LF Friends, Will Travel

Date: 55 PST (Post Stasis Time)

“But this is an upgrade, completely free. I don’t understand the problem?”

Tchizak hovered behind the counter, his wings beating furiously to keep him above the ground and at eye level to the person opposite him. Like almost everyone else on the planet he was a Kirken: a brown 3ft tall insectoid who were the dominant species on the colony. This one was rubbing its four hands in annoyance, antenna twitching in that tell tale sign of someone completely done with the situation in front of them.

The room was a chaotic mix of shelving and piles of junk scattered around the small area. Wires, electronics, and mechanical parts were tossed around with no sense of order, each piece casting a long shadow in the dim grimy lighting. But this wasn’t what was annoying Tchizak, nor was it the glowing canister of raw warp plasma being left dangerously open in the corner. These were just the day to day ‘perks’ of working at “Ptatch’s tower of repair”.

No, the annoyance came from the customer in front of him . A large towering bipedal mammal standing at over 6ft tall, arms of muscle that looked as if they could punch a hole through an exoskeleton, two piercing eyes set over a mouth filled with teeth made for grinding and tearing. This customer was a Terran, the first time Tchizak had ever seen one. It was also the most annoying illogical being he’d ever met.

“But I don’t want a replacement. I came here get Cleany McCleanface fixed!”

That was the ridiculous name that the Terran had given to the XL Temco Clean Master that was brought in for repair. The autonomous cleaning drone was practically a relic, over 30 years old. The Temco company had long since gone defunct and fixing the machine would cost more than just buying a new one.

"Parts just don't exist for this brand anymore." Tchizak said with an annoyed tone, not understanding how this concept wasn't being understood. "It's not worth the repair. I'm only gonna charge you a standard repair fee so you're getting a huge discount on a far better product."

"The sign outside says you'll 'fix anything, guaranteed'. Replacing isn't fixing!" The Terran looked annoyed, the deep frown on his face verging on anger as he brought up the faded and scratched sign hanging outside the chaotic repair store. "Fine, just give it back and I'll go somewhere else."

"Sure, let me go check the back".

That would be a problem, as Tchizak had thrown the long out of warranty item into the trash this morning. Sure he could wade through the mass of scrapped parts and items that made up the dumpster outside their sketchy repair operation…. oooor the insect could do a move known to retail workers everywhere in the galaxy: Go to the backroom, take a 15 minute break and say you can’t find it.

The backroom was even more of a complete catastrophe than the front room, as if a bomb had gone off inside a manufacturing facility. The scents of plasma, oil and other probably dangerous chemicals filled the air as Tchizak made his way through the half storage half repair area. Flight was quite literally the only way to move around the room, the floor and every piece of available shelf space being used up with parts, half working items and pieces of scrap.

At the back of it all stood a cramped workbench, also filled to the brim with various half finished repairs and wiring tools that had once seen better days. Sat at this workstation was another Kirken, tools in hand hovering over some piece of electronic equipment to be repaired; the titular Ptatch.

As Tchizak entered Ptatch looked up at his employee, noticing the annoyance emanating from the insect immediately

“Tough customer?”

“Yea, some weirdo who wants something worthless fixing. Refusing replacement for some reason."

"I'll deal with them. Could use a break anyway."

Tchizak gave a small nod of gratitude, as he watched his boss head towards the storefront. The pay might not be as good as the bigger repair places, but Ptatch always had his exoskeleton against the more annoying customers.

This feeling of gratitude turned to confusion as his boss immediately returned, antennas twitching with anxiety and concern, the clicks and chirps that made up their language practically brimming with a worried anger.

“That’s the Terran! I specifically put a note on the repair ticket that this was a repair only job! Do you think I just put notes on things for the fun of it! Why didn’t you fix it?”

Tchizak could feel himself losing confidence in his own argument. It was just an old device brought in by some strange alien.

"The thing would have cost more to fix than to replace. What exactly is so important about a cleaning drone older than I am?"

"It's not what it is, but who owns it! Didn't you read the informational packet on Terrans when they started moving here? Terrans are known for two things. Coming from a deathworld and pack bonding with anything. I very much wouldn't like to be ripped limb from limb for messing with something a Terran named!"

Ptatch gave a long deep sigh of annoyance, massaging his antenna before continuing.

"Fine, just give him his item back, he'll be pissed but it's better than making him really angry. Where did you put it?”

“I threw it away, I didn’t know he’d still-”

“YOU DID WHAT!”

The noise that emitted from Ptatch was a high pitched screech, a noise of absolute exasperation and shock.

“Why would you… Of all the dumb…. No. You didn’t listen to instructions, you are going to fix this. You are going to go out there and apologise to the Terran that there was a delay, then you’re going to find that cleaning drone and fix it by tomorrow, even if it takes you all night!”

The look of dismay was obvious on Tchizak’s body language, starting to argue before being cut off again.

“Alternatively, you can go out there and explain to the 6ft tall deathworlder that you threw away his friend.”

—----------------------------------

Tchizak grumbled as he picked his way through the garbage, shifting the contents of the dumpster around him. Luckily it hadn’t been emptied yet,, but the mass of broken machines and scrap parts were an intimidating haystack to find the single needle in. He was covered head to toe in oil, grease and other unwieldy excretions of broken machinery. Tchizak had already been rifling through the dirty contents for the last three hours, nighttime now leaving only a dim alleyway streetlight to work by.

He still didn’t get why this was so important, but after finally quickly reading up on Terrans, had decided that it mattered a lot less than angering something that could probably tear him in half if it so chose. Tchizak spotted a glimmer of glossy black metal, taking a moment to realise that he’d finally found what he was looking for; carefully reaching in through the broken machinery with his forearm to retrieve his prize. Now time for step two of this operation.

He brought the cleaning machine inside and placed it at the workbench, finally giving the decades old device an actual once over. Thankfully spending the better part of a day in a dumpster had only given the object a few easily fixable scratches. The hockey puck shaped object was entirely black, punctuated with carefully painted on Terran letters reading “CLEANY MCCLEANFACE”. Two cartoon representations of mammal eyes and a cartoon smile finished off the additional decorations.

Taking the thing apart, Tchizak had to be impressed with the level of maintenance on the device. It had clearly been taken apart, cleaned and fixed up multiple times; if it wasn’t for the model itself being long discontinued he wouldn’t have guessed this thing was older then he was. It wasn’t “like new”, but it clearly was well cared for.

As he took it apart for diagnosis, he gave the strange Terrans more thought. Admittedly giving such importance to something so random was on brand for them. They had entered the galactic stage and immediately started befriending anything that moved, and several things that didn’t. The Kirken were no exception to this, gladly accepting this grand alliance in favour of protection from the nearby Estorian Empire.

Tchizak gave a groan as he spotted why the machine wouldn’t boot up. The CPU was dead, and even worse it was some weird custom thing, made by yet another company who had since gone defunct. A quick Galnet search brought up the immense cost and time to buy a new one from the only place that still had any in stock, immediately discarding the idea of a straight replacement.

What about the original CPU design? Whenever some small company created their own parts, it always would be a knock off or slight design change of a more well known piece. If Tchizak could find what design it was originally based off of, maybe that part could work in its place?

The next two hours were spent in long silent research, trawling through random discussion threads, Galnet nodes that no longer worked, contradictory information. The company who had made these chips had re-branded three times and been acquired by another organization twice. Badly translated archived Galnet pages, a completely different part with the same model number and learning more than Tchizak would ever want to know about this random company that built knock off CPUs. But in the end he pored over his hard earned prize: the specifications for the part in question.

The design it was based on was exceptionally common, and with a little modification to slot the square brick into the rectangular hole, it might just work. The parts were assembled, the pieces cleaned and everything was put back together. Then it was just turning the thing on, and hoping.

The lights turned on, the device gave a 5 note startup tune that was most definitely not factory standard, then with a sigh of relief the cleaning done hovered in the air and began mapping the space around it, starting to attempt cleaning the gargantuan mess that was the room. It had taken 7 hours, Tchizak was covered in goodness knows what, but it was done, leaving the insect with only one thought in his head.

“Finally!”

—-------------------------

The interaction was far more cordial with the Terran this time, the primate gripping his newly repaired obsolete cleaning drone, a large smile covering his face as Tchizak handed him the receipt.

“So we can’t cover this under warranty, considering how non-standard getting this working is, but because of the misunderstanding yesterday we’re just charging you a basic repair fee.”

The Terran didn’t seem to care, paying without question continuing to tightly clutch his prize.

“No worries dude. You have no idea how difficult it’s been to get the little guy fixed up. I’m just glad he’s finally well again. Have a few friends who might drop their stuff off as well.”

As the Terran turned to leave, a sudden idea entered the mind of Tchizak. It was a silly idea, a strange idea. He didn’t know it at the time, but this would later be considered the birth of one of the biggest business empires this side of the Galaxy and would make both him and Ptatch insanely rich.

“You know, for a cost we could probably modify Cleany McCleanface: upgrades, give it a voice, fun new case? You and your friends interested in that?”