Rachel and Touchstone stole away to Tara's animal sanctuary well after sunset. Rachel traded her straw hat for a trucker's hat Ortega had lying around. Ortega promised to return the straw hat when he could. Touchstone navigated the streets in his black hoodie and some thick black socks to silence his feet on the asphalt and sidewalks, only to take them off again when they were clear of town. Rachel was able to trade in the electronics she scavenged for Ortega's private cryptocurrency.
"Where the hell did you find these!?" Ortega asked when she showed him.
"Inside a giant robot."
"Those things were here for you!?" Touchstone interjected as he rocketed from his chair.
"Do you know what these are?" Ortega asked.
She shrugged. "Robo-guts?"
"Well, this is an extremely powerful CPU, and this-"
"What did you do to get giant robots sent after you, why haven't I heard about it, and why wasn't I invited?" Touchstone interrupted.
She looked away. "I don't want to talk about it."
Touchstone didn't push. Ortega explained how invaluable, powerful, and dangerous these parts were, and offered to trade them for his private crypto.
"Any friend of mine will let you cash it in. Anyone who knows me by reputation might let you cash it. It's like a private voucher. The crypto will be a lot safer to travel around with than these parts."
"Ok, how much?"
In a few minutes, Ortega pulled up some kind of black market bank account with a number displayed at the top.
"Are you telling me this girl just raised my entire life savings in ten minutes?" Touchstone sighed, defeated.
Ortega 3d-printed a small plastic square with a QR-code on it. It held the address to a crypto wallet, stored on a decentralized black market banking network.
"Easier to hide than a memory stick." he explained.
"If this is your personal voucher, can't it be traced back to you?" She asked.
"No need to worry. It's based on Monero. It's got my signature on it, but it will only trace back to one of my online aliases. And none of the transactions are traceable, either."
They arrive at the front gate to the homestead. The place was built on top of a steep hill. They walked up a winding dirt road to get here. They find Tara sitting on the porch, watching the stars peek through the silvery overcast. She rises and walks down the steps as they came closer. The two girls embrace.
Tara releases a long breath. "It's good to see you."
"Nice to see you, too."
Tara looks at Touchstone, smiles, and releases the hug.
"We got dinner waiting for you." She says, then shows them into the house.
"Oh wait," Touchstone says when he reaches the doorway. He throws down his pack, digs out his black socks, and pulls them onto his dark gray feet before stepping inside.
"Did we really have to wait here for that?" Rachel asks.
"No, I was talking to myself. Don't wanna scratch up the floor."
"I can't believe you're real. " Tara reaches toward his forearm.
He recoils. "Please don't."
"I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
Rachel and Touchstone follow Tara, and the smell of food, to the dining room. Rachel takes in the familiar scent of the house. Past the food, there was that indescribable aroma that's unique to the house. Every home she's been in has such a smell. Maybe it's the result of a variety of constant sources of scent compounding into some kind of unique olfactory signature.
They take their seats. James follows from the living room soon after. The four of them eat and talk about the day's events. At least six were rounded up by bounty hunters today. Two of which were Mutes, including one that helped power the town. There was rumor of several shootouts outside some of the towns.
"It's only going to get worse when the corporate mercenaries show up. Those were just the people caught out in the open at the wrong time. People will start selling out their neighbors soon." Touchstone says.
"What?" Rachel says. She knew what people were capable of, but the people here looked out for each other.
"It's true. It's happened before." Tara says.
"Yeah, everyone mostly knows everyone around here." James says, "But people come and go all the time. We have to share this town with people who would sell out their own to get in good with the newest corporate warlord. So we stick to the people we can trust, tolerate the people we can't, and just help out whoever we can."
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"I guess you're right." Rachel says. It wasn't that different from what she learned using the free-web. Or anywhere else, really. "So, what are you going to do? What about all the divs here at the sanctuary?"
"We already have them moved far enough in to keep prying eyes at bay. Now, we just have to keep people from looking too close. The council has our backs, so they should be able to keep this army from digging around too much. And as a last resort, we'll say we are rehabilitating them before we turn them in." Tara says, "What about you? What's your plan?"
"I don't know. I'm waiting to find a guy who can fix my tablet, then I guess I'll find somewhere quiet to start working again." Rachel says.
"Your friend's a total badass, so I think I'll stick with her for a while." Touchstone says to Tara, then he turns to Rachel, "If that's ok with you?"
"Yeah, you seem to know your way around better than I do."
James speaks up. "Wait, wait, wait. This girl's been a shut in for as long as I've known her. What could make you, a hardened criminal, no pun intended, think she's a badass?" He says.
Touchstone has a sly grin on his face. "Well, she saved my ass from bounty hunters, for one."
"Well, those guys were idiots. You didn't need my help. And you did all the fighting." Rachel interjects quickly.
"Oh contraire, my wide-eyed friend. Those guys knew what they were doing. My skin protects me from sharp things, but the force of clubs, batons, and bullets will still screw up my soft insides. And I might be a hardened criminal, pun intended, but even I can't take on five guys all by myself."
"So how did you two even meet?" James asks.
"Well, my tablet broke, so I headed into town to get it fixed. I went to Mickey's, where you said you got my phone. And they sent me to him, and that's when those idiots showed up. Touch managed to get the one gun they had, after that, they got scared-"
"You're leaving out the best part." Touchstone interrupts.
She sighs.
"I wasn't about to go quietly, so after Touch got the gun and threw the guys to the ground, we got ready to fight. I took out my sword and two of the guys ran. Touch spartan kicks another two, and they all turn tail." She said. "It was a team effort."
The couple take this in with wide eyes.
"Now tell us about the robots." Touchstone pleads.
"Those things were after you? How did you get away?" Tara asks.
"She didn't," Touchstone says. "She gutted them and sold them for parts."
"Well, it certainly seems like you two can handle yourselves." James changes the subject when he sees Rachel avert her gaze.
By this time, everyone had finished eating, so they all start cleaning up and getting ready for bed. Touchstone and James wash the dishes and pack the leftovers as Tara and Rachel go out on the porch to catch up. After that, Touchstone folds up a thick blanket to make a thin mattress on the living room floor, then goes on his tablet, and James on his phone, until the girls came back inside.
Touchstone leaves the three in the living room to go outside on the porch. Rachel can see him through the window, sitting on his knees, meditating by the steps.
"That guy seems alright. But can you really trust someone you just met to travel alone with?" James asks.
"He's trusted me with a lot already." She replies, "And I've learned to trust my gut. He seems cool. I wouldn't have brought him here otherwise."
"I agree." Tara says, "Plenty of people vouched for him in town today. And on the nets. Now that AriCorp's coming anyway, people have been openly talking about him. And they've been quietly protecting him the entire time he's been here. He's like their little folk hero."
With that, everyone says their good-nights. The three of them go upstairs. Rachel to the guest room, and the couple to the master bedroom down the hall. Touchstone came in shortly after they turned out the lights and went to sleep.
Morning broke, and everyone got up to help with the daily chores. Rachel stayed on look-out by the road, playing with the chickens. There was a large, bright orange chick she'd come to favor since Tara got him a few months ago. James went around feeding the animals and divs. Touch and Tara finished setting up set up a large greenhouse that's going to house many plants and small plant-type divs.
"You've got quite some interesting creatures here," he says as a large cat rubs up against his leg, snapping miniature bolts of lightning to the ground, barely visible in the daylight.
"She likes you. Most people can't pet her without protection."
"How intelligent is she?"
"About as smart as a crow or a young child."
"Can she understand speech?" He bends down to play with the mute-cat. He notices a scar running down her side.
"Only what she wants to hear." The air becomes ionized as the two play to the sound of constant zapping and cracking.
Around noon, everyone joins back for lunch. They spend the afternoon with everyone on their computers, phones, and tablets. Tara and James share what was happening in the towns and where the band of mercenaries were. The climate in the towns did nothing to change overnight, and the mercenaries were apparently rolling through most towns without stopping. They were still a couple of days out.
Touch shares his insights into how the latest global corporate wars, div trafficking, armed uprisings, and the struggles of the global free web are going. He started to grow passionate and animated as he talked, but soon deflated when he read the room and saw no one cared to discuss beyond just sharing headlines.
Rachel was content to draw her favorite divs from the sanctuary in her sketchbook she left here one time, listening as everyone talks.
The evening rolls around; Touchstone receives his report from Ortega, and Rachel gets in contact with a guy a few towns over with a tablet. Slightly better than her old one. He was even throwing in a rugged case with it.
'I got some of Ortega's credits, how much for everything, charger too?' She texts.
'120'
Rachel asks Touchstone if that's a good deal. He scoffs, "I highly recommend you haggle, hard. That's almost fifteen hundred pre-war dollars. Those credits are going to go quick if you don't hang on to them."
'I can do 30 with my old tablet. It works except for the cracked screen'
'50 + tablet?'
'40 + tablet and charger. Unless you want to deliver?'
'Ok, message me when you're in town.'
Touchstone spent the evening looking over the report Ortega put together. He procured the piano in the living room as an ad hoc desk, setting up his tablet and an additional small laptop from his pack. He became so absorbed in his work that he stopped talking past single syllable responses, eventually devolving into complete silence and furious typing.
They left him to his work. When dinner was ready, he politely declined. After dinner and the subsequent cleanup was finished, he asked if it would be alright if they left well before sunrise the following morning.
Tara and James both said it was fine. Everyone exchanged their final goodbyes, swapped contact information, and went to bed.
At around four in the morning, both Rachel and Touchstone wake to their vibrating alarms, silently fold up their sheets, grab their packs, and were out the door. Both packs bulging with food gifted to them for their travels.