"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.
Jahv led Keith and Davy towards the back, to a door with more alien script on it, and a digital display sign with more alien script in illuminated green. "Good, it's unoccupied." remarked Jahv.
The door slid open to reveal a room about the size of a walk-in closet. "This is the sauna?" asked Davy.
"No," said Jahv, "this is where you two leave your clothes. They're not permitted in the sauna."
Keith shrugged and pulled off his shorts and removed his sandals, and Davy dispensed with his overalls. Then they went through a second sliding door.
Steam emerged from a large region across the floor. That region, however, was not steaming water. It was bubbling, dark olive green mud. "You're kidding, right?" said Davy hesitantly. "Green mud?"
"It's very therapeutic." remarked Jahv. "Gets all the stress out of your system."
"How deep is it?" asked Keith, looking intrigued.
"About two feet." explained Jahv. "There are seating areas within the mud, and of course the walkway around the perimeter, for those…" he glanced at Davy, "reluctant souls who might only wish to dip their feet in or something."
"Heck with that!" retorted Keith, who had backed up several feet into the short corridor which led to the small room where they had left their clothes. He then took a running start and yelled "Cannonball!" He brought his feet up and flew into the green mud, which made a loud SPLORK! noise as Keith hit.
Seconds later, a green-mud-covered Keith popped to the surface. "Yow!" he exclaimed. "This stuff is pretty hot! But that was a blast!"
Jahv had walked down a couple of nearby steps, but was now swimming out towards Keith. Davy was still at the side of the sauna pool. Jahv scowled, somewhat amusedly. "This was more or less your idea, Davy. Are you not going to participate?"
"Heck, he's still getting that 'haunted mud' story out of his mind from where Keyro landed." laughed Keith.
Jahv made his way back to the edge of the sauna pool, and tried splashing some of the mud on Davy. Davy backed up a few steps. "Don't make me come out there and throw you in." said Jahv. "I'm a lot stronger than you are."
Davy frowned, but came closer to the pool. "Well, okay. But I don't want to stumble on the way in. Lend me a hand?"
Jahv stood, came to the top step, and extended a hand to Davy. Davy, catching the young alien completely unawares, hauled Jahv out of the mud, lowered him to the floor, slightly twisted his arm behind him, and then sat down on his back. This, of course, got a fair bit of mud on Davy, but he didn't seem to mind. "Now, Mr. Lot-Stronger-Than-Us-Poor-Humans, here's a little lesson in leverage, and we won't be throwing any more mud in my direction, will we?"
Jahv was giggling. He knew Davy wasn't serious. "Okay, okay! I give! Cousin! Cousin!"
"The word is 'Uncle'." called Keith, who had come over to the edge of the sauna pool to watch the amusement.
Davy let Jahv up, and then jumped into the mud pool in a fair approximation of Keith's cannonball. Jahv himself re-entered, and for the next several minutes, the three boys wrestled around, until the heat and the strain of moving around in the thick mud exhausted them. They headed for the edge of the pool to catch their collective breath and talk.
"Jahv," asked Keith, "that replicator thing you brought with you. Is there anything it can't make?"
"It's actually rather limited." said Jahv. "I'm trying to get it to make machine parts for a project I have in mind. But it's good for some stuff. Mostly small stuff."
"Why, when you have that bottomless backpack, would you even need it?" asked Davy.
"Some of what the fabricator — and for that matter the food replicator — can do is make things we can't carry with us. Perishable items especially. Certain medications, stuff like that. But they have their limits. The food replicator couldn't be used to feed the world, or anything."
"Why not?" asked Keith.
"Power pack would burn out long before then." said Jahv. "Theoretically, the fabricator can make replacement power packs — if I can get it to do that. But they're really not designed for such massive use. It's like — I don't know how to make a comparison that you'd understand."
"Like using one candle to light an entire house?" asked Davy.
Jahv nodded. "Close enough, I guess."
"You mentioned perishable medications." said Keith. "You a doctor or something?"
Jahv giggled. "No. But even kids younger than Keyro have to have some first-aid training to travel in space. And you get more training each year. I can't do surgery or diagnose complicated illnesses or anything. But I can take care of minor injuries and stuff. Space travel may be fairly common where I'm from, but it's never one-hundred-percent safe. We don't take it for granted. Space can be a very dangerous place."
Keith suddenly thought of something. "Hey, how long we been in here?"
"In the mud?" asked Davy.
"No, in this whole holocron thing. Since the lake." replied Keith.
"I think it's been about three hours." remarked Jahv. "I'm still getting used to your time measurements."
Keith cringed. "That makes it late afternoon. I dunno about Davy and Martin, but I need to be getting home."
"Yeah, me too, really." added Davy. "But this has been a blast!"
"Holocron access." said Jahv. The device appeared to be floating on the mud seconds later. "End program."
That put the three boys back in the dome-tent. The mud was completely gone. Their clothes were piled about five feet away from them. Keith and Davy wandered over and redressed. "All that mud just disappeared!" said Keith.