The market was not as big as I had imagined, there were three shops selling food, and one of them sold only fresh meat, I even recognized the carcasses of frosch. And four more shops selling everything else, one shop had only holoprojectors showing different equipment. If I understood correctly, in this shop you could buy equipment to order. The other shops mostly sold what they could recover from the landfill and rare equipment that was unknown how it appeared here.
First of all, Leah and I bought army rations, and we specifically chose those with an expiration date of no more than three years ago. At first, I didn't want to take them at all, but Leah convinced me that they can be eaten up to ten years after the expiration date. Our second purchase was two thirty-liter backpack tanks with drinking water. I had somehow forgotten that we needed water in addition to food. That was the end of our purchases, as buying a mobile generator for a hundred thousand, and only on order and after three months, did not suit us, as well as a speeder for seventy thousand and two months of waiting. Despite the fact that outwardly such a generator could be bought for thirty thousand, and a speeder for ten thousand.
We were not very interested in the other products, the refurbished equipment was of poor quality, it was obvious that low-skilled technicians were doing it. I may not have understood the technology of this world, but Leah did, and it was enough for me to see her expression when she looked at the equipment they were selling.
But at the exit from the village, we were met by a man in an infantry suit with his helmet off. The fact that he was waiting for us became clear immediately, as he stopped talking to his friends and headed straight for us.
"Hello, I'm Georn, the mayor of our wonderful town," the man introduced himself with a slight smile.
"Leah, Zach," I introduced us, we were having a conversation about local dating and Leah asked me to do the talking, as women were not considered equal to men and there were cases when men were offended when women approached them first. In more civilized sectors, there was equality, just like here, but here it was only in words.
"Yesterday, the security guards told me about a strange couple who avoided contact with people with good weapons and, let's face it, didn't look like locals." Georn began to talk about the case, "Judging by your purchases, you are planning to stay in my territory for a while, so I want to get to know you a little better. I'd like to invite you to lunch at my house.
"I think it's a good idea," I replied, "if we plan to stay here for a while, it's worth having good relations with those who have some power here."
"It's wonderful, my fourth wife is a magician in the kitchen, she cooks fantastic dishes with a minimum of ingredients," the man smiled happily, "please follow me."
It took us about five minutes to get to Georn's house, where he lived in three medium-sized containers connected by small containers. Between the containers, in the center of the small yard, there was even a tree in a large flowerbed, and right now a few kids were sitting under the tree playing some games on their tablets.
The picture I saw spoke volumes: a living plant outside the sector with fields in the middle of the asteroid is a very rare thing, children who looked happy even at first glance, medium-sized containers that did not look like they were found somewhere in a dump, it seemed that they were delivered here new, and a full-fledged flyer that stood next to the entrance to the house.
The house itself was bright, clean and modern, no garbage or anything else, it was an ultra-modern house by my earthly standards. Right at the entrance there was a disinfection capsule that Georn asked us to enter one by one, and only after the disinfectant, we left our purchases and went inside the house, where we were met by a young girl, about sixteen years old.
"This is Mayrna, my fourth wife," Heyorn introduced us, "and these are our new friends, Zach and Leah. "
"Come to the central room, I have set up lunch for you there," Mayrna said, then bowed to me and went somewhere inside the house.
" Don't mind her, she's very shy," Geyorn said as he led us into a room with a table set for three, "That's why I love her," Geyorn said sincerely, stopping for ten seconds, at which time the suit began to open and when it did, he stepped out of it, and the open suit moved to the wall to charge. "Sit down," he nodded across from him, and when we sat down he continued, "You should know a few basic rules if you plan to stay here. First of all, fighting with weapons is prohibited on the territory of our settlement. We have a court, which I chair, and if you have a complaint against someone, you can come to me and we will sort it out. Secondly, killing even outside the settlement is unacceptable in all cases except for self-defense. Thirdly, we try to follow the laws within the settlement, of course, there is no police here, but even without the police we can deal with lawbreakers and it will be a much more severe punishment. Fourthly, we have taxes, five percent of the amount received in the settlement, which means that if you earn money here, you have to pay tax. Of course, you can leave the settlement to get money, but there is no guarantee that the laws will be upheld there. I don't want to hint at anything, but outside the settlement, robberies are not uncommon. Fifth, you are welcome to join us, despite the difficult living conditions, we try to remain human," Geyorn smiled and waved to his wife, who immediately came over and began to pour food into the plates for everyone.
Mayrna really cooked very tasty food, I don't know what it was, something like meat and vegetables, considering where they get their meat from, I didn't want to know who my meal was when I was alive. But it was extremely tasty and satisfying, and at the end of the meal I could barely finish it, but it was impossible not to, Leah educated me about traditions, in such situations if you do not finish what you were treated to, it means to show disrespect.
"And now let's talk about some nuances," Geyorne became serious, "I don't care who you were there, the main thing is that you don't get into trouble here. I'm asking you once, will you bring problems with you?"
"I hope not," I answered honestly. "We didn't break the law within the ten forty-two limits, and beyond that, nothing serious," this is also true, we are in the cross-sectoral search, but as petty criminals, no one will organize a serious operation for us.
"Very well," he replied. "Do you plan to live within the settlement? Or outside?
"For now, outside the settlement," I answered.
"Then I have a map of the property in the compartment for you. " He pulled out a printout on some kind of plastic from a cabinet behind him, "This," he pointed to a large green dot, "is our settlement," "these areas are owned by one of our people, I hope you have chosen a place to live outside these borders?" he asked us. I wasn't sure, but it looked like our place was in the black zone, not the colored one.
"No, what does the black zone mean?" I asked Heyorn.
"These are, let's say, not the best places, they are hunting grounds for frosch, and given their anatomical features, it is difficult to defend against them. Therefore, if you decide to live there, you should think about hunting repellers, which are the ones around the village," Heyorn replied.
For the next two hours, Geyorn spoke about the local factions that lived here in the repair hangar. Here, by the way, we managed to find out why this hangar was so large, it was part of a group of enterprises that were engaged in the production of the station. Inside the hangar, the supporting structures of the station's sectors were built. And they were huge. Three blocks up to seven hundred meters long and up to five hundred meters in diameter could be assembled at the same time.
That's why the hangar was abandoned, and after the construction of the station was completed, it became unnecessary and was turned into a dumping ground for equipment that might be repaired in the future. Initially, technological waste from all sectors was thrown here, but after ten years, there was so much waste that the sector's management imposed a high fee. This greatly slowed down the filling of the hangar, and now we had ten to fifty meters of technological waste under us.
The bulk of the dump's inhabitants were descendants of technicians who were supposed to be engaged in the repair or disposal of technological waste. Unfortunately, few of them are now more or less serious technicians. But Geyorn himself boasted that his father had paid aliens to install something called a neural network in his head and study the knowledge bases, which made Heyorn perhaps the best technician in the entire sector, and if not for a conflict with the sector's leadership, he would not have lived here.
To be honest, I didn't understand why he told us so much, he must have been bored and when he saw our new ears he fell for it. So only three hours after we entered his house, we went to our temporary home. It was unpleasant to realize that we would have to go from a completely comfortable home to a boat with shit and vomit at the entrance, but there was no other option, and we had options to improve our situation in the near future.
"Leah, what is this neural network?" I asked the girl when we had walked a little farther from the settlement. When talking to Gayern, I tried to ask questions that would not make me look stupid.
"This is a colony of specialized nanobots that builds additional neural connections in the head and plays the role of a computer built into the brain with information output directly to the eye nerves. " Leah answered.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"Did I understand Gayerna correctly that this thing can help you learn something new quickly?" I asked her.
"I mean, yes, but there are some peculiarities. My great-grandfather learned about this technology during the first contact with aliens. It's fantastic, you can learn the entire school advanced course in one year, and in two more you can become a high-class specialist in some complex profession. So, control over nanobots remains with aliens, there is one corporation that produces these things, it is called Neural Network, the second disadvantage is in these very knowledge bases, the content of these bases is also controlled by this corporation, when studying knowledge bases there is direct contact with the long-term memory department. This is how you can rewrite a personality. You noticed that when Geyorn spoke about the aliens, he was delighted with them. He's a big fan of them.
"Then this technology is useless for us?" I was already dreaming about how quickly I would be able to figure out everything after studying the knowledge base.
"Why, if you buy illegal neural networks and databases..."
"Then we don't know what will be in them," I answered, interrupting Leah, "I have to create them myself from scratch to be sure that everything I think is really my thoughts."
"Look," Leah stopped and looked at me in surprise, "you made the same conclusion in ten minutes of conversation that my great-grandfather had made in a decade and a half. You've gotten a lot smarter. Who are you? Where is my stupid but dear Zach?"
"Leah, can you tell me about my past? Who am I? Where did we meet?" I decided to take the opportunity to learn about my body's past.
"But there's not much to tell. I stole from you, but you noticed it, grabbed me and dragged me out of the crowd, saying that you were going to do something terrible," Leah laughed, "You dragged me into an empty corridor and put me in front of the fact: either I help you steal the safe in the apartment next door, or you break my finger bones so that I can never steal anything. "
"What a freak I am," I whistled, "And then?
" And then we stole a safe with five thousand credits, and you split them fairly in half. And then you offered to work together. Those two and a half thousand credits were my loot for the month, so of course I agreed. And then it was business as usual. Steal some good money, have a good time at the resort, and then it's all over again," Leah replied, "What did you expect? Did you expect something more romantic?"
"Come on," I waved her off.
The rest of the way to the boat, I thought about how I wasn't such a good person in the past, stealing for fun. This was not what I expected to hear Leah say about her past self.
Now it's clear why Leah is so lighthearted, and she has a huge potential, given her family, she could do anything instead of being an equal thief.
Leaving our purchases in the boat, we headed out of the dump. We needed to contact Leah's great-grandfather and get contacts that would help us get new documents. And it would be nice to go shopping. We still needed a generator and some kind of transportation. But the transportation would have to wait until we had real documents.
It so happened that we met the same guard at the exit from the dump. He was so happy to see Lia. He immediately came to us, calling another guard to take his place.
"Hello, beautiful girl. I'm glad to see you again. Can we go to a restaurant tonight?" he didn't even pay attention to me, as if I wasn't there at all.
"Hi, handsome, I don't mind, but I have a lot of things to do with my friend. Can we call in a couple of hours?" Leah replied.
"Can't he do it himself?" - He can't wait to see how Lia bewitched her husband.
"Unfortunately, I can't let him go on his own, he doesn't know how to bargain at all," Lia replied, "I'll write to you when I'm free.
"Hmm, he forgot to charge us for leaving," I said as we moved away from the checkpoint and into the dump.
" He's only thinking about fucking me now," Leah replied.
"Will you go out with him?"
" I think, yeah, I'll relax, get laid. It's good for us after all the stress we've been through lately," I felt bad for some reason hearing Leah say that, but she's right, we're not a couple, and sex is a great way to relieve stress, "and it would be good for you to go to a whore.
"That will come later," I answered. The realization that I would most likely never see my wife again gradually began to sink in. So far, I had managed to block it out and believed that I could find a way to get home, and I couldn't imagine myself with another woman in bed. "Here it is, taking us to the Nurbis shopping center, it's like a node of inter-sectoral communication," I said as I stepped into the cabin of the flying bus that stopped in front of us.
The flight to the mall took no more than ten minutes. The mall itself was huge, it occupied seven levels of one branch and each level of the store was at least a thousand square meters. After sending Leah to the inter-sector communication node, I immediately entered the first level.
Almost immediately, thousands of people caught my eye, people who did not think about how to survive, people who were just resting. Some with children, some just by themselves. There was a fountain in the center of the first level, and there were a dozen and a half kids running around in their underwear. The mothers nearby tried to drive them away from the fountain, but it was clear that they were playing, they were having a good time.
Approaching the hologram at the entrance, which showed all the stores in the mall, I began to look for a small electronics store. Leah and I discussed that I needed a new communicator to replace the one I had lost during the police chase, and it was impossible to buy one like Leah's on the market, and I didn't need it so much, I was still not well versed in local technology. And buying a communicator along with enrolling in an online school was exactly what I needed to quickly adapt.
The small electronics store was located on the second level of the shopping center, or rather there were as many as eight of them, so that's where I went. You could get from the first level to the second level by elevator, escalator, or regular stairs. Since I was next to the escalator, I took it to the top. Having quickly found the store I needed, I stood next to the wrist communicators department.
"Hello, how can I help you?" a girl in a poisonous green uniform approached me.
"I need a ruggedized wrist communicator adapted for harsh environments. It must have a holographic projector. The processor is not lower than EGH-17, nineteenth is better."
"Unfortunately, the nineteenth hasn't been delivered yet, there was a presentation in our sector only a month ago, and so far they are only available on pre-order." She led me to a chair and sat me down and typed something on the table next to her, and ten seconds later a small drone flew to us and brought a box with a communicator. "The Cyros-18, the most popular model among young people, comes with virtual reality glasses and a one-year subscription to the Segmentum game. The case is made of carlium alloy..."
" Let's have something in a durosteel case. Do you have them?" I asked her.
" Not a very popular model," she summoned the droid again and pulled out another communicator, "On the downside, it doesn't have an additional graphics coprocessor, instead it has a built-in outdoor air analyzer for ten thousand major pollutants. It also has an emergency communication system, which, if activated, will send a distress signal that can penetrate most civilian signal jammers.
"I like it. How much?"
"Three hundred and forty-two thousand ksars," the girl replied, "I know it's expensive, but because of the analyzer, I can't make the price less. The analyzer itself costs one hundred and eighty thousand."
"I'll take it," I replied, "Also connect it to the standard-level online school, access to all classes.
"Maybe you need something else," the girl was surprised by my additional order, but tried not to show it.
"I'll pay in credits too," I told the saleswoman.
"All in all, five thousand seven hundred and three credits," the girl answered. "We'll have to wait half an hour to set up the communicator. Can I get you something to drink?
"Something non-alcoholic tonic," I answered the girl.
Twenty minutes later, I left the store with an active new outfit. On the way, I contacted Leah on my new communicator and we agreed to meet at the clothing store. It was worth buying a few new sets of clothes that would not be as rare as the overalls we were wearing. Those who knew about clothes could understand the cost of such overalls.
On the way, I bought some ice cream at the food court and waited with him at the entrance to the clothing store for Leah, and she was a little late, because hers great-grandfather decided to talk to her, not just pass a message.
"What's yours great-grandfather said?" I asked Leah.
"And you didn't take me?" Leah looked at me offended.
"Here," I gave her my remaining ice cream. As she sucked on the ice cream, she said:
" We have contact, he is the same old man as my great-grandfather, they served together," she said, "He is already on a well-deserved rest, but his grandson is the right-hand man at Agnen, so you know they have the ability to do everything."
"When are we going to go to the meeting?" I asked her.
"I already wrote to him that I am my great-grandfather's granddaughter and I need help because my partner and I are in trouble," she replied, "The old man invited us to dinner tonight at the Sixth World. It's a restaurant on the observation deck of the sector. It's an upscale restaurant, so our task is to dress accordingly. So let's go," Leah smiled, gulping down the rest of her ice cream at once.
"I really don't like your smile, it tells me you're up to something," I said, taking a couple of steps back from her, "Leah, whatever you're up to, it's a very bad idea."
"Stop right there," Leah said, "Pull yourself together, we just need to pick up a couple of sets of clothes.
"Did you write to your beau that we can't meet today?" I asked Lia, resigned to the fact that I was going to be a doll, as I had seen this before when I went shopping with my wife. Another world, and women are the same.
" I wrote that our business would be delayed, so if he really wanted to meet me, he would have to wait until the night. And he agreed," Leah replied. - "Look, what a great suit. What do you think?
" No, not this, are you kidding?" I immediately protested when I saw some incomprehensible thing with feathers and in all the colors of the rainbow. "Let's go with something from that row," I nodded to the row where a couple of older men were choosing rather decent monotone suits, of course they didn't look like Earth costumes, but at least they didn't have feathers.
- You're so boring, even for old people, we'll find something for you," Leah said promisingly.