Pawn Shop

It was 12 o’clock according to the old mechanical clock on the wall, but the old pawnbroker had long since given up on paying the device any mind. With the perpetual gloom that hung around outside the shop, 12 o’clock meant it could be midnight or it could have been midday and he wouldn’t even have known the difference. It had been that way ever since the regime had built that new factory making God knows what a few blocks away, its huge bulk and all the smoke the building pumped out obscuring the light from the artificial sunlamps built in the arcology’s ceiling a kilometer or two above ground level. Bad enough that nobody on this level of the city-sized building he lived in along with most of humanity would ever see the sun as is, but thanks to the factory even the facsimile of light they had previously was now cut off. Honestly, it didn’t really matter whether it was day or night to the old pawnbroker, given his profession and the clientele he typically dealt with he had long ago forsaken the old 9 to 5 hours that most other businesses adopted. It was an easy thing for him to do, his apartment was right above the shop, and he tended not to go out much if at all. A smart attitude to have when you lived in a neighborhood where a walk around the block meant a 50/50 chance of you getting shot and you had enough money to afford to get all your worldly needs delivered by drone. Speaking of which the drone that was supposed to deliver his lunch was running late. He was about to go to his personal console in the back of the shop to see what the status of his order was when he heard the proximity sensor on the front door chime. He looked over towards the sliding door at the building’s front expecting to see one of those little car drones roll in. Instead, a man…or at least someone he thought was a man strolled in. It was hard to tell with all the layers upon layers of torn and filthy clothes they wore all over and the bandana they had over their mouth.

‘Probably homeless.’ The pawnbroker thought to himself. Still as long they had something to trade why should he care?

“Welcome to Jack’s pawnshop.” The namesake Jack said to the bundled-up figure, same as he’d said to a thousand other people a thousand times before. “Are you here to buy, sell, or pawn something?”

Jerkily the bundled figure moved from the door to the counter, walking as if one of their legs wasn’t quite working right. Reaching the counter, the bundled figure slid a hand into a pocket on their filthy outer coat before pulling something out and dropping it on the counter. It was a small thing, perhaps the size of the face of a wristwatch and it glinted under the florescent lights above. A locket of some sort, shaped like a heart and with a thin chain attached to it.

“How much for this?” The bundled figure said in a distinctly masculine voice confirming Jack’s suspicions of the figure’s gender.

Through the hole in the bulletproof glass that cut across the counter, Jack reached his hand through and grasped the object. He pulled it through the hole and began to turn it over in his hand examining it closely. It was a bright yellow, not the usual duller reddish yellow of the brass trinkets he usually saw in his shop. This was the real deal, maybe 16 karat gold. Idly Jack ran one of his hands through his greying black hair as he did some mental arithmetic, an old habit the wizened old man had never quite been able to shake no matter how hard he tried. Something like this was worth maybe 3,000 credits based on craftsmanship…so he could probably open the haggling with a bid of say 1,250 and gradually work his way upwards if that proved unsatisfactory. Jack was about to say as such when one of his wrinkled figures tracing the locket’s surface found something on the edge of it. A small section of the locket seemed to give a little under his touch. Curious he pressed down upon the small section and with a small click the locket split apart revealing a picture within. A handsome dark-haired man and a woman with fiery red hair gazed back at Jack from within the picture, their faces holding bright smiles…and something else, something he couldn’t quite explain.

Idly Jack touched the picture with his finger…and then he felt it. A buzzing sensation at the back of his mind, one he’d long since learned to let flow over him rather than fight. It wasn’t often he felt his gift act up, and that was a good thing. He didn’t want to end up like that one idiot who had used his gift to consistently win bets at the dog track. The only warning of his fate had been the sound of his door being kicked in by the regime’s special task force in the middle of the night.

Schooling his features to not give any hint of what was going on, Jack let the mental images flow over him.

Warm light filled his mind’s eye illuminating a scene bright with colors Jack had no words for. All around…things sprouted from the floor…no…the ground…and swayed in the faint breeze. The air was clean here and filled with a pleasant smell Jack only vaguely knew only because he had once smelled its artificial equivalent. The smell of flowers and of morning dew, something normally only found in one of the higher levels of the arcology. Amongst the flowers a couple lay, the couple from the image, their faces bright with life, their gaze filled with affection for each other. Abruptly another flash cut the image off, vaguely he heard two male voices shouting incoherently, one pleading the other harsh and accusatory before the sound of gunshots and a woman’s screams echoed in Jack’s head. Another flash and a new image appeared. No longer did colors sway around the couple, no longer did they lie in a bed of verdant life. Now the image was duller, the bright colors replaced with walls of grey and dark brown chairs. Now the woman sat alone in a chair, her face hidden beneath a black shawl, her eyes wet and nearly as red as her hair from tears. The dark-haired man was here too…lying in a cheap pine coffin barely 10 steps from where the woman sat. Numbly as the woman turned her gaze downward she placed one hand on her swollen midsection and in response a small kick from within answered her touch. Another flash, another change, now the image was grimier, dirtier, even the faintest traces of respectability lost from the surrounding. Now beneath a perpetual gloom, he saw the woman walk the brightly colored silks and velveteen of the first vision nothing more than a distant memory. Now she wore humbler affair of brown and grey, while in her arms she held a bundle which squirmed with life. He saw her ring the buzzer of a building whose signage was so dull as to nearly be illegible before she placed the bundle on the ground and quickly walked away. She never once turned back, never once spared so much as a glance toward the bundle she left, and Jack knew why. He knew that if she looked back, that if she spared the bundle another thought then she would break and go back for it…and then they would both starve. A moment later and Jack knew for certain she had been right to do so, for as she rounded a corner and began her hurried journey down an alley back toward what now passed for home…a familiar figure stepped in front of her…a figure clad in multiple filthy layers of clothes…holding something whose sharp edge faintly glinted.

And then…it was done. The feeling faded out taking the images with them. Subtly Jack shot a glance toward the clock on the wall to get his bearings like he always did after his gift was used. 12:03 it read, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that what had felt like a lifetime had only been a span of a few minutes in fact. He took the shining thing in his hand, placed it on the counter, and once more looked back toward the bundled figure before him.

“500” The pawnbroker said toward the figure across from him.

“You can’t be serious!” The other began to protest…only to stop dead as he saw the cold blue diamonds’ that served as the pawnbroker’s eyes shot him such a hateful glare that by all accounts the bedraggled man should have burst into flames.

“500” The pawnbroker said coldly. “Take it…or leave it.”

A long pause, the heavy silence that filled the shop broken only by the faint ticking of the hanging clock the hum of a distant air purifier.

“500 then.” The bedraggled figure at last said. The pawnbroker turned his disgusted gaze away, nodded, and walked over to a nearby register to ring up the sale. A few taps on the keyboard later and the card with promised number of credits popped out along with a receipt. He took them both, handed them to the grubby figure, and promptly made his way toward a display case to place his newest acquisition. As he did so he idly noted the grubby figure making his stumbling way out of the shop out of the corner of his eyes, and in response from the depth of his mind, Jack felt a single dry thought bubble to the surface.

‘Business as usual.’