Chapter 4

A month too late, I got a much better offer than the university’s. A group of aging tycoons wanted to buy an entire habitable planet or moon to develop as some strange sort of retirement community. “Mr. Henrich, our organization, F.U.N.N.E.R. would like to make you as wealthy as our richest members. For ownership and full rights to a comfortably livable world, Free Use Nudist / Naturist Erotic Retirements will pay up to ten million tera-creds! We’ll also provide interstellar freightcruisers to supply our new world and any nearby, transporters and relays for instant travel between all settlements in the star system, and Hypercoms for our new world and any of yours. Please reply to schedule a survey and contract offer soon.”

I’d wracked my brain and made a big sacrifice for only four thousand, but they were offering up to ten MILLION! I made a fist and pounded the side of my hand on the table repeatedly. BAM! BAM! BAM! “Fucking DAMMIT!” Once I relaxed a bit, I went over the terms of my deal with the university. For up to six years, I would need to let the scientists explore all the survivable planets and moons in my system. Luckily, there was nothing in the contract against hosting surveyors or explorers from other organizations at the same time. I requested that F.U.N.N.E.R. send a survey team and make me an offer for whichever of my moons or planets they preferred, then set one of my bots to building another dormitory.

As I laid in bed and hugged Nora, I savored the possibility of a deal with F.U.N.N.E.R. It would take years, but most of my problems might be over! I could have a free Hypercom! Even better yet, free interstellar freight would reduce the cost of anything I bought by half and double my income! Best of all, if I wanted, MILLIONS of tera-creds would let me leave and retire to a life of luxury only an eighth of the way through my life!

The pleasant thoughts made it quite easy for me to relax. I was nearly asleep when Nora reached into my underwear and seductively asked, “We’ve made love five times today, Jonas, but wouldn’t seven or eight be even better?”

I gently held my hand to the back of her neck and said, “Good night, Nora.” I pressed the power button at the base of her skull, then got a full night’s sleep for the first time in a week.

After I finished in the bathroom the next morning, I felt my stomach rumbling and remembered my lovebot was a good cook. I powered her on, and before she could ask for yet more sex, I ordered, “Switch to your next lovebot personality.”

In a neutral tone of voice she replied, “Activating new personality, ‘Daddy’s Darling Deedee’. Please wait.” I saw her breasts and butt shrinking slowly. She still had her beautiful blue eyes and long blonde hair. Her figure was much less voluptuous but still attractive, with halved-orange-sized breasts and somewhat of an hourglass shape. As I finished getting dressed, she sweetly said, “Good morning, Daddy. What would you like me to do?” Her arms and legs had shortened, and she was only the height of my chin.

“I’m hungry. Go make me some breakfast.”

“Sure, Daddy. I love you.” She smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek sweetly, then walked to the kitchen nude. Her barely mature looking and extremely cute new body was nice, but confused me a bit. I wasn’t quite sure if wanted to hug or screw her more.

As I walked toward the front door I glanced at the calendar on the kitchen display screen. It was Friday, June 13th, 2804. I didn’t believe in religion or superstitious nonsense like bad luck. The catastrophe happening on Friday the 13th was a heck of a coincidence, though.

I was climbing up to the land crawler’s driver seat as the ground began to shake. The seismic vibrations went on and on, growing more and more intense. I knew the biggest danger during a quake was things falling on people, so I jumped off the crawler’s ladder and ran away from it. I fell to the dirt after only a dozen steps, then quickly crawled to a wide-open area away from the buildings. I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt sleeve and breathed through it to protect my lungs from the rising dust cloud.

There were four large aftershocks over the next hour or so. Once the air had cleared enough, I saw nearly everything I had built over the last twelve years was gone! The repair shop, machine shed, poultry barn, and my home were all piles of rubble! I decided the chickens and ducks were my most urgent concern. If they died or escaped I’d greatly miss eggs in the morning, and I’d feel bad for them too.

I dug through the machine shed until I found the large net an agbot sometimes used to collect fish, then spent several hours running around chasing birds. By dark I had managed to catch a rooster and three chickens, plus two pairs of ducks. I put them all inside the huge land crawler for the night, then curled up in the back seat of my rover.

I was about to go to sleep and wondered how things could possibly get any worse, when a thunderstorm started.