Tanya returned to Lectric Land with the handwritten list of parts she had been able to identify from the dismantled antenna. Emily followed dutifully, eyeing the empty shelves with suspicion. Lenny sat next to a great pile of parts, all placed in large boxes mixed together, and several smaller piles set before him that had been sorted appropriately. He raised a hand in greeting at then as they approached the till.

“You’re keeping everything?” Emily asked.

“If I throw out my entire inventory I’ll never recover. Fewer and fewer people make things like these, anymore,” he shook his head solemnly, as if either of them would understand what that meant.

Tanya nodded. “They don’t appear damaged in my testing. The ones that survived, anyway.”

Emily coughed and took sudden interest in the floor.

“Did you need something?” Lenny prompted.

Tanya held out her list. “Can you tell me if anyone’s bought these parts recently?”

Lenny squinted at the paper, but did not reach out for it. “I’m not really sure I should be telling you something like that.”

Tanya waved the list at the unsorted pile. “We’re trying to find out who did that.”

Lenny looked at his pile, baffled, as if he had never seen it before. “Is…That some sort of hobby of yours?” he asked, mystified.

“Yeah, sure,” Tanya said. He finally took the list from her hands, read it over, and stood from his stool. He turned and considered a row of filing cabinets, before selecting one and beginning to rifle through it’s papers.

“You-you keep your sales records in there?” Tanya asked.

“Gotta keep them somewhere,” he said, flicking through the folders and comparing them to the list. He shook his head and opened another drawer, and began the process again.

“I mean you must have a database somewhere? Of inventory and invoices?” Tanya said.

Lenny chuckled to himself. “This isn’t as flashy, young lady, but I assure you this is faster.”

Emily leaned over the counter to watch, her eyes sparkling with amusement. Tanya could not help but feel offended. What happened if the paper was destroyed? What if it got misfiled? What happened when he ran out of space? What if the ink smudged? What if he needed to access them from elsewhere?

Lenny eventually stood, his search complete, and set down her list on the counter, as well as several handwritten notes on index cards and copies of receipts. “See? Nothing to it. I’m not sure I understand the joke, though.”

“The joke?” Tanya asked.

“Only person who’s ever bought some of these was you,” he said. He pushed the papers to their side of the counter. “See for yourself.”

Tanya picked up the papers, and under the photocopied logo, and the handwritten part numbers and totals, was clearly her own signature at the bottom, along the line. She glanced at the rest of them, baffled, and sure enough, each showed the same. “Huh. I… thought I recognized some of them.”

“Those transistors aren’t manufactured anymore, by the way. I’ll sell you the rest of the stock, if you want,” Lenny looked to the pile, annoyed. “As soon as I find them. Inventory card says there’s thirty-seven in there somewhere.”

Tanya looked doubtfully between her written list and the invoices again, sighed and pocketed the list, and pushed the invoices back across the counter. “I-I don’t think I have much use for them at the moment, thank you.” She nodded for the doorway, and they left into the light of mid-morning.

Emily looked around as Tanya idled outside the door, where they had been attacked a day prior. “So, what do we do now?”

Tanya sighed. “I guess we have to keep asking around? P-p-parts couldn’t have come from here, but they came from somewhere.”

The search only became more irritating from there. The lack of manufacture Lenny had mentioned in passing seemed to be a much more dire situation than Tanya had originally anticipated. She limited herself to the small overlapping area between the two signals, in the hope that as a mechanized mind, Droid would have chosen optimization and efficiency over stealth. But, what she had narrowed down to a few stores and suppliers seemed to be even more limited than she had planned.

One warehouse that she recalled sourcing some parts for Drake One’s original build had gone out of business entirely, its office space hollowed out and turned into a veterinary clinic. The people at the reception desk were flustered by the questioning, and Tanya had to leave nearly immediately on account of her allergies in any case.

One spot that she had recalled as being useful on her last visit had redesigned its interior entirely, from a collection of loose parts and wire and cable similar to Lenny’s set up, to a clean storefront of brightly lit walls full of little else beyond cell phones and car stereos. The teenagers manning the cash register balked at their questions, and snickered at their turned backs as they left.

The next place still existed roughly as she remembered it, though it appeared to be part of a larger chain, and the necessity of tying itself to wide mass market appeal made the selection of questionable value. Tanya scrutinized the shelves carefully, but very little of it seemed to be of any use, and most of it did not appear on the list she had created.

At some point, in her frustrated mumbling, one of the employees approached and inquired about their presence.

Tanya held out the list, “I’m looking for these parts specifically.”

The human gave the list a quick glance. “I’m not sure these IBM chips are actually for sale for anyone that isn’t the DoD,” he looked between the two of them. “What on earth would you possibly need with them?” And then he half turned, glancing around the open floor the store. “Am I on camera?”

“You don’t have them,” Tanya said.

“Look, I’m not sure what you’re trying to build here but I hear Apple has something they’re going to offer pre-built with more than enough power for a household next year, you don’t need all this.”

Tanya frowned. “What? No, I just want to know if you had these.”

“This is all extremely niche stuff, for serious builds.”

Emily leaned into the conversation. “How about you just answer the question, guy?”

He scowled at Emily as if she had a particularly unpleasant smell. “No reason to be rude.”

“We’ll see if there is or not,” Emily said. “You got the extremely niche stuff or do we have to go to Lectric Land for it?”

He smiled the insincere smile of someone that did not intend on being helpful. “You can go wherever you like. The chips take six weeks by boat to get here,” he held the list back out to Tanya, flippantly. “Bulk order only, pay in advance.”

Tanya took it back without thinking, and the man turned and left without another word.

“I am remembering why I don’t come here,” Tanya remarked.

“I’m impressed someone trained a giant asshole to speak,” Emily said, perhaps just a little too loud. She had apparently decided there was cause to be rude after all.

Tanya led her out of the store before any further nonsense could commence, and they stood together on the baking pavement of the parking lot. Tanya frowned at her list, which was becoming more worn and crumpled with each stop, and grumbled to herself, stuffing it back into a pocket. “If these things are so rare surely s-s-someone would remember a lunatic buying them. Or st-st-stealing them, or whatever.”

“You said this guy was just a head?” Emily asked.

“Well. He used to be. It’s been months, he could have a body by now, I think.”

Emily looked back to the store, “We don’t have to visit every single place right? Like, could we call instead?”

“I hate that. Voice only.”

“Seems like that might help more than hurt us. Have one of the guys do it,” Emily pointed at the pocket with her list in it. “They might have more luck with it, even if they have no idea what any of it is.”

“That’s so stupid,” Tanya protested, and when she realized her face was getting hot, stared hard at her own feet. It had been so long since someone had assumed her level of competence, she had forgotten how angry it made her.

“You are very patient,” Emily observed.

“What?”

“I think you showed a lot of restraint, not lasering the whole store down for saying you weren’t serious,” Emily grinned.

“Yes, well, that’s why I brought you along instead of Mallory, I suppose.”

“Haha, she would have outright murdered him,” Emily made a motion vaguely away from the store. “We heading back then?”

Tanya sighed. “Not, not yet. Let’s get something to eat first. Might help me think.”

It may have been the first time Tanya actually witnessed someone physically grimace.

“Not hungry, but you’re the boss.”

Tanya decided to opt for something cold. The day was already becoming unbearably hot, and it would help combat the sweat starting to set in behind her neck. Emily followed her to a smoothie shop, and vigorously shook her head when offered something of her own again.

Tanya’s credit card declined.

She didn’t quite understand what the clerk meant the first time he said it. He dutifully ran the card again, with the unbothered face of someone who had humored hundreds of people before her, and when it declined the second time, he held it out to her and shrugged. “You got another one?”

It declined too.

“Or maybe cash?” he said, looking more concerned about the line growing behind them than the transaction itself.

“Cash,” Tanya murmured, looking to Emily.

“I don’t have an allowance,” Emily said.

Tanya fussed around in her pockets and was able to scrape together enough bills to cover the total, and they moved out of the way of the rest of the line while they waited for the food to be prepared. Tanya frowned at both cards, tapping at the magnetic strips as she did. Neither seemed worse for wear, but that meant nothing. A card that couldn’t be read wouldn’t even get to the point of declining, it would have simply been refused outright by the machine.

“What does it mean, exactly?” Emily said, watching her fidgeting. “Declined?”

“Some possibilities,” Tanya answered. “These work on a network,” she nodded to the cash register. “It’s hard wired into a system that calls the issuing bank to check the account and authorize the t-transaction.”

Emily didn’t seem to understand, and Tanya sighed, putting the cards away, to worry about later. “No person actually looks at the account, it’s just a program that checks it for validity and sends a response.”

Emily looked at the registers. “You think your weird machine friend turned off your bank card?”

“I think the timing is suspicious.”

“What’s the point though? You had money, right? What’s it do other than be annoying?”

“Oh, for some people being annoying is enough, heh.”

“And he can do that? As just a head?”

“Well, like I said, he might have more than just a head now, I-” Tanya blinked. “I need to get back to the Pond.”