Supplies

I guided Estelle away from the stall. We ended up withdrawing behind one of the containers. I patted her back but didn’t say anything. She gave a sniffle.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “I just thought that for once we got lucky. You know? It seemed like it would work.”

I nodded. “It sucks.”

“How long?” Estelle asked.

“We took over two weeks for the round trip. It would be 4 to 5 years,” I said. There was a strange anger boiling up inside me. 5 more years in this hell. Was it even possible for us to survive that long? Not to mention that the calculation was under the assumption that the lab would be able to provide us with loot for all those years without running out or worse, someone else finding its location. I wasn’t about to bring up all of those facts in front of Estelle though. “It’s possible it has some more valuable things. We took the most easy to extract surface level items. We didn’t even touch the main part of the experiment.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m a mess.”

“No, don’t apologise. We will do what it takes.”

“Do you think it’s possible?”

“We’re alive,” I said and she nodded. “By the way, I think it’s best not to mention the whole artefact thing. It’s not like we know anything useful, but we could be painting a target on our backs anyway. Who knows what people would do if they thought we could lead them to a profit. A profit we could have a lot of use for.”

“I understand. In all honesty I don’t want to have anything to do with it anyway. You saw what that thing did to the poor man. He didn’t even steal the artefact. He just knew about it.”

“Well if we want to get out of here before the year 2000, we need to do something about it,” I said but she was right about the dangers. Yet I kept thinking about it. An alien artefact would be enough to buy our freedom and much more. I would have to get in contact with an information broker and try to figure it out without putting us both in danger. I wish the guy managed to live just a minute longer. The only lead he gave us was the simple word ‘atlas’. Without context it was hard to know what that meant. Of course an atlas was just a book of maps, which did somewhat fit. A map leading to the artefact would be nice but the way he said it, it didn’t sound like it. Other than that Atlas was a name of some ancient god and a mountain range in Africa. I hoped it wasn’t the latter, since that would be a little out of the way, though it did fit the way he said it. In atlas. But what did he mean by too? Are there more than one? The most logical conclusion was that atlas referred to something related to CERN. Perhaps a facility or even one of the great experiments that they performed on the large collider rings. Those probably had fancy names.

We visited a bunch of stalls to resupply. We exchanged the batteries for charged ones, bought new rations and medical supplies, and ammunition for pistols and the coil gun. The entire expense would reduce our profit from 1.2% to about 1.0%. Did I account for that in my estimate? Eh whatever. I just have to find the information broker. We didn’t use currency in the settlement. All our profits and debts were simply added onto our accounts. MiSiTech specifically then converted it to reflect the percentage of total debt for our conveniece. I thought that was supposed to be encouragement for their workers to see themselves getting ever closer to freedom. On the other hand it seemed to bring despair just as often as the number didn’t decrease. Of course in the end all prices in Ferroviaire were still standardised to credits, it’s just that those credits didn’t exist in a physical sense.

Before departing we decided to have a drink at a bar, where we found an isolated bench.

“Wait here, I’ll get the drinks,” I said. “And don’t let anyone else sit here.”

“Don’t worry brother. I’m on it.”

I went to the counter to order. He was right there as usual. Even though I didn’t get along well with others, I’ve been in the Zone long enough to know how things work. Serge the informant could be reliably found at his spot next to the counter. I ordered two complex drinks and sat down next to him, pretending to be simply waiting for the bartender. Serge didn’t visibly react but I could tell he was paying close attention to me.

“Nice weather today,” I said. He just nodded, but that was all it took. I leaned in closer. “What’s altas?” That made him raise his eyebrows. He lifted three fingers. “Cut me some slack what about two?” He started turning away. “Fine.” I hated how quickly I folded but I had little choice. It was the only chance I had until the next time we came to sell junk.

“ATLAS is an experiment on the LHC ring. That’s the second largest ring,” he said as he leaned in closer. “A lot of it was destroyed during the incident though. Show me your map.” I gave it and he marked a spot on the outline of the ring. “I wouldn’t expect much from it if I were you.” He then turned to the bartender. “I’ll have my special. It’s on my friend here.”

The 3 drinks arrived and I paid. Despite the fact that the special turned out to just be a regular beer, the assault on my account was bloody. The fat bastard didn’t have to move a muscle here in the settlement and made good money selling almost useless information. I carried the drinks back to Estelle. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Cheers,” I said. We clinked the glasses together and drank. I wanted to down the drink fast but that would just mean having to start walking sooner, so I sipped slowly. Estelle seemed to be operating under the same assumption. Still, we had to move sooner or later since we didn’t want to sleep anywhere near the settlement. Only large groups that could defend themselves from thieves would dare something like that. The guards kept the peace in Ferroviaire but they would only react to stealing if they saw the crime in action. Unless someone would steal your identification badge it would be impossible to prove an item was stolen.

“Are you ready?” Estelle asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“Great. Neither am I.”

“Perfect. Then let’s move out.”