Industrialization has achieved its peak today as the time, talent, and economic incentives have come together to create the great invention for tattoo enthusiasts around the Local Cluster.

We of the Protectorate are civilized, enlightened peoples, with robust institutions, and the capacity for cooperation. The technologies built on one planet can travel to others and be improved.

30 years ago, the electric pen was invented as part of a larger machine which duplicated documents. It was then taken, adapted, improved, and the result was the tattoo pen. Done are the crude methods of taking needles or brushes and jabbing the skin thousands of times to create a design, now technology does the work!

The Interstellar Tattoo Union got its hands on the new tattoo pen first and announced a public showcase. Five artists, five peldak canvases, and I dropped everything to reach Pelratha after receiving my invitation.

I laid on my stomach as a girl drew on my back, the needle jabbed so rapidly I couldn’t even register the individual stabs. She drew the outline of a great shield in black, and the heraldry in the center, then switched out the black ink cartridge for colored ink.

Sweeping around my muscles, she filled the full-back design with detail and highlights in under two hours.

Still full of energy and time, she moved on to my arms next, then chest. It would only last for a few decades so I let her draw whatever she wanted, and I even let a few novice artists get a sense for how the new machine works. They drew a few small images, messy and full of mistakes, while a few cheeky artists just wrote their names on my body.

The efficiency is undeniable, and the ITU is expected to order hundreds of tattoo pens.