Axton stretched his real-world legs for the first time in what felt like forever. As much fun as it was to be in the game if he stayed in too long he could end up losing touch with reality. Besides, it was a good thing to experience the real world instead of secluding himself in the pod forever.

After all, the storage tanks occasionally needed replacing, and the safeties in those pods prevented them from being changed while there was still someone using them. Likewise, he wasn’t of the mind to try and find out what would happen if the septic tank was overfilled, or the nutrient tank was left empty for too long.

Plus, there were things he could only do while out of the pod. Perhaps due to hidden, under-the-table no-compete contracts, the virtual world in the pods had no ability to allow its user to use certain services while in the virtual world. As cool and efficient as it would have been to have all those options in one complete package, the fact remained that, for now, he had to hop over to a different machine to do what he was going to do.

Thankfully, the pod could link to this computer, sharing data, but only up to a point. That was fine, though, as he didn’t exactly have much of a mind to use this machine right now for more than what he intended to do right now.

While he didn’t need to do what he was about to do, he didn’t want to be overly dependent on his uber-rich friend forever. For safety’s sake, he had moved back in with his absurdly rich childhood friend, Thomas Rhodes, but it was a matter of personal pride that he had managed to stay as self-sufficient as he had been for as long as he had been.

Now, though, he was back in one of those massive, completely frivolous mansions, though at his own insistence he was buying his ‘wants’ out of his own, personal bank account. So, after all of that exposition, what was he about to do?

Well, the little battle between him, his supporters, and the assholes loyal to Donovan had netted him a tidy fortune-to-be in terms of salvage. He had led a valiant defense that turned into an absolutely crushing victory, and as the leader of the victors, he had first dibs on all the best bits and bobs that could be looted from the defeated foe.

Of course, while he did take a few good pieces, most of the loot he left for the people who helped him. Most of the stuff that he had actually chosen to take for himself was Common and even Trash rank loot, but there were a few pieces that were of the Uncommon or even Rare rank along with the mountains of undesirable garbage.

But, as he had shown in the Beta, Axton had a way with things people viewed as trash. With enough spit and polish, and with a bit of hard work and effort, you could even shine shit. Therefore, what wonders could he make if he put in the effort and used this seemingly useless mountain of garbage to the full extent of his imagination?

But there were still some things that he felt needed to be sold. Oddly enough, it tended to be the rarer things that he felt needed to be put on the market sooner rather than later. He did have a very good reason for wanting to dispose of these components and pieces of equipment, though, and if you looked at the item names and their descriptions you would have to be a moron to not figure out what that reason was.

You see, Donovan had brought no shortage of Players, NPCs, military tech, and other such things from his base in the Andromedan Empire. And, as you might imagine, some of this military tech had special tracers built into them in the event that they got taken by the people who salvaged them. This meant that, simply by having them in his inventory, Axton had an ever-present target on his back that anyone with the proper systems could see no matter where he went.

That was a liability, and Axton wanted that liability removed as soon as humanly possible. Sure, if he put his mind to it, he might be able to remove those trackers before anyone came after him, but he didn’t want to waste his time with that kind of busywork, so selling them, even to NPCs, was the best option that he had right now.

With all that said, he booted up the old box and began to list all the unwanted pieces of salvage on the auction house. While he could very easily have just put them up there and let any old gullible and naïve fool pick them up, only to have themselves assailed and possibly ganked into oblivion by the Andromedan Empire and those associated with it, he was not of the mind to do things that way.

No, Axton was a nice guy, and clearly labeled the items as being potentially dangerous, along with listing the reason why they were labeled as such. As long as they were in the auction house, those items would not draw the attention of one of the game’s virtual empires to him, and if someone picked the items up then they would have to do so either after knowing full-well how dangerous they were or after ignoring the clearly stated and often repeated warnings that Axton had so generously put on them.

And, if no one among the Players picked them up, then the game would shift the item over to a separate in-game NPC auction block where those very same NPCs would have to deal with those items. And, if after that no one bought them, then he would just get a lump sum that was around 50% of the item’s initial auction price. In the end, he would be paid regardless of if the items were bought by real people, NPCs, or even if it was just lost to the ether.

And, given how some of the items he was seeing up in the auction house were raking in some fine money for their sellers, Axton ad a good feeling that someone, somewhere, would buy these unwanted liabilities. With a few clicks, the items were now out of his hair, and he could focus on other things that needed to be done. He hadn’t slept in his own bed in a while, and he hadn’t eaten real food in an equally long period of time. He was feeling up for a nice Cesar Salad and a bottle of Generic Cola, and once his stomach was satisfied he would hit the hay and relish the soft, silky texture of his bed.

Maybe living in an Oligarchical Technocracy where every single human want and need was taken care of wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Though he did wish that there was more accountability, but then again, at least nobody starved, died of thirst, disease, exposure, or pollution. Maybe that was a necessary sacrifice (along with privacy) for such amenities and luxuries being so widely available and cheap as all hell.