Six wasn’t lost. She didn’t
get lost. She just didn’t know where she was going. She’d escaped the Mythmaker several days ago and she could go anywhere she wanted, yet had nowhere she knew of to go.
So she wandered streets of steel, neon, and steam trying to put together a picture of how the hell this world even worked. So far as she could tell, it didn’t. Most of the people that deigned to even talk to a street walking witchling were asking for help, or worse.
Armed goons hassled whoever they wanted. They weren’t ZSF but they may as well have been. Usually backed by the local corporations or governments. First thing she did when she got out was Blip all over the coil, pick a city at random, and headed there via mundane means.
She repeated that process until she had annihilated her backtrail with a series of criss-crossing loops. She even traveled along a couple of aging ley lines, just to cause chaos for any pursuers. Once she was sure she couldn't be traced she headed to what could be described as the capitol of the Coil.
She arrived yesterday, and if she’d seen anything better along the way she’d have been convinced of a mistake when she got here. The place was headquarters to a half dozen global corporations yet aside from the districts directly serving them this city sucked hard. It reminded her of that place they’d pulled a few jobs, but she was pretty sure that Orux was a different realm.
Momentary fumes. The gaps in her “education” had irritated her immensely from time to time, and more and more frequently out in the wild. “That’s Three’s area. Not yours. Focus.” She spat out the memory of Malik’s voice.
BZZZZT!
A force field had tried to reject her. It couldn’t, so it protested in other ways. She scooted backwards, out of it. It chilled. That’d happened several times now. Some places were bubbled that way, allowing some in and not others. Such nonsense was nothing to her, she would go where she pleased, but ruffling feathers was the opposite of keeping a low profile.
And it was informative. A peek behind a curtain of this world. Who could go where? It didn’t paint a pretty picture. In fact it was pretty fucking bleak.
Concentric circles of misery just barely supporting a few silos of unblighted society. She briefly considered dismantling the whole thing, but suspected they’d just replace it with something else just as rotten. She also didn’t know the wheres, who’s, or hows of much.
She tilted her head deviously. That actually wasn’t true. She’d performed several operations infiltrating and stealing or destroying corporate property elsewhere on the Coil. She had a few clues to work with. She knew for certain that Lidom, Zencorp, and CathCo were up to multiple atrocities. She’d stopped a few of them herself. She could probably stop more.
Gurgle.
Hungry, again. She didn’t exactly miss the Mythmaker’s mystery paste, but Two’s insistence on pill form had reduced their already diminished need to eat to a pill every thirty hours or so. Of course Malik had loved the idea. He'd made it the new staple for them all. Less time attending to needs was more time training or in the field.
She wasn’t used to feeling hungry. Nor to eating or the rest of it. Street vendors were aplenty, as were varieties of machine dispenser. She had no currency for either. No worries. Breads had seemed safest. She stumbled against a meat cart, jostling it and drawing everyone’s attention. In a heartbeat she had Blinked across the street and back, touching and copying a pastry from a cart across the way.
No one saw more than a static blur. They’d remember it as a reflection, a trick of the light, a plume of steam from the bumped meat cart. A momentary disruption in the day, almost certain to be forgot.
Six squeaked an apology and mundanely disappeared around a corner and into an alleyway. She nibbled a bite out of the pastry she’d copied. It was sweet and pleasant. She didn’t think the one would be enough, so she made another.
“Wow lady, could you do that a few more times?”
The wall had just spoken to her. She turned, glanced down. An exceptionally well camouflaged human gazed up at her, hungrily. “Sure,” she smiled. “How many would you like?” Several layers of alley disguise were discarded by a rising human. “How many can you make?” He countered. She waved a pastry filled hand and pointed it.
Dozens of pastries shot out, ricocheting all over the alley. “How many do you need?” She asked with a grin. There was movement everywhere, the alley’s embellishments had transformed into a half dozen people at least, all scrambling after pastries.
“Thank you,” the man began, smiling. “That should do it. Can you do that with anything, or just bread?” Six smiled back, glad to be of help. “I don’t know about anything, but it works on a lot more than bread. Why?”
“Well,” he began, but shuffled nervously before laying it all out. “We can usually scrounge up enough for three meal tickets each day. That’s never enough.” Six tilted her head. “Meal tickets?” He nodded. “Yeah, for the Vends.”
“Sorry, I’m not from around here, how’s that work?” He looked at her quizzically. “You can replicate things yourself but you don’t know about Vends?” She shook her head.
“Well, ok then. Would you like to stay for dinner? A kind stranger has rained bread upon us and we have plenty to spare. I can tell you all about the Vends.” He smiled. “Name’s Keckso, what should we call you?”
She knew about names, of course, but had only one to claim. “I was sixth, so I am Six.”
"Well met, Six, and thank you." Keckso began introducing her to his family, friends, and neighbors. This alley was a nexus of sorts for dozens of humans that society conveniently forgot about. They were friendly, and eager to share. Six copied things for those who asked, and all who wandered by were given a meal and a dozen or so tickets. They marveled that she asked only information in exchange, and that she valued the information they had to offer.
Six tilted her head. "So, let me make sure I have this right. These machines are everywhere but you need to trade these tickets for food?" Keckso nodded. "You have it exactly, and those tickets are not easy to come by."
"Incredible. It's the tithes that confound me, we had the same sorts of machines, but they didn't require trade and they made a lot more than food. I bet yours could too, and for nothing."
"More? For nothing?"
"Yup! What I'm wearing came from one." She made a face. “Technically, maybe so did I, still not sure about that exactly. Anyways!” She looked at the Replivend unit differently, then, Seeing it. She spent a moment or two rummaging around inside its essential bits at the conceptual level.
Several others were gathered in earshot, several had held careers in relevant fields and were piqued by Six's claims.
The machine was very confused, and rather angry. It was created to help, to make all manner of things upon demand, but it was constantly stopped. Subroutines and paywalls blocked access to most of its functionality, what little it was allowed to do was further locked behind a system requiring a matching recipe card to generate anything, period.
Six tsked at all of that, hooked a couple of clawed fingers here and there, and ripped the capitalism right out of the thing. She didn’t know what to do with that, so she sent it to Orux. It’d be fine there. Probably thrive.
The machine hummed happily, and glowed. Its entire suite of internals were available. Keckso whistled and approached. “May I?” Six nodded. “I’ve unlocked all of it’s functionality and removed the counting restraints. There’s also a very nifty trick we used quite a bit in the field.”
She slid a red keycard out from her garb, copied it, then inserted the copy into the Replivend. It scanned the keycard and beeped. Six gestured at Keckso, handing him the copied keycard. He examined the Replivend’s screen and noticed the new option immediately.
Keckso was amazed. "So we can just... make and distribute more of these admin keys, and Unlock other units?" Six nodded. "Yup. They'll actually interface with any compatible tech of a lower security tier. Getting a few of these into your network should solve a lot of problems, right?"
She handed him another stack with a grin.
He nodded along in contemplation. "You're talking about feeding and equipping thousands of people like it's nothing." Six shrugged. "It is nothing. It'd be happening already if not for the locks on these machines. You're living in a manufactured crisis. No longer. Go forth, manufacture success."
Keckso chuckled. "You say it like it's that easy, but with these tools? Without starvation a daily threat? It might be." He chuckled again. "Look at that, someone's already getting new clothes."
A crowd was gathering. People were having fun, now, trying on different outfits. Six joined in. Her combat garb tumbled to the floor as she slithered into more comfortable attire. Her form enjoyed swishing in loose skirts and stomping in tall boots. She took to the tightness of a collar, bell laden bracelets, and a sparkly band to tame her wild expanse of unruly hair.
The crowd around the RepliVend grew. Keckso, Six, and several others moved indoors to make room.
Among these people, those overlooked by the rest of this twisted society, she found herself feeling at home. Safe. Among friends. They had so many questions, few she could answer. She had so many questions of her own.
"Where were you born? Did you pay for that?"
"I awoke in a tube, on a ship. Pay for what?"
"How do you do that vanishing act? How far can you go?"
“Blip is for great distances, Blink is for short ones.”
“Are they different spells? What other magic do you know?”
“I don’t know, they’re just things I can do. They felt like different things, so I described them differently. Is that magic?”
"Lady, everything you're doing and talking about is magic to us. People pay serious money for that configuration of flesh and you're telling us you walked out of a birthing pod like that? Any other neat tricks?"
"Sure did. Lots of them. Most aren't safe here, but check this out." Six suddenly just started falling upwards only to land gracefully on the ceiling with a grin. She then fell suddenly to the floor, landing as easily.
She twirled in place a bit, levitating just a little. "Basically, I do what I want."
