Chiodo wants to see me, so I feel obliged to go. Not because I owe him or his MRCZ anything, but because it’s good to keep up relationships. His MRCZ has premium flow and lots of pull with the gene tinkers and the wetmen. The Blobbies ooze with flow. They’re a clan of deal brokers and fixers, perfectly secure within the bubble they called home. The bodyguard ushers me in and fixes me with a blank stare of polished chromium. His body is covered in a sleek black sealsuit, a personal gift from my MRCZ to the Blobbies. A show of friendship and good faith.

I approach Chiodo and watch him through the clear viewing port of his tank. He floats in a nutrient-rich bath in a zero-g  pod near the Hole. Massive, pale and rippling with folds of blubber, he doesn’t resemble a person so much as some kind of aquatic, atavistic hybrid. A creature pulled from the liquid past of human evolution, from amoeba to tool-user. I tap on the side of the plastic tank and he rolls over onto his back, his stunted limbs lifting him to the surface. He bobs up and down, sipping something from a foil packet.

“Dear dear,” he burbles, his double-trachea giving his voice a fluted tone, like some deep woodwind. He can eat and breathe at the same time. “Star-girl, so nice of you to come all the way in-ring.” He takes another sip. Some fruit-flavored beverage laced with vitamins and carbohydrate. The larger Blobbies are even farther in-ring, so immense that they forgo tanks and live in permanent free-fall. A weird fetish, to want to be such a size. But they don’t want for anything else. In a time where a perfect body is standard,  imperfection is a desirable commodity.

“Enjoying the new suits?” I climb up the side of his tank and sit on the edge, idly stirring the pale pink fluid with my fingertips. “Your guards look fierce.”

Chiodo wriggles in the water, pantomiming his pleasure in a whole-body expression. His face is so fat that it’s hard to read his features. He clucks his tongue. “So nice, so nice. That is quality handiwork. From your looms, yes?”

“Of course, I’m here on official MRCZ business…”

He lolls to one side, somewhat dismayed, than bobs over to me.

“What do you need?”

I squirt the information to his key and wait the microseconds for him to accept and process the information. Surveillance video and some other records. I fill him in while he peruses the information.

“A neo-purist MRCZ called Three Threads. They’re small-time, very nouveau, very avant garde. Deals exclusively in insect silk…the real stuff, not the analogs.”

Chiodo splashes himself with some of the pink fluid of his bath. His white skin is slick and shiny, like wet plastic. “Continue.”

“They ghosted our MRCZ. You can see the footage there, yeah? One of our looms is gone.”

The agent of Three Threads, some contract ghost, was liberating something in the video record. A box, small enough to carry in two hands without too much trouble.

“The problem is that our loom is proprietary. Three Threads means to disassemble it, re-engineer its design and sell the schematics to some corporate concerns back on Earth for some data. Their MRCZ is so small that it’ll be a huge hit on their flow but I think they mean to boost their flow with barter of that data.”

The guard approaches the ladder to the tank and barks something to Chiodo. The Blobbie ducks down beneath the surface and sinks down to a monitor bank affixed to the far wall of the tank. When he emerges from the surface, his eyes were on me, glinting with possibility.

“Ah, so Henneman/Kartis should make them a better offer and return the loom to you?”

I shrug. It’s the best idea I have and Chiodo can be trusted.

“Why not gift the schematics yourselves? Surely your own MRCZ could use the flow. Or trade them for some data of your own?”

I already thought of that possibility. “Sure, Henneman/Kartis can broker the deal but  then our cache goes down once the parasites on Earth start mass-producing our designs. I’d rather keep our designs on the Donut and keep our flow in the positives, thanks.”

Chiodo drops his drink packet into a recycle bin and rolls over onto his back. His chubby, stunted arms are crossed over his belly, like a sea otter.

“We’ll get your machine back from the neo-purists and return it to you. In exchange, you will produce a new design, agreed?”

I bow and give the tank water a playful slap. “Thank you, Chiodo. As usual, we owe you one.”

He claps the water with his hand and sends up a splash. “As usual.”