The stall remains as haphazard as ever, its payment bucket near empty.

The stall remains as haphazard as ever, its payment bucket near empty.

Hauzmann wanted a poetry magazine from this place, didn't he?

If there's a copy of HOLOCENE's novel in Portofiro, the sci-fi section of this stand is probably your best bet.

Any worthwhile mystery novels here?

Depends on how much you enjoy predictable pursuits of serial killers, variably through occult forests and the urban stage.

I've had enough death in my life recently.

Not a lot of mystery around it either. That's the good bit.

Except Vespar. He left a bit of a trail to chase, at least.

Exactly my thing. Let's go.

Unfortunately, the stall's offerings look pretty bare. Nothing catches your eye.

Here's a mystery for you: why isn't Operant CASCADE focusing on the assignment?

No mysteries for me, thanks.

And yet the genre will survive just fine without you. People can't get enough of it.

Closest they can get to jumpstarting their heart.

Look through the self-help books again.

By far the largest collection, you see a wild range of material -- from an anti-aging guide to a series of books all by the same author, Vitor Campf.

Who is Vitor Campf?

A prominent Luzian philosopher whose works have occasionally crossed over into international interest.

You may remember him from such court cases as 'CAMPF VS. SANTOS ELECTRONICS LLC' and 'CAMPF VS. STATE MARRIAGE LICENSING BOARD.'

Famously, he's the guy who fornicated with a cash register.

Understandable. Who wouldn't do anything for a quick cash injection?

The court cases found that he wasn't motivated economically. It was more of a mechanophilic interest that got out of hand.

The man's a role model. He has much to teach us.

Look at the man in the picture.

He leers up at you from the cover, in high-contrast black and white, glossy and concupiscent.

Underneath, it is stated: 'THE PHILOSOPHICAL BAD BOY FOR OUR TIMES.'

A very bad boy, indeed.

Technically, he married the cash register. So at least they weren't living in sin.

A thinker and a lover of the first order.

So... did he write about how he did it?

There's nothing about that in this section, at least.

Maybe he was proving a new theory? Something about money and personal freedom...

That wasn't what the courts concluded. It would seem to be an entirely mechanophilic interest that got out of hand.

Machines are the future. Makes sense to marry them, too.

While Campf has been branded a mechanophilic by the court in these times, it may be that his interest becomes more widespread, even the norm.

Doesn't seem familiar.

He gazes back at you from the cover, darkly handsome in glossy black-and-white, with the far-off look of an old film star.

Underneath, it is stated: 'THE PHILOSOPHICAL BAD BOY FOR OUR TIMES.'

Oh, please. How bad could the man be? He's an academic.

You'd be surprised. There are some shocking cases of plagiarism out there.

If he can make philosophy sexy, he deserves all the credit he can get.

Many people are attracted to the mind, rather than the body.

Those are just people who have no choice.

Kiss kiss.

Anything about reviving a catatonic double?

There are no medical textbooks you can see.

Anything about rekindling old friendships?

Nothing.

Maybe an etiquette guide? Something to help me write a good apology would be good.

It would be, but there is no such thing to be found.

Anything about at-home epilepsy treatments?

It seems anything actually useful has either been taken already, or was never here in the first place.

Let's see what the anti-aging book has to say.

You flick past the foreword, written by a prominent plastic surgeon, and into the table of contents:

'Soy and You'. 'Smoking: the Real Enemy'. 'Are the Injections Failing, or is it Stress?'. 'Why You Should Drink More Water'. 'But What Does Mother Think?'.

Am I drinking enough water?

Absolutely not, even by the most generous medical recommendations.

What's wrong with cigarettes?

Nothing to that effect is written here. Instead, backed with a tonne of evidence, the book simply states that smoking gives you wrinkles.

Good job I haven't been smoking lately.

Congratulations! You've been thinking about it, though, haven't you?

Only every waking second.

Oh dear.

Then why the hell aren't we lighting up right now?!

Just a little.

No, actually. I think I've really turned a corner.

Maybe you have. Maybe you're ready to start resisting at long last.

A shame that the damage to your skin may already be locked in.

Nothing wrong with wrinkles. Shows a life well-lived.

The book doesn't seem to think that's the case. In fact, it declares war on aging, as if it is something that could actually be beaten if you adopt the right habits.

Most wars are just as futile.

If we love wrinkles so much, why aren't we smoking?

Mmm, I don't think that's right.

The book has a lot to say on this topic, and many others. Basically, anything that brings you any sort of pleasure, the book states that you should probably stop doing it.

What a miserable waste of paper.

You shut your whore mouth, book!

The book is silent. Though a sticker on the back cover would like to remind you that it spent 50 weeks on the best-seller charts.

Right! That's enough of that. (Go back.)

The large collection of self-help books almost seems to reach out to you, begging to be useful.

Done here. (Go back.)

You return your attention to the broader stall.

Look through the self-help books.

What's in the romance section?

A large space is allocated to the genre but most of the books have been taken. Only a few worn stragglers remain, one of them doesn't even have any pages -- just a dust jacket.

People hunger for that happily ever after.

Especially when they're in a place that makes it seem so unlikely for them.

Search the sci-fi section again.

You return to the scabby shelf of speculative fiction.

'Blood Type: Hecatomb' is the book you want.

Search for HOLOCENE's book.

Alternative wording

Search for 'Blood Type: Hecatomb'.

As you push your hand between the moth-eaten volumes, something pressed between them falls out and lands at your feet.

Pick it up.

It's a blank business card with the letters IOU written across it in blue pen ink.

'Blood Type: Hecatomb - 5 Renomarks. Penthouse, Housing Campaign. Use callbox.'

Reno -- the city's pre-eminent capitalist and head of Renotel, of the dolphin-themed payphones.

What the hell is a 'Renomark'?

The private currency of a private citizen... someone who considers himself an entity worthy of his own monetary standard.

Where do I find this scoundrel?

His pied-à-terre in the Housing Campaign.

You just need to find a way in. Look for a fancy callbox.

Apparently he maintains a pied-à-terre in the Housing Campaign.

That expensive callbox you found checks all the marks. Give that another try.

I suppose wealth makes its own rules.

You tuck the 'Renomarks' back between the books and return your attention to the crooked spines.

Typical elite behaviour. (Shake your head.)

Alright, Reno's got the book. Onward.

Wait, 'Reno', as in Renotel?

It seems your former double and the richest man in Portofiro share a similar taste in literature.

Flick through 'Light March of the Chosen'.

Pulpy space opera, not at its finest. The characters are heavily stereotypical, the plot is erratic, and there are spelling errors on nearly every page.

HOLOCENE wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. It's nowhere near deranged enough.

Give it a quick skim.

A bunch of religious cultists travel through outer space in search of what they believe to be their god, but end up being swallowed by a planet.

Hold on, everyone dies?

No, it turns out the planet is their god. They end up inside the belly of paradise and live there forever.

Amazing.

Totally, it's a shame the word 'planet' is mistyped as 'plant' on the final page.

Part of the charm of the mass market paperback. A proper copyedit would've sucked all the juice out.

Ridiculous. Who reads this stuff?

According to the back of the book, there are more than three million copies in print.

Return the book to its place.

Ready for someone else to find and extract whatever they can from its pages.

What is 'Greed in the Interzone'?

Despite its dull cover, it seems to be an outright attack on the current state of reality, realised as an adventure through a futuristic city that thrives on depravity.

Who wrote this?

Klea Barcide, a notorious Luzian novelist and heroin addict.

After her work attracted the attention of the Ministry of Mass Culture, Barcide was forced to flee for the relative protection of the Eastern Republics.

HOLOCENE's kind of writer, though not responsible for the particular book you're after.

The author photo shows her sat on a dishevelled bed, about to jab a needle into her arm, biting a torniquet wrapped tightly around the target limb.

Interesting. What's the throughline?

Between all the gay sex, violence, and drug taking, there's a serious point about how we're being held back by the unfettered impulses of the ruling class.

It is, however, exquisitely written, despite being hard to follow due to its bizarre plot points and elastic sense of time.

How is this city of the future depicted?

It's not much different to a modern-day city, except the laws are much more lax and what would be considered immoral now has become fairly normal.

Doesn't sound that futuristic. Where's all the cool techno stuff?

It seems everyone in this society is too busy being sordid to develop any meaningful technological advances.

Trash. The future isn't about humans, it's about machines.

Perversion and debauchery. My kind of place.

Certain conservative critics attempted to ban the novel on the grounds that certain readers can't tell the difference between depicting something and endorsing it.

It's not us that's obscene, it's the age. We're just fitting in.

Surely there's some underlying moral or critique to all this.

None, so far as you can tell -- it's just episodic atrocities and gratuitous acts of obscenity.

Bagman would approve of this attack on Reality.

If anything, he would object to labelling it 'fiction'.

Enough of that. (Put it back.)

The book resumes its place among the others, its degenerate content perfectly camouflaged.

Return to the main rack. (Go back.)

Hundreds of printed materials, well-used, slumber before you.

You're looking for blood-stained something... deep oracles...

Search the sci-fi section.

A shelf of scuffed books are united by their preference for black and apocalyptic reds. On their spines, a series of grandiose words large enough to fill the universe.

Equivalency, Heracles, Vantalangicon, Annihilation, Singularity, Nanoscale, Hyperdrive...

Two of the titles stand out to you above the others: LIGHT MARCH OF THE CHOSEN, and GREED IN THE INTERZONE.

There was a gun pamphlet in here... (Look for it again.)

'The Wang Guide to Improvised Firearms, Vol. 2: Reloadable pipe gun with push-feed.'

Is this...?

Yes.

It unfolds to become a long, accordion-like pamphlet, with text on one side and diagrams of a homemade gun on the other side.

Now we're talking.

Grounded, practical, amoral, it is exactly what it promises to be.

Is this even legal?

It occupies a particular grey area that the makers of such books -- and homemade firearms -- are particularly passionate about.

What is this?

Take the booklet and leave some change.

You do the honest thing. Nothing changes in the world.

The list of materials should be inside the pamphlet. You can try to assemble it at Foto 24.

Look for the heartless man's poetry magazine.

Alternative wording

Look for Hauzmann's poetry magazine.

You scan the stall, but find no poetry section. Instead, there are several piles of unsorted periodicals, each one dozens of issues deep.

Most of those journals look cheap. Pulp-adjacent, really. They probably feel cheap too.

But a poetry magazine would feel different.

Exactly. Think high-quality spine, silky cover -- something with a premium heft to it. You just need to dig in.

Is it all just cheap, outdated muck?

Most magazines tend to be, especially those that people donate to a project like this one.

Once you're done with the sections here, you'll want to go through those big, unsorted piles too. Could be something premium in there.

How would I find it?

By touch. Think high-grammage, silky finish. The kind of stock used to sell 'disruptive' perfumes to the upper crust.

Have a look through the fashion catalogues.

The more recent issues focus on the emergent Luzian styles. The oldest among them feature Portofiran clothes, local-made textiles from the famous silk factories.

Check out the Luzians.

Masked models stalk glossy pages, unidentifiable yet distinct in monochromatic pieces with striking silhouettes.

Beauty subsumed by style. The wearer is not the point, the statement is.

What is the statement?

No self, no flesh. Just an idea. Humanity abstracted from being.

Your eye wanders to another Luzian cover in a less austere register. Teenage figures boast digital visors, baggy jumpsuits, runic charms. Holographic animals circle their bodies, projected from gadgets clipped to belts or bracelets.

A headline beside these gadgets prompts readers to, 'FIND YOUR SOUL ANIMAL, TAKE IT EVERYWHERE YOU GO'.

A wearable, holographic pet? Sick, all aesthetics and no shit.

Gimmicky, but teens love to unite together under a common purchase.

Without the neon light of a soul animal illuminating their face, how would their peers recognise that they have a soul at all?

The soul does not exist. It's just propaganda for God.

And spiritual dilemmas are simply the mind yearning for hard labour.

Wearing their essential nature for all to see. Very good, saves time.

Even better -- their essential nature as defined by a quiz in a magazine. They see themselves in the object, but it tells them what to be.

That seems... impractical.

That's the idea. No bags, no pockets. Nothing to put in them, nothing to do. Humanity abstracted from being.

Consider the Portofiran clothes.

Every shirt and dress catches the light brilliantly, rippling like coastal waves in golds, reds, and purples as they hang off each posed body.

The craftsmanship is obvious, as if the seamstress manipulated a fragment of a fallen star.

While it lacks the new-age surprise of the Luzian clothes, there is a much warmer, living feel to it all.

That doesn't fly any longer. 'Market trends' were the reason the silk factories closed down, according to Carmuna.

Always a shame when the old ways are lost.

There will be those who mourn them. But, over time, people will forget about them entirely.

A hole in the collective memory that won't be noticed at first... but it'll be felt, sooner or later.

It deserves to die out. Make way for the exhilaration of our techno future.

Clutch the steering wheel, drive us into the radiant techno-world of tomorrow, or get left behind.

The market cannot be denied. It is our king.

You've got to play the game. If you don't keep up, you'll be left behind. The rules are simple.

Living is overrated. The Luzians have got it right.

Attitudes like that make their promise of a future devoid of humanity move even closer, for better or for worse.

A big win for productivity. No more of that pesky human error to contend with.

Is it all silk?

Reams of it. There are a couple of experiments in cotton but they turned out even plainer looking than the silks.

Look at the choice of models.

Men are posed clumsily clutching straw fedoras. Women, who are obviously not mothers, hug unstained children, mirth bursting from their faces.

That might be one cover that's beyond you. Not much mother in you at all.

Good job, I've made a conscious choice to be 'anti-mother'.

Probably for the best. Children don't typically make good assets, they're far too demanding.

Yeah, fuck that. I prefer having a life.

It's good that you equate being an operant to 'having a life'.

It must be in me somewhere.

It really isn't. Your aversion to motherhood must set some kind of record.

Look at something else. (Go back.)

Hundreds of magazines beg for your attention with their colourful covers.

Browse the softcore adult mags.

You're bombarded by cheesecakey photos of grinning nude and semi-nude models. The occasional coy shot hints at full bush.

Hffff, ooooo, mmmhhhmmmm...

These shouldn't be in here. What if some kids found this?

If they take them without paying then they will be marked as dishonourable. It's pretty clear how it works.

In a place like this, it wouldn't be surprising if the kids were the ones who put them in here in the first place.

Is this 'community service'?

You do feel thoroughly serviced. Though, that might say more about the lack of proper adult action in your life recently.

TEMPTATIONS OF THE FLESH ONLY INSULT THE INTELLECT OF THE PEOPLE.

Keep flicking through.

The woman, stood just a metre away from you, glances over her shoulder and loudly tuts.

Alternative wording

The Editor-in-Chief, stood just a metre away from you, glances over her shoulder and loudly tuts.

"Oh sorry, did you want to get in on this?" (Move the magazine towards her.)

A strange noise escapes your nosy onlooker as she quickly turns her head away.

But not before she got a good eyeful, the little minx.

More and more of the smooth, young flesh passes before your eyes. It quickly starts to feel repetitive as you glance up and down the bikini-clad bodies, page after page, tens of them a minute.

Images aren't enough. You need to get hands-on -- rolling around, biting, giggling.

Slowly close the magazine and put it back.

Your perturbed onlooker gives a singular firm nod of approval before sinking back into her reading material.

Lesser people than you would feel embarrassed for being caught in such an act. Fortunately, you have the indifference of a low-class pervert.

How embarrassing! Caught peeping at a sleazy magazine full of what are probably under-age girls.

It's almost like you don't have more important things to be doing with your time...

Ignore her and continue looking.

Turn your attention elsewhere. (Go back.)

The lineup of promiscuous women almost seems to wave goodbye as you once again hide their naughty covers.

Look at the gun-making pamphlet.

Look at the gun magazine.

Turns out, it's not a magazine at all.