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I click “reset password” and glance nervously out the window. Night is starting to fall. I need to get this done now, before I make my escape. The Growlers are assembling in ever greater numbers.
Shapes fly in front of me.Select the pictures with space buses, it tells me.
My frustration is growing by the moment, and with the Growlers making their way toward the house, I need help now. Ordinarily, I’d be against purchasing a sentient being, but I have no choice. There’s no help available besides that which I can buy.
Nobody free wants to be here. Nobody but me, and I’m not fucking leaving. This is my home. My land. My farm. Even if a lot of it is on fire a lot of the time at the moment, they don’t know they’re doing me a favor. A lot of plants do even better after firestorms. So while I might currently be sitting on a smoldering lump of chaos, I remember the forests and fields I grew up in, and I intend to restore them just as soon as I get some help.
I need a big alien. A strong alien. I need a predator who will hunt down the Growlers attacking my fences and boundaries and dispatch them.
CHOOSE NEW PASSWORD, the website prompts me.
I put in the password I thought I had used for this site, but clearly didn’t, because it doesn’t fucking work.
Yet another error appears on the screen.
YOU CANNOT USE A PREVIOUSLY USED PASSWORD
It takes all my mental and emotional fortitude not to hurl the computer tablet right through the nearest window and run screaming into the night.
REVENGE123I type as fast as I can.
PASSWORD ACCEPTED
PLEASE LOGIN
You’d think that having set my password would have logged me in, but no, because that would be simple and effective and not put me at increased risk of being overrun by Growlers.
I login, using my new password, only for a cube of disjointed images to appear on screen.
PROVE YOU’RE NOT A ROBOT. SELECT ALL THE ICE CREAM VANS.
There are two obvious ice cream vans, one less obvious van of some kind, and six heavy vehicles of indeterminate origin. I know that this is a traditional means of securing a website, which is incredibly old tech, but sometimes the old ways are the best. Sometimes, the old ways are the only way. We don’t get the cybernet here; I can’t just jack in via brain probe. I’ve got to use this vintage tablet that runs on external electricity and not the neural energies of my very own mind.
The website takes a moment to think about my answers, a circular cursor whirling on my screen for a maddening length of time.
PASSWORD INCORRECT
CHANGE PASSWORD
I let out a very nasty swear word and only barely stop myself from throwing the tablet on the floor and stamping on it. Repeating the process works, but I can see on the ridge of the horizon, another raiding party is starting to swarm. Some of them seem likely to make it through my increasingly porous defenses.
I’m in.
WELCOME TO THE INTERGALACTIC AUCTION HOUSE. BUY AND SELL ANYTHING, INCLUDING YOURSELF!
This is not legal in a lot of worlds, but this world is my world, and I say that it is okay here. There are two options now, two broad categories to choose from.
BUYERS
SELLERS
My cat, Buttface, darts across the keyboard in a ginger streak and knocks a glass of water onto the floor. I curse, but when I turn around, there’s a form ready and waiting for me to fill in. When I glance over the screen, I see that the Growlers are really starting to make some headway in destroying the crops I harvested last spring and had set out to dry, devouring my precious food supplies. If they don’t kill me, I will end up starving.
I put my details in as fast as possible, price I’m willing to pay, all that good stuff.
YOU WILL BE INFORMED AS TO THE RESULTS OF THE AUCTION WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. BE PREPARED TO RENDEZVOUS FOR DELIVERY.
Alright. Twenty-four hours, and I’ll have a big, mean alien here to help me.
