Seeing the Fun Zone and its VR systems had been nice, but it was time now to find his new home. Stan's backpack weighed on him in the bustle of Libertalia Platform's concrete deck. The tropical sun blazed overhead. It was still early afternoon in reality, which felt jarring. It meant he had plenty of time today, though.

His new housing was over on Sargasso Platform. Finding it meant trying to see past the brothel and the casino and the other vendors clamoring for attention, to the rest of the colony. He weaved out of the plaza and its surrounding support buildings until he saw the ocean again, and Liberty Bridge. The view reminded him that he was around thirty feet above the waves with nothing but a flimsy railing keeping him safe. He was even below the level of the platforms themselves, so crossing was like dipping closer to the sea.

The bridge itself made him grin. He'd read about it while preparing to move to Castor. It was originally a toll path designed to extract maximum profit from people traveling between platforms, with a simple metal span for pedestrians and the small electric carts that were the biggest practical ground vehicles here. There was still a scar where the payment gate had been. After a group of self-proclaimed "pirate bridgers" erected a long, dangerous rope crossing right next to it, the Castor Corporation had arranged to buy the bridge and operate it through the "fees" it charged for things besides walking. So, the super-capitalist seastead had introduced taxes and public infrastructure under another name. The fun part was that it'd happened because of people merrily screwing around in ways that didn't actually hurt anyone but that made a mockery of the rules.

He patted the railing and reflexively tried to see below it. A layer of metal boxes was bolted to the side of each platform, like barnacles on the original oil-rig-like structure. Some of the boxes were standard cargo containers and others made from scraps or something. Here and there a metal staircase or ladder led down to these lower places.

Along the way the wind strengthened, carrying the smell of fried dough from somewhere behind him. The sunlight was dazzling on the water and the air felt surprisingly chilly for the tropics. Stan looked outward from it to the array of other floating districts that made up the colony. Everywhere people were in motion, including some who were giving him dirty looks for being in their way.

His welcome to Sargasso was a rusty sign and a powerful smell of fish and seaweed. Instead of a carnival, this place felt like a giant refinery. Stan made his way past a well-placed snack shop and a few nondescript businesses built into cargo containers, until he reached a staircase leading down into the bare, dirty concrete floor. Supposedly, this was a way into the lower deck he needed to reach.

A man in a black jacket with scaly green shoulders approached and said, "You don't want to go down there."

"I've got an apartment waiting."

The man had digital i-glasses with text flickering across them. "Oh, you're not a tourist? Sorry."

"You're one of the Dragons?" Stan asked. There were no police, just private security companies that did the same thing in much the same way. And that had cooler names.

"Sure am. If you're going to live here, watch yourself and be armed."

Stan nodded, feeling more vulnerable than before as he took the stairs down into darkness.

Under the sunny top deck it was like a cave, or the inside of a warship. The lights were a cheap sodium yellow and he hadn't gone ten steps before he spotted a discarded syringe. Every so often there was a metal bulkhead door, one advertising "Madam Tso's Psychic Readings" and another, "Best Vodka". It turned out that Stan's new digs were on the level below that, with the entrance back outdoors. He opened a door and blinked at the sunlight again. He stood on a catwalk with a dizzying drop below, though on second glance it wasn't far. The salt-crusted outer wall was one of those barnacle formations of after-market containers. Stan shrugged. He was in apartment 8A, which was...

Here. The upper of two doors, this one below his eye level. He opened it with his ID card and found his new home. It was a compartment about eight feet long, four wide, and four high. A couple of metal bits bolted onto the seastead wall offered hand- and foot-holds for climbing in. Stan stared at this space and muttered, "Coffin."

To be fair, he'd been briefed about cramped living quarters and had signed up for a "micro-apartment" from Zeno Simple Living. Still, seeing this entirely grey box in person tempted him to turn right around and go back to California, where the ceiling had been a few feet higher.

Stan sighed. I knew it wouldn't be easy to live here, he thought. Give it a chance.

He slid his backpack inside and climbed up after it. He was still on his hands and knees when he spotted a cheerful note that suggested storing his shoes in the convenient cubby just beside the door. Stan did that, then explored his new domain. It was a box.

No. Stan forced himself to quit whining, and to see instead. Every surface was sturdy plastic or rubber with no sharp corners to hurt himself on. In fact it'd be easy to clean, maybe even to spray out with water. A video screen was built into the ceiling at an adjustable angle. Most of the right side, if he faced outward, was a set of shelves and racks and drawers. More storage hid below the thin rubber pad built into the floor, making just enough room there for his full backpack plus a tiny fridge. There were several power outlets, three light settings, and no furniture but a pillow made of cotton-stuffed paper.

When he turned the video screen on, an intro video welcomed him to his new "affordable housing solution" and urged him to pray every day. Inspiring music played over instructions about how to avoid hitting his head or getting mugged by leaving the door open at night. Stan shut it off, closed the door, then lay back on the cheap pillow and laughed. He'd started Thousand Tales as a totally unequipped newbie, and it looked like his adventure on Castor was beginning the same way.

Without meaning to, he fell asleep. He dreamed of the game, of sailing out from this manmade island and finding a fantasy world of magic beyond the shipping lanes.

#

He woke and sat up suddenly. The door's porthole showed evening outside. He was angry at himself for missing the day, until he remembered that he'd had an eventful last few days. A certain Mexican organ-harvesting gang had so far shown no interest in hunting him down for getting some of their dudes arrested, but he'd still high-tailed it thousands of miles east in other people's cars and then taken a ship to a whole other country. It was okay to be a little tired.

He unzipped his backpack and took inventory. He owned a few changes of clothes, a bathroom kit, a Talisman Mk. II gaming tablet with enough data and processing power to run a small village Internet, a photo of Mom, a towel, six sheets of blank paper for some reason, his wallet, and the new AFS photo ID card. He turned that over in his hands. Was citizenship a kind of property? Not that he had it yet other than the "provisional" kind.

These and a small bank account were pretty much all he owned. He was glad for one thing he didn't have: a Slab, the small computer he'd had back at the Community back in California. That thing would have been beeping at him hours ago to tell him to get up, to eat, and to obey a whole set of "suggestions" about nutrition and exercise or it would dock his points on an arbitrary scoring system and start grounding him.

His stomach rumbled, having figured out for itself that he'd completely forgotten to eat lunch. Stan crawled over to the door and cracked it open to peek outside like a prairie dog. Just the metal catwalk outside and a view of the dark, crowded ocean beyond.

He got out and returned to the "subterranean" decks of Sargasso, apparently the only path back to the platform's surface. Now that it was evening there were more people in sight. Several of the bulkhead doors stood open, letting light and music spill into the gloomy halls. He peeked into one of them and found people shouting around a felt table, tossing dice and pushing chips back and forth. Past the next corner was the General Lee Pub, which sounded promising.

In a cramped steel room with a bar and bad lighting, a mostly male crowd of rough people drank, ate, and arm-wrestled. Most wore beards and wore the same kind of windbreaker, encrusted with salt. Stan took a seat at the bar. Above it stood a portrait of a heroic general in grey riding an ironclad warship, with a saber in each hand.

"You look lost," said the nearest man, giving him a cold stare.

Stan smiled. "Just new and hungry."

"A better place for you would be over in tourist-trap land."

"I'm not a tourist," Stan said, not liking this grizzled guy's tone.

One of the other nearby drinkers began to stand, but the barkeep slapped a bottle of beer down next to his hand, so loud it startled him. The old bartender told Stan, "What my esteemed customer means is, this place is for sea farmers. He gave you advice to try someplace else; I suggest you take it."

Fire surged in Stan's veins. Who did these people think they were, telling him he couldn't eat practically across one hallway from his home? But the barkeep was giving him a tiny shake of the head, others' eyes were turning to watch, and Stan felt the blood drain from his face. He was in over his head. He eased himself slowly off his barstool and backed out of the room. Conversations started back up the moment he was out of sight.

"What just happened?" Stan muttered. there was at least one place around here where he was welcome, anyway. He warily made his way back topside to cross the bridge and see if the Fun Zone was still open. It was, and still busy.

One of the wallscreens flickered and showed Ludo's face, looking concerned. "Back so soon, Stan?"

"Yes, sir. Excuse me a minute; I didn't find the bathroom in that excuse for a dormitory."

Stan scurried off to the restroom. The Fun Zone had a shower room between the restrooms, similar to a setup he'd seen in Mexico; Stan figured he was going to be seeing it a lot. A strange thing there was that the sinks used filtered seawater and the whole room smelled of salt; anybody who tried drinking tap water was in for a rude surprise. Stan had done enough research to figure he'd be buying bottled water and doing most of his showering in saltwater, then scrubbing extra well.

When he returned, he took a free table for two and consulted one of the Talisman pads attached to it. Nobody challenged his presence here. "I tried to get dinner," he said, and explained.

Ludo winced. "Good idea, to walk out. That place sounds like it's for the roughnecks, the real blue-collar crowd here."

"I'm going to be working with my hands too."

"They don't know that, and I suspect they don't count what you'll be doing."

Stan said, "Then is there anything on the menu besides pizza? I've got no kitchen so I guess this is my main cafeteria."

"You do get a free meal per shift. But this isn't your full-time home, understand?"

He leaned back in his seat, surprised by Ludo's sharp tone. "I wasn't planning on spending all of my time here."

"Good. You have other things to attend to."

Stan said, "I really don't, yet. I just moved in." Ludo said nothing, which made Stan uncomfortable. Finally Stan added, "I'll buy dinner here if that's all right, then go... home."

He tried to watch the people while he ate a synth-burger. It was a Sunday night and most of the people looked like obvious outsiders, judging from their souvenir t-shirts and overheard conversations about what a scandalously wicked place Castor was. The strange thing was that there was a group of kids here, playing with a robot wolf while a parent looked on. Stan pictured them having walked here from the main immigration checkpoint, and blinked. He said into a Talisman pad, "They marched right in past the other fine businesses?"

"This is a good chance for you to look around," Ludo said from the screen. "Why don't you answer that one yourself?"

Stan wolfed down most of his remaining food, then got up. Back in California, Ludo had encouraged him to try seeing the flow of money and rules and tradition around him in the real world as well as the game. He wandered again through the Fun Zone and saw no other entrance, but then looked in the elevator. There were buttons for the main floor, the VR pod level above it, the "Clinic" below it, and "Dock". He tried pushing Clinic.

"Nope," said Sonia's voice from a speaker.

"Why not?"

"No offense, but you're new and it's not your department."

There was no keycard slot or anything. "So when customers inevitably push this button, you always say Nope?"

"N -- I mean, sometimes I string them along about secret codes and scavenger hunts. It's fun for them, actually. A few times we've really let somebody visit if they're determined, and if we've checked them for security reasons. And if I like them."

Stan shrugged, for now, and hit the Dock button instead. The elevator whirred and carried him down to the top of a ramp leading right into the water. He was in the shadows beneath the edge of Libertalia Platform. It was relatively quiet here, but more cheap housing or other containers clung to the underside and to the platform's legs. There was a mechanical roar overhead. He looked up to see a roller coaster and its shrieking riders drop off the platform's edge and spin upside-down beneath it, weaving between the pillars. One of the barnacle buildings offered a big window view of it and another pane looking straight down at him. Still, for being the place's literal dark underbelly, this area was understated.

"They built a whole dock just so that squeamish customers could bring their kids into the Fun Zone by boat, without seeing the brothel and the other topside stuff?" Stan asked. He considered the flow of people, money and supplies. "No, it's mainly a freight elevator."

A tinny speaker nearby let Sonia answer. "That's right, though yes, some groups enter by sea. There's a busy ferry service all over." Even as she said that Stan spotted a red boat veering beneath a distant platform. Moonlight slanted down to glint off the water, bouncing light even into this gloomy place.

Stan said, "I'd better rest. Busy day tomorrow."