Three Cosmic Units.
It didn't sound like much. And it wasn't.
I couldn't buy a meal with it on Earth, let alone in Sector 9. The old vending bots still took credits, and food stalls wouldn't know a Cosmic Unit from a metal washer. To the people around me, this system didn't exist.
But I felt it humming beneath my skin—a private economy bound to my soul.
For a moment, I just stood there in the alley, staring at my wrist. The circuitry pattern pulsed softly under the surface, golden light shifting like it was alive. No one else could see it. No one else would understand even if they did.
I'd just made a trade with a being from another planet. Possibly another galaxy.
And all it cost me was something looted off a corpse.
I didn't even know what the badge meant. Just some junk, probably worthless to anyone here. But not out there. Somewhere in the stars, someone named Lixa-Vo thought it was worth 3 C.U.
That meant something else too.
Value is relative.
I didn't need gold. I didn't need rare ores or advanced tech—not yet. All I needed was to find something worthless here… that was precious somewhere else.
My heart beat faster.
[EEP Rating: 1 (Scavenger Trader)][Next Rank: Trader (10 Transactions Required)][Perks Unlocked at Rank 2: Basic Analysis, Storage Expansion, Trade Log Filters]
Ten trades. That was my next goal.
But I had no other items. No new leads. The badge was a lucky break. I couldn't count on more corpses dropping gifts at my feet.
I needed to start thinking like a trader. Not just a survivor.
I left the body. Took only what I needed—some wiring, a scrap of cloth, the coin still etched into my wrist like a brand.
Back on the street, Sector 9 hadn't changed. Trash fires still burned in rusted barrels. Kids with sharpened sticks hunted rats in the alleys. Drones buzzed overhead, scanning for illegal movement. No one paid attention to me. I was just another face in the wreckage.
But inside, everything had shifted.
I stopped at the edge of the old market. There were stalls selling used boots, dented machine parts, broken datapads. And then there was Old Mira—a hunched woman with bony fingers and half a dozen trays of trash she called "ancient relics."
She'd been around since I was a kid. Everyone thought she was crazy.
That meant she'd have something cheap.
"Back already?" she rasped as I approached. Her single eye scanned me like a scanner bot. "Didn't get stabbed today?"
"Not yet." I glanced at her display. Bits of plastic, cracked crystals, twisted cables. A broken screen that probably hadn't worked in decades. "Still selling junk?"
She smiled like a skull.
"Always. One man's junk…"
"…is another galaxy's currency," I muttered under my breath.
I picked up a little cube. Silver, smooth, with one side etched in faded patterns. I didn't know what it did. I didn't care.
"Three credits," she said.
"I've got two."
Her eye twitched. "And half a soul?"
"Sold that yesterday."
She snorted and took the two credits.
[Item Acquired: Unknown Metallic Cube (Damaged)]
The system didn't react. No glowing message, no automatic value.
I walked away.
Back in my corner of the scrapyard, I sat cross-legged and opened the trade interface manually.
[EEP Menu > Upload Item > Manual Entry]Item: Unknown Metallic Cube (Damaged)Origin: Earth | Tier: Unverified | Function: Unknown
I hesitated. What if it wasn't worth anything? What if it damaged my rating? Could I be penalized?
Then I remembered the glowing badge. The system had taken it. If it accepted that, maybe…
[Upload Item?]
I tapped yes.
[Item Uploaded.][Trade Request Pending…]
Seconds passed.
Minutes.
I started to think maybe this one was too obscure. Too useless.
Then it came.
[D.T.R. Incoming:]– Sender: Therun Collective of Shell World Gavos-3– Offered: 1x Bio-Data Thread + 2.5 C.U.– Seeking: "Unknown Metallic Cube (Damaged)"
[Accept Trade?]
I blinked. Bio-Data Thread? What the hell was that?
I tapped the item name.
[Bio-Data Thread]– A neural interface material used for primitive AI constructs.– Tier: Common (Alien Tech)– Function: Compatible with early data-processing hardware.
I didn't understand most of that. But the C.U. amount told me enough.
Another 2.5 C.U., for an item I just bought with two Earth credits.
I accepted.
[Transaction Complete.][+2.5 C.U.][EEP Rating: 1 → 2 (Trader)][Perks Unlocked!]
My vision shimmered with a new system menu.
[Perk: Basic Item Analysis Unlocked]– Scan unknown items to estimate trade potential.[Perk: Storage Expansion Unlocked (10 Slots)][EEP Trade Log Filters Enabled]
My hands trembled. Not from fear. From hunger. From adrenaline. From possibility.
I wasn't rich. Not even close.
Five and a half C.U. wouldn't feed me for a day. I still had no shelter, no weapons, no allies.
But I had a system.
I had a way forward.
And unlike anyone else on this planet, I had access to an economy bigger than anything Earth could imagine.
I didn't need to be rich yet.
I just needed to survive long enough to keep trading.
One item at a time.
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