Paying Back Potion Debt [Bell]

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"Eh hehe... Sorry."

Orion went from being uncomfortable about his past to being embarrassed about his genuinely poor attempt to deflect the question. He should have known that Bell would never fall for something like that. She was an intelligent and clever woman, and not the kind of person to be easily fooled by a ruse.

"Yeah. I... am a little uncomfortable talking about it in the open. And it's not tragic, I think. It kinda is. I dunno."

He rubbed the back of his neck. then shook himself out of his funk.

"But, uh, where were we?

Right! The fabrication stations you see back there are small scale commercial variants. Probably custom made to look nice. Larger, industrial versions are used in factories for... pretty much anything that isn't metal. Plastics. Synthetic materials. That kind of stuff."

Now when he tried to poorly deflect the question of his past, he was not kidding about a hover board. There actually were quite a few on display on what would ostensibly be the "outdoor" toy section. In Bell's time, it would be the section filled with bikes and scooters and skateboards. He walked on over to the nearest one and started flipping through the selection kiosk, which was comprised of a touch screen display. It was bright and eye-catching and had all sorts of tabs for customization and selection.

"You think you might one of these to bring back, Bell? It could make a nice mode of transportation around the city~ Or..."

He pointed over to another display which held something that looked like an even smaller version of the fabrication stations that were behind the glass. It was brightly colored and only had two arms and one stage though.

"... If you really want something to pick apart, you could get that Fabricator toy. It's like one of those make-your-own-jewelry or candy toys you have in your time. A kid-friendly version of those fabricator back there. All you need is resource packs to fuel it."
 
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Apple Magpie

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For the moment, Bell let Orion go. They were in a busy place after all, and she supposed it wasn’t the best place to talk about it, so she just moved on.

“So how much does all of this cost? I mean, with enough materials, you could probably furnish your entire house with one well-sized machine and a good computer. Or whatever you use to design the things that come out of these things.” She was starting to sound a little clueless, but, well, she honestly didn’t know, so it couldn’t be helped.

“You’re asking me to buy a hoverboard? It’s not that it’s not cool, but…” Actually, hoverboards weren’t all that impressive to her, compared to some of this other stuff. It couldn’t be that hard, right? A little bit of air, a system to balance the thing… broomsticks usually worked through the magical energy of the rider, so a hoverboard would work through electricity or something, she figured. “I’ve never been very good in the air.”

Oh, sweet. It was obvious the little fabricator thing wasn’t as awesome as the ones used elsewhere, but it seemed to operate on the same principles, for the most part, and to be honest, she kind of wanted one. Still, she gave Orion a look. “You keep saying I can get things, but I can’t. I mean, my currency probably wouldn’t work here even if I’d brought enough for the price tags, right? I’d have to have you buy it.” She grinned at the concept of finally getting him to pay for something. “And then I can lug it back to your place and tinker, right?” He did have a house, right?
 
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"The machines themselves are pretty expensive already. The toy fabricator is probably the cheapest version available to anyone,"

He casually flipped through the digital catalog of hover boards. Once upon a time, Orion had been quite enthralled with the idea of having one, and even had a favorite brand he would have liked to buy one from. But he never got the chance to own one, and after he got the car the novelty faded.

"The raw materials are the most expensive parts, and prevent everyday people from just having a fabricator for each house hold. I think every company does it differently, and secretly, but the methods by which they... pack the materials for usage is an expensive one.

Orion chuckled and raised an eyebrow at Bell's uncertainty with a hover board.

"Are you sure? You did mmmmmildly well driving my car back there."

It was her loss if she did not want to get a really cool hover board to take back to her time. Though he was not certain if the brass would even allow Bell to take anything back with her through the portal.

Her grin was not lost on him, and he happily approached the Toy Fabricator display, ready to enter whatever qualities she wanted for her personal toy.

"I did say I owe you for all the potions, so consider anything you want on me. It's not often I go on a shopping spree anyway, so I can spare some change.

I bet you want the full package, right? All the features? A ton of extra material packs?"
 
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Apple Magpie

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“Hmm… well, someone should do it. That’s what money is for, right? Blowing it on stupid things you can’t get otherwise.”

There was something she didn’t quite get, though. “So – if the raw materials are so expensive, wouldn’t it be cheaper to make things the old way? How do they make up the difference?”

She scowled at Orion’s chuckle. “Look, rather than a hover board, I’d probably be better off with a hover raft. Man, the thing’s so small, it feels like a given I’ll fall off.” Heck, Bell wouldn’t trust a bicycle. “Look, it was totally in to imbue with old barrels and stuff with wind when I was a kid. I’ve had enough of that sort of thing for a lifetime.” She made a face. They weren’t the best of memories, honestly, and she was quick to shake them off.

“You sure? Sweet. Get me everything. And you’re getting me a meal too, of course. And I want to see your house, and I want to mess with your household appliances.” Was she asking a lot? Sure. But he’d said he was willing, and if he was going to back out now he had something coming.
 
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"The old way involves paying people. Automated robots and assembly lines don't ask for pay, benefits, or safety. That's where the money is saved."

It was a reality that, to Orion, could be seen coming a mile away in Bell's time. So it was odd that some developed countries in her time were more concerned with jobs being lost to other humans when machines were clearly stealing more jobs. Robots may be expensive up front, but they pay for themselves in no time at all.

He quirked an eyebrow at the notion of a hover raft. There was no such thing in the toy store, maybe in a hardware though. Floating pallets and hovering dollies for carrying large objects could have served the same purpose. They were wide and very stable. They lacked any kind of speed however.

"Alrighty. We'll pick up your toy at the front desk and then head off to lunch."

Orion was quick the touch screen, much like how he typed things out on his SAGE glove. The kiosk made a happy little ding and they were set to go. The toy fabricator, unfortunately, was not one of the toys that was available for live assembly. Again, he held his hand out for her.

"And it's not so much a house as it is an apartment. As you can imagine, space is a bit of premium now. I mean, it's always been a premium in the city at any time, but even more so now."
 
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Apple Magpie

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“Sounds too complicated to me. Blech! Commercialism. Too much effort to think about. What do all of you guys do now anyways if you can’t make stuff? Everyone in offices or something?”

“Gotcha. I don’t know what’s good to eat around here, so just throw me somewhere I don’t have to act like a lady, alright?” She’d been in a nice, quiet restaurant a grand total of one time, after which she’d absolved to never ever do it again. Actually, she rarely ate out anyways, unless buying a sandwich and eating it on the job counted.

“And you’re carrying everything, of course.” Really, to her it was a given, but she figured she might as well say it. It wasn’t an issue of men or women or the fact they were on a “date” or anything – he’d said he’d give her anything he wanted, and she was going to take advantage of it for as long as they were in this foreign place.

After a thought, she took the offered hand. No space, huh…“Hmm… but you’re floating. You should have the whole surface of the Earth to work with now, shouldn’t you?”
 
Critical

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"Well, get used to commercialism, honey. It's pretty much a way of life here, and people still do front-of-the-store stuff and other jobs. Robots only replaced the large-scale manufacturing and heavy physical labor jobs."

All of Bell's questions were quickly making Orion think a little differently of his own time. Familiarity tended to make any situation seem mundane and not worth any thought, no matter what was going on. But the minute someone complete foreign to it started forcing some critical thought, suddenly everything seemed equally alien and unknown. He had thought about it before, but nowhere near as in-depth as Bell was making him. Corporations really DID run everyone's lives. People really WERE super frivolous. What DID people do now that most manual labor jobs are gone?

Ironically, Orion was again being distracted from the questions, but this time by the presence of beautiful Bell. More than being easy on the eyes, she was quite stimulating to talk to and just be around. No wonder he kept calling their outing a date.

"Earth's population kinda exploded after a few medical advances, and then everyone moved to the cities. Suburbs are practically extinct since everyone wants to live in a tower. And like I said..."

At the checkout counter, Orion paid for her toys and hefted the bags with everything in them.

"... We kinda screwed nature so... Lets just say its not that pretty beyond the cities..."
 
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“Well.” Her expression clouded a bit. So this was the future ahead of them, huh? Was it completely unavoidable? She wasn’t the selfish person who would say “Since I met you, it’s worth it.” If there was some way of guaranteeing a better future just by sacrificing one person, she would probably do it.

But this was probably far in the future, and so it was irrelevant to her anyways, unpleasant as it might be.

“It didn’t look like conservation efforts were going that badly. So what, did people just give up or something?” She scowled, but only for a moment. ”Hey, rather than eating out – you can’t cook, can you?”
 
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They did not have to go all the way back to the parking structure to get back to his car. Just outside the front doors, Orion tapped out a quick command on his glove, after setting the bags down down for a moment, and the car had swiftly drifted along the surface "roads" to park itself nicely in front of them. Bell may have noticed that the "roads" in question were mostly surfaces parallel to the usual walking areas. These areas were delineated with road markings and signs, and the car followed a particular dotted line exactly. While cars needed some human input to fly properly, on the ground, they could drive themselves within reason when pathing systems were embedded in the surface.

He loaded up the car and held the door open for Bell once more.

"I can cook. I dunno how well you might judge it, but I can cook. And you wanna try drivin' to my place?"

Regardless, he would take his seat after Bell did and they would be off on the way to his apartment with the car guiding the way. His home had already been programmed into the car's computer, so Bell would find it easy navigating the car to it.

"I wouldn't say people 'gave up'...But they essentially did. Conservation efforts could not keep up with the booming population and the usage of technology. Even when we did switch to mostly green technologies, we pretty much stripped the world of whatever it gave us. Replacing nature is a much slower process than using it, y'know?"
 
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“What are you standing around for? We hafta go get the – oh.” Oooooh. Within a few seconds Bell was on her hands and knees, peering underneath the car and trying to figure out if there was a sensor or something on the bottom to check where the lines were. But it was just too sleek to figure out – all the things that actually did things had been tucked away so that even the bottom of the car looked nice. What a pain. How did anyone fix these things?

As quickly as she’d gotten on the ground, Bell popped right back up onto her feet and dusted herself off. “Right then. You’re cooking, and you’re showing me the ingredients beforehand, too.”

Bell settled herself into the driver’s seat, but realized soon enough that the car could handle things itself. “…Man, this isn’t even driving.” She leaned back and made herself comfortable. “Hmmm. But like, don’t people in educated countries have fewer kids and whatnot, start shipping them in from elsewhere? Or did things just get so easy kids weren’t a hassle anymore, and they figured the more the merrier?”

“Well, I dunno. Despite what you guys seem to think, magic can’t do the impossible. It just does things you haven’t figured out are possible yet, so maybe your technology is already at that level and there aren't any quick fixes now – you might just be screwed. I mean, I hate to say it, but. Or, well, maybe you just tell people to have less kids, take away their fancy toys, force them to live off what's left of the land. But you'd have to ask a terrorist for that.”
 
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