The First Bidder

"Whew. What a brutal day."

I scrubbed the blood and sweat from my body in the temporary washroom, letting out a thin sigh. I'd already been slathered in disinfectant before they let me out of isolation, so the only way to kill that lingering film of unease was to scour myself raw from head to toe.

The cargo valuation I'd received on the way in had come in remarkably high. Even splitting the final figure clean down the middle with Lucy, I was still walking away with a guaranteed ten million won, easy. If I'd kept insisting on working alone, I'd have been shackled to a far thinner cut and never had a shot at growing this fast. Recruiting Lucy had been an excellent call.

The shower lever squeaked as I twisted it shut, and the stream from above died in an instant. I grabbed a towel, stepped in front of the full-body dryer, and blasted the water off my skin. Last of all, I shook a drop or two of that mysterious skin lotion that exists only in men's bathhouses into my palm and patted it into my cheeks. Done.

That much, at least, was no different in the real Korea of the 2020s than in the virtual Korea of the 2040s.

"Ready, Number 77777?"

"Yes."

I pulled on the crisp new prison uniform they'd issued me and walked out. The guard posted at the entrance looked me over with a lingering grin. The one who'd laid hands on me my first day — a little dominance display to set the tone — kept his distance, looking awkward about it. The rest of them, though, had been actively courting my favor of late.

The reason's obvious enough.

Even on solo Darkzone runs I was already pulling in a few million as a floor, and now that I'd teamed up with Lucy we were clearing eight figures at a minimum. That kind of yield rivaled three or four ordinary prisoner teams put together. And true to the nickname Super Rookie, I'd only been inside two months. There was still plenty of room to grow, and by this world's standards my life expectancy still had a comfortable amount of runway left.

The decisive part is that I've already made it obvious I intend to build an open connection with the guards.

The fact that I'd gone up to the Ground Floor for a private sit-down with Officer Park would have made the rounds a long time ago. If a mid-level manager like Officer Park was tacitly looking the other way, of course the lower ranks were getting restless.

"So I just need to go now?"

"That's right. They'll all be waiting for you by now."

"They seem awfully excited."

"You're the first one to bring living biological tissue out of the Darkzone."

By year three or four of EFD, most players were casually farming biological tissue with one hand while they shot with the other. This was still year one of the story, though, so a single intact sample had plunged the whole place into shock and awe. I didn't entirely mind the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠atmosphere. I walked the corridor with the guard and picked up what I could.

"So what exactly do they want from me? They could just wrap the cargo valuation on their end and pay me for it."

"The independent currency and goods circulating inside this prison are under strict AI control. If you walked away with enough money to completely smash this place's market economy, that would be a problem, wouldn't it?"

"You're worried about an inflation crisis at the prisoners' flea market? In a prison?"

I had a hard time imagining the guards so much as blinking if the inmates started screaming it's the Great Depression, RUUUN!!!!!! — but they had enough vested interests tangled up in the system that maybe they really were that sensitive.

The guard, however, gave a short laugh and offered an entirely different answer.

"We'd prefer the prisoners keep doing this job for as long as possible. The government, the military, the prison, the corporations — everyone feels the same way. If a market economy we only just introduced collapsed overnight, do you really think the inmates would throw themselves into Darkzone exploration with any real fire? Not a chance. We know as well as anyone that the prisoners we've got now have nothing left but spite and grit."

"That's not wrong. You converted them to death-row status overnight, and they're sitting on a mountain of grievances. The system was brought in to soothe them and split them against each other. If it suddenly fell apart, you'd have a serious riot on your ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hands."

"Exactly. Which is why the Warden set a condition this time. Instead of selling that biological tissue of yours to the corporations and paying you in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cash, cash is off the table."

"So what I receive won't be money. It'll be goods. Expensive enough, obviously, that this prison's little market economy couldn't possibly absorb them."

"Correct. From here on you'll sit down one-on-one with the agents — the negotiators — each corporation has sent. Ten minutes apiece. They'll promise you every kind of intangible support benefit, or physical goods expensive enough to make your eyes spin. All you have to do is pick one of them."

Listening to it, the job didn't sound particularly difficult. At the same time, I could tell the prison had made a fairly reasonable call, trying to keep this from spiraling into something they couldn't take back.

It's an event that never existed in EFD. Should be a fresh experience, at least.

EFD never had inflation or deflation. Merchant AIs stood ready to take every item a player farmed, and other players moonlighted as both merchants and customers, so the flea-market system ran remarkably stable. That wasn't to say there were no scalpers — people who hoarded stock to spike prices for a while, or wildly inflated the value of items whose true worth hadn't been established yet. But a high-performance AI was running the flea market here, not human beings. As long as an invasive species like me didn't start griefing the economy, the risk of a crash or a depression was vanishingly low.

Once the clan system really kicks in and clans start functioning like publicly traded companies, though, it's going to be chaos.

Right now it still felt like a ramshackle Darkzone hobby club of whoever happened to wash up together. The moment actual veteran prisoners decided to form a real organization, they'd become a major power overnight.

Still just playing house, though. That much won't change.

As a ten-year EFD veteran, I had, on my own, commanded a price and a reputation that rivaled most of the top-tier clans. There was no difficulty and no quest I hadn't cleared, no themed Darkzone I hadn't conquered, and my personal yield per run had sat in the highest bracket for the entire decade.

I was still lingering in that afterglow, turning over the old days, when I realized I'd been led to a white door.

"This is as far as I can go. We have an obligation to respect privacy in transactions between corporations and prisoners, at least on paper."

"I appreciate the information."

The fact that he'd gathered intel on what was happening while I was in the shower and fed it to me the moment I stepped out said a lot. The guards in this place were not just anyone. I pretended to shake his hand and slipped him a credit card. I'd taken a portion of the post-valuation settlement on a card for exactly this kind of occasion. He vanished down the end of the corridor wearing that same lingering grin, a little pocket money richer. I'd had time to get my thoughts in order on the walk over, so I didn't begrudge him the expense.

All right. Let's go in.

I opened the door onto a white space that looked like an interrogation room. A single chair and a small desk sat in the middle of it, and nothing else. Beyond the desk, though, a pane of privacy glass threw a hazy image, hinting that another room waited on the other side.

I had barely sat down at the desk when a guard's voice spilled from a speaker in the ceiling.

They won't even tell me the exact value of the sample I brought back, and I'm supposed to negotiate it myself and extract a fair price?

It was a shakedown, plain and simple. If I named a number lower than they expected, I was a mark, and the loss would be enormous. If I named a number so high that nobody bought, that was a loss too. There was no way the prison could process an item like this internally. If this price talk went sideways, the sample would be branded a failed lot — and anyone who'd ever watched an auction knew how those stories ended. Marked down and marked down again, until it sold for scrap.

No matter how you looked at it, I was the prisoner. I was the one who had to bow.

The best deal in the world is buying at your ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠toes and selling at the crown of your head. Right now I'd be lucky to buy at the knee and sell at the shoulder.

My status as a convict, locked together with the simple fact that I could never reenter society, had slapped a massive debuff on my negotiating power. And since they knew I couldn't take cash, they'd probably offer mid-tier goods or benefits and call it even. Naturally, they'd try to fleece me there too.

They'll assume I don't know a thing about the outside and lowball me into the dirt. A merchant's basic mindset is the same whether this is reality or not.

Not that I had any intention of flinching at the thought of getting played. I knew the value of almost every item in EFD to a near-exact figure. I wasn't some freak of memory who could recite which item boomed in which season and the precise price it sold for most often — but I had followed EFD's ten-year roadmap from end to end, and I had the fluctuation ranges and average values of most major items committed to memory. The small stuff didn't move much anyway. Memorizing the averages was enough to enjoy most seasons without breaking a sweat.

Which meant I could roughly estimate the value of the biological tissue sample I'd brought back, premium for the era included.

I sat quietly through the thirty seconds. Then, beyond the privacy glass, a faint human shape stirred, and a presence pressed against the other side. Already I could almost smell it seeping through the wall — the scent of a merchant who'd come to fleece a naive, honest prisoner.

The first stroke of luck in the drawing fell to the agent from Control Corp.

He walked into the room wearing a look of open satisfaction, mentally paging through the catalog of company products stored in his Smart Link. Super Rookie this, Super Rookie that — everyone was talking him up. The man on the other side of the glass was still just a prisoner. How much would a fool who'd driven his own life into the dirt know about the outside world's common sense, or its news? And how exactly was he supposed to answer the particular rhetoric of an elite like himself?

Present a plausible piece of merchandise at a plausible price — not too expensive, not too cheap — and the man would snap it up.

Weren't there other competitors, though? Didn't that mean he had to offer something in a higher price bracket? Not necessarily.

As long as the prisoner can't take cash, whatever goods we put on the table will be heavily colored by his personal tastes and temperament.

Say you handed a fight-crazed lunatic a high-performance combat implant. The sticker price might undercut what the other companies were offering, but to the prisoner it would feel like a far more attractive deal. No need to worry. The competition would be thinking along the same lines. Nobody wanted to name their best price for a mere convict.

Buy cheap, sell dear. Commerce 101.

And the part he liked best was that the other party couldn't possibly run the same strategy. A prisoner. Social refuse. Vermin. Even if the man realized he'd been taken, he could never take revenge — the lowest caste there was. If this deal closed cleanly, the incentive and the promotion waiting on the other side were going to be spectacular. He was already looking forward to them.

"A pleasure to meet you, Prisoner Number 77777. As this contract competition is being conducted in strict secrecy, I cannot disclose the name of my affiliated corporation. In its place, I would like to provide you with a specially curated catalog drawn from the various products handled by our headquarters."

The agent remotely transmitted the files he'd pulled from his Smart Link. The prison AI caught them and threw them up as a hologram for the man on the other side of the privacy glass. He confirmed it — a faint blue glow blooming beyond the frosted pane.

Now all he had to do was wait.

As if a mere prisoner could look at product codes and sample images in a catalog and actually understand what he was seeing.

When a company sold to the outside world, products had proper names. Things like Eggs—Pre-Peeled (At Long Last!) were typical. When a corporation handed someone a catalog, though, the usual practice was to provide the internal product codes. Incomprehensible strings like EGG-55000.

So what's it going to be? Are you going to confess you have no idea and let me sell to you? Or are you going to bluff as hard as you can, pretend you know what you're looking at, and pick something cheap all by yourself?

Either one was fine. If he had to choose, he hoped for the former. If the man admitted he was lost, the agent was prepared to throw in a few decent products out of something resembling pity.

That was when the faint blue light beyond the privacy glass vanished.

"...!"

The air in the room changed in an instant.