Cost Of Living

"Charge your batteries! Power for sale! New Boston panels! 100% reliable! Power here! No credit, tokens only! Power for sale!"

I walk through the North-3 market, calling out the usual patter of the power salesman. Of course, I'm luckier than most - I can proudly show off the "28" that starts all the serial numbers etched onto my power panel frames. Proof positive they are all of genuine New Boston manufacture. Not every seller can do so quite as confidently. There's a flourishing trade in forging a 28 serial number, and chances are 50 to 1 a power panel claimed as New Boston make, is nothing of the kind.

Back when power salvage was just Frank's hobby, that sort of thing used to make me furious. But now, well. . . it's just people trying to survive, isn't it? Who am I to say they can't, or shouldn't?

In any case, I have a modest reputation in the field of power-vending now, and when I say I've got a New Boston panel, I mean it.

This early in the morning, most of my customers are working men and women looking to charge their hot-water kettles, and school-age children who need a quick-charge for their info-screens. Two or three Patrolmen stop me too, charging their Stunblaster pistols and making small talk. There is no one for gossip quite like a patrol-officer on their morning round. The byword is that if you punch a Patrolman in the nose, he has to go find someone to tell all about it before he can arrest you. A ridiculous exaggeration, of course, but they're all so amiable with me, I can almost believe it this morning.

I'm down to my final two panels for the day, when a small crowd of pale, ragged figures approach me.

Core-huggers. Homeless casualties of the war - just like me - only they are from the Lower Townships, and they scrounge a living begging and doing odd-jobs near the Core. North-3 market is several levels down, so seeing them here is not drastically unusual, but it's still a sight I don't often witness. They have washed-out, colourless bodies, dressed in drab-grey, patched clothing; their heads are covered with lank, bean-husk coloured hair; and their faces are set with pale, joyless eyes. They speak in the soft, mumbling dialect of the Core, and this group in particular murmurs in it quite unintelligibly until they apparently select a representative. He sidles over next to me and points at my power panels. I nod, and lift one up to a nearby empty market-table. He hands me a heaped palmful of tenth-, fifth- and half-liter tokens, and proceeds to charge up a seemingly endless supply of hand-torches.

I shudder. They probably can't afford the healthier full-spectrum houselamps - and if they've come all the way up here to charge their torches, then chances are this group has been living mostly in the dark. There are still large sections of several Townships without general power, and a home-generator is probably far beyond the means of these people.

I've always lived in a surface Township, even when I worked in Lower South-5. And even now, camping on the Rim, scraping a living from power salvage, I have to believe I've got it infinitely better than Core-huggers. At least I see the sun, and get fresh air.

My life is just hard. It isn't spent literally in the dark.

Of course, they can come up to the surface whenever they want - there's nothing forcing these people to live without fresh air or real light. . .

Except, you know, the need to eat. There is nothing forcing them to stay in the Lower Townships just like there is nothing keeping me out of GenTech's seed library all day.

That's the insidious thing about poverty - to fight it, you must wallow in it. These people must stay where there is work, and a chance of survival. Time off to go visit the sun must hardly ever come their way.

My fingers close around the handful of tokens. My total earnings are a little over 20 full-liter tokens so far today, not counting these. Not a great profit, considering, but adequate. He finishes charging up the torches, and I heft the now empty panel to my shoulder again.

"Wait there," I tell him. I'm walking my route back and forth near the Power and Tech section of the market, and a battery vendor isn't hard to find. I haggle him down as hard as I can, and eventually I get eighteen standard power cells for the handful of tokens - which end up totaling 3 and 7 tenths-liters. It's a good bargain anywhere.

The man's eyes light up when I hand him the power cells, and he mumbles what I assume is thanks in my direction.

"Don't mention it," I say, mustering a smile from somewhere, "Good luck."

He jerks a nod at me, and the whole group fades back into the catacombs of our Skycity.

I hang around for another half-hour, selling most of my last panel to a group of schoolboys charging their hover-scooters, and the final three charges go to a trio of waitresses on break with their e-cigs.

When I leave the market, my total earnings are 29 and 3. Not a bad morning's work at all. At least it will keep me from starving or stinking until I can pay up my license fee.

I'm ravenous by this point, but I still pause at a water distribution station on my way to the nearest caf. This particular station is a big one - two meters wide, and three tall - almost touching the ceiling. The banks of water coves ring the structure at three heights - 50, 100, and 150 centimeters - meaning anyone, of any height, has access to drinking water, hot or cold.

If you have the coin, that is.

I put in two tenth-liter tokens in the nearest middle-cove, rather than one, paying the extra fee for a hot drink. The device pushes out a small steel teacup, hot and sterile from its steam bath. I take it and hold it under the spigot, and a moment later, piping hot tea floods my cup. Exactly one tenth of a liter. I inhale the fragrant steam, and sip it gratefully. It has been over a week since I could afford a hot drink. The cold remnants from every brew are sold as cheaply as plain water, so I seldom denied myself a stimulant, but I have always despised cold tea, even when I had the coin to afford milk and sugar with every cup.

There was a time when my cold tea got poured away down the drain.

I shake my head, and take another sip. Never, never again.

And my parents had been so ridiculously wealthy, they had often had lemons with their tea. Lemons! Every farming station grows them, of course, as well as rosehips, so they can add the required levels of Vitamin C to their ration packs. But each tiny, stunted bush only produces a very few perfect specimens a year. Nearly all of these are sold in Central Township as a luxury food. I've seen them at Central Market, round, golden, fragrant fruits, piled in lumpen pyramids like some dragon's treasure, and priced at the low-low cost of seventy full-liter tokens each. A standard worker would have to labour a month just to afford one. And yet, as a child I remember regularly having candied lemon peel, tiny lemon tarts dusted with sugar, and sweet cakes spread with whipped cream and lemon curd at nearly every tea party. The fact that I know what a lemon-meringue pie even is just goes to show you, doesn't it?

Lemons. Eggs. Sugar. Oil. Flour.

All things only the richest among us can regularly afford to eat.

To tell the truth, I prefer this public distribution station, and my plain, black tea.

I swallow the last of my precious tenth-liter, put the metal cup in the "Return" slot, and then duck in to the nearest caf. They might only sell the exact same thing you can buy slightly more cheaply direct from a farming station - nutrient-balanced, plant-based, protein-and-carb ration packs, and single-servings of the standard small chunks of shelf-stable processed chicken meat - but at least a caf will heat it for you, and arrange it so it looks like food on your plate, not someone's three-day-old sick.

This close to the market, the caf is packed with morning labourers - some peddlers like me, and a sprinkling of businessmen and schoolchildren, but mostly, there are a lot of farm-station workers, and a lot of farm-technicians.

I hand the nearest waitress a half-liter coin, and ask for a hot-breakfast plate. I slip in past the crowd of men and women waiting for their orders, and find one seat left at the end of the caf-counter. After the morning I've had, I breathe a sigh of relief. It may seem odd to some, but there are few places I feel safer than in a public caf, filled with farm-workers, on the morning of a standard work-day. The sense of community is palpable. It's a feeling of shared burdens, and equality of purpose. I love it.

I eat absent-mindedly, my thoughts already on my planned steam-bath before I go back up to my salvage camp on the Rim. The inner pocket of my coat is bulging with tokens - if a woman is in charge at the bath-house I might even be able to afford a laundry day. My trousers and tunic could use a good steam-clean, and my undergarments have desperately needed the same for over two weeks now.

Practically floating on the feeling of a warm, full stomach, I make my way down to the steamshower station. A woman is in charge this morning, and so I trust her with my clothes, boots and coat. I detach my coat's inner pocket, and put it and my empty power panels in one of the metal lockboxes lining the wall behind her. She comes over to hand me the key for it, and promises to give my clothes a complete dry-steam clean by the time I'm done with my bath. I give her an extra fifth-liter token and ask her to take special care with my underclothes. She smiles indulgently at me.

"Naw prob, luv," she says in her pleasant North-3 drawl.

The steam shower is entirely wonderful. The dried sweat, oil and dead skin practically shed off me as the jets of hot, atomized water rake my skin from every angle. Rust and dirt soak out of my hair and from under my fingernails. Foamed lotion-soap covers me for a moment, before being rinsed away by the next deluge of steam. I paid for three rounds of soap today, just because I could. I raise my arms, letting it get everywhere. Utter, utter bliss. These small, private stalls are orders of magnitude better than the large, communal shower I passed across the hall. At least they are to me. And it only costs a tenth-token more to obtain this small bit of privacy. But, as usual, the loud chaffing and cackling audible from the communal stall puts the lie to this opinion. For reasons I have never understood, some people like bathing in public. Perhaps it is my Central Township upbringing, but I simply cannot. All genders are welcome in communal stalls, and all it takes is one less-than-polite patron to drastically dampen the experience for all involved. Pun very much intended.

Oh well. I rub the last deluge of foam into my hair for a minute before letting the steam rinse it all away. It takes all kinds to make a world.

I open the rear door of my cubicle, and enter the drying-stall. A section of the metal halfway up the wall has been polished into a mirror, and a plastic brush and comb hang from a plastic chain bolted next to it. It takes until long after my skin is fully dry to get all the tangles out of my hair. But when I am done, I fluff my wavy curls in the dry, warm air, and tie it back with the braided cord-bracelet Frank gave me on our second date.

The laundress-attendant meets me at the end of the long row of drying-stalls, and hands me my warm and fluffy newly-clean clothes. The sensation of pristine undergarments and a soft, still-warm tunic make me practically purr with content. She even mended the long tear in my trouser leg without me asking her. I try to offer her another half-liter token in thanks - after all, thread isn't cheap - but she waves my offer away with a good-natured, "Naw luv, feed yersel up a titch, hey?"

I suppose the sight of my scrawny arms and prominent ribs told her exactly how often I can afford the luxury of laundry and a bath.

She isn't wrong, either. I haven't been eating as much as I should. And not just because I can't always afford food.

I sigh. Depression. . . is a bitch. And the survivor's guilt sure doesn't help.

I give her the widest smile I can muster, collect my things from the lockbox, and start off on the long walk to South-1. I desperately need provisions, and there is a farming-station there that gives me a special rate on ration packs if I tweak their crop-regulator to overcharge on starches for a week. I can't modify the machine permanently, since that would be noticed, but an extra sack or two of potatoes every day for a week can easily slip through the cracks. That many can earn me 30 or 40 tokens on the black market, even after splitting the profits with the harvesters. A particularly good haul can be worth 50 or 60 tokens if you happen to have good contacts with the 'tillers. Which I do. My nearest neighbor on the Rim runs a distilling concern, and his vodka is justifiably legendary. He could even work for Central Brewery if he wanted to - but he earns just as much, if not more, being a 'tiller. "An' me time's me own," he told me one day, after I'd asked him why an artist like him stayed out on the Rim. He pays top-coin for good potatoes, and he knows I only deliver the best.

But it's a very long walk to South-1, and my empty power panels are heavy. Halfway through East-4, I'm dragging my feet, barely aware of my surroundings. Deliberately, I count how many tokens I have left, figuring out if I can afford another cup of hot tea today, or if I must wait until tomorrow.

I've just decided I'm going to go ahead and splurge today, and hang the consequences, when I look up and see. . . the most normal thing imaginable.

It's a small salvage-shop, nestled 12 or 15 levels down here in East-4, the exact twin of any number of salvage shops you can find in any Township. Decontaminated Hot Island salvage is as common as rust. But still, something in the window of this one catches my eye.

It's a vase. Round and smooth-glazed ceramic, formed in a graceful classic curve, with a little lip. I can imagine a bundle of fruiting roses, or a clump of miniature-apple blossoms sitting in it, as it stands on a white-polished mantle over an elegant little electric-stove.

I shake my head. Ridiculous.

The vase is hideous - grotesquely pink daisies painted over a swirled background of too-vivid green and yellow. . . but, suddenly, I want it. I want it, and all its ugly normalcy. A scrap of salvage to represent the scraps of my life I've managed to salvage from this war.

But I don't have anywhere to put it, nor any flowers to put in it. What good is a vase to me?

And the little tag next to it says it costs 4 and 2.

Slowly, I turn away, and continue on my walk to South-1.

I still wonder, even now, what would have happened if I had bought it. Hang the consequences and taken it back to my tent, to sit unused in my father-in-law's old footlocker, gathering dust as I gathered RADs on Frank's power-panels?

Would it have changed nothing? Or everything?

Or, would it have. . .

But there.

I'm getting ahead of myself.