At least he already had to check in at his trade desk, setting up his trades before his first digitization. There were countless stories of people getting lost in their first digitization, thinking it would be just a couple of hours, but find themselves at the 7 day cap. HYTOMA was set up with the Auction House only accessible through the Tower network, which calmed people from the 7 day digitization, 1 day walking rule. Prime AI had established that all humans had to spend one day non-digitized, quickly being nicknamed 'walking', after 7 days of digitization. Now the timer was reset if a person logged out before the 7 days, and spent 3 and a half hours walking for each day digitized.
While Tyler usually avoided the lift for the tower to save the 200 credit charge, which he chalked up to rule 4 on the Path to Credits, he wanted to finish his business as quick as possible. Hearing stories about some Tower residents spending thousands of credits a month from riding the elevator, in his opinion, was a huge waste of credits. He walked into the elevator lobby, triggering a passenger request notification on his wrist UI. After confirming the request, a number showed on his screen, telling him which lift to board when it arrived. With the amount of traffic going through the elevators, the Lift AI constantly monitored destinations and directed people to the most efficient lift possible. Tyler had already set his itinerary with his Companion AI Syrix, the Lift AI already knew he wanted to travel to trade section sub 15, it knew which elevator to put him on.
As he stepped off the elevator, he sent a message to Emma and Beatrice. They were his trade partners, and while they knew he was digitizing today, he wanted one last meeting before he dove in. He was going to be the first one to get in, with Beatrice to follow a month later and Emma 3 months from now. He let them know he was going to meet them at their office, which was really 3 terminals facing each other with a small chair for each station.
He walked through a door marked with "Trade Floor 15-24" to a 60'x20' space, with people sitting at rows of terminals. As he walked to his station, he saw a bright blue head of hair, and black hair streaked with bright purple. Seems like his team beat him there, and he sat in his chair and shrugged at his team. "Guess I didn't need to send that message…" Tyler trailed off.
Beatrice pulled at a purple streak coming down from her head across her face, "with how much you have been going on about your digitization, not like we had much choice." She snapped off a piece of Pockey "we've actually been here for 20 minutes waiting for you. Figured you would have been here right after registration opened."
Emma looked up over her book. "It's OK, this book is going over some mythical items, and how much they would sell for if they ever appeared in stores. It's pretty interesting, because some of these items have hidden properties, so how could they guess the price if you don't even know what they do. I guess if you look at the history books, you could guess what the item would do…."
"Yes Emma, sounds really interesting, but I think Tyler here has something to say." With how excited Emma looked, she would probably talk for 30 minutes. She always talked very softly, but she wouldn't stop talking on a subject if she found it interesting. She actually talked for 2 hours about a common fish that could only be fished on 3 days of the year, only at night.
"Weeeeeeeeeeeell, the reason it took longer is a story." He recounted what he just went through, the Wanderer, the Tower Agent and the extra chip scan he went through at the end.
"Extra scanning? I've heard a story or two on a separate BBS with a tower south of us. There is talk about people having two chips on them, giving them a second class for use in HYTOMA. I've also heard of hidden classes available if you have a second class that enhances your base class. But the problem people seem to be having is the second class is established by the chip, and not the user, so you have to be lucky to get a second class that unlocks a hidden class. It doesn't make sense though, because how would people know about hidden classes, why doesn't the Tower network have information on this, it's supposed to share all information. Did you know the Tower network has to share all known information, Prime AI said hiding information only helps the people that control information…"
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"Anyways, we can worry about that later. I need to jump on my station and set up my trades, I want to get digitized as soon as possible. I want to meet with a property agent right away, and square away our first goal of having a storefront."
Tyler turned to his station and held up his wrist, triggering the holographic UI. He pulled his login key from his Wrist UI and tossed it at the Station podium. A thin square sheet twisted into existence, flipping around until it settled parallel to the ground at knee level. Icons popped up out of the sheet, windows phasing into view showing items on sale, other windows showing successful sales.
Tyler reached down on picked up a bubble that read 'create auction', then pulled at both sides until it popped. He picked up another bubble that read 'inventory, and pulled at both sides until it popped. Two new windows appeared in front of Tyler, one window sitting empty except for a small box, the second window filled with a list of items. He smiled, seeing all of his collection requests had been fulfilled, giving him plenty of inventory to sell. Tyler offered a service of selling in game items for raiders at Auction, letting serious Raiders to empty their bags without going for a walk. They sold items for a base cost, then offered percentage earning based on profits earned. Tyler made enough credits to pay rent, which he quickly did by throwing a bubble marked 'rent' at a basket marked 'bills'. While paying bills, he was able to throw credits into the team fund, which him Emma and Beatrice paid into. He took a closer look at bills, as his 'rent' stash didn't cover the marked sum. He was short by 200 credits, and looking closer, he got doubled billed by his elevator charge earlier. He paid the bill, and marked an item to send a request for refund for the second charge, quickly forgetting about a mistake the Tower UI had made.
While Tyler dragged things from his inventory into the auction window, he researched prices on the items, and listed prices that would be low enough to draw interest, but high enough to make sure he wouldn't lose profit on a late solo bid. He threw a couple bags of money at some items he saw on auction, then he listed all the raw ores he bought months ago. He had been trying to sell the ore, which was the only known source of the ore available, but nobody seemed to want to buy it. He paid a pile of credits for them, thinking their rarity would mean some profit, but it turned out that it couldn't be used in anything, giving them a value of nothing. He grinned, as a joke, he listed each individual ore at one million credits, creating 100 separate instances of each ore. Maybe the inflated price will grab the attention of some rich whale, wanting to increase his collection room by one item.
He pulled his login key from the podium and turned around. Emma was reading her book, occasionally twisting her finger through her bright blue hair. Beatrice was staring at him, a serious look on her face.
"You better take care of the property as soon as you clear the tutorial. If I find out you got distracted by a pretty bird and forget to buy the property, I'll powerbomb you through your chair." She flexed her arms, slightly tilted to the side, doing half the pose of the Young Bucks from her favorite wrestling archive videos.
"Yea yea, but truth be told, I'm more afraid of your DDT than your power bomb lady. I won't get distracted, I've told my Companion AI to not let me do anything else until I've got the property." Tyler stood from his chair, "All right, I'm heading to my unit and dive in. I won't lie, I'm going to the 7 day limit, no point in trying to say otherwise, we all know it won't happen. So I'll see you two in a week, send a message if anything hot pops up." A couple complex hand shakes later, Tyler was walking to the stairs. As he passed the elevator lobby, he saw some agents interacting with an elevator panel.
"So this is the elevator that registered a user twice? Does that mean our tower has a dual chip user wandering around? That could mean …" The voice cut off as the stairwell door closed behind him. He stood on the landing for a moment, thinking about what he just heard from the agent. He started running up the stairs, with one thought in his head, get to his unit.