Randall found himself moving along with the flow of crowd.  Closer to the edges of the main street the crowd moved at barely a crawl, but in the middle of the street it was a lot closer to a run or maybe a really fast walk with the occasional sprint.  Randall stayed closer to the edge, not because he knew this, but because he wanted to see all of the wares on display in the shop windows.  Any where there was room for a blanket spread of trinkets or a stall stacked overflowing with merchandise, there was someone selling their goods.  Most of the merchants were peddling items that Randall didn’t recognize, but most of the food stalls had items that had come from Sanity, either from the underground farms or from other villages and towns that had enough to trade outside the Canyon.  A few food stalls were offering things that Randall would sooner starve than eat.  There was a stall featuring ‘delicacies’ like “tunnel spider jerky bits”, “night flier knuckle soup” and “roast tunnel toad tenders.”  These were all edible, but no matter how you prepare them, they tasted simply awful.  Part of Randall hoped that the stall wasn’t really using the ingredients it claimed, but the other part of him thought that anyone willing to eat shit might actually enjoy the taste.  He wasn’t far from that food stall when he thought “wait, do night fliers have knuckles?” He should ask one the Boys later, when they were all back at the train for the night, but it had been a little over an hours since he had his symbol injected.  The old man seemed to know Randall’s great grandfather but he might just use that line with everyone to get them to head to the “Memories” shop.  Randall didn’t have any where that he had planned to see, so now was as good as time as any to head on over and see if there really was a message for him.  If he ran in to any of the other new adults, he could ask them if they heard the same thing from the old guy that asked questions but didn’t let you answer.

The buildings were a mix of metal, wood and tunnel spider cloth wrapped and stretched to fill in the gaps.  Some of the nicer shop fronts were made of larger single pieces of material or made of many smaller panels arranged in a variety of patterns.  A few shops had large windows or openings with either a wire screen or a substance that most people just called plasteel even though it wasn’t metal and wasn’t made out of an old world material called plastic.  Plastic would break down quickly in the bare sun on the surface and wasn’t very useful.  Spun tunnel spider silk was far stronger and more flexible than plastic and even though regular glass wouldn’t break down in the sun, it was easy to crack or break with just a rock.  Plasteel was reinforced with embedded nanobots that gave the material it’s strength, transparency and to some degree the ability to self-repair.  Glass was used mostly for storing spices, liquids and other things, so it wasn’t used much outside of cooking.  This was not because it was great for storage, but making a regular glass jar took access to the right sand, relatively easy to acquire equipment and of course some knowledge that could be attained by apprenticing to someone in a nearby village.  On the other hand, plasteel was in limited supply and reworking the material could only be done with special equipment and knowledge that was a guarded secret.  It wasn’t possible to make new plasteel, or it was a secret guarded well enough that everyone believes it can’t be made.  Plasteel was a valuable enough resource to use as a pseudo-currency.  It’s easy to transport, weighs less than most metals and it wasn’t possible to counterfeit.  In a large town like this, all the currency exchanges were handled digitally, using the newly injected nanites that each of the new adults had just received.

The “Memories” shop was on a side street that was at least double the size of the street that the “Tattoos and Symbols” shop was on.  The shops on this street had items that most people probably wouldn’t need, there were shops selling half repaired devices that would never fully work, undergarment made of tunnel spider silks, soaps and candles made from “natural” sources and even a shop that were you could have your likeness carved into a small piece of metal or wood.  Most of the shops on this street looked similar, they all had at least two floors, with the upper portion used as housing for the owner and their family and the lower part used as a shop.  Rather than using a simple cloth on the door to show they were closed, these shops had signs that read either ‘open’ or ‘closed’ on their doors.  A few of the shops had simply written “open” on the inner part of their door and “closed” on the outside; if the door was open, so were they, if it was closed, then they were closed.
Most of the people that Randall saw looking into the shop windows seemed to be wearing nicer clothes than most of the folks walking around on the main street.  The clothes they wore had no patches or stitching that was obviously different.  Even the colors of their clothes were much brighter that the faded clothing that you would find in Sanity.  These were people that had more than they needed to survive and they spent their time and effort toward acquiring frivolities or traveling for no specific reason.  Randall was thinking that it was more likely that the other shop keeper had sent him to the “Memories” shop in the hopes that he’d get a referral fee if Randall spent his earning at any of the shops on this street.  He wasn’t sure, but he thought that the nanites in his symbol might actually be used for more than just identification and currency transfer.  He wasn’t sure why he thought this, but he kept thinking about it as he worked his way toward “Memories”

Randall stood outside the door of the shop for a few moments, looking over the sign at the top and the overall condition of the shop.  Compared to the other shops, this one seemed a bit more like the “Tattoos and Symbols” shop.  It didn’t have a fancy looking sign, just a rather plain looking metal sign that was polished to a shine and had just one word, “Memories” in a flat black paint.  The door was propped open and had a rather faded “Open” written on the middle portion like most shops on this street.  Inside the entrance the floor made of stone and was worn down and polished from the years of being walked over.  Even though it was worn, the floor was obviously cleaned on a regular basis, otherwise the nearly blindingly white color would have looked more like the path outside, which was a beige color that didn’t look much different than the dirt outside of Junkton.  The inside of the shop was darker than outside.  It took a few moments for Randall’s eyes to adjust and while they did he noticed a sweet smell in the air and the faint odor of wooden shelves treated by a citrus oil to protect them from the dry air above the Canyon.  When his eyes finally adjusted, he saw a small bit of smoke in the air and it was coming from several places in the shop, where there were small burning sticks that were filling the room more with odor than smoke.  Randall hadn’t see anything like it before, so he stood there transfixed by the small curls of smoke almost dancing into the rest of the room.
“It’s called incense,” came a voice from behind a counter.  Randall had not noticed the counter or the man standing behind it.  “I’m betting this is the first time you’ve been outside your home town,”  he continued while Randall pulled himself away from the smoke, “usually the new ones don’t come through here on their first time in Junkton.”  Before Randall could ask how he knew, the shop keeper reached out his hand and introduced himself, “I’m Hank.”
Randall shook his hand firmly, “uh… Randall,” sounding almost unsure of his own name.  He felt dumbstruck for no particular reason, but it passed rather quickly and now he was brimming with questions “What is this place? What do you do? Wait, how did you know this was the first time I left my town?” He felt a moment of paranoia and looked at Hank half expecting him to turn in to one of those nightmare creatures and try to eat him.
Hank could see that Randall was tensing up and gave him a moment to breathe before answering.  “Okay…. Well, I know it’s your first time because your Symbol was recently injected and I can see that on my terminal.”  He could see Randall relax a bit. “And as for what we do… I guess you could say we store things for folks to pass on to their relatives when they die or disappear.”  Hank pressed a few keys on his terminal and looked back up at Randall with a little smile.  “We have something for you.  Let me get it and I’ll be right back.”  Hank headed into the back area before Randall could say anything.
A few minutes and loud noises later, Hank came back out with a small silver box and what looked to a hand crafted knapsack made out of tunnel spider silk.  It wasn’t large, but it had more than enough room for the small box.  Randall wasn’t entirely sure what to do next and Hank was just standing there smiling.
Hank chuckled lightly before saying, “oh yeah, you’re new to all of this. At this shop, we collect a fee when you store whatever it is you’re storing.”  Randall still looked a bit puzzled, so he explained a bit more, “If you did need to pay for something, I’d have a hand pad for you to transfer it to the shops account.”
Randall still had a puzzled expression while looking at the small box and turning it over in his hands.  He couldn’t find a way to open it, it looked like it was a solid piece of metal.  “So how do I open the box?”
“Oh, yeah, you’ll be able to open it once you get back to your hometown.  It should beep or blink when you finally get it to where it’ll open.  It’ll be the same place your relative locked it and that’s usually a hometown.  Let me just check something.”  Hank looked down at the terminal again and typed something on the keys.  “Oh, good thing I checked… there’s a note that say’s ‘Take it to where it all began.’ That’s probably where it was locked.”
“What does that mean?” Randall hadn’t meant to say it out loud but Hank offered up a shrug.  Randall put the small box into the knapsack and held it tightly.  It was getting near dinner time and he didn’t want to eat the foods from the vendors in the city.  He was ready to get back to the train.  Back to the train and rest a bit before the trip back.