There is an all-you-can-eat place. The price is about twice what an ordinary meal would cost. There are grills built into the tables. You order the raw meats and cook it yourself.

She'll pay up and put her optimized hyperefficient metabolism to work.

After forty-five minutes, she has a small audience. After an hour the owner is sending dark looks her way.

Okay, that'll hold her for a couple days. She apologetically sets down her chopsticks.

There are small noises of disappointment from her watchers. The owner shoos her out the door.

She is shooed! She waves at onlookers, smiling faintly.

The other dockworkers look at her with a different kind of respect, as word of her prodigious feat spreads.

Heh. That wasn't really an effect she was going for but all right.

She is generally friendly! She remembers everyone's names and says hi and is a very good listener.

The overall impression given is that she may look strange and have... a lot... of weapons, but other than that she seems like a good person.

Good. (She's not going to sell the weapons, they don't have ones as good here and she knows how to use these if something comes up. Something might come up.)

She will haul so many crates until she can afford a place and tools and materials to construct... a phonograph.

That may take more than one day.

Yeah, she wasn't expecting it to be instant.

But with hard work and dedication, she can get there! Eventually.

Crates crates crates.

At the end of the day, the dockmaster compliments her work ethic and asks if she'll be returning.

"Expect me!" she chirps.

Some of the other workers are going out drinking before going home. Would she like to join them?

Sure! She's saving up, though, might only have a couple.

That's the spirit!

The bar is seedy and the beer isn't very good, but at least it's cheap.

Beer has calories and those are important! Tarinda does not feel like letting it cross the blood/brain barrier; tiny risks are pretty hugely magnified in this setting. She does a pretty good giggly-tipsy anyway.

One or two of the men attempt to convince her to come home with them.

"I have a girlfriend back home!"

Aw. What she doesn't know won't hurt her?

No thanks.

Well, it was worth a try.