My eventual choice for an information broker came down to the single one with a very unique qualification: he claimed to be neutral. But less neutral in the 'I will never lie to you' way that all the rest did, but more in the 'My organization has enmity with major players in all three paths due to having screwed them all over equally at one time or another' sort of way. His advertisement had citations and references and everything; it was very thorough. Was this a good idea or a bad idea? Maybe, on both accounts. But at least this would give me a baseline on what to expect at other places.

I walked into the 'Flamehead Distributors' building to find a room made of screens showing lines of number and letters crisscrossing in every conceivable direction. Floor, ceilings, walls; everything was overlapping screens, though the ground had them positioned underneath a transparent floor. From the outside the door had been squeezed between two others but the interior was big enough that it should have overlapped with both those doors and the ones next to them. Otherwise the room itself was indistinct, even lacking any other exit beyond the one I had used to enter. Within it were a few glass looking chairs and a man wearing shockingly yellow jeans and an electric yellow shirt. The fact that his skin was light grey seemed a small thing in comparison. Above a black head of hair he wore a hat with a holographic flame burning on it. A moment after I entered he stood from his chair and gave me a wave. "Hello."

I looked around the weird looking room, not sure what to think of it. "Uh, hi." I finally answered after a few more seconds to get my bearings. The outside had seemed pretty normal. A lot of the buildings were open to the street and more than a little business was done on their patios, but then there were a lot of businesses that seemed to be little more than a sign above a uniquely colored door as well. This room was probably the most truly 'alien' thing I had seen so far.

There were a few more seconds of silence before he spoke up. "What can I do for you?"

Right, back to business. "I've got some information to sell, or at least get a price quote on it."

He nodded. "Right. Someone downloaded a copy of your world's internet, or at least a lot of the most juicy parts, and you got it from them." He smiled then with a smirk. "Naughty, naughty. It looks like they broke encryption on a lot of private databases from a number of different jurisdictions. That would make for some good blackmail evidence if you can actually pin it on anybody."

"Uuh..."

"Right, let me tell you why you will hire me and not anyone else. First: I'm the best. Not literally, of course, but the best you can get at the current time and with your current limitations. And second: You can trust me. Go on, give me your objection. Everyone does so let's just get it out of the way." He stood there, his hand held out in invitation and his freight train of an introduction finally over.

Right, my next sentence was a trap. I knew he had set it for me and I knew it was going to go off but that didn't mean that I could find any way out of it. "How can I trust you when you just went through my information like that." I deadpanned.

He gave me a bright manic smile. "Because I told you I was doing it!" The smile quickly faded into something more normal as he continued. "All the agencies will do it and even a number of other places as well. The laws of the pocket world were given to you before you entered the market and this room, being a subordinate dimension, has all those rules as well. But it also has any other non-conflicting rules I want to introduce as well. Look it up on the fine print of any of the Information Agencies, they all include the rule to freely share any 'passing information'. The trick is that they keep all their information off-site so they have nothing to 'freely share'. And, while the rules about stealing still apply, it is very much applied in a 'look, but don't touch' type of manner. But if we have a photographic memory, which we all do, than that look is enough to take everything. Even for a large dump of data like you have, all you need is a way to speed up processing or slow down time for the person doing the processing. I'll admit, that is more rare, but over half the agencies have someone and the rest will sell out the fact that you have it." He took a long breath before plopping himself down in one of the chairs. "But don't just believe me, look it up and see for yourself."

I scowled at him, turned my eyepiece back on, and started looking up this business.

"Good attempt, turning off your stuff, but your computer has basically no security and I don't think you even know how to turn the thing itself off." I didn't, but there was no point in telling him that.

The 'laws' for his space were quite enlightening. They included a law against intentionally misleading or outright lying, the aforementioned law that allowed any available information to be viewed, and a law against threats or coercion. Tellingly the version of the law that would apparently allow them to look through my information was there for every single one of the information traders, though it was phrased differently each time. Almost more alarmingly a third of them didn't have a law against lying and half of them didn't have a law against coercion.

Still, I wasn't as trusting as all that. "My mom is an ..." my words just stopped. I tried to call her an apple but the final word simply wouldn't come out. Whatever this was, it wasn't weak. "But if you can just make a law preventing lies than why not just make theft illegal rather than giving a punishment for it?"

He nodded. "I'll give you that one for free. The main reason is that they want dumb people to try. They make a lot more money from a theft that they can ultimately recover than they do from sales, especially when dealing in the tutorial with people who don't know any better. Also it is more expensive to make more restrictive rules, and when accidents happen they want to make sure their butts are covered, and other less important things as well. It all makes more sense when you remember that we do more business with each other than we do with you tutorial students."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Still, I had one last question I just had to ask. "So why should I work with you rather than the other places that similarly protect me against lies and coercion?" Ok, maybe it wasn't the most diplomatic thing to say, but I was feeling annoyed. Also, I'm pretty sure that is the type of thing you are supposed to say during a negotiation. Pick whichever reason is more palatable.

He gave me a incredulous look. "Beyond the fact that if you go anywhere else they won't necessarily give you anything for your information, they will just take it and thank you for your time?" He shook his head. "No, that's not the real reason. The real reason is whatever brought you to me first. I know the look of someone who has been simply caught unaware and I know the look of someone who has just realize they have been swindled. You fall into that first group, which means you didn't walk into any other information broker before me. Now why would that be?"

I knew the answer, I just didn't want to say it. All the other brokers were affiliated with at least one of the three Paths and everything I had seen made me really distrust how the Paths seemed to operate on a grander scale.

"Fine," I finally relented. "What type of a deal do you have for me?"

"Well first you have to remember that I'm both a good merchant and a successful one. So I'll be paying you with information." he answered with a smile.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I replied in a flat tone.

He shook his head and got more serious. "A good merchant gets you what you want. A successful merchant makes a profit. You want money, but that would mean I would take a loss. I already have the info, after all. But you also want information, and the type of information you can use without ruining your tutorial run won't significantly cost me to give you. Making this official will just make things simpler on the back-end."

"But if you need the information officially then"

"Back during your third year of high school you wrote a poem." He interrupted. "You only put it up on social media for less than five minutes before taking it down and never posting it again. The poem was a"

"Fine, fine. I believe you. Please stop."

He flashed me a bright white smile across his dull grey face. "Here is my deal. I'll answer any question you want as long as you are in the tutorial and so long as it won't get either of us in trouble. If it is a bad question I'll at least tell you why I can't answer rather than misleading you or something. I'll also not tell anyone where I got this trove of information. In exchange you will transfer a copy of the information to me."

"You don't want any sort of exclusivity?" I asked, a bit surprised.

He snorted. "That's why I put in the stuff about not telling anyone where I got the information. If you want to spread around the fact that you have it than you aren't as smart as I think you are."

I tried to think of a way to get more out of the deal, but couldn't think of anything. All things considered it wasn't as good as I had been hoping for but it wasn't a bad deal. "Ok. Let's do it. What is next? Is there a contract I need to sign or something?"

He shook his head. "No contract, just a nod of the head after we figured out the terms is enough." We both nodded our heads. It didn't feel like anything but when I thought about walking out without paying in felt like it would be costly. "Just turn on your transmitter and send it all over. It shouldn't take long with your equipment."

I did so and was surprised that it finished within a single minute. "How was it so fast?" I asked.

He gave me a look. "You were transferring digital signals with a system designed for multiverlal analogue rates. Of course it would be fast."

Right, that went completely over my head. Maybe I should ask something less likely to give me a headache. "How did you know about the poem?"

"Your social media company lied about deleting it. They keep everything, partly for analytics and partly as blackmail material in case you try to cause problems for them."

That was somewhat alarming, so maybe something less out there. "Ok, what's with the hat?"

He smiled broadly. "It is a joke. It refers back to a story where there was a group that supposedly were so afraid of people reading their minds and stealing their thoughts that they would burn the brains of their dead. Fire burns even magic, afterall. Some of them were so scared that they made special hats that they could light on fire without burning themselves to keep out the mind readers. Our hats don't use real fire of course, that would be too hot, but the fake fire is funny enough."

Right, so in earth terms they are the 'Tinfoil Hat Information Brokers'. Ok, next question. Not sure how this one can go wrong, but at least it should be more straightforward. "So how does the economy work if you are all buying from each other? Shouldn't it collapse without a stable base large enough to support it?"

His smile faded. "Truth be told you Tutorial Students are most often seen as the product or the reason for a product, though some do welcome the low value transactions. For instance there is a reason that there are so many information brokers here. Furthermore a lot of our business comes from the Tutorial Teachers, the people who act as antagonists during each round. If they die and leave behind a weapon or some of their other stuff, for instance, they often want it retrieved or destroyed. If not than we can grab it up for ourselves. Some of them spend time before or after their assignment relaxing, and our catering to that creates an entire industry chain. They also send out middlemen to buy stuff for them or on other tasks, which ends up being us dealing with us once again. Then there are those who take advantage of the special rules within the tutorial, not that I can say anything more about that without causing you trouble on your tutorial run. I'm sure there is more but your eyes seem to be glossing over already so I'll just leave it at that."

Right, finances are complicated. Maybe I should try for something headache inducing. "What was the real reason you wanted to make this deal?"

He took on a more neutral pose. "A big part of it was that I didn't want to have to transfer the information out from my mind to our servers. Imagine a long tedious dream where you spend the entire time writing a book report the length of the entire internet. No thank you. I'll eat the cost of a few tutorial level questions to not have to put up with that. Then there is the fact that while you might not have money or anything now that doesn't mean you won't in the future. Also..." he frowned, then got a conflicted look on his face, then finally continued with a different sort of focus. "I looked you up and what I found got me interested. The main stuff I can't tell you about as it would turn out very badly for both of us. The powerful are not something either of us can afford to cross." Then his face softened while growing in confusion. "There is one thing though, a phrase left as an addendum by the Core System itself: 'May you live in interesting times'. It is labeled as a curse? What is that about?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea."

"Hmmm... I also might have been just a tiny little bit bored. There is only so long a guy can look at numbers and projections before he just needs a break."

"Right..." I guess I've spent enough time playing around. "What do I need to know?"

He smiled a broad and toothy grin. "That is exactly the right question."