Alice slows to a stop. "Why are you using a sled?" Anything interesting on the sled?

"...Used to sleds, I guess. I'm from Canada. Far north. You use sleds to move things around sometimes when it's winter for ten months out o' twelve."

It's mostly booze and clothes.

"Well if it works for you that makes sense. See you back at the home complex." She starts biking again.

Once they're out of earshot,

"Pretty sure he's going to create a hoard of what he considers 'the good stuff'. Maybe sell it later. Just FYI. I know the type, Nick used to be that type, until he relaxed into engineering some."

"If he starts hoarding anything important then we can address it. As is, I think there's plenty of booze and alcohol in this mall. Hm, that is a point though. I'm going to go to the store that has the mall locks for our wing and lock it down so people can't take stores hostage.

"Good thinking."

And so when they reach the Mall Lobby Alice transfers the computers and software she was carrying off her bike and keeps biking. About twenty minutes later she's back and she has two mushroom shaped locks in a small bag at her side. She goes to the library, she expects she'll at least find Zahn there if not anyone else.

Zahn, and that pharma guy Carl, and one guy who's perusing the encyclopedia grumpily.

"Hi there, how goes the training?"

"I'll talk in a second, I think I'm almost to the point of it letting me reactivate the teleporter."

"Learnin' all sorts of stuff," reports Carl, "The med bay is kind of bullshit apparently. Don't think it'll give me more access for a while though."

"Oh really? Any highlights? Can the aliens cure cancer or something?" (The answer is yes)

"Yep. And they can cure 'missing limb'. And just about any disease. There's a big section on prenatal care, which is kind of annoying."

"I guess that's probably to ensure that we can repopulate the human race. I am not looking forwards to that. I hope their awesome medical technology includes some sort of pregnancy replacement."

He shakes his head. "Doesn't look like it so far. It's not showing me all too much yet though. Hope springs eternal?"

"Yeah."

"Done!" Zahn stands up, "Want to see me reactivate the elevator?"

"Definitely."

"Huzzah, we can move around faster now!"

Zahn walks up to the lounge Alice follows along. "I've got authorization to reactivate the elevator." He says when he walks in.

"So we can try to brute-force a way home now?" She links very briefly - hesitant hope, saving people.

"We can try to set something like that up, I need to figure out a system for doing that though. I'm not sure how automated I can make the system and if I have to change the code verbally each time it'll take way too long. In the meantime, Interface reactivate this teleporter." The doors open and the keyboard lets him enter a couple letters. He walks back out.

"So what's next, do we try to visit the other home complexes?"

"I don't think we should do that without a little planning. I think the next thing to do is to get the codes for the skybridge and the terminal store, hopefully nobody's already poked their nose in and forgotten them, but we should get them before that happens if it hasn't already."

"I have the code for the skybridge actually! One of the girls who went out shopping wrote it down."