The lobby was hopping as I walked on through it. 

 

Someone had brought in large cloth bins on rollers, the sort of thing that you saw at the large municipal recycling plants, and they’d labeled them too. Inside them were scavenged parts and broken items, things that the NPC peons had collected from the broken residences of the building as well as from the streets around us. 

 

It hadn’t looked that full of junk, to be honest. But then again, I wasn’t some sort of NPC android who no doubt had the location of all of that junk fed direct to it via Deus Ex.

 

Another squad of NPCs were digging through the bins, grabbing this and that, then setting to work on it all at a large line of dining tables that someone had dragged and lined end to end like an immovable assembly line. The people there were a mix of NPCs and PCs according to my command log, putting stuff together via some game algorithm and gaining experience points in the process. 

 

Some of them had already achieved level 3! 

 

It was a hell of a revelation and something I planned to capitalize on when I could. Not everyone was fit for grinding experience points from random encounters.

 

I walked over to a cloth bin set aside from the others, Patches at my heels. Someone had markered the words “Lute” on it. Which, well, wrong spelling but whatever. Don’t look at me to get every word right on a spelling quiz. It was the intended meaning that mattered.

 

I peeked in and put my hands on the lip of it. A loot box appeared in my mental screen.

 

“Sir. Sir!” yelled a voice. I closed the loot box and was bombarded by the image of a man in a short-sleeve button-up and bowtie, his hand raised as he ran as if this were a classroom in need of a teacher’s pet. The enthusiasm on the man’s face surprised me. As did his body odor when he got closer.

 

“Don’t call me sir, I work for a living,” I said. “Also, you need to take a shower. Wow do you stink.” 

 

He stopped and gave a sheepish smirk.

 

“Yeah, sorry sir, been working hard. Just wanted to tell you that this bin is the common stuff. We’ve been manufacturing a lot of really nonsensical stuff given the items that we’ve collected. A riot shield, soooo many pipe guns, something called Poorman’s medkit. It’s cool and a lot of fun, to be honest. But we’ve been waiting for you to get back because, well, we want to try some of it out and you never told us if that is a thing we could do while you are gone!”

 

His enthusiasm shined in his cheeks and, to be honest, his stink as well. This was a guy like my old buddy Phillips. A warrant officer that had put ol’ Mr. Roboto back together after an IED had exploded him to chips and wires out in the sandy wastes.

 

I stuck out my hand and he peered down at it as if it were the most exotic thing he’d ever seen.

 

“You’re supposed to shake it. I’m saying yes. By the way, what’s your name?”

 

“Nolan. Nolan Locke.” 

 

That drew me up short. Out in the field we all had a lot of books and FMs that we read in-between games of cards and smoke breaks. The name was familiar. It brought up images of army-style acronyms bent into dirty shapes. Then it hit me, and my jaw dropped.

 

“That guy who self-published those books with the different characters and all of that.”

 

He stared at me and I ran the sentence back through my head. Crap.

 

“I mean, the books with the nanoblocks, and the D.I.C.K. and all of that stuff.”

 

He lit up. “Right straight. Most people didn’t like them but those same people are probably dead now. They should have paid attention to the series. They might have learned a thing or two. What’d ya think?”

 

“Five-star work man. Had us in stitches. Anyways, yeah, set up a research division to try the stuff out. I’ll put you in charge of that if you want. And distribute it all if it works well. Break it apart and craft other stuff if it doesn’t. Now, you said this bin is the common loot. What else did you make?”

 

I had to admit, I was excited. Maybe I’d come out of here with some sort of super plasma cannon and not even need to worry about the weapons market.

 

Nolan shifted his stance, staring at me with eyes that almost certainly had drinks thrown at them by women at the club at the end of sentences such as “What the heck?” and “Stop staring at me!”

 

The sort of glare that Phillips always had when talking to you about tech-stuff.

 

“Just one thing. But the thing is toned green in the loot box, and, well, you should really come take a look at it.”

 

I grinned. When you are a grunt with so much combat stuck between your ears that it is constantly falling out of you and into people’s faces, that’s the sort of thing you want to hear. Whatever the game rules, I knew when to duck, when to dodge, and when to reload.

 

“Lead the way,” I said, his eyes bulging even more.

 

The man turned and I followed, across the lobby turned factory floor. He vee-lined at a weird angle, hip-skirting a couple of edges before stopping at a door that used to be the manager’s office. He looked back at me over his shoulder, his head not quite able to twist far enough to meet my eyes. I noticed that he did nothing to rectify that problem, instead staring at one of my meaty shoulders and delivering his dialogue.

 

“I posted a guy inside. This is seriously some cool loot. Made with a bunch of boxes of staples, chunks of scrap metal, and the springs of a sofa. An NPC just zoomed in on it and worked it hard.”

 

He opened the door and I saw that the room had been cleared of all furniture and paintings. The walls were a blue-steel blue and against the far end hung the scantiest chainmail bikini that I’d ever seen, a bearded fat man lounging against the wall next to it. The links were shaped like hearts, and there was even a giant bulls-eye where the lady’s happyland would happen to reside.

 

I stared daggers at it, waiting for some handler at the mental hospital that I was obviously suffering fever dreams in to shock me into reality.

 

But, no dice. There it still was.

 

Nolan was jabbering excitedly. Saying stuff like “It adds one-hundred fifty hitpoints to your base total. I know because I tried it on. Also, has special buffs like immunity to chafing and free drinks at the club.”

 

It auto-inspected as I stared in horror at it. 

Classic Chainmail Bikini (Rare enhanced armor)

While worn, gain the following: +150 hit points, +3 damage resistance, +2 Charm to beings that might find you attractive, immunity to chafing, +50% chance to have drinks bought for you at a nightclub.

 

Didn’t matter. I was not going to wear that thing. I saw immediately what he was thinking — I could wear it under my clothes and run about all manly with my trench coat and whatever else. But not on your life. Not my thing.

 

It did give me an idea though. 

 

“Does it resize?” I asked. In most games they didn’t bother with body measurements. You got loot, it fit. No worries about hitting the tailor and getting it all trimmed and refit. It just worked.

 

Nolan gave me another one of his giant-octupi glares. “I, well, I don’t know.”

 

I strode forward and grabbed the set off the wall.

 

“Patches, heel!” I commanded. Patches sat on his haunches, his trusting eyes staring up at my own. Sorry for this, boy, I thought as I pushed the whole Victoria’s Secret combat dream towards his body.

 

It not only entered his inventory . . . he donned it a moment later. Autofitted, it clung to his doggy curves in a style that I immediately rated holy-mother-of-god along with no-way.

 

Dude even barked and slobbered my hand. Patches was ecstatic.

 

I turned over to Nolan who was staring at the dog with those crazy eyes of his. “Thanks, man. I appreciate the find and the move. Not sure I’m so happy about how it makes Patches look but a 150 hp are a lot and if it keeps him alive, it is worth it.”

 

The bearded man laughed, but shut up after I gave him a look worth a thousand words. Nolan, though, didn’t seem to notice any of it.

 

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you. This world is awesome. We’re going to make so much cool stuff!”

 

I opened up my command menu and made a new LT and a new division. Then I selected his name and opened up command functions, giving him permission to add people to his division as he saw fit.

 

“Good job, Nolan. I can’t wait to see what you bring me next.”