Chapter 157

Chapter 157: The Captain’s Big Shopping Trip

Duncan had meant what he said—after he said goodbye to Shirley, he really did go to the shops near the Crossroad District to buy a bicycle for Nina.

At the same time, he planned to finally do something he had long intended to do but had been delaying again and again: open a bank account for himself.

Inside the Pland City-State Bank, Duncan sat waiting while the clerk at the front counter prepared the last form for him. Waiting was dull, so he let his attention wander as he observed his surroundings.

Perhaps because it was not a rest day, and also because few citizens from the Lower City needed to handle banking business, the hall felt rather empty. The hall itself was not very large, and of the five service windows, three were idle. Staff in black uniforms chatted idly behind the unused windows. Bright electric lamps shone on the glass of the counters, casting a lazy sheen.

Duncan’s gaze moved upward. He saw long cast-iron pipes rising from behind those counters. The pipes went straight up like slender pillars into the ceiling, then ran neatly in parallel and extended somewhere behind the hall. A deep, rhythmic clicking came from under the floor, as if some mechanical system was running down below.

The clerk who was preparing his forms finally confirmed the last item. She handed the papers to Duncan and said in a routine tone: “Please check that everything is correct, then sign at the bottom. Your account number and seal pattern are on there. The handling fee for a bearer account is 6 sola and 5 peso.”

Duncan took the form and looked over the contents with interest. His mind filled at once with guesses about the city-states’ civilization and their economic system, but he was no expert in such things. After letting his thoughts wander for a short while, he focused on the end of the form. He memorized the short string of numbers there, signed his name, and handed the form and the fee back across the counter.

The clerk took the form, glanced at it casually, then placed it on a punch-card machine. With a crisp series of clicks, the punch-card machine punched a dense array of holes into the blank margin along the edge. Then she rolled up the form, stuffed it into a metal cylinder, and fed it into one of the pipes beside the counter.

There was a metallic clank. The pipe sealed itself. The hiss of steam pressure and the sound of something speeding along inside the pipe reached Duncan’s ears. His eyes followed the sound upward and saw one of the curved pipes near the ceiling tremble slightly—the document had been sent somewhere far away.

“Please wait a bit,” the clerk behind the counter said casually. “If the pipes are working properly today and the machine at the other end happens to be in good condition too, you’ll get your receipt within half an hour. But if that fault light over there comes on, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

It was a peculiar process.

To Duncan, the efficiency seemed nothing special. But to this world, this was already the advanced achievement of city-state civilization in the Deep Sea era.

He watched everything with a mix of curiosity and emotion, and at the same time he heard the clerks chatting.

A young man at the next window was sighing: “I heard the Truth Academy is talking with the main branch. They want to install some kind of new machine that can boost the main branch’s processing efficiency by several times…”

“That’s called a large Sorting Engine. The city-state bank in Morka has been using them for a long time. There are some in Pland too. The tax office and the mathematics institute each have a few smaller ones. The Great Cathedral has one as well. I heard it’s used to manage their archives,” the clerk sitting opposite Duncan joined in without thinking. “If you ask me, the main branch is only thinking about this now. They’re slow enough as it is.”

“That has nothing to do with us anyway,” another bored clerk joined the conversation. “Those things are expensive and heavy. When you count the steam core that drives them and the supporting punch-card machines and Analytical Engines, a single Sorting Engine can fill this entire hall…”

“I heard the Truth Academy is gathering people to research the next generation of Sorting Engines too. Supposedly they’ll be half the size of the current big ones, with performance almost the same, and they run on electricity instead of steam…”

“Electricity? No steam core? What if the machine gets possessed while it’s running? Those things have to keep crunching huge amounts of data. Without Divine Steam to protect it, malevolent spirits would be drawn to the bearings and gear trains way too easily, don’t you think?”

“How would I know… Maybe they’ll have a priest stand next to it. The machine computes, and the priest burns incense and holds mass for it at the same time…”

“…That doesn’t sound like it saves much trouble. It just adds another member of the clergy to the setup…”

“Hey, how much space does a priest take, and how much space does half a Sorting Engine take? Have you seen real estate prices in the city center?”

It seemed that no matter the world, people’s idle chatter at work drifted in the same wild directions. The clerks’ talk soon shifted from Sorting Engines to housing prices in the city, but from Duncan’s point of view, everything they chatted about was fresh and fascinating. He listened with such interest that he even forgot the boredom of waiting.

The idle talk did not last long. With a loud clank from one of the nearby pipes, their discussion about “which is more expensive, priests or housing” finally came to an end.

The clerk opposite Duncan opened the brass tube next to the counter and took out a small metal cylinder from inside. This one was clearly a different model from the one sent out earlier. It was heavier, and the cap was sealed with a complicated locking mechanism. The clerk spent a while working at it with a special tool before the lid finally came off, revealing the item inside.

It was a rectangular metal plate, only about half the size of a palm. Letters and symbols had been stamped into it, and along its edges there were rows of randomly arranged holes of different sizes. The short string of numbers Duncan had just memorized was stamped at one end.

“This is your bank seal card,” the clerk said as she handed the metal plate to Duncan. “It can be used at any bank in the city-state of Pland, and at the Boundless Sea Chamber of Commerce banks in other city-states as well. But deposits and withdrawals in other city-states will be delayed three to seven days. That’s the time needed for transoceanic telegraphs or Spirit Realm communications.”

“Thank you.” Duncan took the metal plate and examined this device that seemed to represent the city-state’s level of technology. His eyes studied the fine little holes, and on the counter he noticed the machine that read these metal plates.

These devices, so different from anything on Earth and yet just as much a product of human thought, were the “footprints” left by city-state civilization on its march through the Deep Sea era.

“Do you have any other business today?” the voice from behind the counter asked.

“Ah… nothing else, thank you,” Duncan came back to himself. He smiled, stood up from the chair, and then, just as he was about to leave, he seemed to remember something. He stopped and asked casually: “By the way… can machines really get possessed?”

“Of course they can. Why is that strange?” the clerk replied at once, as if it were something she did not even need to think about. “In this world, everything except Subspace can be corrupted. Isn’t that common knowledge?”

Duncan paused for a moment. He had asked only out of idle curiosity, but for some reason her answer touched his thoughts. He felt a faint spark in the depths of his mind.

After a short silence, he nodded slowly: “…Right. In this world, everything except Subspace can be corrupted.”

Then he left the bank.

According to his plan, he still had a big shopping trip to complete today. Besides buying a bicycle for Nina, his shopping list held a pile of things that would probably scare Nina half to death if she saw it written out.

The money from selling that dagger to Old Mr. Morris, plus the bounty for reporting the cultists, was enough to support a family of three living comfortably in the Lower City for one or two years. Most of that money was still untouched. Duncan felt it was time to put it to use.

So during the next half day, Duncan practically swept through the markets and shops near the Crossroad District…

Around four in the afternoon, in the shadow of an alley near the Crossroad District, Duncan set down the last bundle with a clatter and let out a long breath.

He looked with satisfaction at the pile of goods stacked like a small hill in front of him.

Flour, vegetables, seeds, spices, fresh meat, preserved foods, dried mushrooms of all kinds, wine—and cheese.

Edible, normal cheese that was younger than he was.

There were also piles of pots and pans and all sorts of things that Duncan thought “might come in handy.”

Once he moved all this onto the ship, the living conditions on the Vanished would change dramatically.

At the very least, the kitchen could start producing proper human food on a regular basis.

Duncan nodded in satisfaction and called out casually: “AI!”

The flutter of wings came from above the nearby buildings, and AI landed neatly on his shoulder.

The next second, the pigeon glanced at the pile on the ground and squawked in horror: “Are you making fun of me?!”

Before it even finished its shout, the bird rolled sideways and let itself drop toward the ground. Duncan had not actually said what he wanted it to do yet, but the creature had clearly, and very cleverly, realized what was coming.

Duncan only chuckled, reached out, and caught the pigeon in midair as it fell: “It’s fine. If you can’t carry it all in one trip, you can always make a few more runs…”