"How can this place afford to stay in business?" asked Davy. "The people are eating the food and not paying for it!"
"Food is free on this world." said Jahv, a little surprised at the question. "Any food product can be replicated easily, and the machines don't cost too much."
Keith watched an alien that looked something like an overgrown slug hovering over one row of food. "Yeah, but how clean is the food?" he asked, slightly nauseated.
"The lights above the rows of food also emit a sterilization beam. Harmless to sentient beings, but it instantly kills any bacteria or foreign objects in the food."
Keith shrugged. "Well, that answers my question. Let's eat! What do we do?"
Jahv smiled. "Just pick up a tray, and help yourself. Stay out of aisle three, though. Most of that would probably be poisonous to you."
The boys began to wander through the aisles, Jahv popping samples along the way. But Davy and Keith were more hesitant. Nothing at all looked the least bit familiar, and a lot of the food looked pretty horrible. Finally Davy thought he saw something edible. There was a tray with what looked, at least, like large bunches of red grapes. He grabbed about half a dozen and popped them in his mouth.
And instantly regretted it. The second he bit down, he felt like somebody had opened his mouth and cut loose with a flamethrower after dousing the entire interior with cinnamon and pepper sauce. His eyes watered to the point where he could hardly see. Searing, stinging pain went through the inside of his mouth and tongue. He didn't dare swallow. Finally, he knelt under the countertop and spit, and then tried to catch his breath. "What the heck were those!?" he sputtered.
"Flamespice Berries." explained Jahv. "Of course, that's only a rough translation."
"Based on the way Davy's eyes are watering, I'd say a pretty good one, though!" proclaimed Keith, trying not to giggle.
"So much for lunch." said Jahv. "What else would you like to see here?"
"Besides a large glass of water?" wheezed Davy.
"This from the kid that puts Tobasco sauce on his pizza." snorted Keith. "What've you got in the way of music stores? Or arcades? Or just plain entertainment?"
Jahv grinned. "Okay, let's take those in order. Come on."
Jahv led the two boys through the wide, winding corridors of the Mall. A few minutes later, they came across an apparent music store. The layout wasn't too dissimilar from a music store on Earth. Racks with alien lettering and packaged rectangles of what looked like transparent circuit boards were throughout the stores. Jahv was prodding through the racks already, and pulled out one of the long rectangles. "This is one of my favorite musicians."
"What's his, her, or its name?" asked Keith.
Jahv made a sound with his mouth that sounded like a cross between a fart and a sneeze.
"With that, I'm not sure I want to hear the music." remarked Keith.
"Aw, come on, where's your spirit of adventure?" countered Davy. "Any way we can get a demonstration?"
There was a small black button on the back of the package. Jahv pushed it. And what sounded like a three-ton pig screaming bellowed across the music store. No one even looked up. Three screams later, the «demo» halted.
"That's — it?" asked Davy, trying to be polite.
Keith wasn't as diplomatic. "What the hell was that? And you gripe about our heavy metal?"
"This is very soothing to the antennae!" replied Jahv.
Davy managed a slight grin, Keith rolled his eyes, and the three boys left the store. Keith expressed interest in whatever sort of arcade the Mall might have, and Jahv said he knew of one. On the way there, however, they passed a toy store. Davy decided he wanted to have a look. Jahv grinned, and Keith just shrugged.
The first thing Davy noticed was a huge, chrome-plated, futuristic rifle that looked like it was right out of Star Wars or Star Trek — but a whole lot better made than any toy he had ever seen on Earth. He picked it up and pulled the trigger, initially planning to make a "Zap!" noise with his mouth, but he was spared the trouble when a loud zapping noise not only burst forth from the rifle, but so did a short burst of light that whipped out of the store, into the mall, and blew a few chunks out of the wall across the way.
"Jeez!" said Keith, flinching. "Put that thing down! Cripes, you call that a toy?"
Jahv inspected the device. "Must be a fresh power pack or something. Of course, the warning label DOES say it's not for indoor use."
Davy was still exploring. He saw a large action figure that looked like a futuristic soldier on display. It stood about a foot tall, and was outfitted in armor and a fancy helmet. Davy picked it up.
The figure moved to turn its entire upper body to face Davy, and raised its arm to raise the visor on its helmet. The face beneath it, relatively human in appearance except for being blue, scowled and said, "Listen, sport, unless you're planning to buy me, and I'm not scanning a cred-card on you, don't handle the merchandise, all right? Now put me down!"
"I'm sorry, I — " stammered Davy. Keith came over and extracted the figure from Davy's hand and set it back on its display pedestal. "Just as well, Davy." he said. "Ever since I saw the movie 'Small Soldiers', I've been a little worried about army-like action figures with too much attitude."
The threesome headed out of the toy store, and shortly came to the arcade. Instead of machines, however, there were several dozen booths set up throughout the place. "This is a good one," said Jahv, pointing to one. "It's called Swamp Hunt. Come on."
"How the heck did you ever recognize our arcade machines?" asked Davy, as the three entered the darkened booth. "This is nothing like them."
Jahv grinned. "History readers. Our arcade machines, or simulators, were once on flat display screens, the way yours are now."
"So, is this some sort of virtual reality game, or something?" asked Keith.
"More like the holocron." said Jahv. "Which I suppose is something like virtual reality." Jahv pressed a small glowing button on the wall of the booth. Instantly he, Davy, and Keith were dressed in camouflage vests, trousers, and boots, and carrying blaster rifles not too dissimilar from the toy Davy had been playing with. There were dense trees all around them, and their feet were sunk in what looked like about six inches of swamp muck.
"Ya wanna tell us what the objective of the game is?" asked Keith.
"We're hunting an ancient prehistoric serpent." said Jahv. "We're on the clock, too. If we don't find it in five cycles, about seven of your minutes, I think, the game shuts down and we get a zero score."
"Prehistoric serpent." muttered Keith. "Great — just what I need — another dinosaur after messing with that thing in the lake."
The three boys made their way through the dense jungle. A few minutes later, they heard a nearby snapping of twigs. They readied their weapons, and a fierce — blue, five-foot-tall chipmunk sauntered through the bushes towards them. The cartoonish creature had a surprised look on his face when he saw the three boys. "Oh! I'm dweadfully sowwy. I seem to have gotten wost. Which way is the Flarney's Adventure Game Booth?"
Davy started laughing, Keith just shook his head, and Jahv looked mildly annoyed. "Five booths down to your right."
The chipmunk bowed politely and said "Thank you.", and left.
"That's the problem with running a holographic program inside a holocron." remarked Jahv, mostly under his breath to himself. "Sometimes you get crossed programs."
Davy finally stopped giggling. "I think that sort of built up our adventure levels for a while. There anything in this Mall that'll let us unclench a bit?"
Jahv, shutting down the simulator game, thought for a second. "There's a health club with a sort of natural environment sauna."
"They'd let kids into that?" asked Keith.
Jahv grinned. "You forgot where you are. This is a holocron program, remember? We can go where we please."
Keith shrugged. "Works for me." Davy nodded his agreement and the three boys headed off.
The health club was at once familiar and bizarre. There were aerobic workouts in progress, although some of the participants weren't entirely humanoid. One of the individuals (it was impossible to determine gender) looked like a twelve-foot-long, very thick snake, who kept coiling, uncoiling, and then coiling her body in the opposite direction in rhythm to some upbeat music that certainly sounded better than what Jahv had played for them in the music store.
There was a weight room, and one muscular individual with four arms was using two sets of huge weights, first pressing one set, then the other. Running on a nearby treadmill, if it could be called running, was what looked vaguely like a large octopus.