After the catastrophe on Flipper and a sketchy crash-landing on one of the disasterpads on Eros, @willisinspace was more than happy to lend me some of the flamingos and a door to use as a sled. As it turns out, steering a flock of mechanical flamingos isn't terribly difficult, although harder than piloting an i35.

  What I like about Las Vegastroid is that it's the kind of city where they don’t make fun of you for riding into town in your underwear on a sled being pulled by a team of mechanical flamingos. The opposite, in fact. I rode through the flashy streets of Las Vegastroid to people taking pictures and cheering, while I waved like a knight returning to my kingdom after fighting off the dragon that was terrorizing the countryside.

  Am I proud of the fact that a few months later, Las Vegastroid started to have flamingo chariot races? You bet your ass I am.

  My lack of pants wasn't the real problem. The little electrical storm I had with the particle reclamation unit had not only fried my ocular sensors, it had knocked out my communications and a number of other functions that I took for granted. The ARM was super resilient. The scanner and navigation system was working fine from what I could tell, but a number of my biotics were offline, presenting nuisances.

  I couldn't enhance my hearing, taste, or smell. I doubted that I had all my repair nanobots. As a Vanquisher, repair rather than reanimation was the way to go, but even if some of the nanobots had survived, there was little I thought they could do without replacement parts. Connecting a dead wire to a dead circuit doesn't really get you anywhere.

  My body itself felt almost like it was unplugged. My oxygen and chemical release regulation wasn't working, making me more susceptible to spikes. Good for my authenticity. Bad for dangerous missions. My muscles weren't receiving their normal little boosts either, so I felt slower, and I probably was slower.

  I needed to find a biotech or a communications relay, or just ask around after The Pharaoh. I had no doubt @bitchfrog could fix me up if I could locate my ship. And as a thank you, I would sell her to the human traders. What a great gig. My crew knew to come here, but I knew also that they would likely be pursued when the ports were shut down.

  My hope was that Itokawan patrols were like, "Hey you! Stop. We mean it. Stop!" And then chased them more for show than to actually catch them. "Ha ha ha. Just kidding. Come back soon."

  I let Sango ride atop my shoulder, perched on the leather jacket he seemed to love, not caring if he added some texturizing claw marks to the electrical burns. He was mesmerized by the clattering sound and flittering movements of the flamingos, their feet tapping against the paved streets as they dragged me along.

  Once we got through the outskirts and hit the Las Vegastroid main strip, with its theme parks of casinos, hotels, shops, theaters, and restaurants, I decided to pull over and wander by foot. The scraping of the door against the street was starting to annoy my human ears anyway.

  I tugged at the makeshift reigns of my sled, pulling at the lead pair of flamingos, whom I had named "Rufus" and "Doofus."

  "Woah!" I hollered at them.

  We were coming up on an Egyptian themed pyramid structure at the end of the strip. If we could park The Pharaoh in front, it would fit perfectly and people probably wouldn't even realize it was a real functioning ship. Not that it mattered now.

  The flamingos ignored me.

  I pulled again. I hollered again. "Rufus! Stop being such a Doofus!"

  Machines. They do what they are supposed to do, what they are programmed to do. These were supposed to wander around like flamingos, not pull a sled. I had hacked them a little bit, but in my damaged state it wasn't my best work. It's kind of a wonder that I got them to do pull the sled in the first place.

  So I did the only thing I could. I jumped off, watching them continue to run for about 20 yards before they slowed down and did flamingo-ish things, like stand there on one foot staring absently at the world around them. They didn't seem to care that they were still tethered together, and tethered to the bent door from the ship. Machines.

  Eros was more than just Las Vegastroid, with five cities and a few dozen minor settlements, but this was still the heart of Eros. Las Vegastroid was its largest and most popular city, full of gambling, entertainment, and love.

  The Las Vegastroid of Eros had never been able to take on the monicker of its Earth counterpart, "Sin City," because when the singularity occurred in EY2052 at a lab on the space station Genesis, they quickly started calling the space station "Sin City" after the singularity. I think "Sin Station" would have been much more accurate, but whatever. I wasn't there to slap them across the face.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I know what you're thinking. Does @kittyboy believe the singularity has occurred. What if I don't believe it has? What if I think that's just a bunch of hype?

  Fine. Whatever. We don't need to debate space politics.

  But it's hard to argue that some type of event horizon didn't occur, regardless of what we call it. We did start a new calendar, after all, and all of us aiways wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fundamental breakthroughs on Genesis.

  Fun fact. I hear that it wasn't called "Genesis" until after the breakthrough that sparked our biotic journey of immortality. It was Laika Space Station, named after the dog that was the first living creature in space, from Earth (you tell me there aren't other living creatures out there somewhere). Laika was a research station, mostly for robotics and artificial intelligence, with a massive number of super computers that benefitted from the cold of space. I really want to see that space station someday.

  But whatever. We were on Las Vegastroid. Since they couldn't call it "Sin City," they called it "The Jungle."

  I believe that was just so they could blast the Guns N' Roses song "Welcome to the Jungle" at every opportunity. Walking around Las Vegastroid, you mostly heard that or "Love Shack."

  Sango and I took in the sights around us, starting with the replica of the Egyptian pyramid of Giza, with its "ancient and amazing" entertainment and a casino floor lined with slot machines. A holographic display told me more than enough to know that I would not find a biotech medic there but that I could lose a lot of qcoins and probably have a decent time doing it.

  That described a lot of places nearby. Welcome to "The Jungle."

  How would I summarize Las Vegastroid?

  It was like every world wonder or interesting historical stereotype from Earth had been teleported here to Las Vegastroid, with a sprinkle of "give me your money" added on top. In about three hours, assuming I didn't stop to dilly dally in any of them, I could survey Mount Rushmore, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus, the Temple of Artemis, Taj Mahal, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandra, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, the Colosseum, and Burj Khalifa.

  That was just part of the historical district and its ancient civilizations. Las Vegastroid featured numerous districts with themes ranging from climate biomes, fictional settings from movies and television, notions of the afterlife, fantasy creatures, you name it.

  Want to gamble in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies? Just head on over to the Dead Hand district, but be sure to wear clothes you don't care about too much.

  It occurred to me that if I was going to spread a zombie virus like zos612, the Dead Hand district would be a great place to do it. I made a note of that. I could report that as a watch spot to the Extrovert Starmada and its network of scouts and spies.

  As much as I wanted to roam around Las Vegastroid and explore the districts, now was not the time. Perhaps when we had finished our main quest, the Extrovert Starmada would let me and the crew have shore leave here on Eros, but what I needed right now was a clinic.

  There were two clinics nearby: Love Hurts and Roll of the Dice. The latter is not to be confused with Playing with Fire or Gamble with Your Life. Those were places nearby where one could suffer serious injury and then be in need of a clinic, but they weren't actual clinics. They did have emergency medical, which is why the popped up on the map when I ran a search, but it was just for serious burns, lacerations, or dismemberment.

  Roll of the Dice, while I'm sure someone thought was a funny pun, didn't give me much confidence despite 4.7 out of 5.0 stars in their reviews.

  "Love Hurts it is," I said to Sango, plotting my route. My path to the clinic would take me through the Egyptian pyramid, past the Greek Colosseum, and then Love Hurts should be just down the street on the right hand side across from a statue of Aphrodite.

  I was excited to go through the pyramid, but I had to remind myself not to get distracted. That's exactly what "they" wanted. It was hard to get anywhere in Las Vegastroid without going through one of the many hotels and casinos, lined with restaurants and shops. In my current condition, as much as the gambling and entertainment might interest me, I mainly had to stop myself from renting a hotel room to go to sleep.

  I slapped myself across the face and headed toward the pyramid.

  The streets were crowded with tourists, but at this time of day most were eating their morning breakfast or starting a day at one of the many poolside bars, so I was able to make decent time. I wished I could just lay under the fake sun, in the fake sky, and sleep by the pool.

  "Did you know Egyptians worshipped cats?" a display announced as Sango and I entered the pyramid, leaving the false skies to enter the dark inner sanctum of the pyramid. "Killing a cat was punishable by death, and some wealthy Egyptians even mummified their cats to keep them with them in the afterlife. On your right, you will find the statue of Bastet, the cat goddess."

  The Solar Historical Society had a huge presence in Las Vegastroid, mainly lobbying to infuse all the entertainment with a bit of education. I approved.

  "No cat killing," I said to Sango. "We should stay here, you and I. People will appreciate us. Maybe we could even be worshipped." I reached up and ruffled his little head.

  Then I saw the mummies strangle someone who was trying to flee the casino floor. I didn't get much of a look at them. One mummy had grabbed them by the neck while the others used their mummy wrappings to mummify their new prisoner and haul them away.

  Everyone knows not to mess around in a casino, or so I thought.

  "Or we just run to the clinic," I added.