This is the story of a guy. One who was born into a remnant of refugee-oh, excuse me, expatriate Americans that had to travel from old earth into this new world.
It's been 30 years since then, and all the MC knows is this life of being an heir to old earth. And things HAVE stabilized since then, but that doesn't mean a whole lot to him. After all, he is a man and not a particularly influential or rich one at that. In a Colony where men outnumber women 9 to 1, his prospects are, well, to die old and alone at some point.
And he's accepted that. He understands that. But if he is going down that way, well, he wants to go out his own way.
Except, that's not what happens.
He longs to be left alone by the remnant of the old world. But those of this new one won't leave him alone.
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People had described the streets of Campt Town as bustling since Mark was a kid.
When people came to these shores and started to set themselves up willy and nilly there wasn't much direction or order to it. It made it hard for a lot of utilities to be properly set up, and God knew people hated moving once they had "claimed" a spot, and it actually caused a run of dysentery in Mark's youth. But it was different from the rather sterile city planning of the Admiralty.
But, more often than not, the ease with which tents are set up made it hard for any one man, or any one family, to properly "claim" a spot. The tragedy of being a people from a highly developed world was that no one knew how to start from scratch and that resulted in things being in a state of flux for a while.
There were worries that a famine, a worry that people from the US just did not have to worry about and rarely had since the inception of the United States, would come about from how terribly they were set up back when he was young. But the twisting roads and "streets" from that time still lived in his mind.
Back when it was everyone that worried about what they would do, what they could do and how to help each other. Back when the sailor threw his back digging ditches that little kids could shit on. Back when the fabric of society still retained a little bit of the order from the Old World.
Back when families still existed.
Today, those whose claims close to that admiralty base "stuck" were those who had the privilege of living in the Town's first true homes. People who were the most "useful" to these times were richly rewarded for continuing their work and, so enriched, started to reform the upper latter of the society they now lived in. Each house built was another family, another man, recognized and laid down like a brick in this makeshift society. Each street laid out and constructed was a few hundred settled and put in place like mortar to hold up this new order.
Each home, each domicile, constructed was another pushback against the hundreds of thousands of tents that used to make the whole as opposed to just the majority. Some day, there would be no tents at all...probably. Or at least, so few that they would be out of thought.
But for now? Those still that lived in Navy-provided Nylon tents, some so old and repatched with fiber fabrics procured from plants in this new world that they looked like tribal homes from ancient times, provided venues, places and locations for the lifeblood of any society to flow forth.
For Mark, whom the tents represented the lowest lows of his life as well as the happiest memories of his childhood, they were still an important part of his life.
"What do you mean things changed?" Mark asked the uncaring man behind a rackety table. They were inside the latter's tent, which had been moved from where his "usual" place in this street market would be. Which meant that Mark had to waste about an hour trying to find this man's ass. A whole hour, while carrying almost his whole weight in weeds.
"I mean that I no longer need that shit," the man, he went by "Julius", gestured at Mark's pack, "Did you think the offer would be open forever? Someone came by with some good shit and now the Plant isn't demanding top dollar for some weeds."
The realities of living in a new world and redeveloping every single thing from the ground up, and many of them with no way of getting the resources that they used to, meant that everyone was looking for ways to replace or replicate things that they had in the Old World.
Never mind that many things derived from Oil could still be had through lengthy and energy-intensive processes, some simple chemical products that should have been easy to produce suddenly weren't in this new land. And no one was sure why. There were legions of bottlecaps that the human remnants here had to overcome, and the bounty of this land provided a venue and resource for this job.
The weeds that Mark had filled in a bag were some of the heaviest things he had harvested in bulk. These wild plants, weeds really, produced really underwhelming flowers that gave off a rather offputting rust scent. But that was because they literally leeched off iron off the ground.
The iron weeds, as the people who dealt in them like to call them, incorporated the metal into their fibers through various chemical processes. Make them incredibly sturdy but a pain in the ass to harvest and an even bigger pain in the ass to carry around. The iron in them was easy to process out of them, but that wasn't why they were in demand.
The chemicals that it used to bind and make organic compounds of the iron were.
Whether the newly minted chemical Plant that the Admiralty had funded still wanted the weeds was besides the point; the weeds had been in demand before it had been opened. People still had a use for them.
And that meant that this man wanted to play fuck-fuck games with him.
"I guess I'll just sell them in the open street then," Mark tried to brush this man off. A small gamble on his part, to be sure, but he wasn't about to negotiate from a place where he had no leverage. Of course, if the demand for these fucking things HAD dropped the only thing he'd be able to get out of them was whatever iron 200 pounds worth of iron weeds had. And at that point, it would have been better to just dig for ore.
"Sit your ass down," the vendor gestured at the lone chair in his tent. This, too, was barely held together and looked as if it collapsed if Mark sat on it with his pack. So he laid his burden of plant down before giving the vendor a flat look but obliging him all the same.
This was an attempt at playing hardball then.
"Now, I said I no longer needed it," Julius stressed, "I didn't say that I couldn't use it."
"And how much is that difference worth?" Mark huffed.
"Well, since it pains me to see a young man like you break his back with that much?" the men gestured at the pack and Mark resisted the urge to spit in the ground with disdain, "I'll give you half for what I promised you."
"Half?" Mark growled and ignored the dig at his age, "It took me months to collect this much. Do you have any idea where I had to go to get iron weeds this big?"
"I am sure Land Survey would like to know," Julious brushed him off, "But get real kid; the market is fickle and I risk losing money giving you this much."
"Oh, maybe I should ask Terrace then?" Mark shot back, "Maybe Jamie has something different to say?"
"Terrace is a small-time chump," Julius told him, "And Jamie has to beg around for orders."
"You think any of them can work with that much weed?" the vendor asked with disdain.
Product that you couldn't sell was product that had no value. Maybe, if Mark went around enough and checked with enough vendors he could sell the Iron Weeds at a good price. Maybe, he could make good on his threat and set up his little stall of Iron Weeds. Might even give him as much as Julius was offering him with the added bonus of rubbing it in his face.
But all of that took a resource that Mark was fast becoming scarce in; time.
With winter coming, the trips to the mountains would only get more dangerous and hard. The supplies that he was looking at came and went in waves, their price rising and falling with their viability. The people that would even stock, sell or buy from him changed with the seasons as everyone strived to be a middleman.
He'd long ago become disgruntled with all of it.
Julius had well and truly fucked him here and they both knew it.
"...is the ring being set up on the Eastside today?" Mark saw himself forced to play the last card that he had. A card that he really didn't like.
Julius pursed his lips a little before answering, "Maybe? Whose to say, really. The governor still looks the other way, but someone died two weeks ago. Things are under heat for the moment."
Mark looked him in the eye and said the words that he knew this asshole wouldn't be able to resist, "Set me up for a fight and set the ante with all of this."
He was pointing at all of the iron weeds that he brought and, without error, Julius began to sweat.
"Really?" Julius tried to contain his eagerness, "You'll really-you'll get in the ring?"
"One fight," Mark firmly said, "Not one whole gauntlet. Not one whole night. Just one fight Julius."
"Of course, of course," the vendor tried to hide his disappointment, "Just one scrap, as quick and clean as a woman. I'll only take, oh, a fifth of the winnings as commission?"
"If you can pay me what this would have sold within the price that we agreed with?" Mark led, making Julius frown, "You can have whatever is left."
A gamble within a gamble. Not only did Mark have to win for Julius to get anything at all, and he knew for a fact that he would be putting money on top of that besides, his winnings now depended on whatever odds they gave Mark.
Because the ring never accepted raw products on their bets. Because they only accepted hard cash. Being his middleman, Julius would have to front money all on his own if he wanted to bet what Mark was offering. Either the odds had to be fantastically generous in Mark's favor for the wager to be worth it-
"Alright," Julius drummed on his table with his fingers and fought with himself before finally deciding, "Deal."
-or he was ever so slightly "wrong" about the change of price for the weeds that he brought.
But then, the main reason why someone like Julius was where he was, a mere street vendor most of the time, was because he just couldn't stop gambling.
