While waiting for some bureaucratic processes to process, I decide to increase my knowledge of what I can spend my apparently minuscule stipend on by leaving my one-bedroom apartment (that's all it is, one bedroom - it's not like I need a bathroom or kitchen) and using public transport to visit a local indoor flea market. I have a few things I definitely want to buy for myself, even used, if I can find them: spare parts for my rat-bot chassis, electronic hardware pieces that I can use to try to build an adaptor to let me use the micro-USB port on the bottom of my skull for more than just recharging without risking malware infections, maybe some scraps of cloth to try to sew into doll-sized-but-rat-shaped outfits. (Sure, nudity is perfectly legal, and it's not like I have any anatomy I care about hiding, but there are several useful psychological tricks I can use based around whether I'm wearing a sharply-tailored suit versus a more casual outfit.)

After running a few numbers, using the cellphone my caseworker, Jerome, arranged for me as a calculator, I also want to see how hard it would be for me to build myself a parachute without any of the nigh-omnipresent flying cameras gathering the data required to figure out that I'm building any such thing for myself. Sure, my chassis may be built of a wunder-material that's less likely to break than anything from my pre-death time - but I'm tiny and easy to be swept or blown off a high balcony, and 'less likely to break' doesn't mean my CPU would survive a multi-story fall. And if I can make myself a parachute... then given the wunder-batteries and wunder-motors used by all those flying cameras, and since I'm so small and lightweight, I just might be able to build myself a powered paraglider to join them in the air. Of course, that depends on whether the parts for any such thing are within my price range.

Nobody seems to be batting their eyes at the old maid-bot being piloted by a rat-bot looking out through her eyes. That's probably because, at least by the standards I'm used to, I'm one of the /less/ interesting beings walking around BosWash. (Speaking of which, I should look into whether any loopholes exist in the conversion between the governments that were around when I was a Canadian citizen and the system in place now. Having been dead at the time, it's possible that I could argue in a court that I wasn't covered by some piece of legislation, thus making me 'the last Canadian', thus giving me an extra card in my hand to negotiate a better deal for myself with.)

I've already picked up a few bits and bobs and stuffed them in the RV-bot's workshop/cargo area, behind where most humanoids have a belly, when I come to the bookseller's stall, and hit the brakes.

The stall is big enough to have a couple of aisles, with shelves reach up higher than the RV-bot's arms can stretch, and if my face was built to be capable of performing a fond smile, I would. (I make a note to see about updating the RV-bot's face and controls, so I could, say, push some emoticon buttons from the head-cockpit and have the appropriate emotional signals shown to whoever's looking.) I carefully pilot my way into the libro-canyons, practicing the controls that let me look higher and lower at the various themes that are on offer, some familiar - including some specific editions I've seen before, apparently Xanth never went out of style - some less so. The guy running the stall is seated behind a glass case, containing racks of what, for him, are probably antique e-book readers of various levels of complexity and of various degrees of being merged into super-duper-genius smart-phones.

He asks if there's anything in particular I'm looking for, I mention my lack of space to store books that are bigger than I am and my wish that I hadn't lost my digital library while I was dead. He seems curious about certain of the details of my status. "So, let me get this straight. You had the legal right to format-shift any books you owned into digital form, you could even burn the physical copies and keep the digital ones, and there was no way for anyone else to keep track of which ones you owned?"

"Yep. I tried to make arrangements for my stuff to be preserved when I died, but that seems to have fallen through at some point while I was dead. I'd be happy to rebuild my old library - except, well, I'm still looking for a few basics, like useful employment to get enough cash for more than the essentials."

"A job, hm? Hm... tell you what, how about I hire you to run this place while I get some lunch? I think I can get you something worth your time on my way back."

I would have been happy enough to do it for free - people-watching (for a very generous definition of 'people') was as much a part of why I was out and about as getting anything done - so after a quick back-and-forth about responsibilities and how hard to haggle and similar stuff (most of which was advising any customers the owner would be back shortly), I took over the stall for half an hour. During which I practice using the controls for the RV-bot's arms to flip pages on some mid-20th-century scifi magazines that had fallen prey to heavy zeerust. And a moderate bit of foxing.

( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxing )

The bookseller returns, we swap places again, and he slides across the glass case what I can recognize as The Future's version of a micro-SD card, along with one of the almost-a-genius-phone e-readers. "Here you go - when you read it in private, I'm sure you'll think this is fair return, and come by if you have any questions."

After some further pleasantries, I resume my driving through the market, picking up a few other things with a high-interest/low-cost ratio, and head back to my apartment to start fiddling with my new possessions.

As it turns out, what the bookseller gave me on that memory chip was, well, everything from before I died. Every book and magazine published. Every TV show and movie broadcast. Every radio program. Heck, every painting and wax cylinder and patent and a few stranger things. Plus Future-level software to sort and skim through the whole thing.

What was also on the memory stick was a short text file, asking that I demonstrate my competence at privacy and plausible deniability by keeping the source of where I got this data to myself, and preferably to not even let anyone know I had said data at all, unless I trusted them enough for them to keep a similar level of discretion. And promising that should I demonstrate a proper combination of responsibility and thoughtfulness, then soon enough I'd be able to leave probationary status and gain access to a better selection of material.

Phrased another way, I'd just been invited to join The Future's version of a 1337 warez group.