82 Relaxing in the sunshine of an artificial star

Oliphant had been persuaded by his uncle to take a much needed vacation, it was not the sort of thing that most people needed persuasion to undertake but Oliphant was different. He worked as a trans-dimensional waveform speculator, basically a kind of arbitrage broker between dimensions and he enjoyed his work. His uncle was valiant however and soon persuaded Oliphant to put his business away and retire for a fortnight to the perpetual warmth of a climate controlled asteroid he had purchased two years ago in orbit around Smegmellion, an artificial star in the Oomphalos sector.

Oliphant recalled a pleasant weekend he had spent there when his uncle had just purchased the property so he allowed himself to be persuaded. Soon he was reclining on a chaise longue made of energy fields on his uncles' private asteroid. A perfect combination of traditional and modern cocktail ingredients swirling in a crystal glass in one hand and a smoking spider from Xaxis in the other. Later, after a dinner of Nebula crabs and assorted crustaceans he decided he would have a walk around the manicured lawns of the asteroid and see what the robots were up to. His uncle hired robots exclusively for his garden. He was a traditionalist, claimed the new self-maintaining lawns made of nanofloroborg made his feet itch. He preferred real lawn and unaugmented flora. Oliphant considered it an affectation since all the varieties in the garden had themselves been engineered to within an inch of cyborg status themselves. It was so difficult for the previous generation to understand the value of today's trends, mused Oliphant

His uncle, despite his protestations to the contrary, had not been on the asteroid in quite some time, on the surface it looked casually lived in but Oliphant knew the telltale signs of habitation and neither the house nor the asteroid showed any of them, not a single memory module had been accessed from the house library in the past 6 months. Oliphant guessed that his uncle was having a vicarious vacation through him since if anyone logged more time on the job than Oliphant it was his uncle.

His mind wandering, he didn't pay attention to where he went and soon found himself in the Versailles replica section by one of the largest fountains. It was amusing to him that his uncle would have gone to the trouble to recreate this relic when in his estimation, the gardens of Isis on Krkkrk were far more spectacular but he had to hand it to his uncle, wherever he created one of these conceits from his youth he created them with a verisimilitude that went beyond mere adoration and came at fantasy from the other side by engaging in a serious competition with the original referents.

When he surprised the two robots making love under a hedge he excused himself with a minimum of fuss, perhaps later he would invite them into the house. The chrome red model had been quite fanciful.

Bless uncle and his minor perversions!