This is getting completely re-written.
Feeling uninspired? Over-burdened with care? Need a love potion? Maybe you'd like to know your future? Then go see John Smith: Dabbler in ersatz affectation.
At least, he was, until an unexpected late-night visitor decided to screw it all up by trying to get him involved with, ugh, intrigue. Any decent protagonist would jump head long at the chance to get to the bottom of alien first contact and government subterfuge. Not John Smith. No, John's response to the inevitable end of the world (he wasn't really paying attention to the details) is to run for the border, get drunk, and gamble more money than he has.
Which may explain why he woke in the middle of a Central American rainforest with a bullet in his leg. And a concussion. And a few broken bones.
It isn't all bad luck, though. His marginally-survived trek through the rainforest leads him to a shipwreck hosting an emotionally immature, and quite possibly unstable, AI named Lily. Under her tutelage, John Smith becomes Trader: Space Merchant Extraordinaire.
But that was two decades ago.
Now, after years of swindling, smuggling, and (totally legal) murder, Trader just wants to retire. Of course there are the usual hiccups. There's a bounty on his head. His girlfriend is insane. Oh, and his boss wants him to take on just one last job.
Nothing complicated, just blow up an asteroid full of pirates. Space pirates. What could go wrong?
Everything. Everything goes wrong.
With his life crumbling around him, Trader learns too late that nothing is easy, everyone has plans, and no one can be trusted.
