LOCATIONS: PRISTINE AWARENESS (PART II)

 

Some of Pristine Awareness' many attractions and notable locations in more depth.

PRISONER EXCHANGE:

Large tunnel running perpendicular to the station's main shaft stores high-value hostages.  Escape is unlikely without people on the inside to assist.  Clean, civilized, and very boring.  All the vices available in Pristine Awareness are also available to hostages at a steep markup (paid for in their ransom).  Guards are polite, well-paid, and heavily armed.  

Low-value hostages are kept in barracks housing in the main shaft and are permitted to travel the station provided they carry proper monitoring devices and paperwork.  They may generally work for their release (and to afford any creature comforts); a few months of washing dishes or a few weeks doing menial work in the shipyard is usually sufficient; the ticket off-station is not free though.  Pirate crews looking for extra hands may also pay prisoners' ransoms.  Unionized pirates generally pay better than the corps and the pirate's life is an attractive option for anyone with relevant skills.   

Involuntary visitors to the station actually contribute quite a bit to the local service economy and low value hostages aren't treated much different than other outsiders (after all, they're not the real enemy).

CHOP SHOP:

Five Days of Rain is a shrewd manager who navigates a market economy that he detests with surprising grace but very little pointless flash.  Most people's only view of the Chop Shop is its storefront; a clean collection of plastic-clad microgravity conference rooms.  The Shop's representatives deal personally with all their customers -- starships aren't cheap and major transactions are never conducted remotely.  They are willing to haggle and may prefer payments in kind if there is a need for certain parts.  Life support systems and advanced optics are always in demand.  The real chop shop is actually a collection of heavily guarded tunnels near the station's airlocks and several very well-armed space platforms outside the station.  Visitors are not welcome.

Five Days deals personally with anyone making very large purchases or wherever warp cores and nuclear weapons are involved.  Rest assured that the Union vets all of its largest customers and will not sell it's best hardware to untrustworthy individuals. 

FOOD AND TOURISM:

TRY A NEW FRUIT!:  In the proud gibbon tradition of outrageously on-the-nose names, this combination restaurant/botanical guardian collects one of the widest varieties of fruits in known space including many rare species from equatorial regions of Earth that were rendered uninhabitable long before the Mistake that were thought to be lost forever.  Alien fruit is also available.  Full of xenobotanists, life support techs, and Solarians.  It draws chefs and academics from all over known space and many corps would pay a lot of money for some of the restaurant's rarest seeds. 

FAT LUDOVICO'S PIZZA CALZONES OF PRISTINE AWARENESS:  Everyone's favorite countercultural pizza joint has a location on the station.  Because making and eating pizza is highly impractical in microgravity, they only make calzones (it's just not the same, man).  Carries several local specials and a number of controversial dessert calzones only available in Pristine Awareness.

REVENANT:  The best restaurant on the station and one of the best available to the general public in the Core.  Affiliated with the Neocatholic Church, it focuses on reviving traditional Terran cuisines with authentic historical ingredients.  Revenant is completely free and individuals are seated by a lottery held  one hour before opening each day.  The lottery only covers one person -- not a good date spot unless you're very, very lucky.  Revenant's lottery is one of the most incorruptible institutions on the station but that won't stop people from trying.  The restaurant's staunch refusal to use vat-grown meat attracts small groups of animal rights protestors.  

MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION:

Five Days' pet project has a tremendous collection of labor memorabilia including an authentic Skylab 4 mission patch (the first labor action in space!).  The collection is always expanding and the museum takes itself extremely seriously.  On the other hand, it's got genuine historical merit.  

MAKE MORE MANS:

Vat grown bodies -- mostly devoted to regrowing sleeves for Union-sponsored death insurance policies but allots about 20% of its production run for private sale.  For gibbons and gorillas, who often have a hard time finding sleeves of the same species, MMM is a lifeline.  They also do encephalectomies and sleeve implantation surgery (bring your own sleeve); fees are reasonable and wait times are short but MMM's surgeons are not experienced with chimeras and cutting-edge chrome sleeves.  Primate-primate transplants are their bread and butter.   

NITPICK:

For non-hominid primates, grooming is an important social ritual that spacefaring apes often miss out on.  Paying strangers for it is a bit weird but what can one do.  Also provides a full range of hair and skin care services for all primates (but usually a bit touchy-feely by human standards).