Carol's Christmas Caper

The hardest part of Christmas, as far as Carol was concerned, wasn't the dinner. Nor was it getting the decorations up, or the cards written. This was mostly because, like any sane technopath, she cheated and used machines to do all of that for her - on the off chance that they worked correctly, of course. Daniel still wouldn't let her forget the time that the AutoTree had decided it wanted to be a rocket ship and left a huge hole in the ceiling, way back in 2015.

No, the hardest part was trying to get Sine a present.

Cauren was easy. Cauren hadn't seen half of what modern human civilization had to offer, and thus would be happy with quite a lot of things. It was basically like shopping for a kid all over again. But Sine... Sine was the sort of person who'd already been mostly everywhere, had already had everything at least twice and was most certainly not wanting for anything. And Carol was pretty sure that a Netflix subscription wasn't going to cut it.

No, this present had to be special. Because when one went gift-hunting for Sine, one had to go to some very great lengths.

And so it was that, one night, Carol borrowed the Sifter and began her search.

-------

Neolithia Minor proved to be more of a distraction than a help. Carol arrived there just in time for the planet's annual dinosaur races - something like a cross between the old Roman chariot races and Mario Kart's Baby Park. So instead of heading to the shops, she found herself in a seat with a dinosaur bone braided in her hair, screaming herself hoarse as a T. rex ate one of the other riders and then kicked a stegosaurus over. That had to have been the worst hundred bucks she'd ever lost on a stupid wager - but at least she got to chuck a rotten egg at somebody's face when they compared her to mammoth dung.

When she finally peeled herself away, she found that a lot of the stalls in the market place didn't really sell anything practical. Designer skins were right out, since she didn't want to inadvertantly upset the children by presenting a jacket made of dead sabre-tooth, as badass as that would have been. Rocks were boring, wheels were useless and the one guy who tried to pitch a multi-function club ended up with a sympathy glance as his invention backfired on him. The most interesting thing on sale were the dinosaur eggs, but Carol figured that between Fluff, the two mice, the kids and Tigatron the living USB drive, Sine didn't need any more living things to look after.

When a triceratops stampede suddenly happened and flattened a good portion of the market, Carol took that as her cue to leave.

-------

The pirate planet, Kaizoku IV, had seemed promising. A cursory look at the papers had advertisted a temporary vacancy on a privateer's crew, promising not only wealth, but all the booze one could handle, which was always a bonus. It swiftly turned out that signing up, however, was nothing like the movies - there was a lot more paperwork involved, including a ledger that stated that the company was not responsible for any loss of personal belongings, limbs or indeed heads. And so, boarding a ship that looked more like it had crawled out of an episode of Star Trek than an actual sailing ship, Carol found herself off on a rather clichéd voyage for treasure on some far off island.

Not much detail needs to go into the voyage itself. A mutiny started up over pay disputes, but was quelled when the technopath revealed that hey, jackass, I have a giant gun and you don't. A swarm of baby krakens appeared at one point, but a few barrels of rotten apples later and they were satisfied. The cursed temple the crew explored was fairly by-the-books, too, although Carol had to admit the trap involving a giant mechanical boar was a pretty clever one. She'd even pocketed a few gears from it when the crew left, singing and hauling several bags of forgotten treasure along with them.

But then she got drunk on the voyage back, as did most of the crew on the ship. Which was Bad Move Number One, as in her drunken state she tried to pick out a particularly fancy set of gems as part of her share, so that she could use them for Sine's gift. That got the attention of the female captain, who'd had her eyes on those gems herself, and told her so in no uncertain terms - none of which were polite. This lead directly into Bad Move Number Two, which was to get into an argument about who's boobs were bigger - an argument that had nothing to do with the treasure, but neither one of them cared.

By the end of it, both women were invading each other's personal space, chest-to-chest and glaring daggers at each other, whilst the rest of the crew cowered in terror behind barrels.

"Let's settle this in private," the captain had hissed.

"Gladly," Carol had growled.

And then they woke up next morning in the same bed, wrapped around each other.

Carol wasn't sure if that had been Bad Move Number Three, since the captain had no complaints about it. But she left before the others woke up, just in case.

-------

The science world of Boron Alpha proved to be the worst idea.

The people were friendly enough, of course. It was easy to get over the sight of pot-bellied dwarves in hazmat suits and mechanical Doctor Octopus tentacles walking everywhere. But as much as Carol enjoyed a decent bit of techno-babble, that was the language of these people. Nothing could be said in three or four words when double the amount would do, and the amount of syllables in every sentence would have been enough to choke a dictionary. Whilst Sine and Dawn could be verbose in their own right, one greeting from a member of the Boronians would have made them hand over their nonexistant trophies.

And as for the planet itself...! With the entirety of the race given over to scientific discovery, it was like walking through a corridor made of every science class known to human history. Carol found herself dropping into a kind of bored autopilot as she trudged behind the bearded head scientist, with nothing to distract her from his constant droning but posters on rocks, molecules and cross-sections of animals. The opressive, clinical atmosphere reminder her too much of Rutledge, and she found herself itching for an excuse to get out.

She finally lost patience when the head scientist finally turned to her and said, "By the by, if you should ever find yourself in need of having your queries be ratified-"

"Yeah," she snapped. "Ever heard of Mark Twain?"

And she walked out without explanation, leaving the poor man baffled and embarrased.

-------

She changed her mind whilst running from the ratspawn of the Shadow Caves. This was the worst idea.

She spent several hours scubbing herself in a decontaminaton block and swearing.

-------

It was whilst returning from that little excursion that the idea for what to get Sine hit her. It basically boiled down to knowing that she liked three things.

First, something practical. Tigatron had been appreciated due to being something incredibly useful for her line of work. A USB storage device with an AI that also doubled as a firewall and hacking tool. The amount of fraud attempts they'd foiled with that had been staggering.

Secondly, something that represented their relationship. Ever since Cauren had come into their lives, the courier had become more receptive to sentimental displays of affection, which made a change from the more logical and by-the-numbers character Carol had known her as when they first met. So she would definitely appreciate something that had some heart and love put into it.

Thirdly, something weird and exotic. That wasn't too difficult at all, considering the gifts she'd given away and been given over the years. The gifts all had one thing in common - they were something unique. Something that Earth didn't have, something that was crazy and weird and alien, something...

Carol snapped her fingers.

"Bingo."

And off she went to get some things.

-------

Christmas Day arrived. And what did Carol get for Sine, and by extension Cauren?

Animus Braces. Made from pure Heartstone from Neolithia Minor and refined in the factories of Boron Alpha, set in gold taken from the Whale King's temple on Kaizoku IV. When a matching pair - or trio, in this case - are worn, the wearers can sense each other's innermost feelings and desires, and always know where anyone is at any given moment. And what's more, looking at that bracelet could give a person a display of what lay inside their heart at that particular moment. So no more misunderstandings, no more cultural awkwardness, and (hopefully) fewer instances of running off to do stupid things under mistaken beliefs.

When the other two asked how she'd gotten hold of the materials, Carol merely grinned and flashed her own bracelet in the light of the Christmas tree.

"Come on, guys. That'd ruin the magic of Christmas, wouldn't it?"