The place made me floaty with overwhelm. Best to focus and be on with my errand. I snaked through the media sector, where every surface was lit up or moving or making noise. Sound zones overlapped, two or three songs playing at once, one dominating, then fading as I moved from kiosk to kiosk. It was never really quiet at Unca Joe, but this was an all-out ear assault. Trays of disks and cubes and sticks, plus the rechargeables to run them, all of it second- or third-hand, no better than a picker’s haul. Here, the new stuff was under locks and still in packaging, behind barricading counters.

I cruised stall after stall, looking for a bookseller. No sign of print or paper. Even the ads, price lists, and sale signs were digital. Total waste of power!

In the end, I had to ask. I picked an older vendor listing ‘classic’ e-books. Her booth was deserted, maybe because her signs were handwritten and she wasn’t blaring music and video all over the place. Elbows propped on the greasy counter, chin sunk in her hands, she looked like her last friend in the world was the screen she was glued to.

I cleared my throat. No response. You’d think a customer would be more interesting than some forty-year-old soap opera. “Excuse me?”

She turned on her stool. “Yeah?”

I made sure to use complete, uptown sentences. “Do you have books for sale?”

She waved at her grimy stacks of e-books and readers. “All the best, all the best prices.”

“No, I mean real books. Like, in print. On paper.”

She blinked. “You mean, hard copy? Wrong sector. Try Antiques.”

“Right. Thanks.” I hoped she might offer directions. But she’d already turned back to her screen. No wonder her business was slack.

On I went. I spotted some denfolk in the food sector, trading for meat and veggies or other staples. Ladysmiths, from their sculpted beards, and two clean-cut women from Empire State, den sign worn on their shoulders like military rank. With Florida part of the Caribbean and the Mississippi regularly backing up across the plains, citrus, sugar, and flour were the hardest to come by, never mind afford. At Joe, we sweetened with our own honey. We’d had success with Meyer lemons on our roof, but the crop was small. So far, oranges were a stretch. I slid in closer to listen.

“Buy it now,” a grinning vendor advised, weighing a sack of Canadian corn for one of the Empire women. “Gonna be harder getting it.”

She had a close eye on his scale. “Why’s that? Tariffs again?”

“Nah. Who’d enforce ’em?” The vendor handed over the sack. “What I hear is, they think it’s time to start keeping it for themselves.”