Another rather long discussion with the same robot, one of the residential deck caretakers, who feeling conflicted, both bothered and flattered by all this attention, allowed them to learn about the very restricted way in which visitors were allowed to make money while on the station. And the list was rather short.
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-Extraordinary community services, like what they did saving the station, though they were lacking the proofs to back their claim.
-Entertainment, such as singing or any performance that the robots might deem worthy of payment cause it's improving the attractivity of the residential deck.
-Being a yearly participant in the station Wise Ball competition. A sort of alien tennis where martial, magic, and psionic powers were allowed, which was due to be hosted in four months, two weeks, and five days. So flipping the numbers around, it would be in effectively five months, minus one week and two days.
-Or applying for one of the station jobs, which offers had been nonexistent since the station had been abandoned. A fact that the robots who had been left behind could not understand, in spite of their relative intelligence.
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So all in all, the only realistic way they had to make money in the foreseeable future was to perform and hope it was to the robots' tastes, as they were the only ones to have the station credits they sorely missed to progress to the next deck.
But before they could discuss it any further, Moana took the reins of the conversation:
"While I understand the need to keep Prince a secret and so little of the information we are sitting on is actionable, it's our duty to share this and prevent people from running to their deaths from ignorance. Not when we can so easily do something about it."
"And I understand your feelings." Michel conceded before arguing against it. "But how do you plan to inform them? Talking to them directly would expose us. And anonymously spreading our findings through pamphlets is gonna cost us time, and precious paper and ink I need for my own training. Nothing in life is free. And you are asking us to sacrifice a lot to do the right thing."
"So that's it? The lives of our teams are more precious than the thousands of them?" Moana argued back.
"That's not what I'm saying." Michel tried to defend himself, "Besides, it would have been more difficult but even without Prince to translate, I still could have read the robots' minds and learn from them. It would have just taken a lot more time. So the other teams might not be as clueless as you assume and might withhold some information themselves.
Why would it have to be us, always doing the heroic thing for those people? Sophia sacrificed herself on the third floor, almost died on the fourth and Lono almost lost his hands because of their characteristically selfless behavior. And what did they get for their troubles? Nothing. Sorry for not being a self-sacrificing Saint. It's not who I am."
"Michel? Don't ever use me to serve your argument before making sure I'm okay with it." Sophia warned him, barging into the conversation by doing so. "That being said, I heard the two of you and both your arguments have merit. We are morally obligated to help, and I don't want to lose sleep over this, but we must help within reason. We won't get any more paper and ink until the next floor. So we need to use it wisely. Michel, I'm going to ask you to make concessions and be honest about it: how much can we afford to spend?"
"How much we can afford to spend? How can we predict our future needs, especially in a situation like that?" Michel argued back, "It might be all of it, none of it, or anywhere in between. All we know is that if we are found lacking, especially in ink, we are going to regret it. So, how much is worth your peace of mind? You tell me. Cause I personally would have no trouble sleeping while keeping all of it."
"So your answer is 'I have no freaking idea.'" Sophia summarized, "I hate taking arbitrary decisions so let's cut that argument in half. We are going to save at least half the ink. The paper is a less critical resource so, as long as we don't use all of it, it should be fine. But we still need to keep some for Michel's training and emergency fire. So let's keep at least a third of it. Now, let's write this knowledge down and spread it."
And so they did. Even Michel reluctantly participated in the collective effort, if anything, to make sure they would not overdo it or waste any of the precious ink. And then, four hours later, they were done writing it and sneaking around to distribute it.
"Satisfied?" Michel asked Moana when they were finally done.
"Yes!" The girl exclaimed sincerely, not catching Michel's sarcasm. "I wanted to do something about it and now we are done. My conscience had stopped pestering me. So I'm all good."
"I'm happy we went through all this so you can feel better." Michel continued in the same tone, but Moana was still feeling high on her own morality and did not even react to what her teammates had just said.
And it had been up to Sophia to stare disapprovingly at Michel and sign hip to cut it off. Sophia had to make it up for him later on. But Moana had needed her moment and Sophia had been too tired to argue over something so small. It did take them quite an awful amount of time, lost a lot of precious ink, and Sophia was tired of stealth singing only to drop a few papers all around the place. And they barely covered the neighborhood, as the residential deck, just as any rings they visited before, was huge, and far longer than it was large.
And their little pamphlet campaign? It was truly inconsequential. They did not cover even 1% of the deck and the paper would reach even less than 1% of their peers. And yet, it had been enough to satisfy Moana. Honestly, what the hell that girl had been thinking?
It was like that absurd Colibri story trying to fight off a wildfire with a single droplet of water, and arguing that he knew it wasn't working but was doing nothing but his part anyway. What was the point of doing something if it amounted to nothing in the end? Sophia was more practical. If she could really do something constructive to help and could afford it? She was all for it. But this? I would accomplish nothing and might even come back later to bite them. Not the kind of trade-off she was happy about.
But for the team peace? It was a useless sacrifice she could sleep with.
★☆★
Since the residential deck was supposed to be a resting place for visitors it kept alternating from expansive motel areas to comparatively smaller malls that were the true heart of each node, repeated infinitely across the entire ring.
So of course, the center plaza of every mall was the most strategic place for Sophia to give a performance and hope to reach her intended audience: the mostly uncaring robots. But she was determined she would successfully move those heartless artificial souls before the end of the day.
And so she started singing like her life depended on it. Cause in a sense, it did.
They truly needed the credits to get to the next deck and only those stingy sapient tin cans could give it to her.
But so far, she only had attracted her clueless peers wondering what she was doing. It really turned out that Moana's campaign had been for nothing. As even the local teams had yet to find their papers. If they had not simply been binned by some other caretaker robots.
Yet, all her efforts had not been in vain as after four hours of singing, one single vendor robot abandoned his post for half an hour before she got a system notification.
Your efforts as a street artist have been recognized by a local patron. You had received 10 credits for your performance.
And then, the robot and stuck around for another hour before it lost interest and Sophia called it a day after another half an hour and six hours of singing.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
And compared to what 10 credits were worth, it felt almost insulting. Each credit was worth a basic meal. But you needed about 20 credits to rent an apartment for a day. So the cost of living on the station was around 690 credits a month or 23 credits a day. Six hours netted her 10 credits, so to get up to 23, she would need to sing for 14 hours a day. And actually, sing, not just hum as she would often do to preserve her vocal cords.
While humming actually helped her train her vocal cords for endurance, she had found the shift back to singing difficult and especially tiring. Not only did it solicit her vocal cords more, but also her lips, tongue, jaws, and belly. So Needless to say: she was putting about four times the effort while singing than she was while actually humming.
Humming for 14 hours straight? It was a drain but she was confident she could do it alright, because she already did worse. But singing for 6 hours? Even taking regular short breaks, it had already felt dangerously close to her limit for comfort. And she was sure she was going to pay for it tomorrow. But when that robot showed up at about the time she should have stopped and stayed for one hour and a half? She had to push through and deliver cause it was her first real customer.
But doing a repeat of that every day? She doubted it was humanly possible.
Which got her to her next idea. If they wanted to last and make consistently good money, they needed musical instruments so she would not perform alone and her breaks did not feel like breaks for the audience. The show had to go on even when her voice needed to rest and for this, they needed the right tools for the trades. Instruments that she was completely clueless about how to make.
Even her quarterstaff and primitive bow had been a long shot and so had been their sleds. But musical instruments? It requires a know-how and a degree of finesse that was lost on her. And so she had asked her equally clueless companions. Lono did try to replicate a crude simplified recorder. But while he partially succeeded, the sound that came out wasn't quite right, and trying to play anything on it might actually be dangerous for their health cause it was atrocious.
Clearly, something was missing. But no one could tell what it was. It was just one failed experiment that almost did the trick. But almost did not agree with music as the human ears were sensible to even the slightest off-tone variations.
But instead of accepting defeat, Lono immediately went on trying to produce a second one, while she had gone to try to earn some more credits after resting her voice for almost thirty hours. And this time, when she went back with ten more credits, Lono had successfully crafted one working flute. The sound was still not great but it was playable.
And so they had their first instrument entirely for free and Lono was good enough with it already that they could start working on rehearsal for their next performance. But one musician and one singer would not exactly cut it. And the next idea Lono got for a cheap musical instrument was percussions. Or more specifically a hand drum, which Lono promised would come easier than the flute.
Emboldened with his success, he was now overflowing with ideas of simple instruments he wanted to try and replicate: pantiles, maracas and wooden jingle rings, and xylophone. Everything they could make up without metal and minimal knowledge. There was a distinctive lack of cords instruments. But those would have been harder to make and were comparably high-maintenance.
But still, Sophia was considering buying one from another team against credit if they got enough to afford it and encountered the right talent to make it. But it was an issue for tomorrow Sophia. For now, she had a band of two and Lono was on his way to make it a band of three with his hand drum.
Never would she have thought that she would one day turn her team into a band. But somehow, necessity was making that little miracle happen right now. And to be honest, she might have to add genuine music to the list of her growing passions, right beside acrobatics, archery, and magic.
★☆★
It took some training, or intense training as others would put it. But Michel's turned out to be an amazing drummer. Moana claimed her brother's more high-pitched Pantiles as soon as he was done with it and kept it jealously. But though she had not let anyone else give it a try, Sophia must reckon that Moana was a natural at harmonizing her Pantiles with her brother's flute which saved them a lot of time. The two already played music together and knew their stuff.
Prince insisted on participating as soon as he heard about Lono's idea of a jingle ring. And though he was wearing it like a collar, he kept insisting that it was but his instrument and that he would not wear it outside of repetition and performance, because he did not want to be left out of all the fun.
As for Paolo, he settled on the xylophone, because he used to play piano and that was the closest thing they got. At least, it had keys. And Lono was patient enough to give Paolo two octaves to work with instead of one, giving his instrument the largest range of their band.
And so, between Lono's Flute, Moana's Pantiles, and Paolo's xylophone, Sophia had also two octaves to work with, though they were still limited in terms of scale by the intrinsic limits of their primitive instruments: whether they liked it or not, they were stuck to C major.
But working as a band was paying off, as making money from performance had never been easier. On their very first performance, they made 60 credits in three hours, which was about twice as effective as Sophia's solo performance. Though it was clear that a whole band was a lot more flashier and reliable than a solo performer. And so, through their collective effort, they were earning way more credits than they individually could.
However, the robots had not been the only ones to take notice.
And after three band performances, it turned out that some people had read Moana's pamphlet, although Sophia had taken great care of migrating with the group from one plaza to the next after each performance. She did not know how the robots would reward repeated performance. But she still preferred to move on to new vendor targets every time. It ensured that their credit account was full and that their minds were clear about any preconceptions about her or now, her band.
Plus, that way of doing things had netted them 250 credits in nine days, which would be enough to live comfortably on the station if they so wished. Though they still relied on Prince's shelter for sleeping accommodation and they had not received detention for illegal camping yet. And they needed nothing from the vendors yet, because they were still loaded on food — about two months' worth of food — from their previous adventure on the seventh ring.
But back to the people: They took notice. Some easily linked them back to the pamphlet. And among them were some of Sophia's acquaintances who felt wronged, rightly so or not, by their previous encounter with her.
She recognized Eric, Stella, and the Spear guy she abandoned on the first floor. Although the giant was notably absent. She also recognized Arya's team she had refused to join, though she could not remember any of their names, except Muhammad, the team Swashbuckler. And Michel's former teammates she forgot their names who had come back from the dead and were legitimately pissed off they lost their companions to them. Plus the unknown team she had lied to on the third floor that apparently survived the giant earth Elemental without her help.
That amounted to 16 people with various grievances against her or her team, plus about the same amount of people that joined the angry mob for various but mostly invalid and corrupted reasons.
"So we finally meet again," Stella shouted at her angrily, interrupting their performance. "You don't know how much I waited for that moment." She said, staring at Sophia straight in the eyes before addressing the crowd "That girl and her boyfriend tricked us and abandoned us on the first floor."
And so the others joined her example and started exposing her crimes.
"That girl lied to us and pretended to be someone else." The third-floor guys spoke next.
"That girl and her teammates pretend to help us on the second floor only to steal our teammates on the fourth floor." Michel girl former teammates she could not remember the names spoke next.
"And that bitch refused to help us on the fourth floor because we weren't good enough for her," Arya concluded.
And Stella reclaimed the audience's attention after a few seconds of silence.
"You might have heard all kinds of disturbing rumors about her helping countless people on the third and fourth floor. But who is speaking of the people she left behind? Or the people she sacrificed to achieve her goals? Don't be fooled by her seemingly good actions. That girl and her pets are self-serving prick who cares about nothing but themselves. So who wants to teach those guys a lesson."
To which Sophia responded coldly and pragmatically:
"Rules number four of this forsaken station: 'Any deliberate act resulting in harm, injury, or endangerment to any life form on the station, intentional or otherwise, will lead to immediate detainment and further investigation. Severe cases may result in permanent banishment.' Whatever grievance you have against me or my teammates, here is not the place and I'm not bluffing or lying.
There are several robots already carefully watching your angry mob and ready to report the moment you cross the line. You might have the time to kill us all before the security robots could avenge us. But everyone who participates or makes themselves accomplices of this would pay for it with their lives. So I'm not going to try and reason with you, just make a simple proposal: I'm trapped in that tutorial just like any of you and I'm not going anywhere, so if you want revenge that badly, let's discuss it with our blades on the next floor."
And so, most of the angry mob scatter immediately. And so, after everyone else left, only Michel's former teammates and the Stella team kept staring at them, clearly not done yet.
"This is not over," Stella promised threateningly before storming away with her team following in her wake.
Which left only Michel's former teammates to deal with. But they seemed more interested in talking to Michel rather than her. Which was already progress. If they wanted to get Michel back on their side, it was Michel's decision to make. Although Sophia had now a vested interest in making him stay...
In the end, Michel was free. But he already made his choice and she doubted he would suddenly change his mind.