The map shop gives off a weird vibe to it, like the racers are stepping into another world, completely unfamiliar to any of them. There's a smoky, woody haze, and strange maps of foreign lands plastering the walls, each with a little price tag on them. In the corner of the room, three tiny beings are sitting at a table, playing Mahjong together. When they see the four racers perusing their store, they each get up and one of them goes up to the front counter to take their order.
"Alright, so which one's Dai, which one's San, and which…", Zoda says with a chuckle before Jody elbows him.
"Come on, man. You know that's not how it works", Jody says sternly back to him, unaware that that's exactly how it works. That doesn't stop Zoda from laughing at his own joke.
James walks up to the one at the knee-high counter to see if they can understand him. "Um, hi. Do you understand Earthling English?", he asks them, but only gets a confused look in response. "Alright, no problem…", he says before turning on the translating device and choosing their language on his comm device. "I need a map of the planet Porix, can you help me?", he says slowly into the device. However, him speaking into it makes it sound like he's just naturally speaking their language.
The tiny guy snaps to attention when he hears James speak his language. He turns to the board behind him that shows a list of prices, and he points to the one on the bottom. Their numbers seem to be in a different language too, but he can tell it's six figures in price. He nods in agreement, as money isn't really a restriction on this mission. The tiny man extends his arm to James, which leaves him a bit confused, but he shakes his tiny hand promptly.
One of the other Shinarians grabs a large piece of paper off the wall and heads into the back room behind a curtain with it. James sees her carry it to the back and is a little confused. "She's going to draw it?", he asks into the translator, which the Shinarian nods to. "The whole planet?", he asks in disbelief, not wanting to sound like he didn't believe in their methods. The counterman just nods again without a second thought.
Jody and Zoda keep looking around the store, just browsing at their selection. Zoda tries to sneakily take a picture of one of the maps, just to see if he can get away with it, but the third triplet throws one of the mahjong tiles at him, and wags his finger at Zoda, leaving him grumbling, and Jody chuckling a little.
"Hey, James", Gazelle says, "correct me if I'm wrong, but were you speaking to him in Chinese?"
"Oh yeah, that's one of their native languages here. The first humans to make contact with the Shinarians were a Chinese Space Federation fleet that came here about three hundred years ago. They ended up introducing most of their entire culture to the planet, and they just took it and ran with it."
Zoda overhears their conversation, and turns to Jody. "Hey, did I ever tell you about the theory I have about these guys?"
"Zoda, when would you have ever told me any of your weird theories? We've literally never spoken to each other aside from arrest attempts before this whole thing started?", Jody says back, very confused as to why he's seemingly forgetting why they don't interact with him.
"Eh, whatever. Tell me, which seems more likely to you? Some humans finding this world and their culture just extending to the whole planet in just a few short centuries? OOOORRRRR… ("oh here we go…") the Shinarians coming to Earth a few thousand years ago, introducing their culture to the native Chinese, and those people carrying on the Shinarian's ways as their own. Think about it…"
"Boy, Zoda, that is just fascinating, and might have some ground to stand on, except for just a few tiny, little, insignificant hiccups", Jody says, ready to bust his theory to shreds. "Do you know how old these little guys live to be?"
"Not… off the top of my head", Zoda says while trying to think of it.
"The average lifespan of a Shinarian is about 250 earth years. There are probably still living people here who saw the first Chinese crew land here with their own eyes."
"Ah, that's probably just the story their government told them to tell. You gotta see what they don't want you to know about."
"Oh, so you weren't looking for a debate, you just wanted to talk at me. Got it", Jody says back. "I'm gonna go over here with James and Gazelle now, and you can just keep your little stories to yourself", she says as she walks away from him.
Zoda sighs as shakes his head. "They already got to her…"
Meanwhile, Gazelle walks over to the table and examines the mahjong tiles. He doesn't speak any Chinese, but he is interested in some of their culture. "Mahjong?", he asks one of the guys as he comes back from picking up the thrown tiles.
He eagerly nods, and holds up three fingers. Gazelle sees the other chairs at the table and reasons that it's likely a three-player game. "Ohhhh, ok. I do wanna learn it sometime", Gazelle says, a little sheepishly.
The Shinarian can't understand him, but he does offer Gazelle a chair, and offers to teach him how to play. Gazelle gets quite a bit excited at the prospect, and turns to James. "Hey, do I have time to learn how to play?"
"Depends on how long it takes to make the map", he tells Gazelle. He turns back to the man at the counter and asks into his translator, "how long will it take?". Before he can even finish speaking, the female Shinarian runs out from the backroom and sets the map on the counter, and even gives it a little fanfare to show how good of a job she did.
James looks at the map, a little confused and disappointed at the fact that it's just a drawn image of the planet from space, and not at all what he was looking for. However, before he can voice his concerns about it, the woman touches the map with two fingers and pulls them in opposite directions. Shockingly, the paper map reacts like a touch screen and zooms in to show a more detailed version of the planet's surface.
James's eyes go wide as he sees the detail in this map, as he calls the others over to come see it. They all marvel as the map shows everything on the planet's surface: rivers, beaches, jungles. And then when she pulls her fingers down on the map, a holographic project of the map juts upwards to show the heights of mountain ranges in 3D. "That's incredible…", James says to himself as he looks at this stunning map, to which the Shinarians look like they're beaming with pride.
The one at the counter points at the price listings on the wall again. James snaps out of his trance at looking over this map and realizes he needs to pay for it. He presses his thumb up to the register and a little jingle plays, signifying that the job has been done. He gets a notification that the total cost is around 300,000 space credits, which is a good bit of change for a map, even if it is a really good one.
"How did you guys make this?", Zoda says into James's translator, which James doesn't appreciate. The Shiranians all shake their heads no, like they can't reveal their secrets, which is understandable if they make more than a quarter million per map like this. James folds up the map, and puts it in his bag. The counterman shakes James's hand while the other two bow to him, prompting the other three racers to bow back. Even Zoda bows to them, mostly because he doesn't know what secrets they're hiding, and that they may have some hidden powers.
On the way back to the ship, James is awestruck by this map as he keeps looking around and exploring Porix's surface on the map, experimenting with it to see if it has any other features. Even though it's made of a simple piece of paper, and can be folded and stored easily, it has the functionality of a modern, digital map. Unfortunately, he gets a little too into looking at this piece of parchment, and Jody has to push and pull him across the sidewalk to keep him from stepping on some poor Shinarians.
As they're heading back to the ship, Monique comes running out, super excited. "Guys, guys, guys, Jack found something amazing!" The rest of the racers look either surprised or just plain confused.
"Jack… found it?", Zoda asks.
"Like, our Jack? Levin?", James adds.
"Oh, shut up, you jerks, just come with me", Monique replies in a tone that's too happy to be annoyed at them.
"You know we had our comm devices on us, you could've just called us without having to leave the ship, and run all the way here", Gazelle says.
"Eh, I got excited, I don't regret it."
The five of them head back to the Wyvern, and Monique leads them all up to the war room where they've done their research earlier. Jack's sitting there all alone, messing around with the galactic map that Phoenix gave them, just looking at the various stars and galaxies.
"Jack, pull up that thing you found!", Monique says eagerly. Jack snaps to attention and starts looking for Porix again, as his wandering on the map has taken him far away from their current destination. "So, Jack said that he was feeling like a burden, so I asked him what he could do to fix that. He wanted to find a way to help without having to put himself in the line of fire again. So I told him the only thing we could do while you guys were out was look at the map and maybe find some new destinations for where the other racers might be. So we started looking at the map and he touched Porix to get his starting point, and then he found…", Monique says as she gestures to Jack to continue her story.
"Hang on, I'm still looking for it."
There's an awkward silence as he can't seem to find the planet. "This would've looked so cool if you found it when I gave you the lead", Monique laments.
"Just zoom the map all the way out and find the green dots. There's only three of them", James says, a little amused by all this.
Jack nods, and zooms all the way out, finding the green dot that correlates to Porix. Then, he touches the green dot, and Porix's information comes up. "So, when I was looking through here, I found two long strings of numbers, and Monique told me they were coordinates. I'm guessing one of them is where the planet is in the galaxy, but do you think the other one might be where Beastman is on the planet?"
James walks up to the map and pulls up his comm to cross-reference the data on here with the data he already has about the planet. "Mmmmmm, that first one is the planet's galactic address, so if that's the case, then if we go down here… the latitude's far up enough to match that number… you've gotta be kidding me, those ARE coordinates. Beastman's right there!", James says pointing at the spot where the coordinates line up.
"Of course we find the coordinates on the last racer we have this information on", Zoda says with his arms crossed, just a little bit miffed.
"If you really think about it, we didn't need coordinates for the other two", Gazelle adds. "We knew Dr. Stewart was on the space station over Zorok, and Don Genie took Jack and James to Antonio."
"Now, hang on, guys", Jack says in a low tone, not wanting to ruin the moment. "I'm not sure how useful this information actually is."
"What're you talking about?", Jody asks. "You saved us the time of searching a literal entire planet. Any lead is a good lead, and this is a great lead."
"Well, there's also a time down below it. I guess that's when alternate us found Beastman. All we really know from this is that he'll be right here… in four weeks."
James thinks for a moment after Jack shows them the time. "It might still be worth going there right away. Remember what Zoda said before: he's most likely there to clear out the area of wild creatures, in order to make room for a base here. If he's doing that, he's not just gonna be wandering all over the planet, all willy-nilly; he's doing a job. He's had enough time to get sent here to start his mission, and these kinds of jobs take a good while, at least four weeks apparently. I say we all head down there, search for Beastman in this area, and if we can't find him in a few days, we'll spend the next three and a half weeks looking into leads about other racers, before coming back at this date to collect him. Good job, Jack. This is really helpful", James says, trying to sound genuine.
"Thanks, I guess. I just don't know if…"
"No", James says sternly, trying to put a lot of emphasis on what he's saying. "This is genuinely great intel, and I wish I had found this information myself back when we first started this mission. You did good, and I want to hear you admit that."
"I… um… I did good."
"Not bad, we'll work on it. Alright, guys. Let's get ready. We're heading down to Porix tonight."
