Back at the fire, the conversation had returned to the subject of food. Akari and Cassy were shredding the rabbit meat into the pot of tomato goo after all, while Dana tended to the fish, which still needed constant if low-grade attention to keep it from burning to the bottom of the foil pan. Heather was telling the Reggies about the fish trap she had made, and they showed off the fish hooks they’d made by bending needles with the guidance of one of the books. The were having some luck using lines made by untwisting lengths of utility twine – they hadn’t found any actual fishing line at the Necessities Store either. (“And between us, we were in at least three different stores! It’s a conspiracy, I’m telling you,” Gonzo added.)

  Eventually, someone started talking about his mother’s cooking, and the conversation shifted to reminiscing about meals past, both home cooking and school food. Cassy evidently found that conversation a little intimidating, and went quiet. The rest of the group seemed to find it relaxing, though. By the time the rabbit/tomato goop had simmered down and the fish were declared ready, everyone was talking like old friends.

  Danielle supposed it helped that the majority of them had at least been from the same school, and knew each other by sight even if they hadn’t been friends per se. It made her wonder how people with larger friend groups were handling things, and why she hadn’t seen any larger groups around; but then, the SHAD Party hadn’t exactly been hanging around the Rooms much. Maybe she just hadn’t been looking in the right places. Being in the back corner of the only building not on the road made it easier to leave the “town” discreetly, but it was terrible for observing whatever social order might be developing.

  The two hunting parties both decided to take their food inside to eat, leaving the fire to burn down in the brazier in case anyone else might want to use it once the crowd was gone. Back in 6024, they portioned the rabbit glop into mugs. Akari had seasoned it heavily with garlic and a little salt, but not much else; it wasn’t exactly ready for the school cafeteria’s Saturday comfort food menu, but it wasn’t bad. The “tomato raisins,” on the other hand, were very obviously not fully dry yet. Admittedly, they were showing some progress, but it was clear that a couple hours in front of a fire weren’t a substitute for most of a day in full sunlight, and as Sadie pointed out, the provided guides suggested that it would take up to three days of actual sun.

  The rest of the cut tomatoes got a purification from Sadie and went into the cold box, and the group reluctantly decided to use another ball of twine to make two more drying racks. There was no point in cutting more tomatoes until they could get some dried, so instead, they all settled comfortably in 6024 and did some studying.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Danielle said after they all settled down with their books. “Cassy, do you know how Sent get new Careers? That Ranger that was managing the discussion about the town charter said that Lost Girls usually got different Careers by the end of the year, but he didn’t say how.”

  “Oh, um, kind of?” Cassy said. “I asked Mom what to do if I got Lost Girl, and she mostly talked about how to avoid getting that Career in the first place; but Dad realized I was kind of feeling panicky and told me that in the worst case scenario, what I’d need to do is pick a task and specialize in it – like fishing or foraging or hunting or whatever. The idea is to pick one thing that’s most of your day, and everything else is a sideline. Do that enough, and the System will assign you a new Career. He said, that’s where the first Careers came from; these days, most people get their Careers given to them as tokens.

  “There’s a high-level Skill that lets you define a new Career, and a couple lower-level ones that let you give people existing Careers if they’re working under you – usually it has to be in the same Career as yours, like an apprenticeship where you pass on your Career to a trainee. Oh, and of course parents can give their kids Careers via parental controls. Um, obviously you know that, sorry, but what I’m saying is, most Careers come from those Skills. Inside, I mean. It takes a lot longer to get them from the System, normally; the ones we all got at the Dome must have been triggered by the Advancement tokens.”

  “Huh. It sounds like most of the Lost Girls will probably end up getting Survivor by the end of the year, then,” Sadie said. “Because they’ll probably be out doing survival things all day most days, right?”

  “Maybe?” Cassy said. “I don’t know, it might require more specialization than that. Dad said people start specializing and trading sooner than you’d think, but I kind of wonder if our Sending will take longer. We’ve got less preparation in a lot of ways – less ‘paranoid parent’ camping prep, less study modules or, um, class activities that don’t seem relevant until they are, like that mock government thing. Then there’s the whole thing where they Sent people from two schools at the same time to the same place, which isn’t normal, and then included home tutoring students like me, which really isn’t normal, and that means the group as a whole doesn’t have existing relationships to fall back on.”

  “I’m just as glad not to be depending on school relationships for much,” Akari said. “I didn’t really have a lot of friends in my year.”

  “And the less I see of Susan and Vanessa, the happier I’ll be,” Danielle added. “I’d say they hate me, but I’ve started to realize they don’t care enough to hate properly, they just don’t see me as someone worth treating like a human being.” She looked down, and added, “Jerks.”

  “Don’t let them get to you, Danielle, especially not out here where we have real problems to worry about,” Sadie said. “Those two only have two modes: people they treat like dirt, and people they treat like gold-plated diamonds. I have it on good authority they even annoy people in the second category. It stinks, but it’s not your problem they can’t grow some real social skills.”

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  “My mom says people will grow up in a few more years and it’ll get better,” Akari said. “I don’t know what to expect right now, though, except that we have to be careful who we trust.”

  “I expect Susan and Vanessa are still not people to trust, though,” Heather said, “and knowing that is valuable in its own way. A lot of the popular crowd might turn out OK now that they’ve got real stuff to worry about, but the really bad ones are definitely not good people to take a risk on; and they’re good at giving different people different sides of their face, so knowing who they are in advance is valuable. The people from Booker though? We don’t know them at all, and Tree of Knowledge was the smaller school. Which means Cassy’s got a point; we might not want to rely on the popular-kid pecking order for anything, but just knowing who’s worth giving a chance and who to stay clear of would be something, and for more than half the camp, we don’t know that.”

  “Did you know any of the Lemonade crew?” Cassy asked.

  “Well, I knew Go- Gonzo, a little,” Akari said. “He wasn’t popular either, he’s always been kind of paranoid and a little weird. And I know Regina from Armed Arts club, but she was into archery the way I was into swordplay, so we didn’t interact all that much for members of technically the same interest club. It was just too big, and the three main parts were separated too much. I’ve had Nathan in math classes, too, but I think he’s actually in your year?”

  “Yeah, Nathan and Lauren are both part of the straight-As-and-advanced-studies end of the popular crowd,” Heather said. “Lauren’s one of the decent ones, though, she’s just super nice and everyone likes her. Nathan’s more of a hanger-on type, maybe, he’s with the group but he might be a little shy or something? I dunno. Danielle has classes with them, I think?”

  “Yeah, science and language arts last year,” Danielle said. “I don’t know if Nathan’s exactly shy, he’s just maybe the kind of person that prefers smaller groups. I kind of wonder if that’s how he ended up with Gonzo – it might have been like the three of us before I thought of asking for Akari, where there were three people who were sure they wanted to room together and then they didn’t know what do to for the fourth. If that was what happened, though, I’d have expected Nathan to be in a hunting party with the other two, rather than with Gonzo.”

  “I don’t know,” Sadie said, “I think a lot of the popular kids might be acting pretty helpless right now. I can easily imagine some of them trying to have a summer vacation instead of going to work, like Cassy said, you know? He might have roommates that he likes fine as people to hang out with, but he knows they’re worthless to hunt with. The river’s a long way from here; if the Lemonade girls invited his whole room, but only two of them were up for the hike, that could be enough to explain it, you know?”

  “Could be,” Danielle said. “Anyway, if we’re going to study, we should get to it.”

  There wasn’t much conversation for the rest of the night. Danielle put up her book at 9:30, and wound and set the alarm clock, warning the others that it was set for 7 am again. Then she washed her mug and spoon and got in the shower, where she washed most of her clothes. When she came out, Cassy had left, and the others had washed their dishes and set out tomatoes for the next morning’s breakfast.

  “I’m in the shower next,” Heather told her, “as soon as you do your mana check. Akari and I were both about to cap out, so we made tokens. Sadie’s running a little lower – she’s been using Purify a lot. How are you doing? Are you ready to make another ten for the healing supply?”

  “Oh, yeah, I can do that,” Danielle said. “You’re trading me a five again, right?”

  “Yeah, the one Akari donated,” Heather said.

  “OK, go ahead and grab it and I’ll make the ten now,” Danielle told her. She manifested the ten-mana token while Heather was getting the five from her footlocker, and they traded.

  Heather took the token and put it in her first aid kit, where Danielle noticed that it had a partner.

  “Did you decide to move the reserve from your belt to the first aid kit?” Danielle asked. It made sense, she decided; the belt pouch could conveniently hold one token, but two might be a stretch. The first aid kit had room for several.

  “Actually, Cassy donated a ten of her own,” Heather said, “so I’ve got two in the kit and one in my belt. The goal will be to not use that one. It’s the last-ditch emergency reserve.”

  “Hm. In that case, I guess we should keep working on trading that one up as far as Cassy and I can get it,” Danielle said. “You know, a bit at a time.”

  “It’s weird to think that you can make fifteens now,” Heather said, “when practically everyone else is still stuck with fives.”

  “Technically, everyone else can make nines if they want to,” Danielle said. “I’m guessing nobody does because it would leave them dry, but they could.”

  “You know what I mean, though,” Heather said.

  “Yeah, I know. Mana Improvement and level 2 together are a big deal. If there’s really level 3 Predators out there, though, they might still have as much mana as me,” Danielle said soberly. “At least, if it doubles again at level 3. Why isn’t that something we know? There are lots of level 3 adults Inside, you’d think it’d be common knowledge.”

  “Maybe it is, for adults,” Heather said, sliding her first aid kit back into her Decision Day bag. “Anyway, I’m going to do a little laundry tonight too, so see you in the morning. Feel free to turn off the kitchen light, I’m all set up.” She set her bag back in her footlocker and closed it, and headed for the bathroom.

  Danielle laid out her wet clothes on top of her blanket to dry from her body heat, then turned off the kitchen light and carefully walked back to her bed in the indirect light from the sink area. “We all need to unlock some kind of night vision,” she muttered to herself. “We’re practically living in caves again, here. We need infrared vision, or low light, or something to make this easier. And maybe night hunting.”

  “Dream on,” Akari muttered from her bed. “It’d take so much mana to get everything we want.”

  “I bet infrared vision is a Trait, though,” Danielle said. “We could get it from the next mana monster we fight.”

  “Howzat? Wait, never mind, tell me in the morning,” Akari said.

  Danielle chuckled and fell silent. That night, though, she did dream of various forms of night vision she’d seen or heard of in history videos and games and stories. Tabby cats chased rabbits across her field of view, in black and white or ghostly green or varying shades and intensities of red. Each time, the rabbit got caught in a snare, and the cat gleefully finished it off and clawed the snare down to run off into the bushes with its cooling prey. “I like this preview,” her dream self said, “the vision style, I mean, not the thing with the cat chasing the rabbit. I’d like to choose this one.” The voice of a verbal System interface replied, “That choice is not unlocked. Please make a different selection.” “I’ll find a key and get it later,” Dream-Danielle said, “but seriously, why is there always a cat?” “There is always a cat because there is always a rabbit,” the voice replied.

  old fashioned, un-improved caves. Humanity has generated a surprisingly broad array of Skills for seeing in dark caves, but since they also try to make the caves into very low-mana zones, they tend to revert back to technological lighting as soon as they get things properly sealed. Still, there are some emergencies that really just require some people to be able to see in the dark, so they're still pretty common Skills.

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