"I'm not sure yet, but I do have a question — what's with the symbol?"

Ooh, she gets to explain things to her girlfriend. Fun.

She has a girlfriend. Very fun.

"So Rorch is kind of video game capitalism. A crucial step in owning and selling stuff is having a logo that you can magically apply to it. When you sell it, the logo changes automatically. We haven't seen anyone who's not wearing a logo of some sort, their own or someone else's—"

She trails off.

"We suddenly have concerns."

"Yeah. If logos confer ownership, and you can put your logo on anything that's unclaimed... does that mean that some rando could make me their property?"

"I don't know, and I don't like not knowing. You're," hers, "your own, not someone else's, and I don't want someone doing that to you."

"I mean. I wouldn't mind being yours. But I think we can do some experiments."

Eva goes over to the doorway out of the train — at the moment they're in drydock — and beckons Sable to follow her. 

"I want you to try and put your logo on one of the books from my library. It's my library, the books are mine, if it only works on things you own already then we should be safe."

She flushes briefly at the thought of Eva being hers.

Then nods firmly and heads to the library, grabbing a book.

She holds it in both hands and carefully attempts to apply her logo to it.

There's a sense of resistance, like pushing a stone wall, and the logo doesn't take. 

Eva exhales. "Whew. That's a relief if I've ever seen one."

She sighs and nods, smiling softly.

"That's good. That... is one concern handled."

"Although..."

She frowns again. "I can imagine entrapping situations, some problem or danger that you can't get out of without help, and the help on offer being from someone who wants to logo people."

"What we really have to worry about there is imprisonment, but I'd be pretty hard to hold prisoner given my magical girl form. Coercion only works so well on people who can just respawn, you know? And I updated my backup just recently."

She hums. "That helps somewhat, yeah. It's still memory loss, and we're probably going to be a little jumpy and protective for a bit, but it's certainly better than it could be."

"Yeah, this gets into continuity of conciousness bullshit. Suffice to say that I personally don't mind dying in a good cause so long as my backup gets loaded. It's a... personal philosophy thing, every me is me."

"We're similar on that, yeah. It's not so much the identity thing as just not wanting you to have to deal with it if we can avoid it."

"Yeah, that makes sense. But I mean, even on earth you'd have no guarantee of not getting mugged or hit by a car or what have you. Still doesn't mean it happens every day of your life."

"... Though I will say we've been having some suspiciously bad luck lately..." 

She frowns. "We have...

"Actually," she glances through the bookshelves for a moment until she finds Journeys of a Conduit, flipping through the pages, looking for something. "Aren't there ways that Bridge effects can follow a Conduit around?"

"You think it's supernatural?"

Eva frowns. 

"I dislike the hypothesis, it feels ugly, but I guess I can't rule it out. I have no idea how any of this actually works."

"Yeah, I'm not a fan, but I remember reading something about this."

Flip flip flip flip flip flip flip, where are the world descriptions, aha, okay, not Earth, not Bevin, not Prison, no, no, no, Academy.

She passes the book to Eva, open to the correct page. "Bridges that spread corruption, ill-fortune, and despair, but also help young love."

And then she's diving back into the bookshelves, looking for another conduit book.

"... That sure does sound like us, doesn't it..."

Eva looks at the page. "Gokigenyou Academy..."

It clicks. 

"I think that's one of the planes I'm connected to. The name feels right. And they say conduits are connections between planes, so..." She frowns. "Maybe this one is leaking."

"We read something about that!" She scans past book after book, looking for another Conduit book in particular. No, no, no, different Conduit book so might be useful but not what she's looking for, no, no, yes!

She slaps Variation in Conduits onto the table. "Chapter's titled Living Bridges, but there are other names suggested, like leaky connections or conduit incontinence."

"Inconduitinence."

"— sorry, my ADD wouldn't let me not say it. Uh, yeah, that sounds like the problem."

Sable laughs and nods. "Yep. It suggests that with time spent in the relevant world, and some effort, you can maybe close it? But it's a process. And Gokigenyou is quite a place by the sound of it."

"Yeah. I'm not sure I want to spend a few years there just yet. But maybe I can learn to refine my connection to it without actually going there?"

She shrugs. "No clue. Worth a try, at least."

Then she spins around and grabs a notebook to start writing a shopping list.

• Clothes
• Underwear
• Earplugs
• Saw
• More kinds of food
• Liquids and minerals to farm in the Bevin

"Can you think of anything else we need?

"Don't forget the bevin does plants too. If there's perhaps a textile crop of some kind, that could be useful."

She frowns. "Also, is there an internet in Rorch? If there is, a computing device would super be worth it."

"Good question!"

She adds both of those to the list. "Oh, and what about an adapter to power Earth tech off Rorch gear?"

"Might be hard to come up with, but we should definitely keep an eye out."

"Hell, if we can just find a book or two documenting the standard they use here, Ruby and I can figure it out making one if we take it slow. And reread a lot of books in the process."

She writes both those down.

"We'll probably think of something else as soon as we've finished shopping and gotten back here."

"Probably, yeah. But there will be other trips."

Eva stretches. "Shall we get moving?"

She nods and smiles, leaning in to shyly press a soft kiss to Eva's lips.

Eva kisses back, and parts with a shy smile on her lips. 

Then it's back to the traincar with her.

After checking all the cargo is strapped down, Sable settles into the pilot's seat. "All aboard!", she calls playfully.

Parking brakes disabled, trackless mode primed, throttle up, and then when the locomotive reaches the center of the small lake, it vanishes between heartbeats, reappearing several meters above the waters of Epiphor.

As she looks around the area, watching for hazards, she listens to the sparks in her heart: where is the nearest Bridge to Rorch, internal compass?

The bridge is north-northeast and a bit below them, following the curve of the water. 

This area of Epiphor is currently being assailed by a heavy storm. The ship rocks in the wind, battered and tossed. 

"Hold on tight!" She frowns and cranks down the rigidity of the pseudo-track system, tightening the whole mechanism. It'll cost them more power on the way down, but an easy recharge the second they touch rail in Rorch makes the slight stability increase well worth it.

The trainship stabilizes a bit, and she keeps the attitude control aimed at the surface of the water a few hundred meters before the bridge — enough time to level out before they reach it.

Eva grabs a rail, spreads her stance and holds on as the ship drives through the storm.

Despite the wind-driven rain, the ship makes steady headway, and they find themselves at the transition point with only a little more time spent. 

"Here we go," she calls as they approach the Bridge. "Three, two, one, now!"

In that instant, the world flashes away around the ship, replaced with a brief moment of swirling color, before they're charging out on Rorch's seas, steadily approaching a rail dock.

Sable locks the pitch control, holding steady on the surface of the water, then hits a blue lever, and the ship unfolds behind them into a normal train, everything rumbling onto onto the tracks with a clatter.

She locks all attitude control beyond track selection and calls out, "Tracks locked!"

Time to head further into town and find someplace to offload their lumber.

Eva grins and looks out the windows of the train, looking around at the shining island city they've just arrived at.

The train quickly rises over the city on elevated rails, driving past skyscraper after skyscraper. Mirrored glass and palm trees are the order of the day; and between them pass the stone and metal-bodied natives of Rorch, the Associates, going about their daily business as usual. 

A stone-bodied man walks by on what looks like an older model of phone, his stiffly-pressed suit crisp as the blocky lines of his face. 

He meets up with a pair of others who are waiting for him with a briefcase, and a collection of circular stone coins are parceled out between the three of them from the briefcase itself. 

The man nods, and the three Associates move off together, presumably on some important task they have just been paid for. 

The architecture is a little older in some places, but the place has a clear vibrancy. There's graffiti on some buildings, but it's bright and fresh, not covered over with layer after layer of scrawls. The whole place looks like it came out of some alternate future-past, half Miami, half the nineties, half some place completely alien.

Sable turns abruptly to a Nixie display board with a large lever alongside it, the pivot far enough behind the board that the different lever positions neatly line up with the individual rows. She twists a ring on the handle until it clicks, and the board lights up with the distinctive orange glow. Another small display board at the ceiling counts down in the Rorchian alphabet and numerals, tracking the distance until the next junction, with no indication of which way she needs to route.

"Fuuuuuuck. Thank the stars we've been practicing the alphabet. At least it's English under the hood."

She selects the first entry, Warehouse, then clicks the button on the end of the lever. The display changes. She navigates to Imports, then Lumber, then selects a station in that neighborhood. The junction display at the top of the cockpit updates.

"Okay, route locked in. We're on our way."

"Oh, good.  My, uh, my translation power only works on speech so looking at that I'm completely lost."

"Earth's is slow, but works on everything. And this is even English, just with a weird alphabet, so it wasn't hard. Took some practice, though."

The junction distance rapidly ticks lower.

And Sable waits until it gets a little bit closer, then sharply pulls the junction selection lever to the left. The train trundles rapidly down the left branch of the junction in response.

"I'm really glad I have you. In multiple senses, even."

Eva smiles and takes a seat looking out the window.

"Likewise, cutie," Sable replies with a laugh. "For one thing, you're cute and fun. For another, we couldn't have snapped the kelp ourselves. But most of all we just really enjoy your company."

Out the window, runners leap between rooftops and swing across multi-lane train tracks with grappling hooks. The terrain rapidly gets more warehousing-oriented as they approach an imports district.

"Awwww, thank you..."

"Thanks for being with me."

Sable pulls the junction lever to various positions, every time with that rolling, ticking sound followed by a solid clunk into place, as they get closer and closer to their destination. Finally, they reach a loading station between several warehouses, the sign on one reading "Rallonkyte Lumber Imports" in the local alphabet.

Sable carefully parks the train. "Here we are."

Eva takes a breath. 

"Alright, here goes." 

She gets up and walks over to the train doors, and waits for Sable to come and join her.

"Oh fuck," she comments as she walks over, looking down at her attire. "I... am seriously considering trying to sell lumber while wearing a nightie and panties. What the fuck."

"I can try and take the lead if you want? Or we can see if I can lend you clothes from the weird wardrobe power."

"Let's try the latter first, and if that doesn't work, maybe you take the lead?"

"Okay, uh, turn around for a second."

She flushes a bit more, nods, and turns away.

A few moments later, a shirt lands on her shoulder, followed by a skirt kicked across the floor. 

And then there's a flash of light. 

"The wardrobe power only lets me swap between clothes I have, but I can wear the silly sailor suit and not worry too much. And I'd feel more comfortable transformed anyway."

Eva taps Sable on the shoulder. "You can turn around now."

Sable turns back, blushing and smiling at the sight of Eva in her sailor uniform. "It certainly looks good on you. I think I'll just use the skirt, rather than stretch out your shirt."

She bends down a bit, stepping into the skirt and pulling it up around her hips.

"Okay, that'll do, at least for now."

"Alright. Let's do this."

Eva gestures towards the doors. "After you."

Sable strides out, down to the office door on the side of the warehouse, a confident smile on her face. Having spent the past few days with the Pirates, Eva may be able to tell the difference between Sable's Business Smile and a normal one, but it's subtle. 

In she goes, looking for someone to do business with.

A Suit on a walkie-talkie is directing Craftsmen to and fro. He looks over and Rorchian exclamation marks flash in his eyes for a moment, then his stone mouth stretches into a smile. 

"An offworlder! Capital! Bringing me something special today? Let's talk business!"

Sable smiles and nods. "Yes indeed! I've got a piece of lumber back in my train," she jerks a thumb in the direction of the station, "that has an easy flexibility not unlike bamboo, but when dried properly and finished has a sturdiness and quality like the finest teak. Would you like to take a look?"

Bits flash in the Suit's eyes. "I'd love to!" 

"Taking a look at some product," he says into the walkie-talkie, "hold for a second." 

And then he walks with a firm confident stride towards Sable's locomotive.

Eva has to get out of the way pretty fast so as not to collide with the Suit. 

She leads the way to one of the freight cars, then slides the door open, revealing a carefully dried and prepared log. It's a bit thin for a tree, at only half a meter in circumference, but quite thick for kelp. It's about ten meters long, and when the Suit examines the end, he finds that the wood does indeed quite resemble teak.

"That's some fiiiiiine product! I won't insult your intelligence by asking where you got it. Good, strong, solid, what do you say to, say, two kiloBytes?" 

She smiles thoughtfully, assessing this Suit in the briefest moment. Does he seem like the type to enjoy haggling?

He seems eager to close the sale, which could indicate he's lowballing, but could also just mean he's eager to get his hands on the offworld lumber. 

She arches an eyebrow. "What do you say to two and a half? There's some awfully dangerous wildlife where this grows."

He considers for a long moment. 

"Sure, two and a half kiloBytes. And if you have more remember Ardex Yards, alright?"

"Absolutely." She offers a hand to shake. "We'll definitely have more sooner or later, though there's some stocking up on supplies and tools to do first."

He shakes, and a suitcase appears out of thin air and pops open exposing rolls of 128 Byte coins each. The Pirates' logo appears on the suitcase, while the lumber is marked with a Rorchian ARDEX. 

"Pleasure doing business. The Craftsmen'll unload it from your train in fifteen minutes. Get yourself something nice for the price." 

He waves over his shoulder and walks off, giving orders into his walkie-talkie. 

Sable grins and hip-bumps Eva. "Check us out, making profits to buy supplies with."

Eva grins. "Shopping trip time?"

"Shopping trip time!"

She leads the way back into the locomotive, locking in a junction route to the personal retail district while she waits for the lumber to be cleared out. 

"D'you want to just operate out of a shared money pool or deliberately split stuff?"

Eva follows Sable back onto the train.

"I'd feel more comfortable with some money of my own just in case, but it's your train. How do you feel about giving us each half a kilobyte and leaving the remaining kilobyte and a half as a communal pool?"

"Deal." She counts out two stacks of half a kilobyte each, passes one to Eva, and tucks the other in a lockable compartment under the control console, then closes the suitcase back up and sets it on the floor.

At the sound of the cargo door sliding shut, she tilts her head and nods. "Okay, sounds like they're all done. Off to shopping!"

And she puts the locomotive into gear and sets off for a retail area.

And off they go again through the district, over the palm trees and power lines. 

A massive golem the size of a building passes as if it were just another piece of statuary. 

It's not long before they pull in at the retail district. The place is crowded with Suits and Runners coming and going about their business; one of the Runners goes grinding down a rail on a skateboard past the stairs down from the station.

"Shopping time!"

Eva tucks her stack of Bytes in the pocket of her dress and gets ready to disembark.

Sable grabs hers as well, and parks the train out of the way at the station, then hops out of the locomotive. First order of business, clothes. Is there a clothing store or two around here?

There is a whole department store, in fact, right down at the ground level. In Rorchian over the door it's labeled ASSOCIATES' CHOICE.

The clothes are an odd split, half starchly-pressed suits, half casual skater-punk clothes. They look like the majority of them are designed to fit the much chunkier stone bodies of Runners and Suits, but there's a sign advertising custom tailoring for suits. 

"I gotta say," Eva says, looking at a skater-punk midi skirt with a rose pattern that's way too large around for her. "These really make me feel less dysphoric by comparison. Makes you appreciate some of the attributes of your own body."

Sable is holding up a knee-length, pleated, wave-patterned skirt that is not nearly as overlarge on her as what Eva's dealing with, but still large for her. "I have some amount of envy over the fact that you got an instant magic transition, still, but yeah, I am definitely distinctly less blocky than Associates are, and that feels nice."

Is there anything in her size? Or any sign about tailoring for Runner-style clothes? She needs a bit more of a magic transition before she's gonna be comfy wearing a suit.

It looks like Sable miiiight just be an Associate's Extra Small, but there aren't a lot of clothes in that size, and Eva looks to be entirely out of luck for clothes that fit her. 

On the back of the suit tailoring sign it advertises "Custom designed pieces for Runners: ask for Craftsman Anrei."

Eva's looking at the sign blankly trying to puzzle out the unfamiliar alphabet.

"Aha. There's a craftsman offering custom Runner-style clothing. C'mon."

Sable leads the way, looking for an employee to ask about speaking with Craftsman Anrei.

There's a pair of Associates behind the counter, and they straighten as Sable approaches. 

"Interested in custom tailoring?" One of them says.

"Very much, yes," she replies with a smile. "Not much here will fit me, and none of it will fit my girlfriend."

"Runner, Suit, or Craftsman?"

"Runner, thanks."

"Craftsman Anrei can take in most simple dresses and skirts for about two to three bytes. Pleated items are much more expensive at six bytes each to start. Jackets and tops can be made from scratch; usually they'd cost about sixteen bytes at the low end for a custom piece, and similar for a skirt or pair of pants. If you want expensive fabric or complex details that increases the price, for obvious reasons."

"Wonderful." She turns to Eva. "D'you wanna start by picking some stuff out to be taken in, or go full custom?"

"I saw a couple skirts I liked the look of, no reason not to get them taken in. The blouses I'll have to place as longer-term orders. I'm thinking maybe three nice tops and a half-dozen skirts to go with; that should all fit in a hundred bytes or so if I'm judicious."

"Okay, let's go find some things that can be taken in." She turns back to the Associates. "We'll be back with some selections to be taken in, then. Thank you."

Sable goes through everything in extra-small, picking out knee-length and shorter skirts in reds and purples and blues and blacks, with dramatic patterns when possible. She eyes some tops for inspiration, as well.

There's plenty of dramatic patterns, some in ungodly combinations of hawaiian shirt patterns with skater wear, but a few items are more to her liking and it's not too hard to find enough to have a solid basis for a wardrobe. Blues and blacks are easier to find in good patterns than reds and purples, but there's a few red patterns, mostly of roses, that are less tacky. The purples are mostly lilac rather than deep violet. 

Eva goes through and picks out some pleated gothy skirts with chains. There's a distinct lack of the longer dresses she likes — Runners clearly need to be able to move fast — so she ends up with mostly mini and midi skirts instead, which makes her feel anxious but a little hopeful that once they're taken in they'll be flattering. 

... There is, however, a distinct lack of underwear in the department store. 

She looks over at Sable. 

"We're short on underwear, it seems."

On spotting the gothy skits with chains Eva's selecting, her eyes widen and she grabs some of those, too. Those are great.

"Hmm. Maybe it's a specialty item? We'll ask. Worst case, I take you back to Earth and we use the leftover funds I've got there to take you to a Victoria's Secret. I probably need a specialty place either way."

"Oh, gosh, Earth. I wasn't really ever planning to go back, but I guess it is possible. I just expect I'd have all kinds of legal difficulties because of, well," she gestures to herself. 

"Instant transition does come with a few drawbacks."

"Hah. Yeah, that would complicate matters. I still have access to my financials, though, so we can take advantage of that. Should probably close up my apartment, too, move all the crap into a few storage boxes on the train."

"Sounds very sensible. Pack away what's left. I had a few sentimental items too, but I seriously doubt I'll be able to get into my apartment to retrieve them with no key, no ID, and the wrong face. And they're just things, ultimately. Rather than scrabble for them I think it's better to make a clean break."

She half-smiles. "The books were the thing I'd miss most, and they've been showing up in my Bevin library one by one."

She smiles tenderly. "If any don't, let us know and we'll take a trip back to Earth for 'em. Glad they're showing up, though."

She kisses Eva's cheek and carries her selections up to the counter.

Eva flushes a little, but follows Sable back to the counter with her own armload of skirts to take in. 

"Here you are," she says to the Suit at the counter. "I'd like all of these taken in to my size. And I'm sorry if this is a rude question, but do you know any stores that do underwear?"

The Suit at the counter straightens his back at the mention of underwear, but nods. "Yes, ma'am. We don't stock it here, but there's a specialty shop down the street in the Runner utility mall. I can give you directions."

"Thank you kindly. I'll also want a few bustiers and tightly-fitted tops, and some crop tops. Who should we discuss the details of those with, since you said they'd have to be custom?"

"The Craftsman will be in in an hour or so. I can take an approximate order and you can return for a fitting?"

She nods. "That would work. We can go visit the specialty shop you mentioned in the meantime."

"I'll take a general description now, then." 

The Suit gets out a chunky-looking pen and a pad of paper.

Sable goes through describing some bustiers and other tops that end up on the gothier side of punk, or the punker side of goth, depending on one's perspective. She also describes a short utility jacket that should come down to her waist, as well as a couple pairs of rugged-but-stylish combat boots.

"Craftsman Anrei doesn't do boots, but he'll have someone he can refer the work to. Thank you for your order."

Eva hands over her items to take in, describes a few custom tops of her own — midnight blue, her favorite color — and nods to the cashier. "I'll pay on pickup."

"Likewise. Thank you for this, and see you when we return for the fittings."

And they head back outside, looking for the mall where the underwear shop is.

The three-day journey through the void takes him to a portal in a crowded neighborhood of the sky, dozens of strange asteroids performing an elaborate dance of some kind. He ignores them and gives what looks like a twisted region of space a wide berth, heading for the bridge to another reality.

He emerges from the portal far, far above a seemingly endless sea. It blurs away in the distance, but directly below him is an irregular speck of light, what looks like an island. He accelerates downward towards it, judging the distance and accounting for gravity's pull. Down. Down. DOWN. Turnover... NOW. He begins decelerating.

...And ends up at a stop rather higher than he expected to, a few miles above, still. Air resistance, right. He can see the strange ocean-city sprawling around more clearly now, though. A twisted dream of commerce and industry, a city on a sea. Huh.

So he drops like a stone the rest of the way, pivoting to a glide above canals and boulevards as he watches this bustling place from above. It's new and different! And he thinks he sees fruit and fish! Things to taste that aren't weird varieties of dream-radiation!

He's radiating a softly chaotic aura, a lot of different essences mixing- Earth and the stable cave, mundane enough to almost be ignorable. Rorch itself, hardly noticeable here. A vast open space, a polite and restrained-feeling place, a hint of grim inevitability, something reminiscent of oil and metal and gems, and a faint hint of fairytale forest.

As Sable and Eva walk to the mall, arm in arm, Sable abruptly stops and looks up. Is that a zoomy conduit she feels? It certainly feels like soft connections to worlds zipping through the sky. To conduit senses, she feels like a similar otherworldly connection like his own, but to fewer worlds: the vast space, this one, a kind starlit forest, a seemingly endless and deep ocean, Earth, and the stone place.

Eva's gaze goes skyward as she feels the sudden presence, her body pivoting and her eyes searching the clouds. To conduit senses, she feels like peace, stability, a deep ocean, and a faint undertone of corruption.

"Do you feel that?" She asks Sable. 

"Definitely," she replies with a smile. "Feels like a conduit, maybe. Bridges aren't supposed to move, and it feels softer than a bridge, so probably a conduit."

She grins and tilts her head playfully at Eva. "New friend, hopefully?"

Thaaaaat's a new dreamsensation? What?

He gets an impression of Ocean, and of the cave. Also an echo of the fairy forest and his space playground. The rest is muddled.

What is up with that, dream? What are you trying to tell me?

Momentum carries him out of range, and the sensation fades out. He accelerates up and back, doing an aerial loop and slowly approaching the bit of sky he just flew through, looking for the odd contact to come back.

Her head whips around, following the probable conduit through the sky, until they slip out of range. "Aaaand they're gone. I wonder who they were."

But a moment later the sense comes back. "There they are again. Sensed us and came back, maybe?"

Eva finally picks out the tiny silhouette against the sky. 

"— Another conduit, yeah. Do you want to take the train up to meet them?"

Unnecessary. He's zhooping quickly in their direction, having identified a vector. A man, wearing a ragged, oily T-shirt and jeans and tennis shoes and badly shaven facial hair, carrying shiny black and cloudy red glass bottles on a woven metal cord around his waist.

He settles, crosslegged, on top of a nearby power line. Warily.

"Looks like he'll come to us," she replies.

Then, looking up at him with a smile, she calls out. "Hello, fellow traveler!"

"Christ, this dream is getting weirder all the time. Though I suppose it's not a dream anymore. It's been weeks. Hi?"

"I thought it was a dream too at first. Then I nearly got eaten by mermaids. Welcome to Rorch, you're a Conduit."

Sable grins and bumps Eva's shoulder with her own, briefly glancing over at her. "I'm really glad you didn't get eaten by mermaids."

Looking back up at the newcomer, she calls out, "I'm Sable, she's Eva." 

"Nick."

With a sudden zip of carefully calculated acceleration and deceleration he 'falls' to the street below and walks towards them.

"Nobody deserves being eaten by monsters. Conduit, hm? Is this place going to try to kill me? So far I've got steel wasps, space debris," (he indicates a hole and a bloodstain on the lower leg of his jeans), "and zombies. He bravely turned his tail and fled..." He singsongs.

Sable winces at the hole and shakes her head. "Seems like a normal-enough cityscape, as least from what we've seen so far. We're just getting some supplies. Could explain things while we walk and shop, if you'd like." She glances over at Eva.

"You mind, sweetie?"

"Oh, don't let me intrude on your date. I can poke around, see things."

Eva shakes her head. "I don't mind. And I did some reading about this place from the library, so I think I know more than you here, Sable."

She smiles at Nick.

"Stay away from the water and you're pretty much safe. There are tsunamis occasionally, but they're pretty rare according to Journeys of a Conduit. If you get into, like, a serious line of business where you're pushing out competitors, you might have an assassin sent after you about it, but as a tourist the biggest danger is that some of the local fish might think you look tasty."

"And it's only a date in as much as girlfriends going to the department store and the hardware store together counts as a date," Sable adds playfully.

Eva smiles and swats Sable lightly. "It can be a date if we want it to be. I mean, we're getting to explore a whole new world. Prime date material in my opinion."

She rubs the back of her head. "That said, meeting strange new people and hanging with them is totally part of the appeal of a date in a foreign city, so please, Nick, feel free to come along. I'd love to hear your story; if it's anything like us two's I'm sure it's a fun tale to tell."

He raises his hands in mock surrender towards Sable. Then kicks off the ground in a suborbital arc long jump to close much of the remaining distance. He bows.

"I shall have to gracefully oblige. I haven't really been able to talk to people. If the entities I saw are, indeed, people. Tell me, do you think a space rock can act like an excited puppy?"

"If you've seen one that does I'd love to hear about it."

Sable smiles curiously, nodding along with Eva.

"My favorite world so far- Though it's kinda close- Is the one I just came from, and I plummeted a hundred miles or so to get down here. It's a great void- Outer space, but weirdly crowded for outer space. Asteroids, comets, thick clouds, odd warpy bits- All moving and lighting up in their own strange patterns. Somehow I was fine in the vacuum and without eating or drinking as long as I hung out near bright areas, but it seems like a me thing- Anyway, I just danced among the celestial bodies for a while. The bigger ones seem smart. It's almost like they're playing chess with each other, from a distance, though I can't make heads or tails of it. But the little ones might be - babies, I guess, because there was this one I call Minimoon that's almost a perfect white sphere that follows me around and jousts with me. It's remarkably puppy like and loves when I actively accelerate towards it in a circle, as if I'm trapped in its orbit. And it's ticklish to lightning. Or at least also seems to enjoy it. Surprisingly cute! I just regret I don't have a picture, my phone is super dead."

"That sounds adorable!"

"I've heard you can get back to Earth eventually if you try. Maybe pick up a solar charger or something like that? I haven't had the opportunity, my appearance changed when I turned into a Conduit so I have no legal identity back on Earth."

"And yeah, that sounds super cute. I'd love to see a picture of mini-moon."

"We can go back to Earth?"

His face turns into something hopeful, then a scowl, before he smooths it over.

"Probably should at some point. I imagine being missing for three weeks or however long will be legally interesting. It's not like I had all the bills on autopay. Nevermind that. What were you shopping for? And d'you think I can pawn some amateur glassware?"

"Clothes, tools, personal care products, everything a pair of traveling girls need to stock their flying train with to make her livable."

She looks down at the bottles at his hip. "And probably. Best I can tell, this place loves to buy and sell stuff. We just offloaded some lumber, so I'm sure somewhere someone wants to buy your glassware."

Eva makes a wobbly hand motion. "Maybe. They seem to have plenty of glass around here, but you can't know till you try."

She looks over at Sable. "If the glass sales don't go so well, do you think we could spot Nick here enough that he can get some basics together? More than the set of clothes he woke up in?"

Sable frowns thoughtfully for a moment.

Then nods and smiles. "Yeah, we can. S'not like our operating expenses are particularly high."

"Looks like you'll be okay on stuff you can get from Rorch at least. You might have some trouble finding some of the neccessities, especially hygiene stuff — the Associates are stone, so they have different needs from humans — but hopefully we can at least get you something helpful."

"Stone, huh. Yeah, there's... A bunch of things I could use. I don't like relying on charity, as a personal thing. If I can sell it as... Furniture, or art, or stylish accessories, that'd be a nice angle. I can resculpt it. I can always see what kind of things go well and make another trip later after getting to know the place."

He pulls from one of the stoppered bottles (more a thermos with a wide, roughly threaded cap), a thin glass tulip, made of layers of black-red-clear glass to evoke the different shades and colors. It's... A little lumpy and smudgey, and slightly dented, but the aim and affect is clear. He makes to present it with a flourish, but seems hesitant and embarrassed about it and abandons the motion with an awkward shrug.

"Hey, that's not bad! Could use a little refinement, but the style's developing. I like the use of different colors of glass to evoke the texture of petals. Not sure how much it'll sell for but it's definitely evidence of progress. I'm impressed with how thin you're able to get the glass." 

"Ah- Thank you?" He glances away.  "Well, part of that is a power too, I'm pretty sure. I can mess with it like play-doh when it's fresh. I actually made furniture for my cave that way. Kind of desert punk?"

Sable grins. "That sounds like a pretty fun and unique furniture style. I'd love to see it some time."

The mall has been growing closer while they've talked, and now the sign looms overhead in Rorch's alphabet.

"What sorts of stuff d'you need? Aside from a new pair of jeans," she finishes with a laugh.

"...Man, I don't even know. Food? Tools. More clothes. Something to protect from space debris would be nice, that shit's scary and I've just gotten lucky so far, but I'm not holding out too much hope for something like that."

"I think we can manage some basic tools and clothes." Eva nods to Sable. "The Associates are bigger than humans so you'll need some alterations done, but it should work out."

"Never thought the highlight of my week would be a new shirt. Then again it's the little things, isn't it? You two seem like you have your stuff figured out. I feel out of place."

"I just got lucky. My awakening came with a library full of books by other Conduits. While I'm not able to read most of them, the one I could read — Journeys of a Conduit — helped a lot."

"Perhaps I could borrow it?"

"I think I'm cool with that so long as it doesn't leave my library."

Eva pauses. "Incidentally, do you have any way to be immortal that you know of? If not I might want to get you into my backup system just in case."

"-Uh. Not that I know of."

"We'd best get on that, then. Next stop after shopping?"

"I would appreciate a bit more explanation about the immortality thing," he says lightly, with a bit of underlying tension.

She looks back at Nick. "It's not really the best immortality method. It just lets there be a new you if you die, you lose all your memories in the time between you were backed up and when you died. So the you that died really does die — it's just that you get to have another you that carries on afterward. Better than nothing by a long shot, but I'd prefer something that worked better." 

Eva shrugs and spreads her hands. 

"How it works is that there's an egg the size of a person you can touch in my personal cavern world — it's called a Bevin — and if you die and I touch that egg I can call a copy of you forward from the egg with the memories of your life from when you touched it. It works automatically for me but not for other people, I have to make it work manually."

"Huh. Do you get like... notification or something? Does it let you know whether you need to pull a new copy when you update your own backup?"

Eva shrugs helplessly. "I have no clue. It's never happened yet and I can't think of an experiment to test it that wouldn't kill someone."

"Yeah. Well, good reason to invest time in finding a better option if we can, I guess?"

"Believe me, I was already planning on that in the long run. Now that I know it's possible to become some kind of immortal I want to find the best kind. Which I doubt this is."

"...So I would emerge as I am now, at a time of someone else's choosing, in a place under their power. It's not that I suspect anyone of ill intent, buuuuut... Anxiety is a hard thing to shake."

"Yeah, I can see how that'd be a hard sell. No need to take me up on it, I'd just feel bad about not offering and then you get killed and it's my fault, you know?"

"I'll think about it. Thank you for the offer none the less."

"It's no trouble. And here we are at the mall."

Eva gestures at the long lane of shops. 

"Hardware store first, Sable?"

She nods softly. "Yeah, that should be a pretty quick and easy trip. We need a handheld saw, along with just the usual basic stuff you'd find in a toolkit. What about you, Nick?"

"So a good general toolkit for work on Earth- Hold on, I should actually make a list-"

He pauses, drains one of the black bottles of water from his belt, and then- Presses it between his hands until it breaks all at once, turning to a pile of sand. He catches most of it and works it between his hands for a moment, coming up with a rough, doughy mostly flat mass. He takes a metal twig and starts scratching notes into it.

"...So, paper and ink, first off. Hammer, trowel, screwdrivers, spirit level, hand saw, tape measure, ruler and yardstick, carpenter square, vice, screws and nuts and bolts and screwdriver, allen wrench, scissors, threaded rod, utility knife, pliers, sandpaper... It's more like clay than glass, this stuff, so I should look into pottery tools but I don't actually know those. Maybe a lathe, on the large end of things. Chisels? Mallet. Quite a list, but I don't need all of it at once. -Whetstone."

"Potter's wheel? You could maybe throw it if it's clay-like enough."

"Kinda wanna see that, now. It'd be cool to watch, I figure."

"You're welcome to come to the land of the metal trees and oil sand with me some day. It is kind of pretty in its way, though a bit inhospitable."

"I'd love to see it. Perhaps once we're looking for a new adventure."

The mall's not too dissimilar from an Earth mall, despite the stone people coming and going. There's a distinct lack of anything that could start a fire, though. 

Eva heads into the hardware store and trusts the others to trail along behind her, and quickly they're surrounded by tools.

"So my budget is whatever you two lovely ladies feel like sparing...? To be paid back, naturally, once I find a buyer for some glass objects."

"Yeah, we can talk about what's reasonable but we should be able to provide at least the basics."

He will browse with them, then. Budget-consciously. Just the hand tools, just the essentials, and maybe a cloth bag. The numbers start adding up quickly, though.

Eva watches as the numbers stack up. Hammer, trowel, replaceable bit screwdriver, spirit level, hand saw, tape measure, ruler and yardstick, carpenter square, vice, allen wrench, scissors, threaded rod, utility knife, pliers, sandpaper...

Two bits for the hammer, another three for the trowel, a decent replaceable bit screwdriver set for sixty-four, another sixteen for the saw, forty for the tape measure, eight for the ruler and meter stick together, eighty-eight for a decent vice, sixteen for a hex key set, eight for a decent pair of scissors, sixteen for the utility knife, forty for the pliers...

It all comes out to about sixty-four Bytes. 

"Yeah, we can definitely cover everything you've mentioned so far," Eva says. "Our business has been doing very well so far and to be honest, you're worth the investment. Chisels and a mallet? Maybe a proper backpack to keep it all in? It feels a bit eggs-in-one-basket-y to give you the whole set when you've got nowhere to properly store it just yet, so the least I can do is keep you from having to toss it all into a cloth bag and get you a proper backpack or similar to haul it all." 

Sable tilts her head. "I'm with Eva on covering all of that, and offering a backpack too, but didn't Nick mention having a Bevin that he was furnishing with glass? So technically he does have somewhere to store all this crap? A backpack is still useful, though, so yeah, throw that in."

"Oh, yeah! My bad, my mistake. That makes a lot more sense."

He's wincing at the numbers adding, too. The vice can wait. So can the screwdrivers; It's not like he has screws.

"I am absolutely going to pay it all back. Maybe even with interest. It's just that this is the first stop we took rather than a glass wholesale or- Whatever. Would you like a set of plates and bowls as a signing bonus?"

Maya slips into front softly. Something about the current pace feels more her speed. "Entirely reasonable, though I suspect we would prefer that you pay it forward, rather than interest." She turns to Eva. "Do you have flatware and such in your Bevin, beloved?"

Nick may or may not be able to notice the shift in vocal tone. Maya sounds softer, a bit huskier, and seems to speak very precisely, with no contractions. She holds her body a bit straighter, as well.

Eva gets the sense that Nick's the kind of person who hates relying on charity. Well enough. She'll do her best not to bruise his pride further. 

"I could use some decent flatware, actually. And I like the aesthetic of Nick's glassware so far."

"A good moment for me to duck into the cave and fetch the ones I'm thinking of, then. Be right back."

He brings back bowls, plates, and cups in a big, slightly precarious stack. They meld the black, red, and clear in abstract swirly patterns, and the working surfaces are all nice and smooth and suitable for being held and used in the hands. Some of it's still a little lopsided, but there's clear effort to make them decent and not blobby. The biggest bowl has an almost celtic knot pattern around the rim in cloudy red glass. He has a few glass forks and spoons, too. 'Desert chic' is an appropriate descriptor.

"Oh, these are quite nice," Maya declares.

A childlike smile comes to Eva's face. "Ooh! Those are beautiful and I adore them. I will absolutely take those as a signing bonus if you're offering."

He tries to hide how flattered he feels at that.

"Two of each type as a signing bonus- Friendship bonus- Whatever. If you want the whole lot, maybe I should get a head start on my sales experience, eh?"

"I will gratefully accept that, and I'm absolutely willing to take more of those in kind or simply pay you solid Bytes for them. What do you say to four Bytes a piece?"

"If you think that's fair, who am I to object? It's nice to see the good ones out of a whole lot of failures appreciated either way."

"I would buy some as well," Maya adds, "if only I did not expect life aboard the train to jostle them too much and break them."

"I'll take another two plates and cups on top of the signing bonus, and the bowl with the celtic knots. Twenty bytes altogether, though if you wanted to quibble over the price for the celtic-knot bowl I might be willing to haggle."

"Alas, I know of no way to make it tougher than ordinary glass. We can subtract that twenty from what I owe you for these tools. Which I'm done adding to for now."

"Alright. Sable, did you pick up that saw we needed?"

That manages to pull Sable back into front. She holds up two toolboxes, each designed to strap down on shelves in a locomotive or a train car, full of a variety of tools for electronic and mechanical systems, along with a saw. "Got those, yep!"

"Great. I'm assuming we're taking all the tools out of the communal pool? What's the approximate damage?"

"About fifty bytes for everything. Could pick up a soldering iron for another few bytes, but don't think we'll need one soon."

"Alright! Then I guess we're done here for the moment. Next up is probably clothes for Nick?"

Sable nods. "Yeah, that seems like the next thing. Department store is probably the best bet there, but we wanted to tour the places in here anyway, just to see what's available, so we might as well take a look."

"I hope there's food. I know I don't technically need to eat anymore but I miss nice tastes already."

The clerks ring up their purchases, and Bytes appear from their hoard in neat stacks. 

It all comes to 114 Bytes.

Eva heads out into the mall, expecting the other two to trail along behind her. 

The mall has a small food court selling fried fish and vaguely-polynesian cuisine — a lot of strange fruits — and a bevy of shops selling skater wear and "alt" fashion. Some of it is even sized more on the scale of Earth humans. There's several shops selling wingsuits, grappling hooks, skateboards, and other movement-tech items. 

"You know," Eva says, looking at the skateboards on display. "I tried to learn to skate when I was like fifteen. Never really got good at it. But now — well, it'd still hurt to crash, but maybe I could learn anyway? It might be fun, and it'd give me a project, you know?"

He's keeping an eye out for anywhere selling homewares or decorations. The middleman will take his cut, but that's all fair, really. He has a good bit more in the Bevin, if decidedly not an infinite amount.

Anyway. "Hobbies are lovely things to have. I skated, once upon a time- If you can't find a better instructor. It's not something that is, well, especially amenable to lectures, though."

"Nice. — if you do sick enough skating combos on this world it gives you money, by the way, that's part of why I'm interested."

"-Ooh. D'you suppose adding touches of flight counts as cheating?"

"Wingsuits apparently don't count against, so it's quite possible it could work for you."

There is in fact a homewares shop at the end of the mall, full of wares for small apartments right out of the 90's. 

He nods seriously.

"...I think I'm going to go check out that shop over there, see if they'll buy as well as sell- Maybe break some things and reforge the sand, even. Meet up somewhere again in a bit?"

"Alright! Good luck! We'll be back at the station in maybe two hours, train with an inky heart on the side, you can't miss it."