste a few steps below steak and one lateral move from bacon, but it practically melted on his tongue. Although Jim's starving stomach oft made him prone to exaggeration, he would have to say this was one of the softest thing he had ever eaten. Instead of taking away from the meat's taste, the slightly sweet drink he started sipping on seemed to fill in the gaps of the meal. Where the meaty taste ended, stopping before becoming as strong as those from Jim's home world, the sweet drink stepped in. The 2 dimensions of the meal somehow combing into a four dimensional experience. Swallowing the rich and sweet foods down together left a strange but satisfying taste on his lips. It was akin to biting into a perfect filet coated in creamy mash- except instead of those familiar flavors he tasted silver coating over refined delicacy. It was hard to succinctly explain, but it was like the a layer of ketchup dip over a thin slice of bacon, a saucy addition promoting a light finish to an already minimal beery and smoky flavor. A weightless bite that left you for wanting for more. When finished Jim felt perfectly full, and yet wouldn't of minded the indulgence of an extra bite.

Jim sat back in disbelief, not quite at terms with the decadence. Simple yet beautiful meals, a deliciously inventive fridge and a store full of unique alien objects to explore. Didn't sound too bad if you really thought about it. Jim had been kidnapped, dragged through the vestiges of space, and out of all potential locations had been deposited here? It seemed like he wasn't exactly suffering, but a large part of his brain rebelled against that sentiment. He wasn't on earth anymore, there was not a human nor broadcast tower in sight. He was far in to the unknown and far from the civilization he was so familiar with; and yet Jim was still feeling those stirrings of content deep within his stomach. Maybe it was just the good food talking, but Jim didn't feel too hardly done to here. Sure there was no manual to follow or way to decipher what the customers were saying, but there was a job here, and people to speak to.

He at least could be content with that, there was something to do- something far from boring. His time was his own to a degree he had only felt when scrambling through virtual listings and wallowing in unemployment-and while unemployment might give you time to spare it certainly didn't give you the freedom to enjoy it. Here there was no supervisors, and there was also no home to go back to. While for many that may sound negative, to Jim it was a very real relief. No scrambling to afford a tiny one bedroom apartment in a civ dead neighborhood. Jim didn't have to worry about web prescriptions and plugging in to talk to people, aliens were coming to talk to him! He was sure they brought with them more interesting topics of conversation than he was usually subject to.

In fact, Jim couldn't remember the last time he had seen this many physical knick knacks in one place, the human pastime of purchasing random items was a completely virtual thing now. Far from stressing about the upkeep of a dingy hole in the wall he hated living in, Jim got to live in an actual store he was responsible for- one that floated in space no less. In many ways Jim didn't feel like his old job was real, I mean he was doing the paperwork of highly efficient programs on the borders of sentience that were essentially nothing more than strings of letters in machines. Sure selling pawned bombs to aliens wasn't any more believable, but doing a programs paperwork-not because it couldn't do it but because it wasn't allowed- was the wrong kind of science fiction occupation. He was dealing with man made problems 20 steps beyond the problems the man had made in the first place. It was all nonsense, invisible documents in the invisible web created by invisible entities. After the first month of trudging through the workload Jim was sure that if he had happened upon a quantum computer anywhere, he would have committed a felony on it-same goes for whichever load bearing servers were keeping the web up and running. Jim used to love the advancement of tech, primarily because of the innovations it granted in the e-reading and video gaming industry. But there came a point in everyone's lives where watching a cooking show held in a virtual reality space where no one actually tasted the cooking became absurd to them. There some real matrix crap going on back there, and Jim was glad to be away from it.

He would miss the cat, but that was it. He didn't own anything, had no stakes down to uproot and move on with. No property, no pod, no tangible savings. most of his money was spent on food and subscriptions, and honestly if Jim hadn't really accepted the reality of his life and knuckled down in that stupid job, nothing would have changed for him. So yeah, he found himself not too angry with the changes that had been made. In fact...

Jim got up from his box chair and put the plates back in the fridge. He then walked up to the sleek space door and waited till it opened in front of him. Then ignoring the debris around him he stepped up to the counter and leaned against it. In front of him was an unobstructed view of a beautiful galaxy. Jim did his best to take it all in, taking a breath as he gazed out at the solar system. When he really though about it, he honestly wasn't much mad at all. He had quite possibly come to a point in his life where he was living upon a planet he had no qualms about leaving, and he wondered about how many of humans felt the same. As he leaned up on the desk and drank in the spectacular view he found that he was actually quite happy-not in the least because that view in front of him was very much, impossibly, real.

Oh and the pawn shop he was standing in? Well that was his and entirely his alone.

After a while of simply enjoying the awesome vista, the store began to rumble underfoot threateningly. Reluctantly regarding the huge mess around the store Jim let out a sigh. Well maybe he was a bit of a co-owner, because this thing was definitely alive.