Aarav didn't waste time.
Back in Codora, he spent his first two days scouting marketplaces—not the flashy towers with sky-lobbies, but the lower grid stalls where people actually bartered. He watched what sold. What got side-eyes. What vendors quietly whispered over.
The same patterns kept showing up.
Personal items. Jewelry. Especially metallics.
Gold wasn't rare here—it was ornamental. Used not for wealth, but for tradition. It showed up in ceremonial gear, in decorative pins, in the clasps of cultural robes. But most of it came from older family lines or ritual stores. What few traders carried it kept it locked and layered in defensive energy tags.
And yet, the market buzzed for it.
Not for greed. For memory.
Codora didn't value money in the same way Earth did. Here, emotional resonance, cultural integrity, and symbolic weight mattered more. That's why gold embedded with memories—objects called 'emotes'—fetched high trade. You weren't just buying metal. You were inheriting a moment.
Aarav approached one such vendor on day three. An old man named Jeta. His stall sold 'memories'—sculptures, pins, and chains that carried emotional impressions. You touched them, and for a moment, felt what the previous owner did.
Jeta liked to talk.
"You're from Vireen?" he asked.
Aarav nodded. "Born there. Moved around."
"You're quiet for Vireen. Most are storytellers."
"I write better than I speak."
Jeta grinned. "Then you'll appreciate this." He handed over a gold ring with an etching of flame across it. "Smelted from the first peace accord. Pure. Technically unregulated."
Aarav held it. It hummed, faintly. Warm, like a pulse.
"How much?"
"For you? One verified short story."
He blinked. "Seriously?"
Jeta nodded. "I've read your civic listing. Story Architect. Tier 2. If I can't trade for memory, at least I can trade for emotion."
Aarav accepted. On his walk back, he couldn't stop thinking about it. The ring was heavy in his palm but light on his conscience. He had earned it—with words, not lies. That mattered.
That night, he slipped back to Earth with the ring wrapped in cotton and hidden in his sock. It made it through. The shimmer flickered as usual, but no sparks, no noise.
He walked through the city like a man carrying something sacred.
He sold the ring to a back-alley pawn shop that didn't ask questions.
$370.
It wasn't much, but it was real. And it was enough to get a meeting with the man who owned the old TV repair shop.
The shop's owner, Mr. Das, was skeptical. Older, with a limp and a hawkish gaze. He wore a vest that smelled faintly of dust and engine oil, and looked like he'd seen more scams than he could count.
"You want to lease the whole place? The storage and the storefront? Why?"
"Sentimental reasons," Aarav said. "I used to stand outside that window as a kid, watching cricket games through the glass. The old man who worked here would always leave the TV facing the street. It was the first place I ever saw color. Not just color TV—color dreams."
It wasn't the best lie. But it wasn't the worst.
Das grunted. "You got the money?"
"Some. I want to lease the whole shop. Month by month, but full control. I'll buy it outright when I can."
"Cash?"
Aarav nodded again. "Always."
Das considered. Then handed him a short lease printout. "You deal in old sentiment, I deal in paper. Sign."
By nightfall, Aarav had keys.
He stood in the storage room where the shimmer pulsed quietly underfoot, and exhaled.
It was his now.
Not forever. Not yet. But close.
In Codora, he walked slower. Thought longer. Spent more time watching rather than acting. He wasn't afraid, exactly. But something about owning the portal—even unofficially—changed the stakes.
He began logging each trip. Timestamp in, timestamp out. What he carried. What he brought back. He built a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Backed up on two drives.
Gold wasn't the only path.
He started experimenting. Little things. Cultural items with Earth appeal. Then he flipped the direction—he brought Earth's cultural exports into Codora.
The first was a print of a popular Earth comic strip. No translation, just images. He left a few copies in a communal sharing box in the lower district of Naris—the residential sprawl that made up most of Central Codora's lower sector.
Two days later, one showed up pasted to a tram post. A week after that, a teenager had re-inked one panel and turned it into a wearable patch.
The buzz was subtle but real. He heard two kiosk vendors laughing about "the one where the talking dog outwits the landlord." A sanitation bot had it loaded onto its side screen as part of its idle display loop.
He realized Codora had no slapstick. No low-brow. No harmless dumb humor.
He'd just invented memes for a world that only knew curated depth.
The next trip back, he tried the ribbon. Sold it online through a handmade novelty site.
$52.
A week later, he sold two more.
Then three.
Not a fortune, but enough to pay Mr. Das for another month. Enough to not panic.
Then he bought a second ring.
Jeta didn't question it. Just smiled.
"Your stories must be getting better," he said.
"They're just beginning," Aarav replied.
He'd traded fiction for metal. Memory for space. Now he wanted more.
He sat in his unit that night and wrote in his notebook:
Next: test Earth art in Codora. Bring a small sculpture.
Assess metal durability over longer term.
Buy the shop within 60 days.
And below that:
Don't get cocky.
That night, he dreamed of a hallway lined with mirrors—each one a portal, each one opening to a version of him that made a different choice. One stayed. One ran. One never left the call center.
He woke up sweating, heart racing like he'd just run from a thousand versions of himself—all less brave than this one.
He reached for his notebook and added a new line to the bottom of the list:
Plan new submission for Tier 1 bump.
Codora respected creativity, but it rewarded utility. He needed something with backbone now. Maybe a serialized story. A guidebook on Earth's lost cities. Or even a fake religious text, stylized like a Codoran mythos.
He tapped his pen, thinking harder.
Then it clicked.
What if he introduced a storytelling format? Something Codora didn't have. Episodic storytelling that came out weekly—like Earth webnovels. If he could serialize something that felt native but addictive, he could own a whole new market.
He scribbled the idea down and underlined it twice. This wasn't just survival anymore.
It was invention.
And if he played it right, Codora would be the first world to binge-read fiction like it was digital candy.
That idea alone was enough to keep him awake the rest of the night, planning Episode One.