A Walk through the Market
New Miami Lore: Tales from Humanity’s Last City
Entry 1 – A Walk through the Market of El Medallon
The main market corridor of El Medallon, and its thousands of narrower, rather secret tributaries offer residents the purest, most personalized expression of freedom available in New Miami. Anyone will confirm so. You can still ask around. The staggering vaulted ceilings and their colorful, hyper realistic firework projections, or the dust dancing through light beams in between stalls, or songs of glory and victory played on millions of nanospeakers are there to glorify, exaggerate, and dilute liberty. That’s a mouthful, and the truth! We all need freedom, and where else could we try it, buy it, and wear it? Sure, you can go visit Betsie’s and enjoy the many wonders of her Leisure Center, but what about your own slice of whatever you want? Besides, the LC is better after dark, and nothing beats tangible, immediate gratification.
So, what should you expect from these corridors beyond lights and noise, and how will you experience their brand of freedom differently than at the LC? Let’s start at the mouth, where los tablados and other large stalls rest below the tallest, meanest ceilings, under the gaze of patrons having breakfast at the second floor caffes. What will you see there? It’s hard to miss the Old World reclining chairs and the fat, decrepit junkies tripping balls in absolute comfort. Or the gangs of young M2s with nothing to do except roam the market, wasting their early years building a reputation for vice and violence worthy of our decadent world. Their world. Or maybe you are searching for answers, in which case you must be both ready to distinguish your own freedom and quick to grab it before another buyer snatches it away!
Take handkerchiefs as an example. What is freedom if not the ability to choose the one that best suits you and your lifestyle, or having the credits to pay for it? No ordinary handkerchief will do. The one you want says exactly what you need it to say, and features the right colors and ornaments to highlight the rest of your inevitably repeated and repetitive look. Is it decorated with paper? If so, can you tell whether the paper is real or counterfeit, and most importantly, could others tell? It doesn’t hurt to have ancient texts on some bits of paper, but nothing beats a well-placed, trendy projection of the word “freedom” itself. Yeah… that’s it… you may not be brave, or handsome, or even fully alive, but by motherfucking Miami are you freer than anyone else!
Handkerchiefs are not alone in their appeal to those seeking liberty. Despite an undisputed popularity on stalls along and near the main corridor, not many vendors choose clothing accessories deeper in the market, and why should they? There are more credits to be made in pet insects, or paper, or wood and random, mysterious tokens from a time long gone and constantly forgotten. Depending on the day, you will find mosquitoes of small and medium size in the second ring. Roaches are harder to come by. For one of those, your best bet would be the rows of stalls farthest from the center. Paper is everywhere, even if under one in a dozen bits is authentic. Wood fragments the size of a fingernail command hundreds of credits at bidding boxes in los tablados. Larger pieces would be out of reach for anyone except warlords and the powerful madam. In case of feathers or ancient animal skins, it’s better not to bother asking for either price or point of origin. It’s not like the seller would know a definitive answer.
Most of these wonders from the Old World are brought out and up from the desert, that vast expanse of death and darkness covering the underworld below. Others are traded down the cluster, descending from the madam’s nest of power to the market’s deepest crevices. Whatever an item’s provenance may be, there are stalls bound to carry it in stock, or desert runners willing to find it for you.
For stuff, as for humans, it couldn’t have been easy surviving the apocalypse. Wood, paper, and other precious organics were especially susceptible to the whims of a dying earth. In New Miami, items like books commanded fortunes. In most cases, a book would be taken apart, cut into thousands of pieces, and each tiny fragment plastered and sold separately. Few people had ever seen an intact page. Only two whole books were known to exist, both brought from de depths of the underworld to the tablados, and now in the madam’s inescapable embrace. One of them spoke of old music in some forgotten corner of the world. The other, written in an undecipherable language, is alleged to include images of gigantic creatures that lived deep in the ocean.
The madam’s Ocean Story, as it came to be known, made its first appearance at an underworld colony during the week-long-week-end celebrations. Two runners had died bringing it out of the desert. A third one, who may very well have murdered his former associates, sold it to the local gang and retired to a life of whores and synthetics. But what use does a warlord have for such treasures? What any gang truly needs is credits, and the influence these bring at the market and the LC above. Thus, an incredibly useless and expensive block of paper was brought up to be displayed at the foremost tablado for everyone to see. Well, not everyone…
Que son los tablados y a como el librito?[1]
Taller, wider, and wilder than regular stalls, tablados are the place to find those more exclusive, inaccessible wonders from the Old World. If you are looking for scrap paper, move along. For the discerning audience, c’mon up and take a step inside one of dozens of bidding boxes! Each box is equipped with a conveyor belt hovering two feet off the ground, displaying daily offers, discounts, and rare finds to a raving crowd of bidders and curious onlookers. Above the belt and atop the box, a jíbaro keeps one eye on the crowd and another on the vertical panels floating over the belt. One sale, and a panel is off, quickly replaced by a newer, better offer. Unless, of course, the item on sale is a complete, Old World book in mint condition, squeezed out from in between the ingrown hairs on our radioactive underbelly. I mean, what do you follow that with?
When Ocean Story arrived at the tablados, it caught the attention of Jaime Pistola, a loyal servant to the local madam. Were the book authentic, no number of credits could be enough to purchase it. If you were inclined to believe el chisme, the book was found inside a mostly sealed metal box floating deep in the desert. The box was one of hundreds spread across the water surface. For the runners who found this unexpected treasure, their search turned into a cruel lottery where any losing ticket meant an underwater death. Four went out. Only one returned. Whatever happened between beginning and end was of no concern to either the living or the dead, other than to drive up the final sale price. And who could blame the jíbaro for exaggerating an already enticing provenance story?
One of a Kind Old World Book for Sale!
Item is Mint!
Language, Unknown.
Includes Images! Tiene dibujitos!
Have you got credits to spare? Would you be here if you didn’t?
Be the envy of the madam herself with this once in a lifetime beauty!
Everyone in the crowd nodded. Most of them were deep in debt at the Leisure Center, but appearances and social status meant everything in New Miami, especially at los tablados. You were there to be seen. So were the guy and gal to your sides, and the fat lady standing behind you. Nobody dared utter a price, fearful to aim too high, or too low and miss the mark. Most of them had no idea what a book was, or what it did, or what it looked like before then. None of the pseudo-sophisticated softballs in the front row raised their hands, so Jaime was discrete when sending word to the LC with his debtor slave. No need to make a fuzz ahead of time. The bidding war, albeit pointless, would start once the madam dispatched her girls to the market and el chisme spread.
For the next half hour, bidding grinded to a halt thanks to Jaime’s undercover crew of misfits. One of them asked for information on the book’s contents, specifically what the images represented. El jíbaro didn’t know. Despite their ignorance, the crowd debated amongst themselves, happy to bypass any further scrutiny on pricing. Another of Jaime’s guys bid repeatedly using a long-defunct currency, causing the system to crash and reset every few minutes. El jíbaro was not pleased, but when the time came to silence and control the crowd, it wouldn’t be his voice that quieted them down.
An envoy from the LC emerged from the front row, the colors, ink, and elbow-blades giving her away. The madam had sent word. The ongoing auction was being monitored. Anyone already at the tablado was allowed to stay, but the growing crowds outside would miss out on the bidding. Representing the madam’s interests, it was up to Jaime Pistola to secure ownership of a one-of-a-kind Old World book. For the rest of them, the time had come to pretend being richer than the madam herself.
Exactly how many credits exchanged hands that afternoon is a matter of still ongoing debate. Those inside were sworn to secrecy. Those outside were bound by el chisme. They all agreed on what had always been a foregone conclusion. The madam won and her new book was as good as gone, ready to be displayed for VIP guests only at her nest. Speculation filled the debtors’ hearts with joy for weeks. Why had she paid so much for a stack of paper? What did the images inside the book represent? Could she cut it into pieces and sell them all to make a profit?
Once sold, it didn’t really matter what became of the book. The market lived on, and life in its corridors moved forward without really going anywhere. Such was the fate of our lives, purchases, and imaginary freedoms, and from the omnipotent madam to the lowest of her acolytes, that book sale was just another Friday afternoon at the tablados. In fact, for most of us, the stories from that sale made more sense and evoked warmer feelings than whatever actually happened. Why bother with unattainable treasures in a place full of Old World relics? Why dwell on either a present or future indistinguishable from each other, when yesterday could last forever in our minds, bending to the whims and trends of our beloved market?
Thus, we walked the corridors day and night, carried away by a streaming crowd that moved as one to the rhythms of unintelligible songs. From handkerchiefs to ancient books, the market had everything but a capacity to surprise us anymore. Unless… unless it is stories we were discussing, such as Old Flo’s colorful interpretation of Ocean Story. In that case, a short walk along the market’s corridors, hallways, and increasingly tighter tributaries could take you anywhere in the past. Whether these tales were true or not, that part would have been entirely up to you. After all, verifiable information shuts the doors to what could be an escape from who we were, so why not just discard it and listen to the made up tales of a crazy-good storyteller?
Ah yes, I’ve heard about the ocean… have you?
And I’m not talking about the madam’s ocean stories, which if we’re being honest, may or may not be true… No. Who needs books when there are still old worlders willing to share their tales and adventures in the dark sea!
[1] Que son los tablados y a como el librito: What are the tablados, and how much for the book?