Exploration revealed that all of their possessions had been placed in appropriate places.  The grill was now situated behind the kitchen, right next to a back door.  The shelves and all the food they held were in the cold storage room.  Along with additional built-in shelves that came with the room.    The pile of blankets and weapons, as well as the tables, chairs, mattresses, and the rest were deposited in the circle.  The system had apparently decided to leave it up to the humans to redistribute them.

Nancy and Chloe chose the sleeping quarters farthest from the door.  Amanda and Lilly chose the next two.  Sam and Meg picked the next one.   Allistor chose the one closest to the door, with Sean and Robert Edward choosing the next two - their unspoken intent to be the first line of defense between the gates and the others. Sandy, sneaking a covert glance at Robert Edward, chose the quarters next to his.

They gave the mattresses to the ladies and Meg and Sam, helping them move those into their quarters.  They agreed to retrieve more of them the following day.  Everybody grabbed a blanket, and Meg tossed each person a roll of toilet paper with a smile.  With a good bit of studying ahead of them, they each retired to their quarters.  Allistor had just taken a shower and settled himself on his bedroom floor.  He was using his backpack as a temporary pillow, berating himself for not grabbing a few of those while he was out.  He was feeling comfy in a pair of the sheriff’s black fatigues and had just opened up his interface to begin checking out the open market information when he dozed off.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Working the System

Allistor woke with both an urgent need to urinate and a sore back.  Sleeping on the cold stone did not agree with him.   A quick look at his interface told him it was 3 am.  He’d fallen asleep early, exhausted, and slept a full eight hours.   With his morning ablutions completed, he left his quarters and went back to the big table out in the circle.  He sat there and pulled up the open market research, figuring he was much less likely to fall asleep again sitting up.

The first thing he checked on was food pricing.  If they failed to salvage more food in the coming days, and were unlucky in hunting, he wanted to know what kinds of food were available and what they cost.

When he did a simple search for ‘consumables’ the results list was hundreds of thousands of items long.  He narrowed it to ‘food’, and the list cut down to just under a hundred thousand.  He decided to go the other direction and get very specific.   “Food items safe for human consumption.”  This time the list was just over a hundred items.