People throw away all kinds of junk. Some of these things are broken but not irreparable industrial appliances, data center style servers, high end personal electronics or cyberware, weapons, stashes of drugs and cash, wrecked drones... Of course, most of it is just useless trash.

(In the background, a news story is spreading on niche media publications... Mysterious algae blooms, now present in Hawaii as well as California, Alaska, Chile, and the Gulf of Mexico...)

Algae is less interesting than motherboards and titanium and gearshafts and power tools. The caches of ammo and money and narcotics are not interesting either; she doesn’t want gangs after her and can’t build anything out of them.

She needs a base of operations that is not a motel. What is the real estate market up to?

Pacifica and the Southern Industrial District are all but abandoned... But people are still trying to sell them for ennies on the eddie, with dubious claims of ownership. In short, high crime areas are cheap. Anywhere "safe" is very expensive.

There's a sweet spot of places near Pacifica that the owners think are going to degrade further and are trying to foist off quickly. A mechanic's garage listed at $80,000. A four floor, 16-unit apartment complex listed at $400,000. A small defunct self-service storage locker business offering its entire premises and all contents (they claim every remaining tenant has effectively abandoned their property), for $40,000, cash.

What does her crypto come to now?

$3200-ish

...Exchange rate seems to be trending down.

She can't possibly be personally moving the needle that much on a couple days' living expenses, what's in finance news?

THE ALGAE MAKES FUEL! MARKET CRASH! PANIC! EVERYONE PANIC! SELL SELL SELL!

...huh. She mentally scraps her plans for a generator based business. She pauses in her junk search to code Rete for adaptive day trading.

That might be difficult, apparently many - most - types of mainline stock trading require meeting in person, or at least having contacts that know you. The cryptocurrency trade and a few other 'creative' financial instruments sit outside the regulation box but are risky and comparatively low volume.

...okay, she bets she can eke a return out of crypto juggling but maybe not fast. She resumes hauling but now she wants stuff that can find her more materials because she's sick of digging in the dump and that means a robot should do it.

Nothing interrupts her trash diving except city dump trucks - and random beat-up pickups - showing up to add more a couple of times.

When she has all she can haul in one trip, back to the motel for more tinkering.

Rete thinks her motel room is bugged.

Figures. The important shit is aboard the drone. She will ask at the front desk for a new room.

...They're gonna charge her for both rooms. Since it's after check out time. If that's okay, sure whatever.

"You have any rules about how much security I can add in if it all removes clean when I leave?"

Siiiiiigh. "I'll tell the cleaning staff to avoid your room, shall I? And inspect the first room. What the fuck did you do to it that you don't want it now, do I need to try to get you for damages already?"

"Oh, no, it's not damaged, somebody broke in and bugged it. I know I'm not paying for you guys to secure my stuff, I just want to know whether I can roll my own."

"Oh, just- Ugh, right, I'll have to get my 'runner to check that next time I have her do maintenance. Whatever, if you're good for the money and don't damage anything or put in actual lethal traps- I don't mean don't defend yourself, I mean don't hook up a shotgun to a tripwire- You won't be the worst guest I've had this month."

"No shotgun tripwires, gotcha. Thanks."

New room ahoy.

New room: Got. Nobody bothers her. The finance market continues doing parkour as people panic buy-and-sell. Rete could actually profit quite a fair bit during the most critical period if it takes a risk with shady fringe financial instruments.

It'll go for it, holding back enough for room and board. It's only got a couple days' mining under its belt to risk anyway.

It triples what it invested over about 8 hours! The window of opportunity closes around then, though, with other trading systems catching on to the silly buggers with futures markets and closing the gap with much higher volume involved.

Neat, good bot.

She releases another drone to sort, pick over, and shortlist stuff in the junkyard overnight, and then she will go wherever has good reviews for dinner.

There's "Pepper & Spice" which is a semifamous fusion place and apparently really really good, but it's across the river has a price tag to match, Paradiso Terrestre as a classic Italian restaurant and a midline in price and reviews being more like a 4.5 star but still quite solid, or "El Coyoto Cojo" is quite nearby. It's a bar, but it's definitely cheaper and has a good rep for home cooked-style Mexican food. Hidden gem hole-in-the-wall style, the good reviews are word of mouth on forums more than in an official map app.