“One dose of Class-3 rejection suppressant,” Krahe offered.

  “Oh, that’s good, but I can’t ‘member where exactly I filed last month’s report. Hope not that memslate that snapped in half before I made a backup…” he continued haggling as they reached his computer and he hopped up into his chair.

  “Final offer: One dose of Class-3 painkiller, two doses of rejection suppressant, and I won’t accidentally torch your smut collection,” Krahe offered, raising her hand to a nearby rack of memslates. She already felt that these upgraded appraisal lenses were paying for themselves. Everything in Nozar’s data-hoard had anti-appraisal measures, but his collection being so vast, those protections varied in strength based on importance. This seemingly random rack of memslates was abnormally well-protected amidst a pile of other entertainment media. It also bore not a speck of dust, and was within arm’s length of Nozar’s workstation.

  He narrowed his eyes, and, chittering with indignant fury, grabbed one of the memslates, gingerly slotting it into his terminal. With the press of a button, one of the screens flickered to the intro of what could be best described as late-20th-century special-effects action cinema — tokusatsu. Mamon Knights and Thaumaturges battling monstrous enemies.

  “It’s not smut. It’s art. High-resolution master copies. Lost media,” he hissed.

  “I’ll still torch it if you try to fuck me,” she shrugged.

  “Fine, now get your greasy ape fingers away from my collection. Just… Just don’t fuckin’ touch it,” Nozar complained, rapidly tapping commands into the terminal. Krahe could hear mechanical armatures come to life somewhere out of sight, and slight vibrations spread through the floor.

  “Want to use your own memslates or no?” he asked.

  “How many do you need?”

  “Three,” he gestured with three raised fingers.

  Krahe handed them over, keeping a sliver of attention on the show he had so reverently described as lost media. She still wasn’t entirely sure that it wouldn’t transition into pornography, given the supremely corny quality of the dialogue and the female heroine’s outfit, one that stood out not because of the low coverage, but because Krahe had surmised that it was supposed to be a Mamon Armor. Like the outfits of Eutropia’s band, only higher quality.

  “Really? You can afford to come to me for information but not to bring quality memslates? Or are you that cheap?” Nozar piped up, disgust audible in his voice.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “They have an indefinite shelf life and no maximum read limit, that’s all I need,” she said.

  “Disgusting. Keep them,” he refused, pushing them back towards her. He reached under the table, pulling out a sheet-metal canister stamped with the brand of the Ironworks.

  KRISTOFFEN

  IWPS-4-005

  ANTM-VRL-R-2O

  Seeing Krahe’s brow furrowed in a mix of distrust and mild displeasure, he set it down in front of her. “Paranoid. Here. Sealed, see?”

  “My experiences have taught me that, if anything, I am not paranoid enough,” Krahe remarked, taking the canister in hand. Under its lid, she found a pull-tab can lid, marked as fully sealed and warded against all radiation up to a certain rating.

  “You offered this. I’m not paying extra,” she said.

  The evoy somehow managed to convey an eye-roll despite his eyes not being capable of such a motion.

  “The time you’ve wasted me up ‘til now is worth more than that canister. Just check it in whatever way you want and get this over with, your order is almost done buffering.”

  With the hiss of an airtight seal being broken, she beheld the memslates — two rows of six. Unlike the clay or metal she was used to, they were greenish jadeite and their reflective surfaces gleamed in shades of purple. The individual symbols were tiny, approaching the limit of her naked eye. Going over each of them, she gave Nozar the go-ahead.

  “Four copies,” she said, pointedly keeping her hand on the canister even after counting out four memslates. If she could walk out of here with this, she would.

  “Payment. I wanna see it first,” he replied.

  Only once each agreed-upon item sat in front of him did the evoy actually slot the memslates into their rightful place. From then on, they didn’t exchange any further words. Krahe, somehow, managed to make her way out of that building and out of Seer’s territory without any further incident. Putting aside the fact Nozar’s jadeite memslates were, as he had claimed, undeniably superior in all ways to what she had been content to use so far, the density and volume of information he had dumped on her was beyond her ability to parse on the spot. There was spite in it, in how immaculately organized it was, as if Nozar was smugly reigning his data-hoarder proclivities and his ability to navigate this complex schema over her. There was a file system in here, though her eyebox couldn’t do more than scroll through it and tell her that there was information it couldn’t handle properly. She would need an actual terminal to properly go through it all. This, in the end, turned out easier than getting clothes.

  Garvesh readily wheeled out a consumer model for her to look over and fiddle with, and ordering a nonstandard, security-focused unit was much easier than she had expected. It was painfully expensive, that much was true, but Krahe was just as painfully aware of how important quality hardware was. Memslates were one thing, she had used them for disposable ends and thus hadn’t needed anything quality so far, but this was different. Garvesh referred to the machine as a “cogen,” short for “cognition engine,” and the manual also mentioned “c-engine” or “c-en” as colloquial terms. After spending some time reading a generalized manual for these machines and listening to the pawnbroker explain the most important aspects of use, Krahe felt confident enough that she wouldn’t have major issues adapting. There were major differences in fundamental design, but it was still a personal data-processing terminal designed by humans for humans, it fundamentally couldn’t be too alien for Krahe to understand.

  If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the ! You get up to 20 advance chapters for both Retribution Engine and Cherno Caster.

  I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, maybe even leave a review or advanced review!

  For a link to the discord, check the synopsis.