Reo stared at the two N$200 notes on his desk, one original and one perfect copy, and felt his entire worldview restructure itself in real time.
The Guild woman had said don't replicate currency, that's a felony, but she'd said it the way airport security tells you not to make bomb jokes, like it was a formality everyone ignored. Reo wasn't everyone. He spent seventeen years following rules that never protected him, staying quiet in a house that punished him for breathing too loud, and where had that gotten him?
Nowhere.
He picked up both bills, held them to the light. The watermarks matched. The security strips were identical. Even the serial numbers were the same, which should've been impossible but apparently his power didn't care about what should or shouldn't be possible.
'Okay, so I can make money. What now?'
The smart move would be to go slow, replicate a few bills here and there, spend them carefully at different stores so nobody noticed a pattern. But he had never been good at patience, not when something actually mattered, and this mattered more than anything in his life ever had.
He pulled out his notebook, the one where he'd been planning his computer store for the past five years. Page after page of inventory lists, supplier contacts, price comparisons, store layouts, all of it written in the desperate handwriting of someone who knew they were planning a fantasy but couldn't stop themselves.
The initial investment for a small store would be around N$150,000 minimum. That covered first and last month's rent, business licenses, initial inventory, basic furniture and display cases. He'd need another N$50,000 as buffer for the first few months before the store started turning profit.
N$200,000 total.
He looked at the two bills on his desk, did the math, and felt something between laughter and panic bubble up in his throat.
One thousand replications.
He'd done five replications today and felt like death. His power had a stamina cost, and apparently that cost scaled with complexity. A phone took more energy than a pen, a laptop charger took more than a notebook. Currency was somewhere in the middle, maybe thirty seconds per bill, and after each one he felt a little more drained.
'So I can't do a thousand in one sitting. How many can I do per day?'
Only one way to find out.
---
He spent the next three hours testing his limits.
Turns out he could manage about twenty replications before his body started screaming at him to stop. After the twentieth N$200 note, his hands were shaking, his vision was blurring at the edges, and the pressure in his chest felt less like potential and more like something trying to claw its way out of his ribcage.
He collapsed on his bed, surrounded by N$4,000 in replicated currency, and did the math again.
Twenty bills per day meant N$4,000 per day. To reach N$200,000, he needed fifty days.
Less than two months.
'I can do this,' he thought, staring at the ceiling. 'I can actually fucking do this.'
Someone pounded on his door.
"Reo!" His father's voice, slurred and angry. "Open this door!"
He scrambled off the bed, scooping up the replicated bills and shoving them under his mattress. He opened the door a crack, and his father pushed through, nearly knocking him over.
"Where's your mother's cigarettes?" His father swayed in the doorway, eyes bloodshot and unfocused. "She says you took them."
"I didn't take anything."
"Don't lie to me, boy." His father moved closer, and Reo caught the smell of whiskey and unwashed clothes. "You think you're special now? You think because you got some useless power you can disrespect this family?"
'Useless power,' he had to suppress a laugh.
"I didn't take her cigarettes," he said again, keeping his voice level. "Check my room if you want."
His father did exactly that, tearing through his closet and dresser with the casual violence of someone who'd done this a hundred times before. Reo watched him, hands clenched at his sides, and calculated how many more days until he could afford to leave.
Fifty days of this. Fifty more days of pretending he was nothing while he built everything.
His father gave up after five minutes, finding nothing because there was nothing to find, and stumbled back toward the door. He paused in the doorway, turned back to look at Reo with something that might have been disappointment or might have been recognition.
"You're just like me," his father said quietly. "Powerless. Worthless. Doesn't matter what the government says, you'll never be anything."
Then he left, and Reo stood alone in his destroyed room, surrounded by his scattered belongings, and thought about the N$4,000 hidden under his mattress.
'I'm nothing like you, and I'm going to prove it.'
---
The next morning, Reo went shopping.
Not for computer parts, not yet, that would come later. First he needed to establish a pattern, make sure his replicated currency actually worked in the real world before he committed to anything big. So he went to Wernhil Park Mall, picked the busiest stores, and bought random shit he didn't need.
A new phone case at the electronics store. N$150.
A pair of sneakers at Edgars. N$800.
Lunch at Nando's. N$120.
Every transaction, he expected someone to notice, expected alarms to go off or security to grab him or the cashier to squint at the bill and call their manager, but nothing happened. The money worked perfectly, got accepted without question, and Reo walked out of each store with his purchases and his heartbeat eventually returning to normal.
By the afternoon, he'd spent N$2,000 of replicated currency across eight different stores, and nobody had noticed anything wrong.
'This actually works,' he thought, sitting in the food court with his Nando's and watching people walk past. 'Holy shit, this actually works.'
His phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number: Your Guild registration has been approved. Report to Windhoek Central Guild for orientation on Monday, 09:00.
He stared at the message, and something cold settled in his stomach.
Guild orientation meant paperwork, meant questions about his power, meant government officials looking at him too closely. The woman at the evaluation had said Replication-type powers were rare, which meant they'd want to track what he could do, monitor how he used it, maybe even assign him to some manufacturing job where they could control his output.
They'd find out about the money eventually. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually someone would notice the pattern, run an audit, check serial numbers, and Reo would go from awakened to arrested in the span of a conversation.
He had fifty days to build his store. The Guild orientation was in three days.
'Change of plans,' he opened his notebook to a blank page.
He didn't have fifty days anymore. He had three.
---
He spent the next seventy-two hours in a state of controlled panic.
Day one: twenty replications in the morning, twenty more in the evening. His body screamed at him after the first set and threatened to shut down after the second, but he pushed through, drank energy drinks and ate protein bars and ignored the way his hands shook when he held the bills. N$8,000 total.
Day two: same routine, except his stamina was slightly better, like his body was adapting to the strain. Twenty in the morning took less time than yesterday, twenty in the evening felt almost easy. N$16,000 total.
Day three: he managed twenty-five in the morning before hitting his limit, took a three-hour nap, then pushed out another twenty-five in the evening. His power was definitely getting stronger, the replications happening faster, the stamina cost decreasing. N$26,000 total.
Three days, N$50,000 in replicated currency, and he felt like he'd aged a year.
Sunday night, he sat on his floor surrounded by bills organized into neat stacks, and made a list of everything he needed to do before the Guild orientation tomorrow.
One: find a store location. Two: negotiate a lease. Three: establish a business license. Four: source initial inventory. Five: set up bank accounts under a business name so the money trail didn't lead directly to him.
All of that in less than twelve hours, because once the Guild got their hooks in him, they'd monitor everything.
'This is insane,' he thought, but he was already pulling up rental listings on his phone, already calculating which suppliers would take cash payments, already drafting a business plan he could pitch to a landlord.
He'd spent seventeen years being powerless, being nothing, being the kid everyone looked past.
He had twelve hours to become someone they couldn't ignore.
---
The store was a shithole.
It was a narrow space on Independence Avenue, sandwiched between a cellphone repair shop and a takeaway joint, maybe two hundred square feet of concrete floors and peeling paint and a broken air conditioner that probably hadn't worked since 2015. The landlord was a short Afrikaner man named Pieter who looked at Reo like he was already regretting this meeting.
"You're seventeen," Pieter said, not a question.
"I turn eighteen in two months," he replied, which was technically true and also completely irrelevant. "I have first and last month's rent in cash."
Pieter's expression shifted slightly. "How much is the rent?"
"You tell me."
They were standing outside the store at seven in the morning, and Independence Avenue was already filling with early commuters and street vendors setting up their stands. Reo had found the listing online at midnight, called the number at 6 AM, and somehow convinced Pieter to meet him before work.
Pieter looked at the store, then at Reo, then back at the store. "N$6,000 per month. Three months upfront, non-refundable deposit."
"N$5,000 per month," Reo countered. "Two months upfront, refundable deposit if I leave in good standing."
"You're a kid with no business experience trying to open a tech store in a space with no foot traffic and a broken AC. N$6,000, take it or leave it."
Reo pulled out N$18,000 in cash and set it on the hood of Pieter's car.
Pieter stared at the money, then at Reo, then back at the money.
"Where did you get this?"
"Birthday savings," he lied smoothly. "My parents have been saving for my business since I was born. They want me to succeed."
It was the kind of lie that sounded stupid but people wanted to believe, the kind that made landlords see a responsible kid with family support instead of a seventeen-year-old with replicated currency and a felony waiting to happen.
Pieter picked up the cash, counted it slowly, and sighed.
"You need a business license. You need insurance. You need—"
"I'll handle it," he said. "Can I move in today?"
"Today?" Pieter laughed, then realized Reo was serious. "Jesus. Yeah, okay, today. Let me get the paperwork from my office, meet me back here in an hour."
He left, and Reo stood alone in front of his store, his actual fucking store, and felt something massive and terrifying settle over him.
This was real now.
He had a Guild orientation in two hours, N$32,000 left in replicated currency, and a two-hundred-square-foot shithole that smelled like mold.
He looked at the peeling paint, the cracked windows and the broken AC, and grinned.
'Let's fucking go.'