"It's too much. We were stupid; should have gone to Inc-Man straight away."

Anisa’s voice woke Keri up. The woman had one hand hanging out of the window, watching the city streets roll by, as Keri fought against the cramp of sleeping in such narrow conditions to sit up. The wind whipped around the vehicle, carrying the scent of their surroundings with it.

Keri had never noticed the smell of a city before, the wet, warm humidity of thousands of CHP cells pouring their liquid byproduct into the atmosphere, the strangely aspirin-like taste of asphalt and prefab all around. At least the moisture did something to alleviate the dry, dusty taste of the roads they had driven on to get here.

The now slowly-cruising van was just another part of the daily traffic, another blood cell in the flow of the city's arteries. No, blood cells performed a vital function, thought Keri. The aimless citizens of this world, moving around simply for the sake of being elsewhere, were more like fallen leaves caught in a stream, already dead and decaying but unaware of it.

Where did that come from? she thought in surprise.

She felt like crap. The narrow, sweat-inducing seats of the van were not conducive to a decent rest, and she had aches in parts of her body she hadn't even known she had. She thought Cassandra had been deliberately pressing the balls of her feet into her back.

It was more her mind than her body that was pained, however. She wasn't used to being in such close confines with other people for so long, especially people who were, no matter how much they had been through together recently, strangers. She needed some time to herself.

She needed some time in the spheres, too, she thought to herself. Her corps had been silent ever since she was dropped unceremoniously out to find the coordinates to Triton wired into her brain.

That was two days ago. The corps was never inactive for that long.

She pushed herself up and activated the display to make sure all was right with the implant. Nothing unusual that she could see; the 2D informational displays that connected to news, sites, and general daily applications seemed to be working as usual. Technically, she had access to a large percentage of the data on the spheres anyway.

But it wasn't access, not really. An optical display could never compress the same quantity of nuanced information as the spheres could, squirted directly into the mind. It was like... like... like a low-res monochrome TV compared to a radial immersion set with haptic feedback. She couldn't even use it to get in touch with anyone[1], because who checked R-mail these days? It was worse than useless.

"I think Anisa's right," she said croakily, throat dry.

“You think we should go to Inc-Man?” asked Andreas with a raised eyebrow.

Keri couldn't remember the last time she had eaten, and said so. To general assent all round, they stopped at a small insta-vend. Keri got several packs of noodles. They would be vitamin fortified but nevertheless taste like wet cardboard, she knew.

She paused as she stepped back in the van. The others hadn't moved from the flickering vending machine, but neither had they ordered.

"What are you...?" she began to say, and then realised.

"Wait, how do you guys shop?" she asked. "How do you buy anything without a corps?"

"Well, we used to have Anisa's," said Cassandra. "But it looks like that's fried beyond use now, so it's either get in touch with people we know or go hungry."

Keri blinked, and stepped down from the van. Flicking her corps into free-connect mode, she set the vending machine to releasing pack after pack of instant food whilst she stared at the group.

"But, I mean, you can't buy anything by yourselves," she said, trying and failing to hide her shock.

"No. Not since they terminated the SAC-cards, we can't," said Andreas.

Stored Access Currency. Keri remembered hearing about their discontinuation a few years back, and being surprised even then that people still used portable, non-corps forms of currency storage. The spheres had been of unusual accord across the spectrum in welcoming an end to such archaic devices. It had never occurred to her that people might actually need them.

"Why didn't you tell someone? You can't starve just because you choose not to have a corpse!" Keri said, to an irritated frown from Cassandra.

"Oh yes, that's right. We just didn't tell anyone. It's our own fault," she said sarcastically.

"But, then, why..?" Keri's voice trailed off.

"There isn't anyone to tell anymore, hon," said Eu softly, much to Keri's surprise.

The woman had been deathly quiet ever since Triton. Keri had assumed she was getting a little overwhelmed by the whole situation.

"Every year it’s just a little harder to get by," said the woman with a sigh. "You know, I remember when the corps was new. Well, not new, but still...fresh. A glimmer of hope after they tore the augs out of every one of us.” She touched the faded scars at her temple, remembering. “God, I sound old, don't I?"

Eu looked from one to the other of the group, Cassandra taking her hand gently and squeezing. She didn't seem to notice.

"It used to be that these things came and went, or at least they changed. The ‘latest thing’ was exactly that; the latest. Not the final. The Butchers hadn't been gone that long, and everybody had the feeling that we were back on the right path. But what use is a path if you don't walk it? The corps wasn't supposed to be anything but a point along our journey, but it stopped us dead. We've stagnated. Broken down, and most of us don't even see that anything needs fixing."

"People act as if it's the ones without the corps who are stranded," said Andreas. "They don't realise none of us are going anywhere."

Keri didn't know how to respond.

"This AI. It could be the answer. But the problem with answers..." said Anisa, stepping past Keri and climbing up into the van without looking back. "...is you need to know if you're asking the right questions."

"Thanks for the food," said Eu, as they followed.

[1] Though, she realised, she hardly had anyone to get in touch with.