Heart pounding, I strained to hear retreating footsteps over the din of the market above. Was it my own heartbeat echoing? No, there! A scuff of a boot turning at the end of the hall. They were moving away. Oh that was close. To close, far far to close. We definitely need to eat but maybe stealing a memory from the market in broad daylight was not the wisest choice. Let's give it another ten seconds then we will slip out of this vent and go the other way and see if we can blend in with the crowd.  

Let's see what kind of memory we managed to grab. Pulling my Oneira from the pouch on my backpack feeling its familiar scratched metal surface as I place it on my forehead with one hand as I fumble for the memory I stuffed into my back pocket with the other. Pulling it free the small crystalline disk gives no indication what kind of memory it is. Well here goes nothing. God I hope it's not a painful memory. It was being sold in the open marketplace so it shouldn't be too bad. 

It clicks into place and the static-like feeling takes over like your leg fell asleep but it's your whole body. Then the static spreads to my ears and at last my vision as my senses are hijacked by the Oneira. The memory begins to play out. It's sunny and the air is warm on my skin. The sound of waves crashing. My feet plodded through warm almost too warm sand. The sounds of kids' laughter fills my ears. I can tell that this is a kids memory. There is less feeling of anxiety and stress than is in adult memories. It's old, the world hasn't looked like this in mine or even my parents' times. 

My steps are speeding up building to something there is a sense of anticipation with just a hint of trepidation. I feel my legs coil to jump then the feeling of air rushing past im jumping into the water. Suddenly the splash and the feeling of the warm air and hot sand was replaced by a cool but not unpleasantly cold wet feeling. Fighting back to the surface of the water my legs kicking and my arms flailing. Breaking the surface, the warm air and the sun return to warm my face as I watch two younger kids splash into the water nearby. I feel elation and a closeness to these kids, are they mine? No look at my hands, they aren't that much bigger than the older kid who just jumped.

I hear a faint beep and know reality is coming back. It's not a long memory but it is a pleasant one. This should be worth at least 2 days worth of meals for us. Its time to get going. I shove my Oneira back in my bag pocket and tuck the memory into my sock. Pushing the grate over the vent free looking both ways the coast is clear as I quietly make my way back to the market. Time to get back to work and find someone to sell this too. 

Could and probably should just sell it to Nox the local Obsidian Collective goon. However he has to make a profit. I would be likely to get maybe half what it's worth. It is however a good idea to stay on his good side. Nox could really make your life miserable when he didn't get his way. Keeping Nox happy though is secondary to making sure my sister and I actually ate this week. Maybe Keppler would be interested in the memory of having a small stall in the market and would pay a fair price but there was no way I was headed back to the market now. I would have to wait for him to close up and head home before I could talk to him. 

It was maybe an hour past midday. I checked my Omni and yeah it was just past 1 in the afternoon the market would close at sundown this time of the year that was about 8 pm. My stomach gurgled disapprovingly. I had given my last ration to Kayla this morning and my stomach was not happy. Well my stomach was just going to have to wait its turn. I should probably head home and lay low while I wait. I don't want to go home, though not without more food. Seeing Kayla's face fall if I didn't come back with something to eat is never something I want to see. 

I had been looking out for her since our parents died while working in one of the factories on the outskirts of town. The foreman had broken the news to us and said it was an accident. I knew the truth though our parents often talked about how the boss was constantly cutting corners to save a buck. Which is why the safety cut off wasn't working that day and why our parents and 3 others were incinerated when the furnace blew. He had also brought their last pay; it wasn't even enough for the next month's rent. We were supposed to be given a death bonus of 3 months pay for each of them. Yet the owner didn't want to pay for that either. The peace keepers refused to do anything because he was an upstanding member of the community and more importantly was rich and their bribe was cheaper than paying us the death bonus. 

She was only 5 then and barely remembers our parents other than the memory chips that we still had and the few memories in her head. I was only 12 but the first time I heard her crying in hunger I knew that I would do anything for her. So I did. The owner Fritz was the first person I ever stole from. I snuck into his office through a skylight because he was too cheap to pay for lectrics for actual lights. I picked the lock with the multi tool my dad had given me as a present on our last winter festival as a family. As the lock clicked open I thanked our dad for taking care of us one more time. 

The payroll safe was harder to get into for one it was alarmed and two it was a safe and a multi tool wasn't going to help me here. I needed the combination I searched through drawers and files trying to find a hint or a clue as to what it might be. I must have tried a hundred combinations however it was the framed check on the wall that finally gave me the combination. It was from the company's first million dollar order for memory substrates. The date was the combination 2808/7/9  but entered as groupings of two numbers at a time. I remember the sound of the click as the lock accepted the combination and the bolts retracted. I thought my heart was going to burst with anticipation as I pulled the door open. 

I knew if I took too much that hunting us down to get it back would be a bad idea. So I took just enough to pay for a month of our expenses before. Now that we were living rent free in what used to be what i called my sanctum it should last us 6 months or more. I also took about the same amount for the families of the other workers who were killed. I left their money at their doors and rang the bell before quickly taking off. I think one of them actually managed to see me but thankfully didn't snitch. 

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Now 7 years later the sanctum is still our home. It wasn't much of a home to get to it you had to squeeze into a hole barely big enough to fit through at the base of a collapsed building about a half mile outside the town most of the area had been destroyed by a fire well before I was born and only kids and scrap metal salvagers ever even came out here. It was not the first time I was glad I kept active and couldn't afford to eat much or I'd never be able to squeeze in now. It used to be basement storage rooms and was coming through what used to be a lower window. Getting furniture in was impossible so everything inside I had made by hand which wasn't much. Both of our beds and a table and two chairs were the only furniture inside. Somehow despite this Kayla made it look like a home and even managed to get a plant to grow in there. 

The building had once been solar powered and a few panels remained intact if partially covered by the rest of the debris. It had taken 2 years when I was younger to find their wires and hook them up to batteries salvaged from an old otoskid transport. So we even had lectrics even if it was only about two hours worth a day. It was enough to give us light at night and power the well pump to fill the barrel each morning with fresh water and to power our omnis and oneira's.  

As much as I didn't want to see Kayla's face if I came home without food I also didn't want to walk there and back on an empty stomach. So I sent a ping to Keppler telling him I wanted to stop by and see him when he got home. Might as well see if I could make some more money this time legally. Pretty soon I would be 20 and the punishment for stealing would not be worth the risk. I couldn't do anything that would risk Kayla having to fend for herself not at her age. I have seen what the world has done to girls her age and that wasn't going to happen to her. 

So time to go see Elbe, probably my only true friend and the only one who i knew before we lost our parents. His dad had died in the same accident and the only one who knew that it had been me who robbed Fritz. He was never going to snitch on me, not after everything we had been through and the fact that he said his mother finding the money was the first time she had smiled since his father died. Hearing Fritz had been robbed and suspecting where it came from was the first time she had laughed after as well. She used it and their savings to open a stall in the industrial sector scrapping and reselling metal and silicon. 

They were always willing to buy the scrap I brought. I saved all the money from this hoping to save up enough to buy a training memory before I turned 20. Training memories were highly sought after and cost about 4 years to pay for most people. I was still about 25k short of being able to buy even a low level training memory. However if I kept going I could possibly pay what I had and work as indentured till I paid the rest off. 

I had found a particularly rich section of debris from the old city that could only be accessed through the tunnels that ran under it. It was dangerous but there were plenty of old broken omni towers whose boards were full of precious silicon. From what I could tell the building used to make memory blanks. I spent the next few hours digging through the junk trying not to cough my lungs out or cause the rest of the building to crash onto my head or fall through to a floor below. All of which were distinct possibilities and would not have been the first time. 

I crawled back out of the tunnel clutching my bag tight. It was heavy with a half dozen processors none of which was intact but still worth at least 200 towards my goal. I am sure I looked a mess and probably didn't smell that great by the time I got to their stall. Elbe was his usual stoic and concerned self telling me one of these days a building was going to drop on my head. Oh and by the way you smell like an onion fried rat. Why thanks and I love you to Elbe. Could you keep $150 for my fund? I need the rest to get some food.  

Sure we can do that. You know if you need money for food the factory is hiring they might hire you just because well you are a legacy. I am never working there. Fritz is as cheap as ever and I can't risk it not while Kayla is so young. It's better than a building dropping on you that would leave Kayla just as alone. Do you know how many scrappers still have all their limbs and how many just never come back? I know Elbe was saying this because he cared about us but I had promised Kayla I would never work in that factory.

The only time I had brought it up she cried for two days until I swore I would never do it. Elbe didn't know that and so he meant his best. No building is going to fall on me. I'm too fast. Plus I'm careful I would never do something stupid. Elbe shot me a look that clearly said you're full of shit. Just be careful Alex one day you may not be as fast and well I don't want to have to say I told you so. I know Elbe I will be careful. I also know that the biggest danger this moment is my stomach trying to eat itself. You take care of yourself and say hi to your mom. I am going to hit the carts before they close. He handed me the 50 credit chit and gave me a hug before making a face and playfully exclaiming yep you definitely smell like an onion fried rat. You know we are too broke to afford that kind of luxury. We can only dream of onions with our rats. I responded as I made a face and turned to hurry to the carts. 

Thankfully  they were halfway between Elbe's and Kepplers so it wasn't too far out of the way. The smell was like a punch to the stomach and it hit two blocks out. By the time I got there my stomach was growling and doing somersaults. I wanted everything. It was so hard to walk past the cooked food carts to the ones that sold basic foodstuffs. I found some discounted day or week old bread. Whatever it was it was hard as a rock but had not yet begun to mold. I also found four eggs, a miracle because I can almost never find them. I also picked up a pound of dehydrated and salted meat. It actually said meat and I wasn't about to ask which kind. It was probably better not to ask. However the most miraculous thing and definitely wasn't cheap was an orange.

It cost almost a third of the money I had but they were rare and also Kaylas favorite. To be completely honest they were also mine. I tucked all the items in my bag, checked my sock to make sure the memory was there and then checked my omni. It was now after 8 the carts were closing here and the stalls at the memory market were too. 

There was a message from Keppler saying he would love to see his old friends punk kid. He used to be my dads best friend when they were kids. Though he never said I knew Kayla and I were the closest thing he had to family. So I took my time so that he could get home first and tried not to think about the food in my pack which was not easy. I did allow myself one bite of the meat which I instantly regretted. It was way too salty especially when i had finished all the water in my bottle as i was scavenging earlier. So I arrived at Kepplers shortly after my mouth rehydrated itself.