I woke up for the first time in a long time with a woman in my arms and it felt good. I was still half asleep and I tightened my grip and snuggled into her hair.

“I really hope that’s a roll of quarters in your pocket, Jack.” Debbie’s voice jerked me fully awake and I whipped back to my own side of the bed. I focused on putting my boots back onto my feet and muttered a quick apology. Debbie got up and went to splash water on her face. I wouldn’t meet her eyes and she chuckled at me.

“Don’t feel too bad, Jack. It could have been worse, I might have accused you of a roll of nickels.” She grinned at me, but she let the issue drop as I stumbled for the door.

With all the fancy tech Tim had told us about yesterday, I was convinced there had to be a better option than the chamber pot. I eventually found something that looked like a cross between a chemical toilet like you’d find in an RV and an old fashioned porcelain commode. I used the facility and pulled the chain and a flash of purple light came out from under the lid. It seemed kind of fancy for a flush, but when I checked there wasn’t a speck of residue in the pot so I couldn’t fault the efficacy. When I came out Hunter was waiting and he gestured back down the stairs and told me the dining room was in the back.

We had oatmeal for breakfast, which was a nice change from our diet of meat and more meat. We kicked in some chocoberries to liven things up. Tim seemed to enjoy them but Angie was over the moon. From that and our own group's reactions, I made a mental note that we’d have better luck selling the berries to females instead of males. There was apparently an open air market on the edge of the village where folks set out handmade goods they made in their off hours. Transactions for XP were heavily taxed, but straight barter wasn’t regulated. After talking it over during breakfast we came up with a rough plan. Debbie and Hunter would go with Tim to talk to Ken and Li to see if the village as a whole had any interest in buying from us. In the meantime the rest of us would set up in the market square and barter our little heads off.

Before they sat off, Debbie called me to the side. “Keep an eye out for someone we can leave the rest of the stuff with to trade on consignment when we leave. For now just setup in the marketplace and keep things going smoothly. When Hunter and I get back we’ll start running people through the XP store. I want out of here by the end of the day just in case.”

“You be careful with the honchos, allright? I trust that Ken guy about 3 feet less than I can throw him.”

“I’ll be fine. About this morning, Jack. I didn’t exactly object to the experience. We ought to have a discussion about that some time.”

Before I could respond she turned and walked away and I was stuck watching her go. John cleared his throat and I looked back up and focused on the present. We headed down to the market square and started laying out our stuff. Allison joined us, and she and Jeri started a discussion about people they both knew who Allison had been catching up with back in the village. I tuned it out, my mind having trouble focusing on the tasks at hand. Eventually we had everything laid out on our blankets in front of us. We tried a couple pieces of each kind of the pottery, and a few of each furs as our display pieces. John had smoked fish and Allison her bows. We wanted our goods to seem scarce and hence valuable, so most of the stuff stayed tucked away until we needed it. That had been John’s idea, and it seemed good enough we immediately put him in charge of the trading. According to him the whole thing was set up similar to a farmer’s market he used to attend back in the real world and he seemed comfortable enough with it.

I took a quick cruise through the other vendors, even though it was still early enough most of them were still just sitting up. I recognized a couple of faces, but nobody that I was on speaking terms with. Only three of them were open for business yet. There was a guy with tomatoes that looked pretty good, and another guy selling pre-cut firewood, and a chickk who I’m guessing had used XP to buy a still, selling drinks. I returned to the little section we had staked out and settled in with Tim’s book. I wanted to take a look at the maps he said he’d made.

His art skills weren’t terrible, I could make out most of the terrain features without referring to the tiny legend he’d made, but his handwriting was terrible. He’d drawn little symbols all over the map that he’d indexed to pages of notes. It took me a second to decipher what I was seeing, and even longer to get any use from it. His writing was somewhere between cursive and just really sloppy print, but after a while I got the hang of it and started to try and digest the information he’d loaded onto the map.

I started off by comparing what was on the map to places I’d already been. He’d labeled the cave where we’d made the keep with the cryptic note, big predator and the chocoberry plants were labeled food resource. That was actually kind of useful and I found another half dozen similar symbols within what I guessed was a day's walk of our camp. There was also a symbol in the cliffs nearby he’d labeled mineral resources with a question mark next to it. There were three more big predator labels on our side of the river, and two on the same side as the village but nothing that seemed close enough to worry about today. On the village side at the extreme edge of the paper he’d drawn a star with three exclamation points. That looked important so I flipped through the notes until I found the match. Apparently he’d picked up hints this was something dangerous to the whole village but information was either too expensive or too obscure to figure out what it was. He offered a couple of theories but what really got to me was the short rant he put in about how he was unable to talk the rest of the village into putting up a real defensive wall when he found it. Tim seemed like a level headed guy and if he didn’t’ think his fry a wolf fence was going to do the trick, the keep might need to upgrade its defenses.

More interesting than the map was Tim’s conjecture on how the game mechanics worked. He didn’t explain how he knew what he put down, and there was some question in my mind how accurate it was, but I couldn’t dismiss any of it out of hand. According to Tim buildings had to be complete and functional at a minimal level that matched a preset description before the system recognized them. Once they were, a person who had participated in building them could claim ownership for a single XP point in the store. Ownership locked anyone else out from spending improvement points and apparently allowed you to access some of the menus from outside the store. That was pretty awesome. He also claimed you could obtain XP from killing, crafting, and captaining. I think he chose that last one just for the alliteration, but according to Tim demonstrations of leadership, making stuff, and hunting monsters all contributed to XP points. I wondered how in the hell a game could quantify something like leadership but dismissed it as unimportant. He also had a bunch of stuff about how he theorized magic worked but I felt my eyes glazing over as soon as they started on that section and I gave up on it. I felt like I had enough to worry about already, and I nudged Steve with my elbow and handed him the book.

“It’s kind of a secret-ish. Read this, don’t talk about it in front of anyone but us, pass it onto somebody else when you’re done.”

He looked confused but took the book when I handed it over and I focused in on the people who came to trade. John had haggled quite a bit while I was reading and I checked on what we’d taken in so far. We had a couple yards of fabric from a hand loom that was undyed but looked sturdy. Several feet worth of hemp rope and a bushel of apples had made their way to us as well. Allison had traded one of her bows for some weirdly shaped Japanese style tree saw, a whetstone, and of all things a coconut. I had a brief moment of confusion on how I’d claim 5% of a saw but dismissed it as unimportant for the moment. We’d work it out on the trip back. We turned down offers to trade meat, firewood, turns at watch, and some pretty neat looking wooden flutes a guy had made. I sensed a bigger sale in the offing when I saw Kim come into the market.

“Hey, John. When the Asian boy scout gets here, I’ve traded with him before. You mind if I handle this one?”

“Asian boy scout?” He seemed confused until he caught sight of Kim heading in our direction and then nodded at me. “If you know him go ahead. I trust your judgement.”

“Thanks. Steve’s got a book for you when you got a minute.” I got up from where I’d been sitting and went out to intercept Kim before he made it all the way to the table. He looked pretty much the same as I remembered from before, one of the few guys who hadn’t taken to letting five o’clock shadow creep in as shaving became an expensive habit. I wondered if it was personal preference or just genetics that kept him baby faced, but dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

“What’s up, Kim? Bought any wolf corpses lately?”

“Jack, wasn’t it? It’s been a while. I see your little group has come back to civilization. Life in the woods a little rougher than you were expecting?”

“Hell no, I love it. Reminds me of a simpler time when men were men and sheep were scared. We actually came back to do a little business. We’ve been hustling pottery but we’ve got animal hides and some exotic meats for sale if you know anybody in the business.”

“For sale or barter? XP transactions have strict regulations here in the village.”

“Relax boy scout, we’re not here to break any rules. I’m talking barter as long as you’ve got something we want.”

“I’m always in the market for hides. My little group turns out finished leather goods, fur coats, leather boots, even baseball mitts if you’re in the mood. If it’s made from animal hides people come to us. We can make it faster and cheaper than anyone else, so we’ve cornered the market in the village. What kind of exotic meats do you have on offer?”

“We’ve got t-rex, probably not what you’re thinking, smoked fish, bear, and ham.”

He looked curious at the t-rex bait I’d dangled, but visibly dismissed it with a shake of his head. “Smoked fish is practically a staple around here, I doubt you’ll get any takers on that. Wait a minute, you said ham. Does that mean you have bacon for sale?”

“Not for sale.”

“You do have bacon then. You have no idea what kind of XP a side of bacon goes for in the store, do you? How much do you have access to?”

I didn’t bother saying that with the monster boar Hunter and Jeri killed being a pretty good indicator of others in our area we had an almost infinite supply if it was worth the expense to bring back. Instead I played it cagey and tried to keep the greed out of my voice as I answered.

“Man, it kind of belongs to everybody in our group. Give me a second and see if I can talk them into selling it.”

I walked back and dropped down into a crouch between John and Jeri. Since Steve always voted with John and Hunter did whatever Jeri told him to do, a discussion with these two was practically equivalent to a quorum of our entire group.

“John, how much of that bacon do we have left?”

“Two or three pounds is all I’m pretty sure. We should have cut more but without the salt some of the pig went bad before we got to it.”

“Awesome, I’m gonna need that. We have any luck trading any of the hides?”

“Not really, I traded away one of the wolf hides, but it was thrown in as boot with some pottery. I doubted they really wanted it. Hides are definitely not a hot seller here.”

“Cause somebody cornered the market. Jeri, can either you or John think of anything leather anyone in the group might want? I’ve got a potential big score here but I don’t want to walk away leaving anything on the table.”

John gestured down at his rundown boots and shrugged at me. “Shoes are a perishable asset, I’m sure we’ll all need boots at some point.”

Jeri hesitated and then nodded. “Maybe jackets or something if the weather got cold, but I think it’d get too hot to wear one now. Work gloves I guess, belts, and saddle bags and that kind of stuff might be useful, but it's not exactly a need. We’ve kind of been making that stuff on our own as we go. I’d say just keep the hides and do it ourselves but it's a pain in the ass. If you think you can get a good deal I say go for it. We trapped most of them anyway, so it’s not like we got a whole lot into it anyway.”

“I’ll go for what the market will bear then. Wish me luck.”

I took the leaf wrapped parcel of sidemeat from John and slid it into my messenger bag, then grabbed a single wolf and crabadillo pelt. I carried the hides over to Kim and handed them to him so he could take a look as we talked.

“Here’s the thing, we do have some bacon to trade. How much will depend on what exactly you guys have on offer. I’ve also got a couple dozen more crabadillos just like that one, and 9 more of the wolf pelts. I’d like a chance to take a look at some of your leatherwork and see what kind of deal we can come up with.”

He nodded at me, and gestured back towards the middle part of the village. “We’ve got an actual shop in town. Come with me and take a look at what we’ve got.”

I nodded and trooped along after him. I couldn’t get used to the way things looked in the village. I kept up my tourist impression the whole way, rubbernecking to try and take it all in. I spotted a big building that looked kind of like a quonset hut. From the trees being drug in and the boards being carried out it was their sawmill. There were what were obviously homes but also a weird blend of buildings I couldn’t really identify that I was guessing were their versions of industry. The one Kim led me to looked like the bastard child of an Abraham Lincoln style log cabin and one of those Pennsylvania Dutch big red barns. There was an opening where two big double doors had been slid back on a metal rail and I walked in.

The place was lit by the purple lights I’d come to expect and smelled like cured leather with a hint of something else I couldn’t identify. It kind of reminded me of a shoe store to tell the truth. Kim gestured at a low table along one wall.

“Take a look at what we’ve got. Those are displays but we’ve got blanks cut and can make stuff in most sizes with a couple hour turn around.”

I went and checked it out, and he was right. They really did have everything. There were work gloves that seemed to have palms made of crabadillo armor and a pair of delicate leather gloves that looked ready for the opera. I had no idea how they’d gotten anything that thin without modern technology. There were leather sneakers with woven rope soles and sturdy work-boots that looked like they were soled with wood and boiled crabadillo armor. There were a pair of saddle bags and I shot a quick look at Kim. He shook his head at me and answered before I had a chance to ask.

“There are livestock available at the XP store, but with the cost and the risk of the local monsters, nobody has been willing to buy a horse yet.”

I nodded and gestured at a pair of what kind of looked like cowboy boots on the table. “Can you give me some idea of what you’re charging here? Offering me one of everything, a single pair of boots, or what?”

“That depends, how much bacon do you have?”

I reached into my messenger bag and pulled the bundle from it and laid it on the table. Kim stepped forward and unwrapped it gently. When I heard the intake of his breath I knew I had an addict on my hands and I grinned.

“We’ll put up the bacon, the hides, and an agreement not to sell hides to anyone else in the village in the future so you can maintain your monopoly, but you agree to buy from us at a price we set today. What do you think?”

He looked up to me, then broke eye contact and looked back at the bacon. “I think we could work something out. I’ve got pretty standard prices on wolf and crabadillo hides. It takes about a half dozen crabadillo to buy a pair of gloves. The same number of wolf hides gets you any but the real high end boots.”

“I’ll take a pair of the boots and some of those tennis shoe things for the wolf hides, and for four pairs of gloves, I’ll throw in a couple of extra crabadillo hides for free. Call it a package deal where you make out like a bandit, but we agree on 5 per gloves or boots on future sales. We can discuss the bacon separate.”

“For today that works, but on the future I’ll go 5 on the gloves but we need at least 6 for the boots. I subcontract out the soles and I have to make a profit here, Jack. What do you want for the bacon?”

“5 and 6 sounds fair. Like you mentioned, bacon is expensive. You got anything but leather goods to trade?”

“Nope, and the tax on a straight XP sale means I’d probably be better off just buying it from the XP store but I don’t have the tokens for that kind of luxury purchase.”

“I’d want a shit ton of leather for that bacon, Kim.”

“Define a shit ton, Jack? I know a guy who has eggs. Bacon and eggs, I can almost taste it right now.”

When he said that I had a sudden urge to go find the egg guy myself and try and cut Kim out of the deal completely, but I had a feeling the rest of the group wouldn’t care for that decision. I focused back in on the mental list I’d been making and reached out and flipped the cover back on top of the bacon. Out of sight was definitely not out of mind.

“I’m guestimating that’s about 3 pounds of bacon. Split it into three separate transactions each for exactly ⅓ of the pile, sound reasonable?”

“Sounds like you’re going to try and gauge me, but okay, Jack. What do you want for the first pound.”

“We already cut a deal on 4 pairs of gloves and two pairs of shoes, but I got 7 people in my group. 3 more gloves and 5 more pairs of boots to complete the set.”

“I’ve got you on the gloves, but boots are more expensive. I can do 5 pairs of the shoes.”

I tried to think back to what everybody in my group wore on their feet. John was in boots and Debbie had on sneakers. Steve had wingtips that were basically falling apart by now, and I think Hunter had like some crocs or something equally absurd. I couldn't remember what either Jeri or Allison wore on their feet even though I had seen them every day for like a week, and I decided it didn’t really matter. I made a counter offer just on general principle.

“An extra set of gloves then to make it an even 4, then 3 boots and 2 shoes.”

“Nobody has over a size 10 or some extra wide craziness that will require custom blanks on my part?”

I had no idea but shook my head. “Of course not. Standard sizes, we can figure them out when we get back to the market. We’ll want delivery tonight though.”

He hissed through his teeth and shook his head at me. “I only keep so much inventory on hand, Jack. If it's a common enough size I’ve already got blanks cut then we can deliver tonight, you’ll have to wait to pick up anything else though.”

“You’ll hold them for us as long as necessary until it's convenient to come pick them up though?”

“As long as I get the bacon up front. 1 pound for 4 pairs of work gloves, 3 boots and 2 shoes, sizes to be determined but nothing over size 11. Delivery tonight if we’ve got blanks in stock, we’ll hold them for you if we have to cut new templates.”

“Deal. You interested in buying the second pound?”

“Sure, but at these prices I might not. I’m pretty sure I can resell it if you don’t gouge me too bad, maybe make up for the beating I took on the first pound.”

“Hey what you do with the bacon once you buy it is your business.” I gestured down and my tattered and blood stained levis. “I could use a sturdier pair of pants first off. Leather but something comfortable and sturdy, none of that catwoman thin leather that looks like it's painted on bullshit. I also want a couple of quivers like Robin Hood had for carrying arrows on his back. I didn’t see any on display but I figure you can make them. I also need one of those sword sheaths that are kind of open on one side for those funky shaped scimitars. You know what I mean by that?”

“I know what you’re talking about, but I’d need precise measurements.”

“I’ve got the sword on me, two different ones actually. You can trace them or whatever it is you guys do. I’d also like a couple heavy leather aprons like blacksmiths wear, say three of them, and the same number of leather dresses.”

“You do realize I’m not Santa Clause, right, Jack? You can’t just hand me a mile long list and get whatever you want. I couldn’t sell you all of that for both pounds of the bacon. The quivers are pretty easy, and there was a pair of pants somebody ordered and then backed out on I could probably adjust to fit you. Dresses are pretty expensive unless you’re talking about one of those high hem sheath things?”

When I shook my head no he sighed. “I can do the quivers and pants, then either two aprons or one dress for both pounds of the bacon.”

I shook my head again and flipped open the cover on the bacon and tried splitting it into three equal stacks. He reached out and stopped me. “What’s the hurry, Jack. I thought we were still negotiating?”

“Negotiating, hell I thought you were trying to skin me to make an extra set of boots. Quivers are cheap and you already have the pants just lying around. That offer was just insulting, Kim.”

“Counter offer then, Jack. That’s how this is supposed to work.”

“Okay the quivers and pants, plus one apron, two dresses and you throw in one of those fancy pairs of shoes.”

“Which shoes?”

“The high heels.”

He smirked at me. “I doubt we have anything near your size.”

“Har de har har. Not for me but one of the people in my group.”

“I’ll go quivers and pants, an apron, a single dress, and a pair of high heels for ‘a friend’.” He gave me air quotes when he said a friend and I had to fight the urge to kick his ass. Instead I just grunted in affirmative and he held up his hands and ticked it all off on his fingers.

“I get two dozen crabadillo and ten wolf hides, plus 3 pounds of bacon. You get 8 work gloves, 4 pairs of boots, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 quivers, leather pants, one apron, two dresses, and the high heels. You’ll give me sizes when we get back to the market and hand over the bacon now. You can pick most of it up tonight, but anything we can’t get done in time you’ll pick up at your earliest convenience, no storage charge. That sound right?”

Frankly at this point I’d lost track, but it sounded good so I nodded at him. We shook hands on it and he followed me back to the market. Debbie and Hunter were back already and I hustled forward to talk to the group real quick before Kim caught up.

“Listen up guys. I cut a deal for all our hides and the bacon, plus a non-compete with Kim in the future. We all get work gloves and some kind of shoe. I got 4 pairs of boots and 3 sets of tennis shoes so ya’ll need to decide who gets what and damn fast. Also got leather dresses for two of you, I’m thinking John and Steve but decide on your own who takes those. It’s not armor but ought to provide a little protection. Also a couple quivers and a blacksmith apron. There’s a pair of pants for me since I negotiated the deal, and a set of high heels for Debbie since she’s the boss and she’s kind of short.”

Debbie cocked an eyebrow at me. “Leather high heels, Jack?”

“Might want to focus on the important stuff.”

She shook her head and a fast conversation erupted as everyone tried to lodge their shoe preference at once. I couldn’t follow it and I shrugged and turned back to Kim who’d come up to our conference. I pulled out the hides we’d promised him and he slid them all into an odd canvas bag strapped to his thigh I didn’t recognize. It was obviously a bag of holding like I’d gotten but I didn’t recognize the form factor. He saw me looking and slapped the belt around his waist.

“It’s called a rocky mountain pack, a lot easier on your back than a standard rucksack. This one’s even more efficient than usual of course.”

I nodded appreciatively and John called out they were ready to give their sizes. Kim went over with a grease pen and a piece of what looked like birch bark to write it all down and I flopped into place next to Debbie.