Work Text:
Hour 1
"Hey, not until the second date," Harper said as the guard patted him down.
"Funny kid. I never heard that one before." The guard took Harper's gun, several sharp and nano-manipulating tools, and assorted snacks off him.
"You think I'm gonna kill somebody with a bag of candy?"
"No food allowed. Head on in."
Harper muttered as he caught up with Beka and Rev, "X-rays and pat-downs. No food, no weapons, no tools, no service. What is up with these people?"
Beka turned on the palm comp the guard had given her. "That's Strohman's for you, the only place to buy in bulk on the Drift, so they can get away with whatever they want. Welcome to 40 square kilometers of shopping."
Harper's jaw dropped as they walked into the supermarket. "This place is huge!" Aisles and shelving seemed to stretch on both horizontally and vertically. Crates and crates and crates of food. "Heaven...."
"Not quite. Especially since the maps on all the carts are broken again."
"Please. Let the Harper work his magic."
It only took five minutes to replace the burnt out wires. Beka fed her list into the map software, and it sent her a suggestion of what order she could pick her items up in, based on the store layout. They climbed onto the hovercart and drove toward their first target.
Hour 2
As she used the palm comp to trigger her selections, turn off the shelf force fields, and unload the crates from the shelves, Beka kept an eye on Harper. Kid looked twitchy and overstimulated from all the holo ads flying around, Muzak, and smells. He jumped every time the palm comp beeped to let her know that she'd reached one of her list items. With luck, hours of this would exhaust him, because just watching him made her tired.
"Baby's first shopping trip," she murmured.
"Hey, I heard that!"
"Then how about you and Rev grab the crate so the store doesn't charge us extra for machine-loading it onto the cart?"
He muttered darkly but obeyed. "You said that our last run paid better than expected, so can we get some chocolate?"
"Dunno, it's expensive...."
He did his cute, big-eyed waif look. "Please?"
"A little bit of milk chocolate maybe."
"I want the dark."
"I don't get you. You have the galaxy's biggest sweet tooth, but you like dark?"
"Chocolate is nature's most perfect food after coffee. Why dilute its goodness with dairy products, soy, or some faux version of either?"
"Fruit's more important."
Harper sighed. "Yes, Mom. We don't want to get scurvy."
Hour 4
"Try Orange Fizz! It's the taste that refreshes! You can find me on Aisle 35!" something said with a squeaky voice. Horrified, Harper watched a hip-high soda can with white, large-footed legs and cartoon-gloved hands slowly approach him.
"Beka...."
"It's an adbot. Ignore it."
"Lambros Meals are really neat! We are filled with bantha meat! You can find us at Aisle 70, near the ice cream!" a big Lambros Meal box with arms and legs chirped.
"Maca-Loonies have fun shapes! It's okay to play with your food! Find us on Aisle 49!" a big can said.
They walked so slowly, mindless, vapid expressions on their cartoonish faces, arms outstretched, approaching.... "It's like Night of the Living Dead," Harper said as he backed up.
"Thanks for the mental image. Like I don't already think they're creepy enough."
"They are merely robots," Rev said.
The Orange Fizz can was reaching for Harper's knee. "Leave me alone! I'm a Sparky Cola man!" He gave it a good kick and almost broke his toes. But it hit a nearby shelf with a satisfying clang. "You... things are going down!" They fled. When he noticed another shopper staring at him, Harper snarled, "What are you looking at?" The shopper sped his cart away.
Beka sighed. "This place has cameras, you know."
Harper whispered to her, "It just means that I have to be sneaky. No one will be able to tell that I tampered with 'em. Trust the Harper."
Hour 5
If Harper had possessed a tail, it would be lashing as he waited for his chance to snag the adbot up onto the cart. His eyes narrowed, his muscles tensed, then he pounced, grabbing one shaped like a box of cereal and slinging it into a little fort he'd made of the crates. She could see him pretty well from the driver's seat, but the cameras wouldn't have much luck.
At least reprogramming adbots would keep him occupied, and in a fairly low-mayhem way.
As he worked, Harper said, "These things have a load of computing power. What a waste that they only say maybe three different phrases."
Maybe not so low-mayhem. "Hey, don't make them too sentient," Beka answered. "A Sparky adbot that went rogue on Albuquerque killed a little girl."
"But they still make these things? Spacers are creepy," Harper muttered to himself as he opened the bot's hatch. "Spacers are creepy...."
Hour 10
Harper saw a ragged little boy watching them from around the corner, eyes seeming huge in his pinched, hungry face. "Beka, does this store have squatters?"
"Sometimes. I don't know how they get through the security check."
"He's living in a grocery store, but he looks like he's starving."
Beka held up the store palm comp. "You need one of these to actually be able to get into anything. They change the codes on these every day.... Don't even think of trying to give that kid anything. Same goes for you, Rev. If whoever he's with finds out you're softhearted, they'll ambush us, knock us cold, rob us blind, then kill and eat us."
"Yeah, okay, but--"
"They found a way in, so if things get really desperate they can get out too."
Their cart moved on.
Hour 14
"Harper, would you make this one say, 'The Divine loves you'?" Rev asked.
"I'm inclined to think that a big, preaching root beer bottle will turn people to atheism, but if it floats your boat, sure."
Rev had to be even more bored than they were. He couldn't actually eat anything in the store. Well, except for the customers, but he wasn't that kind of Magog.
Beka heard Harper munching on something. "Where'd you get that?" she hissed. Damn, she was hungry.
"Smuggled it past the guard. Want some?"
"Seeing as how I'm afraid of where you put it to get it past the guard, no."
"Jeez, Beka, live a little."
Hour 16
Harper sang under his breath, "Lambros Meals are really neat! They are filled with bantha meat! We all love you--" He looked horrified. "Kill me, Beka. Put me out of my misery, please. I have nothing left to live for."
"I think it's time for you to take a nap."
"Don't wanna." Harper rubbed his eyes. "I'm good. I just wanna get this jingle out of my head."
Hour 18
"I could buy a new jacket for what we're paying for this burger!" Harper said. Not that they had a choice unless they wanted to open up their crates, which hadn't been bought cheaply either, and most of the food in them needed to go through some kind of preparation process to become edible. Strohman's knew that it had a captive clientele.
"I doubt that," the bored food court cashier answered.
"Look at me. I am not kidding." But he paid for his and Beka paid for hers. "What's Rev gonna eat?" He watched Rev keep watch over their cart in the distance. Harper knew that Magog could only eat food they'd recently killed for themselves.
"He's fasting," Beka answered.
He was hanging with a hungry Magog. "That's... great. That's just great."
And his burger tasted like perma-foam. At least he'd be enjoying it for hours to come as he tried to pull the strings out of his teeth. Yeah, he'd had worse, but come on, the worse he had came from a dumpster.
Hour 20
When one woman triggered a small crate of Frooty-Os ("Now with barries!"), one of the pasta box adbots walked up to her and asked, "Do you know that there's not a single natural thing in that product? Are you sure you want that? And do you even have any idea what 'barries' are made of?"
Her scream covered the sound of Harper snickering.
Hour 21
"We're done? Finally?" Harper asked. "I mean, we nailed our list. Veni, vidi, vici and all."
"Not quite. We still have to do the gauntlet," Beka answered and pointed.
"The gauntlet? Oh. Damn." The lines stretched on forever. "That's checkout?"
"Yep. I have to review my order and prices, then approve the transaction." Beka sighed. "The waiting's not even the worst part."
Hour 22
Harper felt hungry. He felt ill. Mouth watering, stomach rumbling, he shut his eyes to all the overpriced enticements hemming the checkout line in, but he could still smell them, rich and sweet and savory. The smell triggered instincts that he'd been trying to overwrite since he hit space, instincts telling him to gorge himself since he didn't know when his next meal would be coming.
They were surrounded by candy, food, trinkets, tools, and news and entertainment media items, last ditch efforts by the establishment to get their customers to spend more. With the enticements to each side of him and other customers and their carts in front and behind him, Harper felt claustrophobic for the first time in his life, which was amazing considering how much of it he'd spent in crumbling tunnels and now ship conduits. He couldn't get out of here short of climbing over the shelves.
And the food was killing him.
"We can't, Harper," Beka said. "Computer sensors would pick up on anything being removed, and we'd have to pay for this stuff through the nose."
He wanted to whine at her, but her flicking eyes and trembling mouth suggested that she already struggled enough with exactly the same thing. She didn't need him adding to it.
Harper closed his hands into tighter, more painful fists. At first he'd bit his lip until he decided that he didn't want to make Rev hungry from the scent of blood.
"Have strength," Rev said. "It will be over soon."
They heard someone far ahead of them at the front of line they heard a customer say, "That's supposed to be on sale this week."
"We need a price check," the cashier said over the loudspeaker. The whole line shuddered and groaned.
"This is Hell...." Harper said.
Hour 23
Beka heard the line groan behind her as she actually went through her bill line by line instead of just speeding through it like most of the desperate souls ahead of her had. "I am not getting bilked again," she muttered. Even if Harper did look twitchy and wired-tired as hell.
Finally everything checked out, she paid up, they reclaimed their confiscated belongings, and they got their asses out of there. Just getting away from the overwhelming smell of food helped.
Harper still sounded a little dazed when he said, "Those squatters can't leave without getting arrested. They have to go through the gauntlet to get out, and do you think they could make it through without lunging at the snacks? Since they can't pay...."
"They got in somehow; they can get out," Beka said. "If their lives are really in danger, prison would be better than being dead. This isn't Earth, Harper."
He shook his head. "Just checking out the lay of the land."
"You have a good heart, Harper," Rev said.
"Like that does anybody any good."
Hour 24
When Harper finished situating their groceries in the pantry, he went looking for Beka and Rev. They'd disappeared on him half an hour ago. He found them both sleeping, totally out. Cute. Okay, Beka was cute, while Rev was as cute as big, long-clawed Magog could get.
Harper took a quick shower, then snuggled in beside Beka in her bunk and nibbled on a stolen chocolate bar while he put a milk chocolate one under her pillow.