Chapter 5:
Gina invited the couple back to her home in a section of the forum called C+P, which smelt like a zoo. She apologized for the mess, it was hard to keep things clean in C+P and she had to regularly scrub her home with mindbleach to prevent infestations of scammers and the minor psychiatric illnesses they could spread. She offered them drinks and soon Ean was enjoying a refreshing beer while the girls tucked in to a bottle of spiced rum.
As they talked and drank Gina couldn’t help noticing how in love the couple were, the little glances at each other and the way they held hands at every opportunity was beginning to get on her nerves though she knew this said more about her own sexual frustration than anything else. Slowly the conversation ground to a halt and the room descended in to awkward silence.
“Men are bastards.” Gina said, almost to herself.
Ean had a lot of experience at being insulted by women so raised an eyebrow, “Is this going to be a story of getting dumped, a generic rant against men or a new twist on the ancient female art of demonizing males?”
Gina smiled and knocked back a sizable swig of rum. “I wish it was a story of being dumped but do you have any idea how hard it is to find a man on these forums? Sure it looks like there’s loads of men but the only ones who leave their basements are already married and even when you do get a date they always turn out to be gay and the only reason they took you out was because they thought you were a guy with a female avatar.”
Alyia filled Ginas glass and got as far as saying “Are there.....” before Gina launched in to her rant again.
“It’s always the same, neckbeards smell and never leave the house, geeks are scared of women, forum whores will give you a nasty venereal disease, any man who plays as Amarr secretly likes to be dominated and I wake up with a hangover and no boyfriend. I even took up cheerleading to try and attract more guys and while I‘m not a slut, well maybe a bit of a slut, ok so I‘m a slut but not as much as some girls but anyway what was I saying again? Oh yeah, men are bastards.”
She drained her glass then filled it with yet more rum before brooding to herself. Ean thought there was some major assumptions in her rant but decided to keep quiet, if hell had no fury like a woman scorned then hell would probably have no tirade like a woman who was sexually frustrated, drunk and being questioned by a bastard.”
Another awkward silence set in and Alyia really wanted to log in to Eve, she could think of little else than climbing in to a nice warm spaceship and curling up next to Ean. “Honey.” She said while stroking his arm, “Have you still got the E icon?”
“Ahh, yeah. There might be a problem. I kinda, um, managed to lose it somewhere on the forum.”
“WHAT? And when were you going to tell me this?”
“See” said Gina, “I told you all men are bastards, even your cute little boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry.” Ean knew that he’d screwed up and sorry wouldn’t cut it but what else could he say? Alyia scowled in response.
Gina laughed and put a hand on Alyia’s shoulder, “Don’t worry, all men are like this. They’re fucking hopeless if they don’t have a woman to clean up the mess they make. Come on you two, I‘ll show you how to log on.” She picked up the bottle of rum and realized that it was empty so exchanged it for a fresh one from the cupboard before walking unsteadily out the door.
She led them to the dusty recesses of the forum where old threads had lain undisturbed for years, eventually she stopped and pulled at a menu that was hanging loose. They looked in the space behind to see a vast machine powered by a line of hamster wheels that stretched far in to the distance. Pipes, sprockets, gadgets and gizmos sprouted out of the machine at crazy angles and it was scarred with welds due to the amount of upgrades, turbo chargers and black magic that had been added over the years. A pipe burst and two men with large hammers rushed in to beat it back in to shape while a third man brought in extra hamster wheels. “Oh look” said Gina, “they’re reinforcing a node.”
Alyia’s favourite ship was in her hanger in Dodixie so Gina led them to a portal in the side of the machine and punched in a code .The couple thanked Gina for everything she’d done but she insisted on seeing them home safely, they all stepped through the link and found themselves standing in the red light district of the seediest station in the system. They didn’t so much look around as gawp open mouthed at their surroundings, Ean touched a wall to check that it was real and smiled in astonishment that they were inside a real space station while Alyia looked around for a way to get out of this god awful place.
Gina was also looking around in astonishment but for different reasons, she’d never seen so many sex clubs in one place before and her mind went in to overdrive trying to pick out a good looking guy to drag in to a dark corner and have her way with. Unfortunately after a bottle of rum her definition of good looking guy could be translated as anything with a penis.
Ean looked at Alyia and they nodded in agreement. While it was utterly mind blowing to be standing in New Eden they now had a problem, namely that they were accompanied by a drunk, horny woman and they needed to get her out of there before she ended up as an exotic dancer.