The Desperation Rapids General Store was, to Ben, the single most interesting sleazy pawn shop he'd ever been to. It was laid out like a typical pawn shop, with cheap shelves and a color scheme that consisted of tan and slightly more or less tan. It had no flooring aside from the crystal the building was made from, which to Ben equated to bare concrete in terms of effort. The lighting was some futuristic, magical contraption that somehow still managed to mimic that burnt out, fluorescent bulb feel that was so familiar on Earth. The shit sitting on those shelves, and piled up against those walls, however? Two words;

Fucking crazy.

There was armor that ranged from cloth to leather to metal to cybernetic, all hodgepodge and never a complete set. There were plain looking swords, and then there were swords that were decorated and clearly magical. There were jars filled with various kinds of fluids, or gasses, in every color of the rainbow, and most of them were glowing. All of that, Ben expected, but there was all kinds of weird shit too.

Like several capsules that contained the dead bodies of some extremely nasty looking monsters, bodies that were apparently 'Hot Items' and 'On Sale'. Or the living bodies of weird looking alien creatures, who were merely on sale, and had blank, mindless expressions on their faces, and 'uploading' cost extra. Ben considered the myriad of applications for that, and then shied away from the bodies.

Next to the living and the dead were various robotic bodies, which were neither 'Hot Items' or 'On Sale', and had a disclaimer that the purchaser was responsible for getting their own code.

There were books that were clearly magical behind a force field. There was what was undoubtedly an entire section of the store dedicated to drug paraphernalia, some of which was familiar, and some of which wasn't. There were strange, spherical pills in elaborate cases that made Ben think of Xanxia or Wuxia or whatever that chinese martial arts genre was called.

There was also a regular section that contained regular clothes, and Ben rushed forward and started sifting through it. Much to his delight, the moment he touched an article of clothing, it adjusted in size. He selected a nice looking green outfit, one that was vaugely leprechaun-y, and carried it to the counter.

“Before we get started,” Ben said, “I'm buying this.”

The Gray behind the counter had no complaints, and didn't even ask for any money. The freaky little alien wasn't wearing much, but he had pants at the very least. He directed Ben to a little changing room, which Ben practically ran to, clutching his precious clothing like a man who expected them to turn into bats and fly away.

The changing room was quiet, noise sealed away from the rest of The World, giving Ben some real privacy. The clothes he held had everything; underwear, socks, pants, undershirt, shoes and a button up green suit jacket. The style was suspiciously 'Earth', but Ben chalked that up to the fact that humans had been here for about three months, and fashionistas were probably [Fashionistas] or some shit. If there was one thing Ben knew about fashion, which was an extremely debatable claim, it was that fashion never stopped. For anything. Not even the end of the world.

He was stalling for time again, and he knew it, and he also knew it was ridiculous. He'd been wanting some clothes for so long now that it had become 'a thing' in his mind, it had become a part of his identity: Wanting clothes, but not having them.

Who would he become if he put on these pants! What kind of mons- There was a pounding on the changing room door, accompanied by Short Bus's voice.

“Stop being such a caudal and put on the clothes!”

“How do you know I'm not putting them on right now?” Ben shouted back.

“I'm psychic! I'm reading your mind, now put on the damn pants!”

“I don't want to!” Ben shouted back, unsure if he meant it, but totally sure that he was being extremely childish, and also that he needed to be a little childish right now.

“I'll make you!” Short Bus shouted back, and then started jiggling with the changing room door.

“Please don't break my changing room,” the gray said, sounding almost alarmed.

“You can't make me!” Ben shouted back, and then started laughing, “ok, ok! Don't break anything, Jesus man, I'm good.”

“You're good?” Short Bus said, no longer trying to break in.

“I'm fucking good, give me some fucking privacy! Stop reading my mind!”

“Not happening!” Short Bus said good naturedly.

“For the privacy or the mind reading,” Ben said, pulling on the underwear, and then the socks, like a civilized person.

“Yes,” Short Bus said vaugely, and then Ben decided to just ignore him.

“Your group has a very energetic and familiar dynamic,” Thirty-One commented, “I wish Anna and Dryst would joke around a little more. Dryst, in particular, could really. . . ah, lighten up seems to be the appropriate term.”

“What's up with that guy?” Ben asked, putting on his green pants one leg at a time, just like any other person.

“Oh, Dryst is under a lot of pressure, that's all. His circle, that is, his Elemental Circle, which is to say, his family. . . they have admittedly high expectations for him. Adventuring was supposed to be a way for him, all of us really, to get out from under the thumb of our families. . .” the cyborg sighed, “well, we will see how it all develops. Having conquered a citadel is a good mark on all of us, regardless of the circumstances.”

“Oh, a Citadel?” the Gray said, “please be sure to show me each and every piece of treasure you acquired in the Citadel. Chief Cragg will be most interested in purchasing it, in bulk, at a discount.”

“Hey, Thirty-One?” Ben said, quickly pulling on the undershirt and then the jacket, buttoning it up from bottom to top, like how his dad had taught him. The thought of his parents brought with it both pain and clarity, centering Ben in reality. “Kindly shut up about what happened out in the forest.”

“Yes, I think that would be best,” the cyborg said, embarrassed.

Ben looked at himself in the changing room mirror after he'd put on his new shoes. There was no two ways about it, he looked like a fucking leprechaun. He did a little jig, laughed at himself, and then promptly put the issue out of his mind. If his [Evolution] skill was any indication, and if those criminals down in the lobby were any indication, he'd be back to normal sooner rather than later.

“Chief Cragg will be most interested in acquiring it, nua nua nua,” Ben muttered mockingly, “at a discount! Bah,” he said, then literally spat. It accomplished less than he thought it would, because his [Magical] spit rolled off of physical surfaces like mercury, saturating nothing. It just pooled up in near perfect spheres, which elicited another scowl from Ben. “This is total bullshit,” he said, looking at his entirely clothed body and, more than he had before, feeling kind of naked. “Hey!” Ben shouted, “don't rush me in here! I'm taking a minute to think about shit!”

“Good idea,” Short Bus said, sounding snoopy.

“I'm afraid Chief Cragg,” the gray said, but he was cut off by Ghost Ears.

“Is going to get his damn money,” Ghost Ears said firmly, “and you're going to tell him he's already been paid, and that he should go ahead and start doing whatever it is he needs to do to get our companions-”

“Friends,” both Ben and Short Bus said, correcting him at the same time. Ghost Ears didn't miss a beat, but his voice lost some heat.

“Our friends out of trouble,” he finished.

“Oh very well,” the gray said, “but it'll be trouble for all of us if you aren't quick about it. The Boss,” that's a capital 'B' mind you, “has already arranged for buyers, and they won't be happy about waiting.” Ben, having secured a couple of minutes to sit down and think about shit, sat down and started thinking.

'Fuck!' he thought to himself, running his hands through his hair and wanting to start punching a wall over and over again till his knuckles bleed. He started saying 'Fuck' over and over again, mentally, and clenched his jaw, took a deep breath and tensed up till his face was red and his eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his skull. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he let the breath out slowly, and then took a nice, deep inhale of some clean air.

It was the fucking clothes thing that really got to him. He should, by all rights, be over the fucking moon about having something to wear. Clothes were good! They covered his fucking penis so nobody could comment on either its size, or appearance, both of which were, like Ben himself, just slightly above average. Clothes also, Ben admitted, kept him warm, protected his skin from scrapes, and made him look better.

'This really shouldn't bother me so much,' Ben thought to himself. One of the skills he'd picked up back on Earth, the regular kind of skill where you just figure shit out and don't get a message about it, was self-awareness. Ben had probably learned it later in life than he should have, but had also learned it sooner than most people did. So, when he thought 'This really shouldn't bother me so much,' he immediately dove into, 'No, it really shouldn't. Why does it?'

The answer, as answers often do when one asks the right questions, came immediately, and in the form of a memory.

While working for The City, which didn't exist anymore, Ben had gotten promoted to being the guy who put up stop signs and who put white and yellow paint on the road. A simplification of his job, but not an inaccurate one. The City had, about a year before Ben got the job, spent somewhere between a quarter and a half a million dollars on a brand new, state of the art street striping truck. It was only relevant information because the new truck was enormous, and required a four man crew to run properly.

So, one day, all of them had been driving down the road, cold late summer morning, the kind of morning that was like Fall tapping their watch and saying 'This Summer shit's getting old, time to paint the leaves and make it cold,' just shooting the shit over their headsets.

So they're all on the truck, when they pass by a homeless guy at a bus stop- Stop feeling bad for the guy, he wasn't that kind of homeless. This guy was high out of his mind, about thirty five, and didn't have any shoes on. He was standing upright in his dirty brown and brown-green outfit, energetically talking to the cars as the passed him by. On closer inspection, they had all noticed he was wearing women's underwear like some sort of strange, pseudo-sandals, pulled between his exposed toes.

There had been silence for a moment, and then someone said, “I'm really grateful for my life,” and then they said all the normal shit people say; he had a good job, a good family, a house the motherfucker, and his problems weren't that bad. Then, someone else had said something, Ben couldn't remember what, and he'd responded with this:

“Everybody's got a set of problems in their life. . . and some problems are a lot better than others.”

His co-worker, who had admittedly been a bit of a negative person, paused and then said:

“You know, that's an extremely optimistic way of looking at the world.”

The conversation had stuck in Ben's mind, and nagged at him the entire day. It was later, when he was talking on the phone with his Dad, which was basically him bragging about his successes and minimizing his failures, when he really started to untangle the idea.

In Jungian psychology, there's an idea that the mind needs a religious structure of some kind, a moral cosmology, an answer to all the 'why' questions. The idea follows that if the mind does not have a moral cosmology/religion, or if its moral cosmology/religion is destroyed, the mind will find something to put in its place. It's sort of like if you lost your liver, and could just put some replacement liver in there to keep from fucking dying.

The theory then posited that if the mind can't find a new 'moral liver', it'll just start making shit up to fill the void.

Ben, while talking with his dad about problems, came to the realization that problems were probably just about the same way. He figured that a persons brain, on average, had about ten problem slots. Some people had more, some people had less, but everybody had problem slots.

Solve a problem? Great! Now the brain needs to find a new problem to take its place. No matter how many problems a person solved, they would never be done, because the brain needed to have problems in order to function.

The 'Problem Kidneys' to the 'Moral Liver', as it were. The absolute comedy of it was that people spent their entire lives trying to solve problems, and then felt miserable when they actually succeeded. Their brains got really, really comfortable with a set of problems the longer it'd been holding onto them, and soon, it was about managing problems, not actually solving them.

And if, by some terrible accident, their oldest problems were solved? Misery! Depression! Chaos! Their minds would throw a fucking fit, and then desperately look for some random shit, or just start making shit up, manufacturing a problem to slot into the vacancy.

He had, in that moment, felt like he'd cracked the entire code of human misery, and understood the human condition better than anyone who had ever come before him.

He'd been wrong, obviously, but he was certainly onto something. So, from that point on, at least until he'd sort of forgot about it the way people are prone to do with mind-blowing revelations, Ben had been strategic about his problems. He tried to figure out what issues he was working on, and solving them. Then, when he'd solved something, he'd actively look for something new to go after, rather than just let random chance decided what his brain was going to be doing with its calories.

“Damn,” Ben said, looking at his clothes, “I must have really liked that problem.” He cracked a smile. “Humans are so fucking stupid, it hurts,” he said, clutching his head in his hands and chuckling, while also feeling the painful truth of his statement. “I need something new to worry about. . .” Ben only had to think about it for a moment, then he got up, dusted off imaginary dust from his clothes, and left the changing room. Short Bus was staring at him with wide eyes and excited, slightly hanging open mouth.

“Ben, that was awesome! I love reading your mind!”

“Oh!” Namey said, grabbing Short Bus in a mockery of excitement, “he's all pumped up, look at that!”

“No, to both of you,” Ben said, then walked over to the counter and jumped up on it so he had some height on the Gray. “Listen up fuckboy,” Ben said, pointing with his entire hand at the now slightly intimidated alien, “I know you're about to fucking rape me on prices here. I get that, I accept that, I know it's the cost of doing business. But as you so roughly fuck me over and rob me, I want you to tell me exactly how valuable all my shit is. I won't complain, I'll only do the bare minimum of negotiation, I'll play along. But if I'm about to make you a goddamn fortune, I at least want to know how, and why, because I don't have a clue how much things cost, or even how money works in The World.” By the end of it, Ben was breathing harder than he was at the start, and he was ready for a fight. The Gray seemed to be thinking, his fucked up alien face twitching in familiar micro-expressions.

“That's a reasonable request,” he finally said, with the 'Eh,' facial expression, “I'll give you the crash course. Now, can we please get started?”

“Well negotiated, your highness,” Ghost Ears said, flying over and punching Ben's arm. Thirty-One sat quietly, contemplated the insulting term 'fuckboy', and thought to himself that he could have told Ben what all his stuff was worth, and then decided to just let Ben have his win.