Jonathan was suitably impressed by the weird corpse dumpling machine — but oddly felt robbed of a chance to chit chat, since it was so efficient.

  Jonathan was never much of a talker. Though he had been feeling rather isolated lately, so he tried to claw the chance back.

  "You got me — I'm the new guy. This is my trainer."

  Clarence's eyes flickered for a very short moment, which Jonathan read as being scanned.

  Buddy noticed. "That's neat that you can tell when people are scanning stuff. I'd like to take credit, but I think this one is on Pal — I couldn't see that before."

  Good to know. Jonathan had no idea whether either Passenger was necessary for that. He would have to probe Pal for other tricks later — he was fairly passive aside from the need to be pedantic about measurements.

  "Oh, a raider eh? Always nice to meet someone from the opposite end of the career spectrum."

  "How do you figure?"

  "Well, you have to go to all sorts of crazy dangerous places doing crazy dangerous stuff, with the risk of your body getting mangled in all sorts of interesting ways — where I just sit here nice and safe and have bodies hand delivered for safe keeping."

  Clarence's answer seemed as rehearsed as it was brutal.

  "Is it really that safe? Your neighbors seem a bit… rowdy."

  "Oh, the Pile? Nah, they're great! They keep the rent low. 96% of my business comes from travelers looking to store a body, keep some frozen treat cold, or some other insane thing. These contracts are almost always paid before they reach the station, so I'm not exactly worried about foot traffic."

  "Really? Aren't you worried they'll break in or something?"

  "If these guys had the skills to break into any shop on this station without getting killed, they wouldn't still be hanging out in the Pile."

  "What's their deal? Doesn't the station have security… or an HOA or something?"

  "Not sure what 'HOA' is, but they get raided every few days by automated security — which is why they put up barricades and other defenses. The attacks have been escalating, but my theory is they're just doing that to keep the unemployed occupied and contained in a single area. Destroying the Pile doesn't stop unemployment."

  Clarence paused.

  "Also, they've started becoming a draw for cheap entertainment recently, which is something the station definitely lacks."

  "You mean the fights?"

  "Yep! Every single day. Pretty sure their whole economy — and even their electoral system — is fight-based."

  "Huh. That doesn't seem very sustainable."

  Clarence made a laugh that oddly reminded Jonathan of a cross between an "Ahyuck" à la Goofy and a donkey braying.

  "I don't think a lot of people who end up in the Pile have a long-term strategy in mind."

  Craig put his hand on Jonathan's shoulder — signaling it was time to get a move on.

  "Guess we gotta get going. Thanks for the information!"

  "No problem — feel free to drop by any time. Preferably pushing the cart, not riding it!"

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Clarence hit his sides with little claws, a gesture Jonathan assumed to be the Salaman version of a knee-slap.

  There was a lot to process from just that one conversation.

  Jonathan didn't feel like wasting everyone's time with dumb questions every time something alien confused him, so he resolved to puzzle the answers out himself where he could.

  Throwing raids at a glorified homeless camp twice a week for days — maybe years — on end without changing anything seemed like an exorbitant waste of resources. Maybe the station was so rich it could afford it. Or maybe, given that the security was automated, they had a sustainable means of production.

  The two-man crew decided to head back to the ship to drop off their empty cart before doing any more errands.

  Jonathan was sure of one thing. If Rex couldn't offload this inventory without leaving the ship, it would be up to him. He couldn't see Craig spending more than a single sentence worth of effort in each store — and they had a lot of goods to dump.

  Jonathan wasn't exactly an experienced salesperson. He had experience in sales calls, but not direct sales. He generally didn't like talking to people but excelled at "doing the needful" — so he would suck it up and get that needful done.

  Assuming he couldn't find any other possible method to shift this stuff without talking to anyone.

  Doing whatever it took to avoid the needful was another skill he excelled at.

  On the way back, Jonathan came up with a game plan.

  Rather than try to sell everything at once, he would start with their mountain of junk food — the largest volume of their haul. He would cut a dozen or so slivers off every food item as samples and use those to get quotes from a dozen or so specialty shops.

  Then he would fill his laptop bag with books and shop them around any library or data purveyors he could find. Though he wasn't sure if he'd have to transcribe them first, or if they were valuable as-is. There were a few survival books he'd probably want to hang on to.

  But maybe that wasn't necessary.

  "Buddy — if I were to flip through the pages of a book, could I still retain that knowledge without actually reading the contents?"

  "Heyyyy, not a bad idea! What's even better is that we can compartmentalize each book as an extractable data volume — so you could sell translations alongside the originals!"

  Jonathan had to admit. Passengers were amazing.

  They had some specialty items as well — a couple of tablets, a couple of smartphones, and a quadcopter camera drone. He was pretty sure the technology involved was rudimentary on a galactic scale, but potentially very useful for a raider. So he would try to hang onto those.

  He also had nearly 8 terabytes of all sorts of random stuff on his custom laptop — movies, full series, and some actually useful stuff too. He would have to work with Rex to figure out a way to extract and monetize the content specifically, because no way in hell was he just going to give his laptop away.

  Jonathan briefly daydreamed about becoming rich from selling pirated movies.

  He snapped out of it when he saw an augmented reality show play out in one of the pavilions they passed.

  It featured a bunch of squid-insects — squidsects — assaulting a bull-headed combination of Duke Nukem and Doom Guy. The latter was annihilating the former as they sprouted from the walls or burst out of passersby with a repeating laser shotgun, all while "DRAMATIZATION" blinked in big red letters underneath the scene.

  If it weren't for the warning — and the interface tabs with character bios, episode recap, and credits — it could've been mistaken for a real invasion.

  Until the bull threw a grenade that exploded and spelled out:

  "Go hard with Gerhardt — 13 cycle Spraygun from Arnicore. Check your map or follow the BLOOD for retailers near you."

  The whole thing was a commercial.

  Jonathan checked his map. Sure enough, several shops were blinking violet — the same color as the virtual blood trails. He wondered if the blood would be a different color in stations with a violet motif.

  The dream of being a pirate movie producer was on life support. But it's a big universe. Jonathan was sure someone out there would appreciate movies with slightly more subtle product placement — like the Transformers sequels, for example.

  Not long after that, Jonathan and Craig returned to the ship to drop off the cart.

  Jonathan laid out his plan to the others. Rex agreed with Jonathan's observation that Craig wasn't cut out for sales — but insisted he tag along anyway. Jonathan wasn't sure who Rex was trying to keep out of trouble, but he appreciated the company. Craig was quiet, but also intimidating, which translated to a perfect companion score.

  They ended up going to eight different food and confectionery stores before Jonathan called for a break.

  He really had higher hopes for Earth junk food. There was some interest, but most shops would have to buy low to allow for markups. The higher end stores were worse — it felt like he was selling crabgrass in a meadow.

  What he really needed was a dessert desert.

  He needed to find a captive niche. A target demographic that reliably eats more junk food than is healthy, and isn't likely to want — or even able — to go to high-end rare food boutiques.

  He needed someone like the unemployed.