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After stabilizing her festival Quarter, Cass faces offers, scrutiny, and hard choices. She declines glossy sponsorship to teach hands-on repair and publishes an adaptable community template. The story follows her practical, messy rebuilding of infrastructure and reputation in a lively urban VR world.
The HUD glowed against the underside of my wrist like a second pulse. I tilted my hand and the miniature Quarter I'm designing rotated in midair: a tessellated cluster of walkways, atmosphere ribs, and a crooked market arcade that refused to line up until I coaxed it with my thumb. Build-sparks flicked where modular seams met, tiny fireworks labeled with names only the engine cared about — Corridor-Delta-17, MoodLamp-Variant-F, Micro-Drain-A9. I scooped up a prefab and slapped it into the gap, feeling the satisfying torque of correct alignment through the haptic gloves. The glove hummed approval, and a small HUD banner winked: Rapid Assembly — Skill Check: SUCCESS (Speed Bonus +2).
Outside my window the city of New Tanais pulsed with a late-autumn drizzle that smelled faintly of caramelized algae from the street stalls. Someone had rigged paper lanterns on the canal this year that blinked in sync with the municipal playlist; passersby argued about whether the playlist was too metro or nostalgically synth. It was the sort of detail the simulation handled lightly — a cultural seasoning — but it made the Quarter I'm planning feel anchored in a real, sighing city rather than floating plan-ware.
“Cass?” Rafi's voice came through the commline in a thin, amused rasp. He always sounded like he’d been inhaling static and espresso in equal measure. “You’re supposed to be at the allocation queue in an hour. Last warning: don't forget the token.”
I popped the small green chip out of its slot and pinched it between thumb and forefinger. The Living Week slot token looked like a coin someone had tried to 3D-print with a noodle extruder — rough edges, a little shimmer, a serial number that would announce my presence to thousands. I tongued the idea of trading craft for visibility. I ran a finger along the coin’s ridges and felt the old nervous ritual settle in my chest.
“You got your parade-ready outfit?” Rafi teased. “Or are you going to wear the patched hoodie again and autograph it afterward?”
I grinned, an automatic, private thing. “If it still fits after three nights of standing, I’ll auction it.” I snapped the coin back into its cradle and ran a calibration on the Quarter's main circulation artery. Flow Modeling — Skill Check: SUCCESS. The HUD noted an optimistic efficiency spike and added a tiny butterfly icon I’d come to love; the engine's emotive feedback was a bit theatrical but at least consistent.
Booking a slot had been a months-long scramble of freelance gigs, rushed commissions and repurposed museum display pieces. I’d pawned a winning prefab — a narrow veranda that let player-designed flora catch wind just so — in order to scrape up the last build-points. The coin had been hard-won: not theft, not lucky drop; a barter. A vendor in the Outer Cascade had agreed to trade the slot token in exchange for a lifetime of micro-architecture repairs on his tourist promenade. You'd be surprised what someone will barter for steady maintenance.