The Scrapformer’s Storehouse
Kelii stirred from her sleep just in time to gaze beyond the glass dome of the barge as it rumbled towards a trilogy of concentric superstructures. These great rings circled the Exchange in gentle deliberation, their opposing angles of approach creating a hypnotising swirl of silvery light that routinely captured Kelii’s eyes. The Exchange itself glimmered like a moon-sized pearl at the center of this, a bastion of knowledge and the current seat of The Harmony. If the Bazaar was the heart of the Junction of Worlds, then the Exchange, and its three rings, formed the mind.
As the barge approached the outermost ring, more details came into view. From this distance, Kelii always thought it looked like a colossal patchwork quilt. The ring’s inner circumference was made up of thousands of settlements, each representing a different culture, or populace, or sentient race. Some of these patches were pastoral and idyllic, manor houses on manicured gardens, exposed to the stars above. Some were closed off to outside eyes, domed or shielded from the elements, likely holding an environment best suited to those who lived there. A few were even empty, abandoned by those whose track had never reopened, or whose people had been wiped out during the collapse.
In a way, this quilt of cultures was a microcosm of the multiverse. There was no other place, save the streets of the Bazaar itself, where one could truly appreciate the fullness of the multiverse. It was known to most as the social branch of the Exchange, and home to the millions of intelligent life forms who participated in the Exchange’s forums. It was more than just a home to some, or a political function to others though, it was also a record of every world that ever was. Every little square on this ring told a different story, and just like the tracks, provided a gateway into another world.
It was one of these pieces of patchwork that the barge angled towards now. Curving around past the two innermost rings, the wide, flat ship fired its crude retrograde thrusters in an attempt to slow its approach for a comfortable landing. The moment the barge came within 2 kilometers of the third ring’s inner surface, it breached its atmosphere with a thundering shake. Kelii’s emotions were always dosed with equal measures of terror and thrill during this split second transition, and this time was no different, as her stomach fell along with the barge’s swift descent.
After a few more moments of freefall, the engines of the barge roared, releasing one last flare of energy before bouncing against a dark surface. Seconds later, hydraulics hissed, and the back of the barge rolled down to reveal an expansive plaza of inky concrete. Evenly placed poles of light, each about 50 meters high, led Kelii’s eyes along this dark, flat landscape, towards a giant wall of interconnected scrap. This was the team’s destination. Casp’s Storehouse.
Kelii stepped out of the van, alongside a weary Bathel, and headed towards a small gathering of flat trolleys nearby. The air here smelt as expected in a place like this: Cold and metallic. Kelii hated it. Every breath she took was infused with a sickly rusted tang that would likely deprive her of taste for the next few days.
Kelii had done this run many times now, though, and was familiar with the process. The team would unload the vans, while one of them grabbed trolleys, which they would then stack up and deliver to the Storehouse. Inside the Storehouse, Casp would take the scrap off their hands, sort it, and prepare to send it to the Harmony fleet Shipyards. It was a simple process, easy to follow, and it would have also been mundane, too, were it not for just how impressive the Storehouse was in it’s looming position above the plaza.
The Storehouse was one of those landmarks that had always been here, on the third ring, at least in people’s memories. Dragging the trolleys back to the vans, Kelii thought about what the Storehouse would have been like when it first built, before there were any memories of this place, or any mountains of scrap rising from the ground. Was it once just a small building? Or perhaps it got its start as a small pile of junk, that had gotten added to over the centuries.
By the time Kelii returned, with the trolleys in tow, all three of the vans had been unloaded and were now being cleaned down using the high pressure water systems attached to the light poles. Kelii reached across to help Ngaio lift a sizable box off the ground, when he spoke in a low voice. “Do you remember what I said Kelii? Show the piece of wood to Casp and see what they make of it. Casp may not have the foggiest idea, but they are trustworthy and if anyone knows anyone else on the Rings who can help identify it, it'll be Casp.” Before Kelii had a chance to respond, Ngaio continued on “I’m going to tell the others they can head home after cleaning the vans and we’ll take the luggage, just yourself and I”.
“Alright sounds good, Ngaio” Kelii said, while she turned to lift another box to avoid appearing nervous.
Ngaio, meanwhile, walked to the center of the three vans and raised his voice. “Kia ora folks!” He said, in the speed of a single word. “Kelii and I are going to take the trolleys into Casp this time, so none of you need to hang about. Go enjoy your time off!”. Most of the team were happy to part ways early, though Bathel let out a shrug so casual, Kelii couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or he had just dropped all pretense of caring about anything.
Ngaio did his usual goodbye rounds, shoulder clapping a few of his companions, congratulating them on a job well done. He let out a boisterous laugh after passing Candeliene’s crew, and Kelii realised she had hardly seen them for most of the trip. The thought touched her with an unusual sense of suspicion, though she quickly chalked this up to her nerves.
Kelii jumped as long blue arms draped over her head and grabbed her around the neck. Charr let out a small cackle and turned Kelii around into a friendly embrace. “Oh, see ya, Charr” Kelii said, straining under Charr’s warm grip. “‘I’ll miss you!”
They split from the embrace but Kelii still held on to the side of Charr’s large, three fingered hands. “Promise you’ll tell me more about your adventures in the Bazaar next time, I’ve still got to know how you ended up at an Evening, engaged to an heiress.” Kelii pleaded.
“Of course, mate” Charr said, with a barely detectable hint of hesitation, before returning to her regular cadence. “Don’t let the old man boss you around eh!”
She nodded towards Ngaio who walked towards them. “Alright you” he said, gesturing towards Kelii, but looking at Charr “let's get a wriggle on then! Casp is waiting!”
Ngaio and Kelii said their goodbyes to Charr again, and talked of seeing each other for the next job in a few cycles. They followed this up with a third and final goodbye before setting off in opposite directions.
The outside of Casp’s Storehouse looked more like a temple to the disassembled than a functioning workshop. The walls stretched forever in all directions and were composed of interlocking spaceship parts and pieces of scrap metal bent into every possible shape. Kelii and Ngaio charted a course with their four trolleys, towards a wide entrance cut between two sheets of carbon hull, one of which glowed with the words of countless different languages. What was once a tunnel of stone and steel, was now a restless passage of hard worn alloys and repurposed ingenuity. Everything from giant rockets to old park benches, hung from the curved roof, bound only by each other and the knots of wires between them.
On the inside, the Storehouse itself opened up into a large rectangular chamber lined from wall to wall in more scrap. Below the piles of scrap that flowed off the wall, was dull scuffed dark wood. It was a relic to a more impressive time, and yet more fuel that stoked the flames of Kelii’s curiosity. Kelii could hear the jolly old Scrapformer rummaging in one of the many piles dotted around the room, but could not identify which. Many of these piles were at least four times as tall as Kelii, and probably even twice as tall as Casp, so there wasn’t much chance of spotting them.
Ngaio called out a few times, but the rummaging remained consistent, as did the indistinguishable singing coming from the scrap. Ngaio called out again, this time hanging a little longer on each “Casp”.
The singing fell silent and someone spoke. “Alright! Alright! Hold your hornsteeth!” They said in a booming voice with a thick accent. Shortly after, A large, portly creature barreled out from a mound of sheet metal and cracked leather chairs. They tripped over a stack of piping, which sent them rolling along the floor in a hollow symphony. The creature was wearing a plastic white apron that squeaked at the seams as it struggled to contain a mass of black and gold speckled fur.
“By the Bazaar, Ngaio!” Said Casp, stepping over the last of the rolling pipes. “You just about gave me a heart attack. Even if I’ve got two of the bloody things, I’m still much too old for your surprises.”
“Relax, Casp!” Said Ngaio in his typical, jovial, spirit. “Besides, what did you have to worry about anyway? You knew we were coming? The barge was, surprisingly, very on schedule”. Kelii thought that Ngaio had said this last part more for himself than anyone else.
The large Scrapformer looked annoyed at this assumption. “Yes yes yes of course, but I’m waging war at the moment, Ngaio!” Casp said, waving a twisted stack of old drive comms in the air. “My neighbours aren’t happy with me. We’re locked in a feud. The Chenveraxian embassy sent around its thugs yesterday. Ugly little suckers. Told me to stop clamouring about under their residences or they’ll be lodging a formal complaint with the Exchange.” Casp continued his rant with his back against Ngaio and Kelii. “It’s not my fault their patch is above one of the tunnels. I can’t work around their schedule” Casp strained on the last word, as he yanked a small glass-lidded box from deep within his junk pile.
“A ha! I found it!” Casp said, finally turning to face the two tired salvagers.The box Casp held was divided into four unequal segments. Three contained coloured pastes, but the fourth, and largest, segment was filled to the brim with a foggy liquid. In the liquid, green, worm-like creatures wriggled about, pressing against the glass lid. Kelii wasn’t sure if this was from Casp fligning the box up and down, or because the creatures were still alive. “Whaaa… what is that?” Kelii asked.
“Ahh! what indeed!” Casp exclaimed.
At this point, Ngaio sat down on one of the boxes, preparing to hear Casp’s explanation, knowing full well Casp’s reputation for storytelling. “It’s my lunch! Well it was. I lost it two days ago when I was looking for an old pre-collapse power converter. It fell down one of the tunnels…” Casp looked back down into the hole he’d fished his old food from. “but you know how it goes, things always make their way back up to the surface in this place!”
Kelii wondered just how far those scrap tunnels went, if they went around in small loops, or if they had endings that opened up into hidden hordes of abandoned metal. They could even wrap around the entire ring for all Kelii knew. She’d like to find out, but perhaps another time, when she wasn’t carrying a mysterious piece of magical wood around in her jacket pocket.
With half their overdue lunch in hand, and the other in their mouth, Casp moved to sit on a chair that was part of a wall fashioned from large slices of white and red spaceship hull. Indented in the wall behind him was a nook with two beds wedged together and a large misshapen mattress stuffed over the top. Various strange looking trinkets hung from the bed’s low roof and ran along to the end. At the foot of the beds were a series of glass screens that were bolted to metal rods, so that they jutted out from the junk wall around them. For a bunk bed made of scrap, Kelii had to admit it did look surprisingly cosy.
“Ah! I’ve got some Sawalean steamed tea somewhere if you’d like some!” Casp said, as if they’d forgotten some crucial part of the greeting process.
Ngaio replied before the big creature could start rummaging again. “No no, we’re good thanks Casp, it’s been a long day, let’s just get this scrap signed off and call it in”
Casp took a disappointed breath but received the tablet Ngaio handed to him. Casp scribbled across its surface with a giant index finger that took up more than a quarter of the screen.
“Just dump it all in the corner there”. Casp pointed to the back right corner of the room where a slightly less overwhelming pile of scrap rested.
“I’ll have my accountant sort it out”. Casp meant assistant of course, but their common tongue sometimes lacked nuance.
Kelii giggled at this remark, she didn’t know what she found more funny, the mispronunciation of the word, the idea that Casp might have made the mistake on purpose, or the fact that Casp had neither an accountant, nor an assistant, working for them.
“Maybe if you did have someone to help you out around here…” Ngaio said, tactfully avoiding a language correction. “You’d actually be able to have your lunch fresh!”
Kelii had learnt a lot from Ngaio, and this was one such example. Ngaio was, in Kelii’s eyes, the master of finding common ground. Language, at its core, was a way of understanding each other, and traveling as much as they did, the ability to relate was crucial.
Ngaio had taught Kelii that it did not matter if something was technically right or wrong from a linguistic sense. In a place humming with the chorus of different languages, it was more important to interpret what was meant, than what was said. Words could be filled with lies, but intentions showed the truth.
“...Kelii? Hello, Kelii?” Ngaio snapped Kelii out of her thoughts. She had a habit of thinking deeply about the smaller moments in life, but this also meant she tended to drift off on occasion.
“Let’s get these trolleys unloaded and get out of Casp’s way, eh?” Ngaio said.
“Roger that, boss” Kelii replied, with a fake salute.
She immediately regretted the action, cringing at her lousy attempt at humour. If Ngaio thought the same though, he didn’t show it, because he saluted back with a playful grin.
Willfully or not, Casp went back to his humming and rummaging, leaving Kelii and Ngaio to unload all of the incoming scrap.
After 10 minutes of quiet work, Ngaio stretched his back and pushed his chest out. “Catch ya later then, Casp” Ngaio said, half way down his stretch. Casp gave him an “mmhmm” and flippant, though friendly, wave in return. Ngaio tapped Kelii on the shoulders and smiled. “I’ll see you soon,” he said.
With Ngaio gone, Kelii stood waiting for Casp to turn around. After about 20 seconds of awkward shuffling from Kelii, Casp stopped whistling and said “what is it, my child?” with their back still against Kelii, and their face still buried deep in the central junk pile.
“I ahh, I have something to show you. Well ask you about, and show you I guess.” Kelii stumbled over her words, thrown off by Casp’s blasé approach to conversation.
At this, Casp finally turned around, and held out their large leathered hands. “Bring it to me, let me have a look at it”. Casp rubbed their fingers over the splinter and flipped down a monocle over their right eye, for a closer look. “Come” Casp said, and with a questioning look, began marching off to the other side of the storehouse, towards a corner worktop.
Casp swiped away the contents of the worktop with one swoop of their arms, sending screws and wires and half repaired processing units to the floor beside them. Casp fumbled around with their right hand on the shelves without taking their eye off the splinter, before emerging with a fine metal needle, that when compared to the rest of this place, shone and glimmered so naturally, in the artificial light.
Casp took the needle and scraped it along the surface of the splinter. Kelii gasped at this, concerned that Casp had been so reckless about such a precious thing. “Don’t worry, Kelii, it won’t hurt it!”
Casp held the needle up to their ears and swirled it around. The eccentric Scrapformer continued to mumble to themself. “No. Hmm. But yes. I wonder. Let’s see”. Kelii looked on with a mix of curiosity and confusion, as Casp brought the splinter to their mouth and licked it along the incision they had made. Casp then withdrew their tongue and clapped their lips together, making a strange bubbling noise with their mouth. “ hmm, oh! yes, quite right!”
Quite right what? Kelii thought, getting more confused by Casp’s detached ambiguity.
“You must take this back to where it came from, bring it to my sister.” At this, Casp used their hand to take a large scoop of the coloured paste from their lunch box, and shove it in their mouth. With their mouth full, Casp mumbled “She will activate it for you”
Sister? Activate? Kelii was frustrated with Casp, now.
Not knowing what question to start with, Kelii went with the first that came to mind. “Your sister lives on Pākihi?” She said.
“Pākihi? No, no my child! This splinter is part of the first forest.” Casp took another scoop of their paste.
“This splinter comes from The Heavens Bazaar!”
Kelii’s heart sank. Her frustration evaporated, and was immediately replaced with a nauseating dread. The metallic tang of the Storehouse air was suddenly much stronger, and Kelii’s joints began to ache.
The Bazaar... Somewhere, deep down, she’d felt like the Bazaar was involved in this. It always was… and yet she hadn’t even thought about it, in the fear that doing so would make it true. Kelii would always say she preferred to avoid The Bazaar. Her excuses varied, but the truth was far more simple. She was afraid of it. It was the last place where things had been normal for her. The Bazaar was a snapshot of her life before the collapse, and she was scared that returning to it would cement the end of that life for her. So, she’d avoided it, worried that if she returned, the last of her childhood memories would be poisoned by the complexity of adulthood.
But, now she knew, even with her body trembling and her skin heating up. Even with Casp’s tenuous clues, and the risks it posed to her wellbeing. She knew.
She had to return to The Heavens Bazaar.
