I got a call this morning. "Hey, Sid...it's Scott."

"Scott who?"

"Scott. From Murray's. You busted my shoulder...?"

"Shoulder! Right, sorry, didn't get your name before. What's up?"

"That guy I told you about? Thought he could help you with your fighting? He's agreed to come by."

"Oh. Cool. Can you have him pick up a tire iron? I'll pay for it when we get together."

"Tire iron...? You can't get one yourself?"

"It's better if he brings it. Trust me."

No idea what Scott from Murray's has to offer us. I suppose we can dislocate his shoulder again if he's wasting our time.

With fights not happening, at least in Sperry, we should be looking for alternative sources of income. Not that we need that much in the way of money, but eventually we'll need some form of ID. My info sources on fake ID are mostly fiction and rumor, but I'm hearing $25k per person. We need to start saving up.

Purveyors of identification might be receptive to payment in gold. It's relatively anonymous. We haven't found gold yet. Wikipedia doesn't list gold within a thousand miles of us, with the strongest prospects being Nevada and the Carolinas. Some sites say there's gold in Oklahoma, but so little of it that you have to filter carefully while panning lest you miss it.

Gold can be found in Eorzea at certain times of the day in a cavern that leads between sparse woodland and an area called The Burning Wall. It's a deep oasis with waterfalls and a pool at the bottom. It has blue-glowing vegetation, big yellow-glowing crystals, snurbles (fluffy, downy, bad-tempered birdlike things the size of chickens) and mirror knights (spiky, even worse-tempered birdlike things the size of men). I don't know of any place like that, but I'm still researching.

Silver, on the other hand, is found in Eorzea in a wooded rocky pass near a stream outside of Buscarron's Druthers, a frontier town in the frontier of another frontier town called Quarrymill. That sounds enough like the Ozarks that we should plan a camping trip there to see before it gets too cold.

But silver is kind of unwieldy. At $21 an ounce it's worth more than a hundred times what copper's going for, but we're still talking pounds of the stuff for any real value. The aforementioned identity purveyors might balk at us dumping a hundred and fifty pounds of silver on their desk. But as a backup source of cash, we might be able to liquidate a few hundred dollars' worth a week without getting too much attention.

There's also the possibility of actual work. Official jobs are out of the question until we have some sort of tax ID. But people here have apparently gotten used to the idea of us doing odd things, so they're starting to approach us about odd jobs. The shed turns out to be a better resumé than the tables; I've been asked to help do some repairs and light construction. I'm a day laborer they don't have to go find on the street.

Tsu'na's glamour prisms will be handy for that. Not that our crafting gear looks ugly or anything (and in fact it shows off my wife's figure nicely), but it does look a little Dickensy. Now we can glamour to off-the-rack Ts and painter's pants and maybe blend in. But if we can't find or make a glamour dresser we'll be going through a helluva lot of prisms.

So. Sunday night.

No one died. The guy who lost his hand coulda bled out, but Tsu'na said Myra said he got to a clinic. So no one died. No XP, no gil.

Would've been easy. Dagger to the gut. Throat slit. Head chopped off. Neck snapped. Could've dropped Inside Guy in the changing room and there wouldn't even be a chopped-off hand to worry about. Just a body Myra would have to deal with.

We could solve a lot of problems with force and skill. Maybe create more, but we could then solve those too.

Just like we did at home. In Eorzea. With NPCs.

Just like in a video game.

I think I'll finish up the bicycle.