Space Battleship Agamemnon

by Calculonius

In another universe, a genius inventor born in future Japan would create the Space Battleship Yamato. In this universe, he was born in 1910 Britain. In 1927, HMS Agamemnon was sent to his family's scrapyard. He kept it and tinkered with it for fun for 60 years, resulting in the Space Battleship Agamemnon. This is the story of the Space Battleship Agamemnon and its crew.

5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Their vacation at Alpha Centauri having run its course, HMS Agamemnon switched back to Dimension 29, and flew back to Earth.

Their Mars colony back in Dimension 1 was still just starting out, and could use pretty much anything and everything.

Since Agamemnon was soon to be headed there to drop off most of the crew, they wanted to take something with them to help the colony.

Food was judged to be the thing most likely to be helpful in the event of unforeseen problems, since they could build quite a few things they may need but growing food took time and specific conditions.

And Earth in Dimension 1 was almost certain to try to shoot them down again if they went there.

But the Earth in Dimension 29 didn't know them, and was likely to have plenty of food on hand.

So they went there, planning to trade for food - about 4 box-cars' worth - before going back to the Mars of Dimension 1.

Just before reaching Earth's orbit, the red light on Console 5, labeled Determine Destiny, went out - they'd used it a few times while at Alpha Centauri - and Basil took the opportunity to use the console again. He set the console for the best luck for meeting people they could get in 6 hours: the time it took to charge for a Moderate Alteration like that, and roughly the amount of time that would pass before they'd be on the surface and in town.

As the battleship arrived in Earth-orbit and shut off the star drive, Ron posed at the front of the command center and spoke something guttural and harsh, which sounded more like he was trying to cough up a hairball than speak.

Basil knew it was perfect Klingon for "engage cloaking device", and laughed.

"Well, we don't actually have a cloaking device, Ron, but we do have this," he sat at Console 19, labeled Obscure, and touched an icon that looked more or less like a middle-finger poking an eyeball.

"You don't see any result here, and even standing on the deck you'd just see a wispy outline, since it excludes us. But to everyone observing the ship from outside, we just got surrounded by a opaque cloud extending out a thousand feet from all sides of the ship. We can make that cloud look like water vapor - the little faucet icon there - or dust - the funny boxy icon there is supposed to be a dust-pan. The cloud is all an outside observer will see. It blocks vision, and, in some way Grandpa never explained, also blocks radar, infrared, and even sonar."

"Nice," Abe said, then, "beginning descent through the atmosphere," as he pushed forward on his control joystick.

They had discussed it and wanted to remain incognito if possible - having a battleship approach you could seem like a belligerent act, and they didn't want to 'start off on the wrong foot'.

They knew almost nothing about the Earth in this dimension. But they had observed cities - functioning, inhabited cities - and heard some radio traffic. So they hoped it was more or less like their own Earth.

Basil, especially, hoped that it was prosperous, or at least prosperous enough to have surplus food, and a market for NC brand diet food, which had made Grandpa rich.

The Replicator had been one of the first inventions which Grandpa had gotten working reliably.

And while many folks would have used such a thing to Replicate cash, gold, jewels or works of art, that went against Grandpa's morals. He figured that, since any Replicated thing ceased existing when the Replicator ceased "observing" it, it would be a form of fraud to pass Replicated gold or such things off as real.

He said he certainly wouldn't like it if someone sold him some gold or jewels that disappeared some time later, so he sure-as-anything wouldn't do the same to someone else.

So instead he found a way to use that same 'un-reality' to his advantage.

He'd had the Replicator scan the tastiest foods he could find - or, later, pay skilled chefs to make - then set it to stop "observing" the Replicated food once it hit stomach acid, so nothing got digested or absorbed into the body.

Later, he'd managed to adjust things so that the Replicated food got continually "observed" in its original state - effectively holding it in stasis - right up until the packaging was opened. With that change, NC brand diet food stayed fresh and hot from the oven, right up until you opened the packaging. You could sit a carton of NC brand ice cream on a shelf for 6 months, then take it down and open it and it'd be as if it had been created a moment ago. Hot meals stayed hot. Lettuce and tomatoes etc remained fresh, and so on.

It was a big hit.

Boz had never figured out how Grandpa had managed that 'stasis' effect, nor been able to use it with anything else.

Unimaginable amounts of effort and treasure have been expended in the search for a better diet food - one that satisfies, tastes right, and won't make you fat.

Most don't even come close to the goal.

And many of the rest have some serious flaws, such as sending you to the bathroom frequently with the runs, or causing cancer.

NC Brand - for No Compromises - diet food had given a desperate market exactly what it wanted.

Boz still remembered the label:

NC Brand Diet Food!

Real sugar, plenty of butter, rich cream, and all the salt you know you want.

No compromises at all on ingredients, flavor or quality!

Warning, this food contains no nutritional value whatsoever, and you will starve to death if you eat nothing but it.

That warning had saved them from more than one lawsuit over the years.

It seemed that models, Hollywood starlets, and some rich people were so interested in 'staying trim' that they'd risk starvation for it.

Even after folks started accepting that the warning was no joke, there were still large segments of the population - near 50% - who were willing to eat nothing but NC brand foods, plus something like broccoli to keep them alive.

But the warning had not saved them from everything.

Competitors had analyzed NC brand to try to duplicate its results, and they had failed completely.

So they complained to the government.

The government agencies in charge of that sort of thing - the FDA in the USA for instance - had analyzed NC brand diet foods, been baffled, and reacted strongly.

The government, in classic traditions of almost all governments everywhere, banned what they did not understand or control.

Nobody had been hurt by using NC brand as the packaging said to. But they banned it on the basis of fear - fear of what might go wrong.

Folks saw it coming, and just before the ban, sales skyrocketed, as people hoarded what they could.

And even after the ban, a thriving black market trade in NC foods continued, right up until Grandpa's death. It had kept him continually expanding the capacity of the Replicator, so it could "observe" more things at once.

Basil hoped there was demand here for NC brand diet foods, since he certainly couldn't write a check or use a credit card for what he needed to buy.

Before he left Earth 1 - the Earth in his dimension - he'd hidden certain assets, given some away, and converted more to gold and silver to bring with him, since his dimension's cash and bank accounts were unlikely to be useful elsewhere.

Ron, Simon, and Abe had volunteered to come with him, just out of friendship. He'd given them each a million dollars anyway, out of gratitude, and so they could make things easier for family and friends left behind.

They each spent that first million quickly - except Simon, who'd used some to start a small shipping company - and then, once they had that initial 'wild spending' impulse over with and were wondering what to do now that their money was all gone, then he gave them each 10 million more.

He'd seen the movie "Brewster's millions" and liked it.

They had mostly saved the 10 million each, and had also brought much of it along as gold and silver.

Boz was proud of them.

But he didn't want to start using his gold and silver too early. So he hoped to barter for the food to be given to Mars colony.

He certainly didn't want to give them Replicated food.

He wasn't sure what would happen if folks digested Replicated food, incorporated some of the nutrients into their bodies, and then that got dismissed and disappeared.

Replicating gasoline and using it to run a car engine worked just fine. It burned, produced the desired energy which was used to move the car, and, when dismissed, the car was still moved, and all that went away was the smog.

But cars did not incorporate part of their gasoline into their engines as repairs and upgrades, like the human body did with some of its food.

So they needed to buy real food, or at least barter for it.

Although, in thinking about it, he realized that he could barter away Replicated gasoline too, if there wasn't enough of a market for diet food.

That put a smile on his lips as he went to the briefing.

Captain Basil walked in through the open hatchway to the mess-hall beyond.

He still thought of it as the cafeteria.

It was a big room, and already full of people eager to hear what they could look forward to.

The ones in this room were the less-adventurous ones - the ones who were not yet comfortable with the idea of phased neutrinos seeking them out and resonating with the tiny bones inside their ears to create sounds only they could hear. That was how the rest of the crew would hear the briefing.

Console 3, labeled Communication, handled all of that. It could send to individuals or groups. It was easy for it to send to people it had scanned, but it also had targeting software which could find and send to other people in sensor range as well. But only people who had been scanned could talk back to it, just by saying, or even just subvocalizing, "sprich mit base" - they chose the German word for talk since nobody was likely to say it accidentally.

Basil had gotten everyone scanned, just on case of need.

It still daunted him that everyone, literally everyone, wanted to go exploring on this new Earth - the one in Dimension 29.

It made sense in hindsight.

They were adventurous people to begin with, wanting to explore and experience new things, or they never would have come.

And it wasn't like he was a king or military commander - they were along as friends and volunteers and could do as they liked, within certain broad agreements.

When they landed, and folks set out exploring, Boz would be the only one left on the ship.

It was designed to work OK that way, but it would still be a weird feeling.

He didn't like taking risks like that in a dangerous place like this.

He would do what he could - Replicate some more defense robots, and turn up the ship's security system, for example.

He needed to, since his attention would be split between the real him and the 2 Duplicates he needed to send into town to do necessary business.

It was with his mind on such things that he walked up the aisle to the front of the room and took his seat, not having said hello to anyone. It was due to oversights like that that he had a reputation for being anti-social.

When he sat, Beth, who was running the meeting, began.

"Welcome everyone, whether in this room or around the ship. We have a new planet to explore!. Well, it's new to us anyway."

She got a laugh from that.

"Let me tell you what we know about it, primarily from listening to their radio and watching televised news," she continued.

"It's like the Earth we came from, with some changes."

Folks in the room sat forward in anticipation.

"The biggest difference is that some folks here have super-powers.'

She held up a hand to silence the tumult.

"Yes, super-powers just like you are probably imagining - stuff straight from the comic books. Some fly, or shoot lasers from their eyes, or have the physical strength of a hundred weightlifters and so on. They have the whole variety, probably including anything you can think of."

She paused a moment for things to settle down a bit, then continued. "They call these super-powered people 'Capes' or 'Para-Humans'. They seem to have a small number of them per city, and, as a group, they seem to be unusually combative: they tend to go looking for trouble. Combine that impulse with the fact that they are not legally able to make money using their super-powers, and that probably explains why more than half of them are super-villains. They do have some super-heroes - most of whom work for the government and are paid a pittance - opposing the villains, but they apparently don't oppose them very effectively. So it is dangerous down there."

She nodded to Ron and took a sip of water.

Ron spoke up, "that is why we are issuing everybody Kevlar vests and backpacks - that's bulletproof vests for those who don't know - and your choice of guns. We have experienced volunteers - primarily from the gun club - to show you how to handle those safely and we urge you all to take some along with you, as well as going in groups. Most trouble tends to find those who are not prepared for it. Be prepared and avoid problems."

He held up a dark gray hooded sweatshirt.

"Also, if you want to fit in, your best bet is to wear jeans and a hoodie, preferably black. It seems as if half the city is dressed that way. We have bulletproof versions of these too."

He nodded to Beth and sat down.

Beth cleared her throat and continued, "You have 4 more hours to practice with that stuff before we land."

Someone laughed.

"No, I'm serious," she said. "Sure, the ship can fly to the moon in just over a second on the slowest speed of the space drive. But in atmosphere we fly at 25 miles per hour. Low-Earth orbit starts at 100 miles up. Do the math."

Someone asked "why not just teleport the ship down?"

"Good question," Basil answered. "But we won't fit. For Teleport portals, we are limited to roughly 2500 square feet. That can be 50x50 or 25x100 or whatever. But the ship is just too wide and broad to fit through a teleportation portal. Dimensional portals are different, obviously, although our teleportation portals can also take you across dimensions, but ... nevermind. In short, we won't fit & must fly."

"Anyway," Beth resumed, "this Earth is not very prosperous, because it has almost no international trade due to attacks from something called Leviathan."

"Historically," she nodded to Basil in thanks for his input, "many legends have featured something called Leviathan and it is most often a giant squid or sea-serpent. We don't know more than that yet, but will be taking precautions."

She held up a backpack. "This situation also presents an opportunity. We haven't any money these people will recognize as money. But with almost no international trade going on down there, there will be certain things they've long-since run out of, such as," she took two small containers out of the backpack and held them up, "cinnamon and nutmeg. We have a selection of such spices as those, black pepper, saffron etc. in these bullet-proof Kevlar backpacks we're passing out. You can barter these spices as you choose - get lunch, a keepsake, a taxi ride or whatever. They should all be in-demand where we are going. Oh, and, of course, there's some chocolate in here too."

A small cheer went up at the idea of having some form of spending-money to use while exploring.

Basil had approved Replicating spices and chocolate for that - they had a conditional set to dismiss them when they hit stomach acid, so they would not affect nutrition.

Beth pointed to a map on the wall, and rested her finger near the northeast coast of the USA. "This is where a straight course in takes us, and also happens to be more or less familiar territory to most of you - the USA I mean, not necessarily this part. At the moment, the government officials and enforcement arm of the city known as Brockton Bay are busy with some event just outside of town, so we're heading there, since we've had trouble with governments trying to be pushy before. They sound like they'll be busy long enough for us all to get in a good few hours sightseeing, exploring or whatever, before they get back and potentially decide to prove to themselves and us that they are in charge and can do what they want."

Several crew-members booed at that. Basil recognized a couple of them had been on deck when government fighters tried to strafe it on their last trip away from Earth 1.

Those passengers had done nothing to deserve being strafed.

He couldn't blame them booing such behavior.

Beth held up her hand again, and continued when she could. "One more odd thing to note is this: the year at home, as you know, is 1987. But here the year is 2011. No, we don't know how that happened. No, we don't have any ability to time-travel. Not that we know of anyway. We think it's just one more different feature between the dimensions. We know some dimensions have some differences in their natural laws. Maybe this is one of them."

She paused to let that sink in, then cut in to the growing chatter.

"I know. I know. When I first heard it, I, too, got all excited about seeing what interesting discoveries the future may hold. That's 24 years' difference. I thought surely they'd have made some major technical advances, cured cancer, maybe invented flying cars that fold into briefcases like in The Jetsons, and things like that. But it turns out to be very disappointing. As far as we can tell so far, the only advance they have made is that their electronics got smaller, faster, and cheaper. That's it, really. They've put electronics into all sorts of things, including toasters, giving them some of the functions of computers - I can't imagine why. And they've connected all their computers together, which, as far as I can tell, mainly means they get them taken over by hackers more often than not. Their mania for putting computer functions into odd things has extended to hand-held radios, which they call "cell phones" for some unknown reason - perhaps the idea originated in jail? We don't know. Anyway, that's pretty much what we know about Earth-Bet - oh yah, they call it Earth-Bet and are apparently in contact with one other dimension they call Earth-Aleph. Anyway," she finished, "That's what we know. Stay safe and have fun out there."

Ron stood up, "and go practice gun safety."

But the rest of the crowd had stood as well, and were rapidly chattering away among themselves, as they headed towards the exits. Many paused by the tables there and picked up bullet-proof vests and backpacks. Almost as many also picked up guns of various types.

The robot standing outside the room would offer everybody a taser as well.

Ron, Abe, Basil, and Simon were the last 4 out of the room.

They paused a moment by the tables.

"Several people selected energy pistols, I see," Basil observed, looking at the remaining selection on the table. "That's good. It will give them a better chance if they run into super-villains. You know," he said, "Grandpa was really trying to get a Star Trek style phaser pistol working, but the best he could manage was these 4. Well, these and one more - I didn't put the Scrooch Gun out because I don't know what it does. The time I tried it at the firing range, nothing seemed to happen. Too bad."

"I see a lot of people chose laser pistols," Simon noted.

"It's a great choice for beginners," replied Ron, as he picked one up. "I'm taking one myself, since it's so easy to hit with - just point and shoot and there's no recoil. Put it in sighting mode first, get a harmless dot on your target, then pull the trigger for the real blast and you get a bulls-eye every time."

"True, but you only get a couple shots on the power pack it has, so back it up with a real gun just in case." Simon said, suiting action to his words and picking up both a .45 caliber pistol and a plasma pistol. "I like the plasma gun better than the laser. You still only get a couple of shots before it runs out of power, but those couple basketball-sized blobs of absurdly hot plasma will burn through darn-near anything. That gives you flexibility."

"Yep, that is useful," replied Abe, "but I prefer the greater precision of the destruction you get from these," he picked up a charged-particle gun. "The thin stream of super-fast hydrogen nuclei it spits out recombine with whatever they hit and break the existing molecular bonds as they do so. You can carve a nice neat line through anything. And on top of that the impact is still like getting hit by a truck!"

He smiled, then put the particle gun in a shoulder holster. A moment later, the .45 Simon silently handed him went silently into the opposite shoulder holster.

"True," Basil smiled, "but for sheer destruction this one beats them all." He held up a disintegration pistol. "Every molecule of any type falls apart when this suppresses the charges on its electrons. It lacks in impact - it hits more like a feather than like a truck. But the double lightning bolts are nice - the first when all those positively charged nuclei repel each-other, fly apart, and scatter all over, and then the second when the brief suppression wears off, and all the electrons - briefly neutral, and so left behind, but suddenly negative again, repel each-other and fly apart just as vigorously. Charged particles in motion is also known as electric current, and there's enough in these interactions to look, sound, and act like a lightning-bolt."

He picked up a .45 too. "these are just all-around useful too, of course, and my Duplicates will be carrying them alongside the disintegrators."

Abe, holding a fully-automatic Mac-10 he was considering, spoke up "speaking of which, are they ready to fly? I hear that we've picked up enough air-traffic control chatter on the radio in order to add ourselves to the pattern and land in the local airport."

Abe had missed that part of the command-group briefing.

"Yep, and yep" Basil replied. "We have a 16-passenger plane Replicated and ready for you. It is balanced on the deck, forward of the main front turret. When you're ready, we'll lift it with telekinesis, and drop it through a teleportation portal - those can stretch just wide enough for its wingspan - to teleport it down to only about 10,000 feet. We're still too high up for the atmosphere to support flying, and the teleport will take care of that. That first part of your flight should be exhilarating, as you dive to get up to actual flight speeds. We'll send you down, then do likewise for the 4 other planes, with some north, east, and west of the town, at varying distances so they don't all arrive at once. We figure by staggering their arrival like that, we won't look like an invasion. At least, we hope not. We're just waiting for you, since you're the best pilot."

Abe grinned, grabbed a few loaded magazines for the Mac-10 from one of several boxes, and hurried off with a cheerful wave.

Basil smiled and spoke to the other two. "As you know, we're launching some of the boats the same way - teleporting them from here to points in the ocean near the city we'll be visiting. We've already got a couple Replicated ferries full of Replicated cargoes - mostly jeeps and a truck full of trade-goods - headed for the coast north and south of Brockton Bay. I understand you two wanted the 'full amphibious experience' of launching your boat from the battleship itself once we're floating in the sea?"

"That's the plan." Simon answered.

"We think it'll be more fun, or, if not, at least an interesting story to tell," agreed a grinning Ron.

"You realize we'll be landing a bit more than 12 miles offshore, so that we're outside their territorial limits and not subject to their laws, and that a 12 mile boat trip will take some time?" Basil asked.

Ron grinned even bigger. "You realize that we, ah, just happen, to have some of the prettiest crew-members coming along with us on our boat ride? That time will be well-spent in getting to know them better."

"I do like to see people thinking things through and making the most of their situations," smiled Basil.

Soon enough, Basil was alone on the ship, walking back to the command center after having seen off the last boat.

He opened the hatch, stepped through, and froze.

Beth was here, working at the sonar console.

"Uh, hi", he said, frozen in place "I thought you were going exploring like everybody else."

"I can do that later," she replied easily. "For now, you needed someone here with you, so I'm staying."

He thought "Oh crap - that sounds like it might be kinda 'relation-y'. Does she like me? How do I deal with that?"

"Uh, thanks," he said. "I had thought of possibly making a third Duplicate in case I had unexpected trouble - fall and hit my head or something like that. But the toothache from two is bad enough. So, uh, thanks."

"It's no problem, I like being here." she said.

He thought, "is that a hint? I don't get hints. You might as well write a message in Sanskrit, encrypt that, and transmit it by laser pulses when I'm not looking, as sending me hints. Rats. What do I do now? What do people say in situations like this, especially where the pause is probably already too long? Compliments?"

Feeling rushed and off-balance, the best words he could come up with were "you have hair which is nice". It felt awkward but he was drawing a blank as to how to improve it. Plus he was feeling the awkwardness of the conversational pause.

So he started to say it, feeling slightly relieved as he came up with the minor improvement of saying 'that's' instead of 'which is'.

But as he got 3 words in, a minor warning popped up on a nearby monitor, distracting him at just the wrong moment. His words came out as

"You have hair...that's nice."

She laughed.

He thought "this gets worse and worse. Was that the laugh of someone appreciating what she thought was a joke, or the dismissive laugh of someone recognizing imbecility?"

He looked at the warning on the monitor for aid - a nice emergency could make them both focus on work and get past any awkward social stuff - but to no avail. Like most computer warnings, this one was trivial and had just happened to demand attention at the wrong time.

He wondered to himself "what do I try now? Another compliment?"

He had an idea - just a concept, not the actual words - to say something like "I liked the briefing you gave."

But on second thought, feared that it might come out as, "I like your briefs." which sounded really wrong somehow.

So he ditched that train of thought.

What could he say? People talked about the things they'd recently been doing, didn't they?

He could say: "We've been recommending people arm themselves when they go ashore, just in case."

But she was there and already knew that, so that would sound stupid.

He wanted to say something along the lines of , "I hope when you go ashore you'll take suitable precautions."

But it came out as, "Do you have a gun?"

He realized that sounded wrong, was too flustered and hurried to figure out why, tried to correct it along the lines of, "We want everybody to be armed, for safety," but his best attempt to put it into words came out as, "I have a gun."

He was saved by the bell - the warning bell on the sonar console.

Beth said "Captain, there is a large mass underwater and headed our way."

Basil's relief was immense. He said "Feed its coordinates to Console 38, I'll bring it up on visual."

While working on his console, he thought "Captain - that's formal, rather than friendly. So, she is probably not interested in me, relationship-wise. I know how to deal with people professionally. Whew that's a relief. "

His screen focused on the coordinates she'd given, and he laughed. "It's just a pod of whales. No threat to us, at all. But good work, we don't know anything about this Leviathan, but it has the locals scared and to have all-but-stopped international shipping, it must be bad news. We need to stay on our toes. Thanks."

Beth smiled and said "well, on that note, here are some more coordinates for you to check out while you're there. It's an unmoving source of sounds that I can't quite figure out."

He looked for a moment and said "It's no threat either - a large ship is sunk across the mouth of the bay, nearly blocking it. I wonder how that happened?"

She shrugged and he said "are any other worrying things on the sonar?"

"No, Captain."

He nodded and said "OK, then I should probably focus on what my Duplicates are seeing for a few minutes - one of them just arrived at the city library, where we hope to learn more about certain important local topics, like Leviathan, the food supply situation, and, maybe that wreck across the bay too."

It was an excuse, but a plausible one. He and his Duplicates were linked - all knew what each-other knew, so there was no need to focus on them.

But, while looking through his Duplicates eyes, it was possible for that Duplicate to effectively be looking in two directions at once, such as reading two books at once.

Mostly they were planning to scan the interesting contents of the library using one of the Replicator's remote scanners, so they could Replicate the books and newspapers and read them them later.

But his attention could, plausibly, help, and it was a way to put off any more social interactions, at least for now.

Boz looked through the eyes of his first Duplicate.

Others tended just to number the Duplicates, but Boz preferred to name them for amusement value.

So, in this case, Duplicate one was named Bas-Oon, since that sounded like the musical instrument Bassoon. Duplicate two, headed to a grocery store, was named Bas-Teal, since that reminded him of the French Bastille in Paris.

The Brockton Bay Public Library was typical for its sort of building. It was a large, older building, probably with some historical significance. And it was crammed with shelves full of books.

Bas-Oon didn't start with the books though. Rather he started with the newspapers, which included today's paper plus archives going back for decades.

From those they hoped to learn whatever the locals thought was most notable. Then they could focus on those things and scan books about the individual topics that stood out.

Bas-Oon didn't really need any help, and Basil, pausing frequently to check the battleships' sensors, switched before long to observing things through Bas-Teal's eyes.

Bas-Teal was in a more-or-less typical grocery store, walking along the aisles, noting what they had and didn't have.

The store was an odd mix of new - such as electric lights, refrigerators, and freezers - and old things such as may have been common the 1800's.

For one thing, he was standing next to a pickle barrel - a waist-high wooden barrel full of pickled cucumbers floating in brine, with the price per pickle printed on the side.

That was one of many examples of preserved seasonal foods. They had dried apples and dehydrated slices of several other fruits too - fruits that grew in North America anyway.

Such things used to be available fresh all year round - flown in from whatever part of the world currently had them in-season.

With no international shipping going on in any quantity, the growing seasons started mattering again. You could get apples when apples were harvested, or in preserved forms. The same for cucumbers, apricots, and everything else.

There was a small sign nearby excitedly announcing that strawberries would be in-season in a few weeks & to get your pre-orders in now for a discount.

As for things not grown in North America, they were simply not present.

No bananas, no coconut, no chocolate, none of the spices that grew in different climates.

Some of these could still be grown in greenhouses here, but still were not available. Apparently those with the money to build and run greenhouses mostly valued the produce thereof more than the money they could get from selling it.

And, while plastic was present, it wasn't ubiquitous like he was used to back home. There, almost everything was packaged in plastic - sometimes in several layers, with one bag within another.

But plastic came from the petrochemical industry and, while the USA had some of that domestically, it used to import a lot more.

With such imports no longer happening, there was less plastic and it wasn't used frivolously.

So, as it had been in the 1800's, there were several open barrels of various things - grains, beans, peanuts, dried fruits, and similar - with scoops and price sheets attached to them. Apparently you were supposed to bring your own containers for holding them, and for holding your groceries in general.

And speaking of groceries in general, the shelves were not as full as he had expected. Apparently these were hard times, economically.

That idea was supported by the presence of an armed guard by the front door.

Bas-Teal asked a clerk "do you accept barter?"

The skinny teenaged clerk nodded "the details are up to the manager, but yes, sometimes."

Boz nodded, "OK, and is it possible to arrange a bulk order here?"

The clerk shook his head "what you see is what we've got." Then he hurried off to help an insistent old lady who was starting to sound grumpy.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Bas-Teal heard from over his shoulder.

Turning around, he saw a blonde teenager, probably a high school girl, with freckles, green eyes, and a smug smile, was addressing him.

Gesturing to the rest of the store, she continued, "I mean, you're gawking at everything as if you've only ever seen such things in movies."