
Titus McWorther has spent a century building his perfect retirement on a secluded, self‑sustaining world—a tiny planetoid tucked behind a dark nebula, complete with custom gravity, lush soil and a private atmosphere. Now, after two tranquil years, he decides the only thing missing is a whimsical luxury: an automatic bath‑unit with a back‑scrubbing attachment and toy‑boat docks, and he sends a precise order to the galaxy’s biggest supplier.
But the interstellar courier network is a tangled web, and his request collides with a diplomatic missive from the distant planet Gauyuth‑VI. The two messages become entangled, and a bureaucratic clerk in the Western Cluster’s aid office mistakenly treats the private order as a high‑priority political agreement. As officials scramble to honor what they think is a treaty, the quiet retirement of a solitary potentate is suddenly thrust into the middle of interstellar politics, promising a cascade of unintended complications.
Language
en
Duration
~45 minutes (43K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2019-11-29
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1920–1976
A New Orleans journalist turned science-fiction writer, he became known for smart, unsettling stories about warped perception and artificial worlds. His best-known novel, Simulacron-3, helped set the template for later virtual-reality fiction.
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