"- why're vehicles and phones hard?"

"I mean, I guess they weren't when the grid was up? But vehicles are damn convinced they need fuel to run, and it's hard to tell them otherwise, and phones - you can get one to connect to the local area network, right, use the switch board as a hub, but getting them to actually call people direct when you didn't also make the receiving phone's tricky, especially if you're not just pinging nearby receivers, and if it's short range it's a walkie talkie, not a phone."

"...huh.

Knack?"

"They call them something else in Columbia or wherever? It's the thing something's meant to be - like, if you take two knives, and craft them both, and one turns out to have an edge that can slice through metal like butter, and the other one won't cut flesh no matter how hard you try, that's their knacks. Running without fuel's a needed knack for vehicles and all, but that's a hard one to get right, especially with room for other knacks - things don't like being... All same-y, you know? Each thing's got its own personality."

"...ah-huh."

Hum. "Got anything else you wanna know? Can do directions to places and all."

"I think I'm set, but thank you."

"Anytime. Welcome to Waynesboro, hope your stay's good and all."

"Hope so too!"

She jogs toward the union place, taking note of promising junk that isn't marked off by flags.

Most of what's easy to work with and visible from the street's been marked off, but apparently most locals don't have a ton of capability or interest in salvaging large metal items, because there's an old factory that's being salvaged for brick but not for machines, from what it looks like with how the flags are set.

Ideally she needs electronics, or moderately precision machinery to make them with, but she can probably start from earlier on the tech tree with Rete's copy of Wikipedia helping.

Unfortunately there's no unscavenged electronics (unless the machines contain some) lying around in plain sight.

Welp. Union place.

The union place consists of actually two buildings in a row of them - one on the corner, its exposed face painted with a weird impressionist mural of people working in different fields, and one sort of scrunched up between that building and the pharmacy next to it. The scrunched up building seems to be mostly individual offices, while the corner one with the mural hosts the actual lobby proper. The brick's weathered, but the decorations are all well maintained, and the chairs in the lobby's waiting area all look like they were made by some eccentric artist dedicated to designing A Chair. The linoleum floor is pretty scuffed, with in grained grime, and the receptionist seems to be busy working on his knitting.

He looks up when she enters, blinking through glasses that look handmade (probably by someone in an art deco phase), and smiles awkwardly. "Hey! Uh, like the suit thing. You - here. Uh. Union stuff?"

"I'm lost and the person I asked where this is sent me here. What are you a union... of?"

"Uh, most of the local unions have a rep person here, since sharing the building's more efficient? Why here?"

"I was asking about what kind of crafts people want."

"There's a general crafter's union, yeah, mostly for people doing commissions. A bit small, but they're good at linking crafters and clients. Also some crafting falls in other unions' wheelhouses more, but that's usually 'cause it's all part of the same field. Architects are in the builder's union, that sort of thing."

"What's the advantage of unionizing?"

"For commissions? Union people usually get paid and treated better, clients know the union will blacklist them if they try to cheat someone or act inappropriately. It's also easier to find work - lots of people will just tell the union when they're looking for someone to do work for them, and the union'll do a better job of matching skills and need to the work than just posting a thing on the community board. Union also helps the clients if they pay up front and the commissioner doesn't deliver; instead of a strike fund it's got a fund that covers like when an emergency happens and you can't complete a thing. Though you can only benefit so many times from that. Union also helps out if you need to sub-contract something, since they've got a ton of local connections."

"This doesn't always work as well as advertised - it's still run by humans and all - but I think our local organizers are on the up and up and generally trying their best."

"I usually work in electronics, do you know if there are parts to be had?"

He scratches his head. "I don't think there's any in like a materials bank you could draw from, but people definitely sell parts and, like, broken radios with parts included, and someone should know roughly where to scavenge parts if you're trying to stay even cheaper than 'broken radios.'"

"I don't have cash but I'm really good at stuff with electronic parts. ...suit can fly."

"Cool! Haven't heard of too many people getting that knack on something. Would count as a high value thing if you think you can pull it off twice? And if you're doing a commission you usually ask for half up front."

"My stuff, uh, tends to have a mind of its own, but I think I could do flying again, yeah. With the right parts."