When my shift ended, it was dark, and my buds were back from the junkrun. They were lounging around and talking trash in the Hive, while I curled up in my bunk under gen-five, moldy fluff that I'd scavenged from some corner of this junkworld. I couldn't stop thinking about Fern, for some reason. She was a nerd. No, not just a nerd, but a prof―a 1337 nerd― the cream of the friggin' crop of society. So how could she be so unhappy? She didn't have to slum it in a gang warren and dig in junk heaps to avoid starvation. She didn't have to compete for top spot on the Hipstamatic leaderboard. All she had to do was...well, do science shiz, I guessed. That's what the nerds did, right? I mean, I knew that the lower rungs in the Academies did admin stuff―kinda like our punks, tapping away at consoles all day long―but the profs and the scientists and the research assistants just had to do research and boom, they lived like friggin' kings. It had never occurred to me that someone like Fern would have beef with her life. I mean, for sure, no self-respecting hipster would want to be part of that world; we had higher goals of being anti-establishment, reminding everyone where they came from, never allowing anyone to forget that even though a popular trend was popular, we had re-cooled things that were better. We were keeping the True Culture alive.

The scientists were all serious and focused and cold and rational and didn't care about people, really. At least that's what mom and dad had taught me. I wish they were here now. Maybe they could help me make sense of this. And ok, so science research is ridic and lame, but if she's part of that world, and her mom is part of that world, how can she hate her like that? I mean fam is fam, right? I didn't get the hating on fam.

I twisted and shifted, tucking fluff beneath me, above me, but nothing was comfortable. Was it hot in here? I touched my hand to my forehead and found I was sweating. I peered over the side of my bunk and squinted, trying to make out the others in the dusty dark haze. Slowing my breathing, I listened and heard a the same old melodies of snores―ah yeah, that vibrato one was Lise, and the high wheezy one was Tomahawk. Outside, the trash bugs clicked like chattering teeth; adapted to live in the klicks and klicks of junk. The clicks intermingled with the clanging and crumpling sounds of what could only be hobos: the junkbunnies so desperate and so bad at making finds that they dug for science stuff late into the night, couldn't afford real habs, and burrowed out hovels like the less fortunate gangs.

Every night was like trying to sleep on stage at a friggin' indie metal concert. I trundled out of bed in my jams, dragging some fluff that caught on my foot. I flung it away, jumped down to the rubbery floor, and stepped into my boots. I tugged on the smarty tabs and they laced up snugly, fitting themselves to my feet. At this point, the only way I'd settle my mind was to work on my bike.

I had ferreted away a few mods in a cubby hole, buried them behind dirty underwear and other girl-stuff my fellow runners didn't want to touch. I tossed the mods and my tools into a sack and strapped my headlamp on, and tip-toed out of the Hive. I demagged my bike from the rack and walked it down the long, dark corridor to the Shop―a cavernous hollow carved from the jagged subterranean rock, about a hundred meters away. It had spiffy shelves and hooks and shiz for tools, even though most of us had our personal tools and didn't leave them there. It was far enough away from the Hive that I could tinker with my bike without waking up my buds.

The lighting in the Shop had long since died and never been replaced. I put on my headlamp and the wide beam scared some grease bugs which skittered out of the light. I felt a comforting buzz from Tilly as she received some new hot find from Hipstamatic. I decided to flip her into voice mode; I had made a ritual of working on my bike when nobody else was around and listening to her background chatter. I kept her volume at a low mumble.

"Today's hot find," Tilly began, "Mid 22nd century (Old Earth calendar, pre-migration) Neutral Milk Hotel reunion album, notable for being led by cryogenically-thawed front-man Jeff Mangum; 3rd re-cooling; suspected locations: Jefferson Airplane Canyon, Beta Fornax II; Valium Cruces, Fintassel Junk Town."

Every runner liked to make upgrades to their bikes—some cosmetic, some functional—that made them stand out as unique reps of the gang. Tomahawk sewed natural-looking pleather around his bike tubes, Lise added telescoping axles with extra wheels to her rear wheel, Gallagher installed spring-loaded knife throwers to both sides of his down tube so they could shoot out and mess up a rival. Of course, most runners didn’t seem to spend nearly as much time digging up relics as I did for my bike when I should have been finding loot that Hipstamatic cared about.

I hid a guilty smile. Over the last year, Tilly had helped me find deck upgrades for my bike that were on the Hipstamatic list, but kept them for myself. If Betts ever found out, she'd friggin' kill me; it was a cardinal sin among my peeps to keep for any items personal use that could bump up our place on the leaderboard. I couldn't help it anymore; I giggled openly in a dark corner of the Shop as I looked through my haul.

I was on my knees, a wrench between my teeth, holding my front wheel steady. A circle of bright light from my headlamp gleamed off my spokes, and was swallowed by the neoprene floor.

"Couldn't sleep, huh?" a voice said. I turned abruptly, and my wrench fell and bounced on the floor. Fred wore a smirk that I read as, "I'll bet you didn't think I could sneak up on you so easily."

"Fred, what the hell?" I smacked my palm against the side of my cargoes where Tilly was to make her drop out of voice mode. I hoped Fred hadn't heard her.

"Listening to some StarNet radio, huh?" he asked, laughing.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, uh, just you know pirate Hipster deejays from BF-IV."

He waved me off, and leaned against the door. "I couldn't sleep, either. Since you missed the end of the run today, there's something you should know."

"Huh?" I picked up the wrench and held it tightly. "Ok, you have my attention."

Fred dragged a rusty stool over and plopped down onto it. "We did ok yesterday, but we're not doing well enough. Betts wants to up the ante, 'cuz it sounds like Random has sniffed that we're losing our edge and has plans to horn in on Bandersnatch territory."

I tensed, remembering my run-in with the Randomer at the Banyan Sea. Had something I had done tipped him off? He was deck enough to warn me about the nerd invasion, and we'd never had beef with them before.

"So, she wants to stage a preemptive strike," he said in a whisper so quiet I barely heard it. "A raid."

"Huh," I said, shivering. Was that a breeze coming through a crack in the wall? "We haven't done one of those in years."

Fred shrugged. "Yeah, well, we haven't been tied with another gang for last place on the leaderboard in years, either."

I could always count on Fred to give it to me straight. The Shop's emptiness echoed with our silence as he stood there seeming to watch for my reaction. I looked away, glancing at my bike in the glow of my sputtering head lamp. I'd already installed three mods before Fred had shown up: the first, a horn that could wake the dead playing some boisterous, ancient tune of a genre that the history vids called Mary Atchi, then a chrome-edged windscreen (better than wasting power on mag shielding planetside), and lastly an aft oil cannon. There was also something called a DiscoStrobe dangling off the steering column, not yet fully installed: it's what I was in the middle of when Fred showed up.

I turned back to Fred, shivering. "So, a raid. We're talkin' a real live raid then, huh?"

He nodded grimly. I stared at my bike again. His eyes finally tracked mine, as I worked to finish up the DiscoStrobe install. "Say, you've got some nifty new mods there, don't ya?"

"Don't look too closely at them," I mumbled, as I felt my face getting hot. He had hopped up and was walking around my bike examining them. I braced myself for his discovery of my Hipstamatic theft.

"Say, these could come in handy."

"Come again?" Why wasn't he berating me?

He let his fingers trail real slow and gentle-like over my mods, as if he was trying to frigging seduce my fixie. I don't think he meant it like that, but I didn't think of him that way, and it kinda grossed me out.

I smacked his hand away. "She's my girl, not yours," I said, shooting him a grin.

Fred removed the offending hand real fast.

"Yeah, yeah," he nodded, blushing but trying to play it cool and changed the subject. "These could be totes handy for the rumble; the windscreen's good for deflecting any shiz they throw, the horn―"

"Don't blow it, it's super loud," I warned.

"Oh, sure," he said, jerking his hand away.

He looked askance at me. "Loud enough to make it all the way back to the Hive, even?"

I nodded.

He shot me an impressed grin. "In the thick of things, that could be a good distraction."

He was right. Even though they were pretty, they were also functional. These were frigging tactical mods, and I hadn't even realized it. I guess I always did have a knack for functional.

I yawned. "Fred, I need to hit the sack. Thanks for the update, though."

"Yeah, yeah. Rest is good. Betts set wake-up for dawn. Tomorrow is all reconnaissance. We rally at dawn the day after that."

Ugh. Dawn.

"She's sprung for some primo nutribars for everyone," Fred added, as if that would make it better.

"How thoughtful," I said, grimacing. I collected my tools and trudged back to the Hive, careful not to step too loudly or bump into anything and made my way to bed.