Huj was making good headway along the coast, the boat clipped and cut the tide like a baker might dispatch with an overload of frosting. Next to him was a gasgalt, reorientating in so many ways you couldn’t count them, and next to that perched Compolingi, The Eternally Hungry.

Compolingi was wires here and wires there, they went around this and over bumps and explored imperfections like a curious guppy. Huj sent one of his arms to the left and the boat veered but not fast enough so he did it again, this time more sternly. Along the bank, where the water met the road, an inlet came into view and that inlet was much larger than an inlet and it was called Useless Bay. Huj spun his right arm in a figure eight and Compolingi parked the boat in Useless Bay.

On land, Compolingi was hauled to shore, wires sprawling and all. Huj did not dare make use of the dock: the planks needed a good lesson in order and he wouldn’t trust it to hold his weight in debt, let alone fifteen tons of information.

That was Huj, the lugger of information – by the gram, by the pound, or perhaps you prefer your data in widgeys? If it sits and bubbles with bits, Huj was the man to get it from and to.

Such a task – for there is much information in this galaxy and its intelligent occupants are careless with where they put it – cannot be done by machines of flesh. No one has a need for information that wobbles, and all flesh does is squirm and slosh and shake when put into action. Huj therefore gains the trust of his customers by piping it into Compolingi, The Eternally Hungry.

To take Compolingi to a doctor would be to carry a cut of side-walk into a Noof Festival: you’d be left with fees in the ears.

Her apparatus was of two parts: a lower and an upper, which communicated through an electromagnetic field of Eden, that is, microcosmic hums produced by the folding of the end of the universe back into its beginning, this happening at a rate of one-hundred folds a second. The lower part purely dealt with odd information, anything that couldn’t be divided in two even halves. For the even pieces, why it was the upper part that handled those and it split whatever it was given until there was just a puddle of quarks and after it finished that it counted them all up and remembered that number, throwing the quarks out.

Through this process, Compolingi could store the entire universe and much more. In fact, if bored, it spent time storing itself – universe and all – into itself again. Huj did not know how many copies of Compolingi were inside Compolingi. He was unsure if Compolingi knew either.

Huj and Compolingi took a path that lead from the shore through some tight brush. The overgrowth frustrated Huj, for it meant that this planet lacked Ordinator Borgs. The path took them up two hills and down one, the whole time they were held well by fronds. When they finally broke from the brush Huj could tell they were at a village for there were houses about and citizens milling. Through whispers in the ear, Compolingi guided Huj to a building. It was red all over except for the door of which there was none. The entire structure was inverted, the walls on the inside and the contents on the outside. A character set in an armchair, smoking a pipe as long as a sapling, a lamp provided unnecessary light on the paper in his hand, for it was still daylight and the character was on the lawn.

“Is that the target?” said Huj to Compolingi. Compolingi buzzed in confirmation.

Huj stepped forward and raised an arm: “Ho there!”

The character in the armchair seemed to not notice, perhaps absorbed in the contents of the paper. Huj walked close enough to smell the age of the fabric of the seat.

“Hello and hello.” said Huj.

In all directions was the paper flung and the character sprung to life as if they’d been riding an unpleasant resurrection. “Good goodness! Don’t you knock before entering a man’s domain? Who are you and where are you? I’m blind as a bat but I kick like a spindlewab doused in gorg!” Three kicks and a wind-up punch hit the air in front.

“Huj, is the name and huck is the business.” Huj bowed deeply then deftly reached into his pocket and with a stroke of the fingers appeared a small card which said, Sergeant Huj’s Huck Lugging. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ll be out of your house quicker than a quark flip. I have a delivery for one,” Huj looked at his arm where it had something written on it, “for one Ooster Demunds.”

Ooster Demunds had eighteen eyes and these he had placed all around his head except where his mouth was, which was large enough to make him completely blind in one direction. He turned his head a little and then saw Huj now and exclaimed.

“Ah, yes, there you are – why didn’t you say something.” He took the card from Huj’s hand and read it as if it was a sermon he had to recite tomorrow. “What’s this then?”

“Huck stands for ‘Hudge Muck’, and muck, as I’m sure you are aware, is me and you.”

“I beg your pardon!” Every eyebrow on Ooster scowled, for he’d never been called mucky in his life and no one got past Dr. Demunds with an insult, not the least without a good tustling to make sure it didn’t happen twice.

Huj either didn’t care or didn’t notice his customer was upset. “I’ve got so much muck that if I didn’t keep it safe in here,” he patted Compolingi’s case, “why I’d be leaving blackholes everywhere like a wet hound wrecks a fresh carpet. Compolingi and I have a delivery for you – a message – from someone across the stars. The contents, of course, I do not know, for I encrypt them with keys too small to see, but if you’d just put an auditorial or perceptive organ to this tube here and I can deliver it to your nervous system?”

Ooster stood there and said nothing. But he was fuming, that was certain.

“A painless procedure I can assure you. As I see you are a species of sensors many, I apologize a hundred times and once more that I can only provide a single output channel. Expenses, expenses, expenses. You know?”

Ooster spat on Compolingi, turned, and began walking towards the interior of his house, which was a column of walls and a roof.

“Hey!” called Huj, “Where are you going?”

“Outside!” I need some air. And Ooster opened a door in the wall which Huj hadn’t noticed because it was also red, and squeezed himself into the cluster of walls. Huj frowned and looked down at the card in his hand. He turned it over twice, and rubbed his thumb along it as if to take a smudge off glass. He cocked his head to his shoulder and asked Compolingi what they should do.

“Not to worry, sir. At times, I believe, there are creatures in this galaxy to which information only flows in one direction. It’s always out from their internal processing and never in. It can be astoundingly hard to get even one bit past their filters. I even met a lady who was so clogged up cognitively that information couldn’t come within a foot of her without being pushed right back.”

Huj looked down at his feet and nodded.

“Here’s what I say we do. I, as you know well, contain a complete copy of this universe ten times over – you and myself and our friend Dr. Demonds included. Those copies, again, I have backed up inside other universes that I have synthesized. Oh much larger than this one so that it fits two of ours inside a neutron star alone. All these backups I have parsed while you chatted to our Dr. Demunds and found not one of them responded any differently whether you knocked at his door before entering, or if you came with ten tons of gafficks in tow. He’s a stubborn entity it would appear.”

Huj’s shoulders were tiring. He set Compolingi on the floor in front of the armchair and took a seat himself. He ran his hand along the arm and felt the fabric, wondering what process created such a sensation. He looked at Compolingi and nodded, “I have never – never, turned a customer down. Failure is for fathers, and I have refrained from having offspring for that exact reason: I don’t fail. Compolingi. I have never failed.”

“And to that, sir, I am aware aplenty. Please, rest a while and spare your words, for I have already had this conversation with you twelve times within the universes within my universes within me. It ends well and you need not worry.”

Huj opened his mouth and then closed it. Huj nodded. Huj made bubbles with his cheeks and then let them fall. He ran a hand through his hair, then closed his eyes and settled deeper into the armchair. “Okay.”

At this, Compolingi buzzed so fast he couldn’t been seen in one place and looked like a smear. Some pops came out, some pings came out, these followed by prangs. They made a melody, but if you chased it too long it didn’t follow. Then all at once it stopped and Compolingi’s electric purr left.

“Is it done?” asked Huj.

“It is done.” said Compolingi.