Do you remember any specifics from it? There has to be more cringe shit than just Fonald Plump.
I had made a post with these quotes when we were on reddit (I still have my notes so I'll paste them here). Edit: Looking back on these quotes, I think my post was about the stupidity of him hamfisting contemporary nonsense like Abbot and Costello and selfies into a book set way into the future.
Real Starship Repo quotes:
Page 76:
"Okay, sweetie," First said to the station interface challenging her credentials on the screen of her deck. "Let's play peekaboo." She touched off a blink cracker program that hit the interface's credentialing system with hundreds of thousands of log-in attempts per second. With each attempt, the program watched to see how long it took before the rejection command was sent. The longer it took, the more log-in characters in the sequence were correct.
Any competent IT admin would have security measure in place to recognize the sudden, impossibly high spike in log-in attempts, but her program had a clever, and expensive, caveat. It reset the log-in counter with each hit. The system didn't remember from one attempt to the next until it was too late. Her cracker repeated the process more than three million times until it worked out the correct sequence and granted her access.
"Peekaboo!" First said just as the rest of the crew arrived.
Page 91:
"Aah!" First corrected. "Leave the Skeksis alone. She's not bothering you," First said. Before she'd left PCB, The Dark Crystal and other Jim Henson productions had come back into vogue once the Assembly archive had opened and mankind learned he'd actually been an alien refugee trapped on twentieth-century Earth after a navigation malfunction. He and David Bowie crash-landed on the same ship.
Page 109:
"Well, I'd prefer to keep control over my 'openings,' if you don't mind," First said. "Have you met any early-twenties human males? They are the worst creatures in the entire universe. Not the most dangerous or the most cunning. Just. The. Worst. They're half the reason I'm out here, because aside from a handful of fetish weirdos, nobody is staring at me like I'm a piece of meat."
Page 113:
She stared, openmouthed, at the gossamer rings laid out like the ridges of a platinum record glinting in the sun, and on down to the crescent pearl of Mulos Minor at the center. It was breathtaking in every sense of the word.
That'd make one hell of an album cover, First thought.
Something - no, First corrected herself, someone - bumped into her from behind.
"Oh. My. Lords!" The red, segmented being exclaimed at First's face. "Your human cosplay is incredible!"
"Um, thanks?"
"The face, the skin tones, it must have taken forever!"
"About eighteen years, actually," First said. "But my parents helped some."
"Wow! Can I get a selfie?"
I'd prefer if you - "
Flash!
"Right."
"Thank you sooo much," the red alien in the absurdly long Wolverines onesie said as they inch-wormed away. "My followers will love this. You're amazing."
Page 171:
Cyborgs felt different, somehow. Jrill had synthetic eyes as part of the standard kit the Turemok military had outfitted her with after basic training. But Loritt could still tell Jrill was a Turemok just by looking at her. So much of Vitle had been replaced with machinery, Loritt had no idea what species the man had started life as. Did he have three legs at birth, or was that a design concession? Somewhere, he'd rolled straight across a line, probably without even recognizing it was even there.
Was it bigotry to think so?
Page 264:
Loritt and the stylist shared a laugh.
"All right, all right. A real Abbot and Costello you two are, " First said. "How will you know what my hair is supposed to look like when you're done?"
"Actually, I've brought samples," Loritt set down his handheld and pressed an icon. Holographic images appeared of Audrey Hepburn, Raquel Welch, Angelina Jolie, and half a dozen other starlets from centuries past that were only now being carried to this part of space by long-forgotten radio waves.
The stylist leaned in to inspect the gently rotating images with the deliberate, attentive eye of an artist.
"There's less length here to work with than many of these examples." They ran First's hair through their six-digit hands, ending in suction cups. "However, I think I can capture the basics. Frame the face, accentuate the natural wave of the material, a new color...yes, we can accommodate your needs."
Forgot which page:
Perched atop it sat a larger-than-life statue of the already generously proportioned Fonald Plump. Everything but the fingers, they seemed on the stubby side. Like a fistful of baby carrots. First felt the bile rise in her stomach.
"Who puts a statue of themselves in their own entryway?" she marveled. "I mean, this place is already festooned with PLUMP branding. How much hungrier for self-aggrandizement can one man be?"
"Plump is something of a collection of insatiable appetites. And incidentally, that's not a statue."
First was about to ask what he meant when the statue sprang to life, answering her question before it escaped.
"Welcome, guests, to the most exclusive, most macro gaming experience in the galaxy! It's amazing, believe me, believe me. You're in for a real treat; everyone says so. You're the special people. You've floated to the top, and you get to live it up with your humble host, me, Fonald Plump."
