“Am I making tokens here, or what?”

  “Oh, ah, yes, if you’re ready to get back to it – here’s the mana for my set,” Agent Bea said, pulling out an oversized paper roll, like a roll of coins, but obviously for System tokens. It even had its denomination printed on the side: 100s (10). She opened the end and slid out ten 100-mana tokens on the counter. “Do those, please, and then I’ll get out the other half.”

  Danielle nodded and got to work making Now Hear This tokens. Agent Bea stepped back, and whispered to Ranger Flo (not quietly enough), “Seriously, what am I missing with the Local Anesthetic thing?”

  Ranger Flo whispered (a lot closer to being inaudible), “Unlocked it the hard way,” then something Danielle actually couldn’t hear, “Guided Suture too, so” something else properly below hearing. Danielle supposed she was telling Agent Bea about the suture kit they’d given her.

  Agent Bea responded, “You should sell her the practice pad now.”

  Ranger Flo gave her a startled look, then a nod. “Good idea. I’ll be right back.”

  Ranger Flo left, and Danielle continued making Now Hear This tokens. When she got to ten, Agent Bea got out another roll of tokens and her empty case. She laid out another ten 100-mana tokens for Danielle, then started putting away the Now Hear This tokens while Danielle made the rest. Ranger Flo got back when she was on the 14th token, but instead of coming back to the counter right away, the Ranger went to the bookshelves and started looking for things. She searched the near side of one row, then had to go around through the one empty aisle to search the other end of the row. By the time Danielle was done and Agent Bea had all the Now Hear This tokens packed into their fancy case, Ranger Flo had stacked up three different piles of books on the counter.

  “Very good,” Agent Bea told Danielle, sliding the flat case into her satchel and bringing out a smaller pouch. “I am happy to say that I was able to find all three of the Skill tokens we agreed to trade: Alter Tag, Step Light, and Scout’s Awareness. I’m going to give you two of them now, and after your council meeting tonight, you can bring me your extra Now Hear This token, say that you think you were given the wrong token, and I’ll trade you the third Skill from this set for it – sort of a deposit, as you suggested before.” She took the three tokens out of the pouch and laid them face up in front of Danielle.

  “That works,” Danielle said. “Go ahead and hold on to Alter Tag then, and if anyone asks what I got by accident, that’s what I’ll tell them it was. Just one thing to remember, that way; and nobody will be jealous of Alter Tag. It sounds too boring.” She picked up the Step Light and Scout’s Awareness tokens and put them in her fancy token pouch.

  “That works,” Agent Bea agreed with a chuckle. “I’ll go get your satchels while you complete your business with the Rangers, and then we’ll talk books.”

  “OK. Got the mana for the Create Light Source tokens?” Danielle asked Ranger Flo.

  “Right here,” she answered, pulling the strong box out of her satchel again. She laid out ten 100-mana tokens, and a sheet of what Danielle first took for graph paper. Upon close inspection, she saw it was more like the printout of a spreadsheet, with labeled columns and alternating rows shaded a pale green. At the top, it read: Payment for Skill Token: Create Light Source (10) / +3,000, then skipped a column, then had another “3,000.” She gave the Ranger an interrogative glance.

  “Account ledger for the tab we’re opening with you,” Ranger Flo explained.

  “Oh – it really is a spreadsheet! Sort of,” Danielle said.

  Ranger Flo laughed, and shook her head. “You’d have seen these in math in another year or two,” she said. “It’s what spreadsheets were originally made to digitize, more or less. Anyway, for now, it represents your payment; as you decide on catalog items or other purchases, we’ll mark them down against the total until it’s small enough for one side or the other to pay down in tokens. I found a couple of Skill tokens for you, so I expect to add the first entries in a few minutes.”

  “I can work with that,” Danielle said, and started making the Skill tokens for her side of the deal. A few minutes later, the counter had 1000 less mana on it, and ten more Skill tokens for Create Light Source. Danielle’s Oceanic mana pool sat at 0 points, so she switched to Riverine.

  “Thank you so much,” Ranger Flo said, lining up the new Skill tokens in her strongbox. Danielle noticed that the tokens of Skill: Combat Medic had already been removed; the Ranger was putting the Create Light Source tokens in the same row. “Now, since Bea isn’t back yet, let’s talk books. You’ve been busy unlocking Skills left and right, and I know you’ve been fishing and so forth, so I’m not going to lecture you too much about not hiding in your room reading reference books when you should be out collecting food; but don’t let your sudden increase in reading material get you off track, OK?”

  Danielle chuckled. “We’ve already decided the school books are going to wait for winter,” she said. “What’s all this you’ve been stacking up for me, though?”

  Ranger Flo moved to the first stack of books she’d piled up earlier. “Well. The school books we let them deliver right away do contain some of those annoying ‘common knowledge for older people’ things, so they’re not just for school catch-up. These, however, are the books we were discussing earlier: a Class guide each for Healers, Scouts, and General Enhancers, and a guide for the Skill tree that has the best paths to opening Displacement. If these are still what you want, you can just tell Bea ‘these four’ and she won’t have time for second thoughts on the last book.”

  “Oh, that was very thoughtful,” Danielle said. She was about to ask why the agent would have second thoughts when the woman herself came back into the room, this time through a side door Danielle hadn’t taken notice of before. She thought it must go into the area behind the ‘market stall’ counter. Agent Bea had a pair of cardboard boxes and a leather satchel stacked up on a small handcart, which she wheeled up to the Book Store’s checkout counter.

  “All done?” she asked. “Here are the satchels – I checked, and they’ll actually fit in your duffel in the boxes, but only just. The critical dimension is end-to-end, so I think we can slide in the books in the wide dimension.”

  “That sounds good,” Danielle replied. “Ranger Flo helped me find the guides we talked about earlier, so that’s ready to go.”

  “Oh, good. Can you check them out while we pack, Flo? Or, wait, do you have a register code here?” Agent Bea asked.

  Ranger Flo shook her head. “I’ve never worked in the bookstore. Does your junior agent there have a code?” She nodded towards the young man, still flattening boxes in the next aisle.

  “Oh, yeah, I just got set up so I could help with the care packages,” he said. “I’ll be working in here during the fair, too – they tell me it’s actually super quiet, though.”

  Ranger Flo laughed. “Only because the real action is out on the fairgrounds! What is this, your second year? Third?”

  “Second,” the young man replied, his eyes darting to Danielle for some reason. “Um, so obviously we didn’t have a new Sending last year; is it going to be really different?” he asked awkwardly.

  “Not this season,” Agent Bea said. “New Sent don’t come to the Summer Fair their first year. Fall, now – the Fall Fair is going to be an experience. You’ll be on the fairgrounds for that one; everyone will be.”

  “Why don’t they come to Summer Fair?” the younger agent asked.

  Danielle decided to spare the older women an awkward decision. “They tell us it’s not safe for us,” she said, “but based on how a certain segment of my Sending is acting, I suspect it’s not safe for anyone. Except maybe the level 10 Rangers and senior Sent that are so far beyond us we couldn’t touch them if we tried, and even then, theft could be an issue. Two more weeks will be just long enough for the people who are relying too much on their starter rations to get really hungry and desperate – and frankly, a lot of people already seem pretty desperate.”

  Agent Bea sighed. “We try not to rub it in, but yes, that’s a factor. The fact that new Sent can’t compete with any of the older Sent for pure System power is another factor; the first few levels come quickly. Right now, you’re all – er, most of you, are crawling up level 1, feeling like it’s taking forever, but the truth is most of you will be at least level 3, possibly level 4 by the time of the Fall fair; and that’s not even considering people like you individually, who might have gotten a bit of a head start. The fairs are roughly four months apart; if you level pretty close to the four-week safety limit every time, you could be level 5! Things change at level 5 though; even the driven ones slow down. People that come to their first Fall Fair at level 4 are entirely likely to still be at 4 come Spring Fair, and 5 for their second Fall Fair. The average difference between a new level 1 and a new level 5 is much more dangerous than the difference between a new level 4 and a mid-level 5.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “I’m right, then; there’s a darn good reason why getting back Inside takes people five-to-ten years and not just one,” Danielle said. “It’s not just the month-long safety period.”

  Ranger Flo snorted. “No, obviously not. Believe me, your cohort might be more panicked than older Sent, but you’re not more determined to get back Inside. If there was a fast and easy way that worked, Sendings would just be shorter.”

  Danielle nodded with a small, vindicated smile. “I keep telling people. Not just anyone is willing to hear that, of course, so I say ten months to ten years when I’m talking to the ones that are really determined to believe they’ll get inside fast.”

  “I’d explain why, but it’s yet another thing that can get you in trouble with Systemists,” Agent Bea said. “They think it’s wrong to tell people about levels higher than the one they’re currently working toward; that means it’s safe to talk about level 2 to anyone in camp, but level 3 information is off-limits to most of them. The state Court of the Elements tried to ban a bunch of our books and guides over that – not in my time, but new agents still learn the story; we finally had to pull the guide to base levels and reformat everything else so it’s easier to learn about just one level at a time.”

  “Does the base guide still exist? Can I get one if I promise to keep it hidden from Systemists?” Danielle asked.

  “Nope. It got classified as religious literature, and banned from the government-operated book shop,” Agent Bea said. “But lest you think it was a mistake, please hear this: people died over that disagreement. In the early days, the book stall sold Bibles and Korans and Books of the Elements too; we stopped because the turmoil caused by Sent who were questioning their beliefs coming into conflict with Sent who were holding onto their beliefs with new fervor ended in deaths. Too many times. There’s a good reason we don’t sell those things, or allow them to be brought out in starting gear if we can help it.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re preventing the free practice of my religion,” Danielle grumbled.

  Agent Bea sighed. “Well, the fairs usually have a discreet religious goods seller or three, so if you still want something from them come Fall, I can’t stop you. You won’t get it from any of us here, though.”

  “Wait, you mean people who aren’t from the government or the Sendings come to the fairs?” Danielle asked, both because she was intrigued and to make a graceful exit from an awkward subject.

  “Oh, yes. Not just anyone at all, mind you, but Insiders who aren’t too close to the limits of level 3 can apply to come out for the fair, sort of like a business/camping combination,” Agent Bea said, allowing herself to be diverted. “The good people delivering the care packages are Insiders too – I suspect a lot of them are relatives hoping to get a glimpse of the right student – Sent, I mean – on behalf of the parents.”

  “And now they’re all going to have to be quarantined pending blood tests,” Ranger Flo said with a sigh. “Do us a favor, and don’t have any more emergencies for a day or three, OK?”

  Danielle laughed awkwardly. “Um, I’ll try. Why the quarantine?”

  “Because there are just enough suspicious symptoms showing up around your camp that we can’t prove there’s anything wrong yet, but we also can’t send people inside without checking for infectious diseases,” Agent Bea said, “which means Flo and Michael are about to be very busy indeed. Let’s get these boxes in your boti bag now.”

  “Wait, what am I busy with now?” the young man asked.

  Agent Bea laughed. “Not you, Mike,” she said. “Healer Michael. This won’t affect you unless we actually have an epidemic coming on.”

  “Epidemic??” he asked, going wide-eyed in alarm.

  “Don’t panic,” Ranger Flo told him kindly, “it’s just like when the flu is going around, Inside. First-year Sent have it rough, encountering the big three for the first time – sometimes they won’t hit the last one until their second year, technically. You’ll be busy distributing disease recovery kits whenever the first one hits; it’s inevitable. Well, unless you somehow haven’t had it yourself.”

  “Do I report for the blood draw, then?” Mike asked.

  “No, you’re not trying to go back in. You just keep working and if you get sick, report to the clinic,” Agent Bea said. “Like when you had the Speeds last fall.”

  “Oh. OK, I guess,” Mike said dubiously, turning back to his pile of boxes.

  “Aren’t you going to ring up books for me?” Ranger Flo reminded him.

  “Oh, right!” he came around the counter quickly and set his box knife aside. “Anything for a break from the endless boxes,” he joked, and logged on to the register.

  Agent Bea claimed Danielle’s attention, and they wrestled the boxes of “School-Style Canvas Satchel, Sending Blue, 20” into her duffel bag. The first one was only a little awkward, going into the softer-sided container; but the second one was a bit of a challenge to get through the opening while it was half-obstructed by the first. Once they had the boxes in, Ranger Flo came over and helpfully slid in the four books, which did fit easily enough along the backs of the boxes, with room to spare for more.

  “Perfect,” the Ranger Healer declared. “There’s room for me to try to sell her a few too, and round up the number from the tokens I found for her!”

  Agent Bea sighed. “Do I need to recite the ‘focus on doing, not reading’ lecture?” she asked.

  “Nope, I already did,” Ranger Flo assured her cheerfully. “But your set of books is missing a couple of crucial references for someone in her situation.”

  “And what might those be?” Agent Bea inquired skeptically.

  Ranger Flo ginned at her. “Class guides for her own actual Classes, obviously! You sold her the Healer guide just so she could help her room’s Healer figure out how to bypass her resistance trait; but you didn’t sell her the Medic guide.”

  “Oh. I suppose that would make sense,” Agent Be said, but her tone remained skeptical as she eyed the two piles of books still on the counter.

  “She also just took a new Class while you had her at the Dome for some reason, possibly because Dolina scared her,” Ranger Flo said. “So she needs a guide for that; and something with proper diagrams of medical stitches for her to work from if I convince her to buy these practice pads. You can go if you’re needed elsewhere, Bea, these will go on the Rangers’ tab if she takes them at all.”

  “I’m needed to get the testing and quarantine situation set up,” Agent Bea said. “And you are too!”

  “Ah – fair point. I’ll be along promptly, I promise,” Ranger Flo said.

  Agent Bea shook her head. “I can tell you’re up to something. I’ve known you too long.”

  “Well don’t give away the game before I close the sale!” Ranger Flo said teasingly.

  The Sending Authority agent shook her head again. “Fine, but don’t blame me if another Skill Sharer ends up mad at you, then,” she said, and left the room.

  “She’s not going to end up mad at me, is she?” the younger agent asked.

  Ranger Flo shook her head in turn. “Don’t worry Mike,” she said. “I didn’t give Danielle anything she hadn’t already promised. And none of what I’m about to sell her now is questionable!”

  “What was questionable? Since everyone here seems to know besides me, right now?” Danielle asked.

  “The Guide to the Layer interactions Skill Tree,” Mike said immediately. “Don’t share that one around for a while, OK? Like maybe until after the Fall Fair at least?”

  “Um, I might agree to that if you tell me why?” Danielle said cautiously.

  “It’s got stuff from one of the categories of information we’re not suppose to bring up and share around until the Sent themselves start asking questions,” Ranger Flo said. “But! You asked about good Skills for dealing with hostile persons in your neighborhood, and Bea very reasonably recommended working towards Displacement, so you get the best guide for that task. Moving on! I’m happy to say that not only was I able to get proper authorization for the Ultrasight token, but the commander even managed to dig up a Body Shield token for you. That one is going to run you 500 mana, but I think we can agree that it’s worth it, no?”

  “I don’t actually know much about the Skill,” Danielle said leadingly.

  “Ah, well. It’s a shield Skill that covers your entire body, and lasts longer if you don’t actually take damage. It’s a good all-around base protective layer, and the maximum duration goes up faster than many Skills’ durations do. It’s popular with Rangers, emergency service workers, and anyone higher level who has to deal with physical protection – Outside animal care workers, for example, like Ranger Gretel of cheese fame. It’s not a rare Skill, but it is quite high demand. You need it ASAP, it was not easy to get it for you – my superior actually went to a discreet source Inside to buy one rather than asking Karen for it – and it will definitely be profitable for you long term.” Flo said, pulling out the token and displaying it like a salesperson showing off a jewel.

  Agent Mike apparently thought so too, since he quipped, “And just look how it sparkles in the light!”

  Danielle chuckled appreciatively, even as Ranger Flo rolled her eyes. “Is it one of the ones you might end up having trouble getting from Karen?” she asked.

  “It’s already one we have trouble getting from Karen,” Ranger Flo said. “She can’t cut us off entirely on this one, but she never gives us enough priority.”

  “I guess my profit is pretty well assured, then,” Danielle said. “All right, fine, five hundred. And it’s 450 for the Ultrasight token, right? So I guess you’re wanting to sell me 50 mana worth of books?”

  “Well, that was my original plan, but let me show you what I pulled and see how much you want,” Ranger Flo said. “For starters, I have this set of three suturing practice pads for you; 15 mana for the set. This is to practice your stiches on without having to find injured people. They come with a little instruction book, but they’re meant for medical and veterinary students who have already had proper classroom and laboratory instruction, so you should also consider this coursebook for EMT students, conveniently in a Ranger-approved binding just for Sent students. You’ve already had your field experience, as it were, so I think between that and the Guided Suture Skill, you’re at the point where a reference book and some practice will do you a lot of good.”

  “That makes sense,” Danielle said. “Is the book 5 mana then? Or 10, like the guides?”

  “Ten,” Ranger Flo said firmly. “You only need one chapter right now, but it is a full semester’s textbook for a class we teach to new Rangers, and when you have time to read the rest, you’ll find the rest of it useful as well.”

  “Hm. So that puts us at 25, and you want to sell me two Class guides as well?” Danielle asked.

  “Better. I want to sell you a regular Class Guide for Medic and Field Medic,” Ranger Flo said, holding up a book with that exact title. “However, for your newest Class, I want to propose this three-volume set!” She pulled over a stack of three books. “This is everything you need to know about ‘elemental’ Light; the first volume covers Careers and Classes, the second one is a Skill Compendium, and volume 3 is an Enhancement guide. The set is called Light Your World, and just because I know you’re working on related Skills that we want you to be able to share, I can give it to you for 45 mana instead of the 50 that Mike here is going to charge me at the register.”

  “Huh. I admit, that sounds relevant to my interests,” Danielle said.

  “I thought you’d say that,” Ranger Flo said with a grin. “That leaves my offerings down to these two very boring Skill tree guides; Administrative Skills and Security Skills.”

  “Uh – ” Mike said, a cautionary sound, Danielle thought.

  “She needs the security, and it’s nothing we couldn’t sell to anyone else with rare Skills and demonstrated need,” Ranger Flo told Agent Mike.

  “Yeah, maybe, but you said nothing else questionable!” the young agent objected.

  “Why would security be questionable anyway?” Danielle asked.

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