The next morning saw many awkward glances between the Moxes, only Gena retained her composure.


    When their eyes fell upon me they hastened to find anything else to look at.


    "You''re all being silly. It''s not as if we had an orgy." I finally snapped in exasperation over a breakfast of scrabbled eggs and bacon. The food was unpleasant enough without them adding to it. Whatever process Biotechnica used to create synth eggs was way off the mark, though the bacon was only slightly odd.


    "An orgy would have been less awkward, " Mark was the least affected after his lover. "We''ve all done that before."


    "It''s about control." Ricky began, "We''ve all had all kinds of fun, but we''ve never felt so out of control."


    I found that to be an odd statement, until I really hashed it out. Gena and Mark were the only two here that had ever been Dolls. Dolls, at least the types they had been, almost never got to choose anything about their encounters.


    "Ah. Then I apologize."


    "No, no. You don''t have to apologize choom, we consented, it''s just we had no way of understanding how intense that would be." Ricky shook his head in denial.


    "It was nova!" Lacie chirped her face flushed, "But scary."


    "We obtained very useful data." Evie added.


    "We''ll get over it. It''ll just take some time." Ricky was probably the most messed up. My few interaction with psychologists in the past, indicated that they like ordered interaction. This was definitely not ordered.


    "Alright, I''ll try to give you guys some time." I gave up on my food. I started clearing my mess up. I could just use Purify, but I liked washing dishes after I cooked, it always gave me a sense of closure to the meal.


    "You cooking is great, but you never really seem satisfied when you are eating. Why is that?" Trust a shrink to notice that.


    "It never tastes right, I grew up with better food." I gave a short answer.


    "Where are you from?" Ricky pushed again, his psych senses must have been tingling.


    "No, I''m not going to talk about that right now. Maybe someday, but not today." I went back to scrubbing dishes.


    My family had a rule; if you cooked you didn''t clean. I never liked that rule, I believed that if you made a mess, you cleaned it up. I never understood where my attitude on that came from, but it was a small point of tension with my relatives.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I sighed, no use thinking about it now. I''d never see them again.


    I finished the dishes and went back to ruminating on what to do next.


    The next day my Hub was available to visit. I could sense its condition in a small part of my mind. Easy to call up, but also easy to ignore. Since it would still be a couple of days before the first volunteer showed up, I decided to hop into the mini pseudo world.


    Letting the Moxes know I''d be gone for a while, I called up the gate in my bedroom. No I wasn''t going to explain it to them. They could wondered about it.


    The Hub was mostly as I left it. The only immediately noticeable difference was that the Pylon floating way over the center of the space was glowing much brighter.


    The blue tinted light played oddly over the structures, casting stark shadows. This made the space feel haunted, which I supposed made me the ghost. Heh.


    My first impulse was the going into the Value Tree and buy a whole bunch of food for back in NC. I would certainly do that but first, it would be prudent to explore the half-sized Megabuilding. After all what good was such a thing when there were no people to house.


    MB Treeside was much like MB 4, except the parking structure was under the building. I didn''t see a need to explore downward right now. Again wondering what use the parking structure might serve.


    As I entered the lobby, I felt the blast of negative pressure. Always a startling experience if you weren''t expecting it.


    There was a reception desk in front of two more classic elevators, other wise the room was relatively small for the building. I noticed you could walk around the elevators. Back there was a hallway with doors. A sign above them read "Battle Arena".


    Slightly opening one of the doors I looked inside. It was a combination of a Colosseum and a Basketball court style rec center. There was a central depression and stacked bleacher style seating. It was large enough that I thought it took up most of the foot print of the building. It extended upward three stories with entry to higher level seating on those floors. To get into the arena itself would likely require going down to the first or perhaps even the second subfloor.


    Why would I need this?


    I used the elevator to head up to the fourth floor. I noticed only the top floor was distinctly labeled. It read "Master Floor Living Area". Very strange way to put it.


    On the fourth floor other than the lobby was the Gallery. The walls were glossy white and yet didn''t reflect as much light as you would expect. The overhead lighting here looked like old florescent tube lights, but neither made that slight humming sound nor threw out harsh light. Interesting.


    It held glowing marble statues of my people and even other folk that I had met. Dakota, Rogue both young and old, Nolan, Amanda, Both Sally, Megan and their doubles. All the Moxes I had met, and several others.


    There was a section labeled Victories and Defeats, full of screens showing the fights I had been in, from different angles. This included directly from my perspective.


    This area was followed by the Memorial for the Fallen, Scuff and Fix, Chuck and Barry, Huskler and Keighvus, Lumi, Sinn and others.


    Then there was the Rogue''s Gallery. The statues here were done in black marble that seemed to absorb the light.


    Carver''s statue was first, though I didn''t recognize him, Several other people who I had not the slightest clue who they were. Various members of the Maelstrom, Tyger Claws and Scavs. Obvious Corpo Types. The last statue was covered by shifting black fog, I had a feeling this represented my Case Worker.


    A deep and terrible snarl tore itself from me, before I managed to tear myself away.


    I spent a few moments collecting myself. Deep Breaths.


    Heading back to the elevators, I was still very confused as to what possible purpose all of this might serve.