BY MIDDAY KEDPIN SHOKLOP STOOD staring, eye wide, at a beautifully orchestrated splay of coral-and-sand-colored buildings studded with gleaming black glass and shining white tile. Jewel-hued landspeeders and speeder bikes of makes and models Kedpin had only ever seen in holovids hovered in front of the complex, and Kedpin saw famous faces among the impossibly well-dressed beings mingling near the main entrance: Krin Kallibin, the celebrated fathier jockey! And—

“Oh my! Is that…is that Orisha Okum!? She must be the most famous card player in the galaxy!” Kedpin tugged excitedly on the sleeve of a passerby, who huffed irritably and kept walking.

“The Canto Casino Hotel! I made it!” Kedpin shouted, ignoring the well-dressed beings who frowned at him. Sometimes you have to be your own booster rocket: Kedpin recited the Salesbeing’s Saying to himself silently.

The hotel grounds were dotted with gardens that held not only Alderaanian chinar trees, but also beautifully radiant plants that his data card told him were Dagobean brightmoss bushes and tall, luxuriant Kashyyyk orchidferns. Their combined scent was subtle and overpowering all at once. Kedpin’s nose-slits quivered on the crest of a sneeze, but no sneeze came. It was as if his sense of smell were being pleasantly teased. Nothing in the holovids could have possibly prepared him for this.

Kedpin made his way toward the main entrance, marveling at the variety of species around him. Tall creatures with elongated faces, tiny hovering beings, hulking things on plinths. He had only just stepped inside the palatial double doors when a green-faced, scaly little being even shorter than himself and dressed in black and white approached him as if he were a lord.

“Welcome, my good sir, to the Canto Casino Hotel. My name is Altovan and I exist only to serve. What can I do, sir, to make your experience here one of a lifetime?”

Kedpin had never in his life had a living being address him with such deference. Droids, sure, but that was about it. For a moment he just stood there.

“I…oh! My name is Kedpin Shoklop, and I’ve won a two-week all-expenses-paid trip. I’m the VaporTech Vaporator Salesbeing of the Year!”

The little alien’s face scales shimmered happily and he beamed with pleasure at Kedpin’s accomplishment. “Why, that’s wonderful, sir! Warmest congratulations on your accomplishment and welcome to Canto Bight. Please just give me a moment, and I will check on your arrangements, Master…Shoklop, was it?”

“That’s me—but you don’t need to call me Master!”

The green-faced alien smiled as if Kedpin had told a joke, then bowed his head, and led Kedpin to a computer terminal. His scaly little fingers danced over the keys as he spoke to Kedpin. “Your room is ready for you, sir. It looks like the Hero’s Suite has been reserved on your behalf! An excellent choice. If you’d just be so kind as to point out your luggage, I’ll happily have it sent to your room.”

Kedpin felt his hearts sink. “My luggage!” He’d completely forgotten about the business at the Great Arch. “I gave it to someone who said they’d bring it to the hotel, but…well, I think they might have been lying. My…my luggage hasn’t shown up here, has it? Under my name? Kedpin Shoklop?”

The little alien spread his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

Kedpin moaned. What was he going to do? “I can’t believe I gave my luggage to a stranger. I’m an idiot!”

The alien made a soothing noise. “No, no, sir. You are the trusting sort. There’s nothing wrong with that, sir. The galaxy could use a few more kindhearted, trusting beings.”

Kedpin’s breath caught. The opulent lobby was full of guests and casino-goers from a dozen different species coming and going, but Kedpin felt as if he were alone with the little green alien. He smiled. Aside from his mothers, this was the nicest anyone had ever been to him in his life. “Well, thanks. But I still need my personal vaporators. And humidifiers and…” He felt himself growing tense again.

The alien cut him off gently. “Well, with those matters at least, sir, we can perhaps help. While we know of course that no things are quite as satisfactory as one’s own things, we can easily have an array of personal vaporators, humidifiers, and dermal moisturization packages sent to your room.”

It felt like the first real good news Kedpin had been given since arriving in Canto Bight. “You…you can?”

“Of course, sir!” the little alien said, clasping his hands. “Why, we wouldn’t deserve our—if you will forgive me—unparalleled reputation if we didn’t attend to trifles such as this efficiently.”

Kedpin almost couldn’t believe it. “But…Well, I haven’t traveled much, you see, but I’ve stayed at VaporTech Travel Housing several times for business and they never do that.”

The alien smiled at him. “Sir, if you’ll again forgive me a moment of pride, and meaning no insult: This is not VaporTech Travel Housing. This is the Canto Casino Hotel! And speaking of which, where are my manners? This is the midmeal hour—would you care for a bite or two before you retire to your room?”

“That sounds great!” Kedpin said. He hadn’t eaten since his very early morningmeal on the Cantonican Dream.

Midmeal at the Canto Casino Hotel was unlike anything Kedpin had ever experienced. The holovids didn’t do it justice. How could they? Kedpin hadn’t seen this many different dishes in his long lifetime, and here they were all together in one meal. Delectables for every palate in the galaxy. He walked through room after room filled with jellies, meats, eating-papers, plants, insects, chew-blubbers, cakes, marrow-bags, pies, carni chips with glaze sauce, hydrosoy sprays, cheeses, kamtro grassticks, and a thousand other foods. In each room Kedpin had only to point to a thing, and it would be brought to his table. The yeast-worm jelly was the most delicious thing Kedpin had ever tasted. It was so good it nearly made him cry.

By the time he was done, he was so full he felt barely able to walk to his hotel room. The room itself was bright and beautiful. The walls were tastefully draped with glimmering tapestries, and the floor was covered in plush rugs that tickled Kedpin’s feet as he walked. The huge, perfectly soft sleeping pod fit Kedpin’s body as if it were made for him. Within moments of crawling into it he fell into a deep, restful sleep, dreaming of all the new things he’d seen and smelled and tasted.

An hour or so later, Kedpin was woken by a gentle rippling noise at his door. It took him a few moments to realize it was a sort of signal, alerting him to press the intercom button on his sleeping pod. Kedpin rolled over and pressed the flashing blue diamond.

“Master Shoklop, this is Altovan, your hospitality liaison. I am terribly sorry to disturb you, sir, but in your itinerary module you did indicate an interest in visiting Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. Are you still interested in a session?”

With some effort, Kedpin sat up in the squishy sleeping pod. “Oh, yes, please! Very much so!”

“Excellent, sir!” Altovan’s voice over the intercom was so full of cheer, Kedpin could almost see the little alien’s green scales shimmering. “I’ll have an attendant escort you. They will be by your room in precisely thirty minutes.”

An olive-skinned human in understated livery—again, Kedpin marveled, not a droid—arrived soon after and guided him on the walk from the Canto Casino Hotel to Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. The man left Kedpin standing in front of the facility’s huge façade of sculpted stone. “The hotel is just a short way back the way we came, Master Shoklop. But I’ve programmed the route into your data card as well, just in case. If you require anything else at all, please don’t hesitate to have a Zord’s employee contact the hotel’s front desk.”

As he entered Zord’s, scents of soap and seawater steam filled Kedpin’s nose-slits. He stared in awe at the sandstone and marble façades and watched beings of all sizes and shapes come and go, each clutching a small white towel. Armed with information from his datapad, Kedpin asked after the services of the renowned masseur Lexo Sooger, whom Kedpin had researched during the voyage, but was told that Zord’s most famous employee had left for the day.

The massage itself was nothing short of astonishing. On a few occasions over his more-than-a-century working for VaporTech, Kedpin had displayed what the company termed a “productivity-impacting proclivity for panic.” On these occasions VaporTech had required that Kedpin, at his own expense, retain a company-sponsored tension macerator droid. The experience was never pleasant.

But Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse was completely different. Kedpin was ushered into an elegantly cobblestoned room and invited to lie on a towel that was draped across the smooth little stones. A vault door was sealed shut behind him. Then a tiny blue masseur roughly the size of one of Kedpin’s feet briskly introduced himself as Gven, climbed onto Kedpin’s back, and began kneading his flesh with a strength beyond his tiny stature. The sensation was so painfully pleasant that it took Kedpin a few minutes to realize that the gravity in the room was slowly being reduced to zero.

Once aloft, with the tiny, now silent masseur climbing all over him and doing things to his flesh that no one had ever done, Kedpin’s mind began to wander. How many times in his life had he been able to do this, Kedpin wondered—to just lie there and think? About something other than vaporator models or client lists or productivity models? At first it was exhilarating. But then it began to terrify him even as it thrilled him. The oddest memories and feelings floated up. Embarrassment from Kedpin’s first failed sale, a century past. Resentments against his co-workers that Kedpin thought he had buried decades ago. Shame about good customers with whom he’d been less than honest. Guilt. But eventually even these melted away beneath Gven’s pseudopods.

When Kedpin emerged from Zord’s the sun was low in the sky, smudging the horizon with hearts-racing oranges and purples that Kedpin’s eye had never beheld. The air had cooled enough to be more tolerable, and the sand that had been irritating his nose-slits seemed to have settled. Gentle music and pleasant spices wafted from the cheery cantina next door. He decided to walk back to the Canto Casino Hotel.

Kedpin felt wonderful. His body felt better than it had in years, thanks to his visit to Zord’s. But it was more than that. Kedpin felt wonderful inside, in a way that felt new to him. He was living his holovids! He had flown through hyperspace on a private cruiser, eaten yeast-worm jelly at the Canto Casino Hotel, had a zero-g massage at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. And soon he would fulfill his decades-long dream of seeing a real live fathier race. He felt not only as if his fortunes on Canto Bight had turned a corner, but as if his very life had. Everything he had done to get here had been worth it.

Kedpin’s data card told him he was just two blocks from the hotel when he was approached by two lanky orange humanoids. Kedpin could not tell them apart except that one wore blue and one wore red. Kedpin thought they looked like they had bad news.

“Pardon us, sir, but are you—” one began.

“—Master Kedpin Shoklop?” the other finished.

“I…I am,” Kedpin said.

The alien in red said, “We’re terribly sorry, sir, but there’s—”

The alien in blue stepped in. “—been a problem with your hotel room.”