Sasamoto Fumi had a reputation for sniffing out a bargain. Even after retirement, even after moving to the colony district, her eyes still went straight to the discount tag.
That day at a secondhand shop called Reuse Orion, she found a kneading table — the kind you set dough on, give a press, and it does the kneading for you. The price tag said thirty percent off. Underneath it, a sticker from the previous owner: “Just a gentle push — so easy.”
It wasn’t on the regular shelves. It was on the back shelf labeled “Drifters” — things that had washed in from other stars. Those items were usually expensive. The fact of having come from somewhere else was enough to push the price way up. Nobody knew which star, exactly. The shop staff didn’t know. Sasamoto didn’t know. Just very far away, apparently — and everyone was fine with that.
She didn’t hesitate. Off-world goods didn’t disappoint. She’d bought a drifter clock once before. It hadn’t worked, but she’d written that off as bad luck.
She hauled the table home and got straight to it. Set down some dough. Gave it a push. Nothing. She leaned in. Climbed on top and shoved with her whole body weight. The table didn’t even tremble.
She called a repair service. The technician who showed up was a young man named Kashiwagi, the type who charges just for coming to your door.
“So, this is the one,” he said, running his hands over the table. “Ah. Right. This isn’t broken.”
“It’s not broken? It won’t move.”
“It won’t move, but it’s not broken. This is an off-world unit, you see.” He peeled back the sticker. “Says here, ‘just a gentle push.’ The thing is, ‘gentle’ is relative to where it came from.”
“Relative how?”
“That star has much higher gravity than we do. Way higher. So what counts as ‘gentle’ over there — in our terms, that’s like…” He paused. “Several people stacked on top of each other. The table only starts working once you hit that kind of force.”
Still standing on the table, Sasamoto gave it one more good shove, half out of habit. Still nothing.
“So I’m not even close.”
“Not even a little. If everyone in this colony district piled on, I think it’d still be too light.”
“But if I took it to that star, it’d work, right?”
Kashiwagi looked slightly pained.
“It would. But the shipping cost would probably be enough to buy several apartments like this one. And also —” He tapped the table lightly. “If you stood somewhere with that gravity, you wouldn’t be able to stand. Your body would be many times heavier than normal. You’d sit down and never get up again.”
So the world where this table worked was a world no human could visit.
Sasamoto stepped down off the table and looked at it. Somewhere on that far star, she imagined, this table had kneaded dough faithfully every morning. It was a good table. A hardworking table. It just happened to belong to a place where she could never set foot.
“Kashiwagi-san.” She pulled out a ballpoint pen. “This is top-of-the-line, where it comes from, right?”
“Well — probably normal over there, but yes.”
She flipped the price tag over. Crossed out the thirty-percent-off number with two firm lines. Wrote in twice the original price.
“Take this back to the shop’s Drifters shelf, would you? Tell them it’s finest goods from another star.”
Kashiwagi stopped writing his invoice and looked at her. Then, without a word, he loaded the table back onto his cart.
He was barely out into the corridor when the neighbor from across the hall, Mrs. Kajii, stopped in her tracks. She leaned in close and squinted at the price tag.
“Oh my — is that from another star?”