Jim Cargan: Prospector, Weekend Smuggler

[Artifacticals]

Jim’s work was all done
sometime around a quarter to one
The chop shop’s boys had told
Slick Jackson’s loot could be sold
and so the Cryer shareholders won.

Alloys and ammo were pricey
And acquiring them was dicey
But on Novi, they were free
like they came off a tree
and how Jim got them was spicy.

Jim saw the Titanic mooring
and thought its pilot quite alluring
But she was on the clock
even with her ship in the dock
And so maidenless he kept on enduring.

Hi, this is Slick
and I’m going to make this quick
You see, Jim’s a hell of a guy
And does that man ever try
But the cops might make those charges stick.

That Titanic flying girl?
If he could, he’d make her toes curl
but he’s a, you know what, I’m hijacking this all the way.

Jim looked unamused at Slick as he finished laughing at his own (stupid) joke. “It isn’t funny. I shower.” Slick cackled yet again. “No, she isn’t worth it. She thinks she’s out of your league because she has a job she has to report to the taxman. You’re a freelance scrap miner, you may as well be a Junker, the fringe sometimes piratical scrapper kind, to her. Oh, and they’re on your ass for smuggling already.”

A great distance away, on Manhattan, a police officer sniggered for no reason in the privacy of his one-man patrol car.

“He just had to announce it where she could hear it, didn’t he.” “If he did it just to cockblock you, I wouldn’t be surprised. Then again, considering where you work, and what you do, it would be more surprising for you to be clean.”

“Look, Slick, tell me straight. How the hell is a pirate like you so well-spoken, but then we have people with a decade of education and training talking like they’re Houston street gang kids?” “Oh, right.”

Slick then adopted the most shockingly adolescent mindset one might expect from an adrenaline junkie pirate and got ready to spend the rest of the night making jokes at the expense of Jim’s love life, with increasingly lewd and crude hand gestures to describe what Jim was most assuredly not getting, to the amusement of the other patrons of the local spekeze. Jim’s regret at having asked that question was as sharp as it was immediate. And then

Titanic lady walked into the bar
and bestowed upon Slick a scar
With sharp nails did she rock
and on Jim’s door was a sock
The man’s face was as bright as a star

Wait what no way did Jim score
That lady is no whore
He was like a lovesick puppy
And she an uncomfortable yuppie
Also on Novi, Jim has no door.

Go to hell, Slick
You can suck my dick
She I totally did bang
And you can say oh dang,
Yet to my story I shall stick

Gross immaturity won the day
Or so the observers would say
Jim and Slick gave each other grief
But their arguments would be brief
For the bartender said “no way”.

Jim’s Ragnar was off the stack
For scrap did Novi lack
And the Titanic was almost ready to launch.
The suits partnership appeared quite staunch.
And Titanic lady waved back.