With a certain unease I lookedstared at my mug of tea. Only a week ago I hadn’t even been in contact with another human in years or heard about the fundless, and neither had I seen a single kid in most of my adult life. I also had never heard about any possibility of a world outside of the City. And now I was drinking ‘outsider tea’ made of real leaves in a hidden room in a squat with a tiny fundless kid and my new friends Evelith and Leste, plus a levitating AI monk who evidently didn’t drink any liquid since he was mostly just a projection. The strange thing was that it all seemed to make sense somehow. A small amount of time and a few new people made such a world of difference, but at least now I felt alive and human.

Little Vi’s secret room was hidden indeed. We would never have been able to find it without her. The shy but very smart girl with her enormous blue eyes and messy rust-coloured hair couldn’t be older than nine or so, but it was clear that there was a lot we could learn from her just from observing her. She had been living alone here in this building for almost two months now after the ‘mad preacherman’ had broken up the Xando gang, and had done so without much trouble even though she wasn’t able to do much outside. The whole building itself clearly held no secrets for her, she even seemed to know a lot more about it by now than even the adults of her own gang, let alone the creepy preacherman and his violent cultists. Which was probably how she had been able to escape them, and their new followers. I had no idea that the fundless had their own religions of death, but now was not the time to ask about such things. There were other questions that were more urgent.

The secret room wasn’t big, and cramped with all kinds of stuff. There were no windows but Vi had installed tiny diode-lamps working on old eternal batteries scattered everywhere, which lighted up the place in different colours. We sat on wooden boxes and ancient chairs and we drank our tea from china teacups that seemed to belong in a museum. The room must have been a secret hoarding place for generations of smugglers, but the tea itself, which must have come from contact with the outsiders, was relatively recent. She shared it generously with us, even though it would undoubtedly be quite expensive on the black market. Anything from the outsiders was rare and wanted, even by the fundless themselves. But she was probably was too small to understand the significance of such things already.

It had taken a while to convince the poor girl that we would not harm her, and that not all ‘fundslaves’ as she kept calling us were evil monsters out to destroy her and the ‘free people’, as the fundless called themselves. She still didn’t seem to trust San YaoYao much, the fundless generally had a deep mistrust of AI’s in their culture, and she clearly had had very bad experiences with both religion and robots recently. San Yaoyao himself didn’t seem to care much, being his patient and optimistic self. Leste seemed more or less accepted because he knew more of the fundless than we did, even if it was not enough to act natural to an actual fundless kid. She didn’t seem to mind me much, and it was clear that she liked Evelith most, so it was her that was still doing most of the talking. She was still trying to get a coherent view on what had happened with the Xando gang, but the child wasn’t very cohesive in how she explained it.

“You stayed with the Xando gang until they left the building because of the preachers?” Evelith asked. “Yes, because Xando took care of Little Vi. But the others were not very friendly. Except for Zap and her husband Argon. They were angry most of the time. I don’t know what for. They wanted to go sell the outsider tea to a gang I didn’t know. And when we came to this place again the bad preachers were here. They preached about death and hate and the dark god Fhanfhelos. And then they suddenly tried to kill Xando. He ran away. Zap and Argon too. They caught Mongi and beat him up, but he also ran away. And after a day they went away, they said they were going to the new temple of Fhanfhelos.”

Leste cursed again, but it was San Yaoyao who spoke first. “A temple of Fhanfhelos?” He hadn’t spoken yet but his AI voice sounded quite concerned now. “What temple?” Little Vi looked at him, still a bit terrified, and hesitated to answer. “Little Vi don’t know. It’s a fundslave religion, so it’s bad. But more free people are converting methinks. The preachers always sound mean and angry. They speak about death for unbelievers, and about seven hells. And they want to go to nirvana or something. If you die for death you get seventy-two bottles in nirvana or something like that. And Fhanfhelos is ugly and evil. Little Vi seen pictures. Xando says he doesn’t exist but the preaches really believes in him.”

“This is worse than I thought.” The monk mumbled, more to himself. “This is not good indeed.” Affirmed Evelith. “So there are indeed enemies of humanity rising up, even among the fundless tribes, with another dark religion worse than the twin religions of the dark goddesses. We could do without that.”And she turned to the little Vi. “They could come back here anytime. This is not a safe place for you. You can’t stay here.” The child protested wildly. “Little Vi can’t go anywhere else. Little Vi is safe here in this room.” She protested. ”safe against humans, but not the killerbots. You know they can scan through the walls.” Vi hesitated. “They come back sometimes to patrol around the building, but they haven’t come inside yet.” Leste looked grave. “It’s only a matter of time. You come with us. We find Xando.” She backed away, still trembling a bit. “You promise that no-one will hurt Little Vi? They always told Little Vi the fundslaves would try to catch Little Vi and lock Little Vi up.” Evelith reached out her hand. “We’re not slaves. And we’ll protect you. No-one will lock you up. I promise. On my little pinky.” She still wasn’t entirely convinced. “But Little Vi don’t have funds. Little Vi cannot live in the fundworld.” “Our building has no fundlocks, even though it’s an official building. You can stay in my room if you want. And you can use the unused concert hall if you want.”

Suddenly I looked at my screenphone. Terrified I said to the others. “I have to run, can’t miss my shift.” And then I started running to the robofactory.