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rainbowfic2023-08-31 08:49 pm
azzandra) wrote in rainbowfic2023-08-31 08:49 pm
Teal Deer 2, Newsprint 9, Blue Heeler 9
Name: Azzandra
Story: Transit
Colors: Teal Deer (2. Electroluminescences), Newsprint (9. You are so complex that you don't always respond to danger.), Blue Heeler (9. This is what happens when you're unhappy with what you've got, someone's husband eventually gets it!)
Styles and Supplies: Panorama, Seed Beads
Word Count: 3636
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Language, mention of drug usage
Notes: I'm not sure if these are minor character, so much as very deep background characters who will never appear again, but this is a kind of 'lower decks' episode for Transit.
"The snake man was back again today," Tricks remarked with a sigh. "Didn't buy anything, again. This better not be another real estate speculator trying to buy out my shop."
She didn't pick the shittiest alcove in the Greenlight Market so people would bother her over it.
"Anyway," Tricks continued, wiping a folded piece of cloth over a terrarium's glass, "if he comes by at the same time every day, maybe I'll just close the shop. I have one of those 'back in five' signs that I never get to use. That should get him to turn around and leave. Nobody's ever back in five."
Inside the terrarium, the circuit-vines pulsed as the spirits inside shifted, moved. They grew so densely, that the collective had recently developed their own electro-magnetic empathy field, and when they had the same thought at the same time strongly enough, they could even convey it without an interface.
"Yeah, well, what do you guys know?" Tricks huffed, and flicked her fingers against the glass. It made a resonant sound, the entire terrarium humming in annoyance and lighting up as the waves of vibration passed through it. "You freeloaders don't even pay rent."
Talking to them was a vital component of spirit husbandry, but Tricks' life was so repetitive and mundane, that finding some subject to discuss was a bit of a chore. At least this strange visitor to her shop provided some meaty fodder for conversation.
She pulled the tarp over the terrarium, plunging the circuit-plants in darkness. But their light still slipped past the edge of the material, dripping to the floor, pink-tinged and alien.
They were sulking now, not happy to have their suggestion dismissed.
Tricks was worried that maybe the spirits had a point. What if the stranger did suspect what Tricks was actually up to?
Music crackled through tinny speakers affixed to the upper corners of the shop. It was brassy, from an unfashionable decade in music, and turned low, as if it would disturb the dust otherwise. The rest of the shop was similarly uninviting. Unsorted shelves boasted music from a cross-section of genres that never took off. The light was just a little too low to be comfortable for humans, but the posters on the wall were backlit in gaudy pinks and greens. The subtly unwelcoming interior was only helped by the shop's awkward positioning in a corner of the market that saw little foot traffic.
In her two decades of operating the shop, Tricks had not sold more than three albums of music a month, usually to confused shoppers who were passing by and decided to have a look in and then bought something because they felt awkward browsing and then leaving empty-handed. The worst by far were the specialized collectors, who came in looking for rare items, and put their grubby hands on everything, and then asked dozens of esoteric questions that Tricks did not know how to answer.
Because the truth was, Tricks was not in the business of selling music disquettes. At least, not primarily. Oh, she went to the local radio hubs and through the discard bin at music stores and stocked up on whatever looked unpopular and unattractive, just so she'd have things to put on the shelves. Then, each year, she'd write off massive losses on her taxes because nobody bought her products. As far as anyone at the Transit Tax Authority offices knew, Tricks' shop survived solely because of generous monetary gifts from Tricks' 'Uncle', a totally real fictitious person who totally existed. On paper.
No, what Tricks traded in were bootleg spirits. And because of the questionable legality of her real enterprise, it did help her customers if she maintained a more legitimate business that could grant them plausible deniability. Spirits? Homegrown spirits? Oh my, no, they just had terrible taste in music, and that certainly wasn't illegal, or else many more neighbors who listened to their music disquettes inconsiderately loud would get picked up by Internal Discipline officers!
But that was precisely why Tricks felt her teeth set on edge by this stranger who, three days in a row, came in, looked around, and left empty-handed.
Today was day four, and at least Tricks knew what to expect as she heard the entry bell rattle rustily. She emerged from the back, and he nodded politely to her.
He was one of the aliens who came from the Ghostlands. The ones with the scale patterns across their skin were called Nomads, and Tricks knew of them mostly because their reputations were three parts salacious rumor and one part horror story.
They had venom in their fangs, Tricks had been told; euphoria-inducing poison, immediately addictive, but as ravaging to the body as a wildfire. There were venom-dens in Hex where humans grew slow and bloated with venom, their minds withering as they spent all their possessions in their fevered need for the high.
Tricks didn't know how accurate the stories were. She certainly wasn't going to let this Nomad bite her, but then again, she didn't let any of her customers bite her, so that wasn't precisely a radical shift in policy for her. She was pretty sure decadent venom-dens weren't allowed in Transit anyway, but apothecaries accepted any kind of substance they could turn into medicine, so she had to wonder if the venom was valuable on its own.
The Nomad strolled through the shop with hands folded neatly behind his back. He was taller than Tricks, fine-boned with sharp features, and his face was shaped mostly human. His scales were faded into skin, both of a plausibly-human medium brown color, but with an added shine. He even had hair, a black and fine glossy curtain of it falling down his back. The Nomads who could imitate human appearance best tended to be older, which was one of the more reliably true facts about them.
The first time this stranger had entered Tricks' shop, he had also introduced himself by a human-sounding name: Bisic. That was weird just because, in Tricks' admittedly idiosyncratic understanding of retail, customers did not need to introduce themselves like it was the first day of school. She'd awkwardly muttered her own name in reply.
Tricks found herself bringing up Bisic to one of her regular clients, Welya. This was one of Tricks' real clients, who had no interest in music, so their small talk tended to revolve around anything but.
"Maybe he's shy," Welya suggested, after being told of the regular but inexplicable visits.
Tricks pulled a face at this suggestion, and Welya shrugged.
"Can't be easy to make friends with so few aliens in the city," Welya went on to say.
Tricks grumbled something, but carefully reached down with her clippers towards the circuit-vines. She also had a pair of pliers, which she used to carefully tease apart the tangle of various spirit-housing cables.
"That one, to the left," Welya indicated.
"Excuse me," Tricks said, "but who is the one with the clippers here?"
"Excuse you," Welya replied, "but who is the one with the money here?"
Tricks fixed Welya with a stare for a few seconds, before grunting and reaching towards the tendril Welya indicated. She cut it carefully, and the tendril calcified into dead wire, translucent white dotted with pink lights where the spirits lurked inside.
The wire was no longer than Tricks' palm, and she handed it gently to Welya. The pink lights flickered as it passed from one hand to the other.
Welya hummed thoughtfully, and took out her Alexyz tablet. She had an adapter plugged into a port, but instead of having a port at the other end, the adapter's cable was cut and the wire stripped. Welya carefully tied together the wire she had just purchased with the bare wire of the adapter, and the tablet lit up with glitches as the spirit uploaded itself to this much roomier container.
"Remember, only use--"
"A closed local network, got it, got it." Welya rolled her eyes at this frequently-heard advice, but Tricks wasn't going to stop saying it.
The last thing she needed was one of her clients to get sloppy and get found out. Most were middlemen to begin with, and dealt with far less educated customers of their own, so one would think they'd understand the need for caution.
"Either way," Welya said as she began to leave, "if you ever figure out what that weirdo wants from you, give me a ding on my Atoz. You've got me curious now."
It was Tricks' turn to roll her eyes. Welya was just about the only person she knew who used her Alexyz tablet for illicit activity, but her Atoz tablet for everyday stuff. Most people had it the other way around, but Welya insisted it was much easier to jailbreak an Alexyz.
Whatever. As if Bisic ever did anything interesting.
The next day, Bisic stopped by a box of mis-sorted cafe concert recordings from two decades ago to thumb through the disquettes.
Tricks watched him from the corner of her eye, and it wasn't like she expected him to steal something, but he'd also not tried to listen to any of the disquettes either, so it was unclear to her if he even liked music. There was a listening station with headphones tucked away at the back of the store, and even if it was old and a bit cluttered, it still worked perfectly fine; she'd even pointed it out to Bisic.
So, because she was only looking at him while pretending not to, she didn't understand what happened until she heard the crunch of splintering plastic. Her head whipped around, and her eyes widened in shock, but before Bisic could notice her, she lunged under the heavy desk she used for checkout.
Now crouching under the desk with her Atoz tablet, she desperately jabbed at the screen to open a direct messaging line.
intricacy.jove: He just ate a disquette!!!!!!!
welya.2020: lmao ate a disquette
intricacy.jove: Don't laugh, I'm terrified right now! I didn't know they did that! Is this normal?
welya.2020: hlod on that wasnt a typo, man just chowed down on a disquette?? plastic and all?
intricacy.jove: CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH
welya.2020: your life is wild. wouldnt want it
intricacy.jove: HELP
welya.2020: idk what you think I can do in this situation, babe
Before Tricks could bite her own hair in frustration, she heard a polite tap on top of her desk.
There was no way to gracefully extricate herself from this situation, so Tricks popped up as if she had been engaging in perfectly normal behavior, holding her Atoz tablet to her chest like a shield. The kids in the neighborhood laughed at her for being old because she didn't switch to an Alexyz, but could a slim little breakable Alexyz be used like a bludgeoning instrument when in need? No! That's where the Atoz tablet came in!
"Yes? May I help you?" Tricks asked, in her best imitation of a salesperson.
"Swivel Cafe, New Year Bash '45-'46," Bisic said.
Tricks blinked.
"That is what the label on the disquette said," Bisic clarified. "I wish to pay for my purchase."
Tricks tried very hard to think of the least culturally insensitive response to that, but there was just no way around it.
"You do know the disquettes are not for eating, right?" she blurted out.
He seemed quite surprised to hear this. Then, tilting his head to his side, he seemed to consider something.
"I suppose that would explain some things," he said mildly.
'YOU THINK?!' Tricks thought very loudly but did not say out loud.
"I thought your spirits were surprisingly dilute," he continued.
"...This isn't a bar," Tricks replied, her bravado undercut by uncertainty. He didn't mean--
Bisic tilted his head in a way that made his black-on-black eyes look like bottomless pits in the wan neon light of the shop.
"Those are not the kinds of spirits I was told you supply," he continued, voice taking on a much firmer note.
Tricks remained speechless for a few seconds, and Bisic remained silent in sympathy.
"Let me just check the back," Tricks said, her voice far away.
He nodded in agreement, and she slipped into the back room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it as she started tapping on the tablet.
intricacy.jove: Holy shit, he thinks I'm a dealer!
welya.2020: well, you are
intricacy.jove: I'm not a dealer, I'm a supplier! I'm even a cultivator, if you want to get into details. What prices do you usually charge?
welya.2020: what does it matter what I charge, I'm not the one selling him anything
intricacy.jove: Come off it, I know you bitches mark up my product before passing it on to your clients, just give me numbers
welya.2020: I meaaan... yeah we mark it up. we take the risks here, we work for that money. consider it a peace of mind tax for not being the one that gets ID breathin down their neck
intricacy.jove: Wow, that was real defensive for someone with a clear conscience. Will you just TELL ME NUMBERS
welya.2020: idk like mid-range product maybe 3600-4000 a pop
intricacy.jove: I have been seriously undercharging you lot. Wow.
welya.2020: no you havent. I could go to any supplier and they'd be cheaper thn you, yourer just lucky you got the good stuff
intricacy.jove: So I'm charging 6000/unit then
welya.2020: that's not the price range I gave u, tho?
intricacy.jove: Yeah, you just said I got the good stuff
welya.2020: oh........ yeah I guess I did
When Tricks returned, she had managed to pull herself together again, and even brought a small tray with a cluster of cables flickering with prismatic light through the rubber.
Bisic's eyes opened wider, and instead of a smile, his mouth merely opened and his tongue flicked out to scent the air.
"Yesss, that's it," he said.
"So, how many were you looking for?" Tricks asked as she picked up her pliers and trimmer.
"All of them," Bisic answered. His gaze was glued to that cluster, and the way it pulsed in response to the attention was almost like a heart beat falling into sync.
Tricks, however, was beginning to feel just the slightest bit of misgivings. She only ever sold spirits one or a handful at a time. Nobody really needed more than a few spares--it was a lucrative field, spirit husbandry, but it was not a prolific one. Spirits needed time to grow and learn. Though she had others still left in the terrarium, this cluster formed a solid quarter of her output this year: a solid two dozen that she could count.
What did one even do with so many spirits, alien or not?
"They're six thousand creds a pop, so you may want to adjust your ask," Tricks told him.
Bisic's gaze jerked up towards her as if he'd been jarred out of a pleasant dream. His expression pulled in tight and his eyes narrowed. She assumed it was a frown, though she could just as well be wrong. Hey, this wasn't Hex, the aliens in Transit kept to their own and she had never had to learn to interpret these things!
"Ah. I had assumed we would barter," Bisic said.
"I take money," Tricks said. "No trades, no barter."
"Are you certain? You don't even know what I would offer in return."
Tricks was absolutely certain she wouldn't take anything but money, however, she was a bit curious now. After weeks of being confused by this person's visits to her shop, she did feel it would be anticlimactic if she just turned him away and he left. But what could he possibly think he had to trade that would tempt her so?
"I charge extra for biting," she replied.
"Hah--no, that's not--" Bisic seemed at a loss for the first time, and shook his head. "That's not on the table. But I can show you, and you decide if it is worth the trade."
"Alright, as long as you just show me," Tricks accepted. "What is it?"
"The thing we require the spirits for," Bisic replied, and extended his hand, palm upwards, towards Tricks.
This felt like some kind of trap, but Tricks once again felt her curiosity ratchet a bit higher. What could he possibly show her that Tricks didn't already know about spirits? You put them in your device and you could train them to do things for you: parse files, order directories, block certain features and modify others.
None of such things required touching another human person, but maybe it was different if one was an alien.
So, it was improper to say that Tricks took his hand against her better judgment, because there was no better judgment to begin with. She simply took his hand.
And for a second, there was only the feeling of a warm, dry palm against hers.
And then
the world
turned
on.
Welya arrived early morning for her bi-weekly shopping trip to Tricks' store to something she had not experienced before: the sound of music coming through clear and loud through all the speakers in the dusty, cluttered space. This was a radical shift from the diffuse background instrumentals that Tricks would usually put on at the lowest possible volume.
In fact, Welya hadn't even known Tricks had that many speakers installed, never mind that they were functional. For someone who owned a music shop, Tricks never seemed to actually like music all that much.
'God, I hope she didn't take the venom,' Welya thought with some despair. Tricks had never clarified over messages what she accepted from the snake man in trade for spirits, except that it was, as Tricks wrote 'gREAT, jsut,m sossooo fuckn AMAZING', which was not an encouraging string of words.
If Welya had been friends with Tricks, she would have run over right then to check on her, but they were, at most, associates, and anyway, Tricks' next messages were considerably more coherent, if not more elucidating, so Welya convinced herself not to fret.
"Hello?" Welya called out as she looked through the music shop and did not spot Tricks.
Tricks was there, however. Her arm sprang up from behind her checkout desk and waved through the air.
Welya approached, relieved to see Tricks looking perfectly healthy, even with a pleasant flush of color to her face, as she sorted through a box of disquettes.
"Did you know I had all these?" Tricks asked without preamble, fanning out a stack of disquettes with wonder in her eyes.
Welya's eyebrows rose. "Music? Yes, I was aware you had music in your music shop. I figured."
"But have you ever listened to any of this stuff? It's amazing!"
Tricks hopped up to her feet, and spilled the stack of disquettes onto her desk, on top of what was already a mess of scattered disquettes.
"Look at this, look!" She waves one of the disquettes through the air. "Perspicacity Tanner's Best Of. My mother loved this album. She played it all the time when I was a kid, but I haven't heard any of these songs in years. And it was right here, under my nose, this entire time!"
"Mm-hmm."
"And this. This!" Tricks now waved a different disquette, albeit more gently, as the yellowed and cracked plastic indicated it was old. "The Kids from Probatory Way's debut album. They only printed fifty of these, because that's all they could afford for a first run. There are songs here that haven't even been uploaded to Transit's public directory!"
"Amazing," Welya said, pasting a smile over her face. "Anyway, do you have my stuff?"
Tricks blinked at Welya.
"Your stuff? Uhh... no, sorry. I'm all out."
Welya gaped for a moment, completely thrown by this change to their usual established routine--'do you have the stuff?' 'yeah, obviously, what kind of business do you think I'm running here?', and then the usual bitching over price.
"What do you mean you're out?" Welya asked. "Where did your whole stock go?"
Tricks shrugged. "I traded it."
"For what?"
"For this!" Tricks said, opening her arms wide as if gesturing to the whole shop.
"This was already yours, you idiot! It's your shop!" Welya shrieked.
Tricks shook her head, however. "No. No, you don't understand. It was here, but I didn't-- I wasn't seeing it, right? I wasn't hearing it!"
That was the dumbest thing Welya had heard in a long time, and she felt her pulse throb in her ears as she grew even more annoyed.
"Well, where am I suppose to go for supplies?"
Tricks shrugged again, much to Welya's exasperation. "I don't really know any other people in the business. But hey. Hey." She put her hand on Welya's shoulder and looked very serious. "If you stick around, after I open at 12 there'll be some people coming in. Did you know the Greenlight Market has an audiophile club? They've been looking for someone to host their meetings. I can squeeze you in."
"After you squeezed me out? No thanks." Welya slapped away Tricks' hand and scowled. "It's that snake man's doing, isn't it?"
"So what if it is?"
"I would have preferred he got you hooked on venom!"
"Well, that's not a very nice thing to say," was Tricks' frustratingly mild response to that. In fact, she seemed not at all bothered that someone wished her a fate worse than death to her face, as she went back to sorting through another box of disquettes.
Grumbling, and having no alternatives, Welya departed.
And Tricks, feeling more energized than she had in the full three decades of her life, returned her attention to the vast bounty which had been under her nose this entire time.
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