Instructor Ren stacks proposals like he’s dealing cards he doesn’t want. The room smells like damp chalk and old paper. A printed notice on the wall says PRE-SORT: ONE WEEK BEFORE COMPETITION; the competition itself is in two. Today is when he decides who even gets seen.

  Two nobles’ sons go first. Their sheets are immaculate: tidy block diagrams, neat timing charts, clean power budgets, even footnotes. They read them the way you read something you’ve practiced once but didn’t write. Ren doesn’t smile. He asks one question each—simple, pointed—and both boys pause just long enough to show the gap. He stamps both: Approved. Exhibition track. Two weeks. Everyone in the room knows what that means: their projects will be displayed at the Tikonov City Hall Complex.

  My turn.

  I hand him a single page: block diagram, fuse, power budget, failure modes in the margin. No footnotes. Pencil corrections where the numbers moved after the last test.

  Ren reads without changing his face. “Power draw?”

  “Five to seven watts at idle, twelve at full. Fast-blow five hundred milliamps on the primary.”

  “What happens when the sensor dies?”

  “The fan stays off. The manual will show blink codes in yellow light. Shutdown on boot if the readings disagree for more than ten seconds.”

  He taps the paper. “Why not purely mechanical?”

  “It learns the street’s pattern. Mechanical can’t time windows. And I wanted a challenge.”

  He shifts the page a finger’s width. “Programming. You did it yourself?”

  “Yes,” I say. “On my father’s noteputer.”

  His eyes lift once, then settle. “And the enclosure?”

  “Scrap aluminum. Brushed.” I don’t add who cut it.

  A small pause. He lowers his voice a half-step, casual for the room, aimed at me. “Any… assistance you’d like declared? Anyone telling you you must compete?”

  “No, Instructor,” I say, same quiet tone. “No one asked me to. I chose it.”

  He watches my face a beat longer than necessary. “If you needed help, you would ask?”

  “I would. If I needed it.”

  He nods as if we have agreed on something and glances at my paper. A moment later he looks at me and stamps the page. Approved. Exhibition track. Two weeks. He slides it back across the desk. The stamp means I will visit the Tikonov City Hall Complex in two weeks. The look probably means father-built, father-coded, father-solved. I keep my mouth shut and nod once like a student who knows he’s been given a fair chance.

  On the way out of the building, I pass the nobles’ sons. Their diagrams look as good as mine. Maybe better. You can make anything look right on paper if the right hands are on the pen. I save them for later perusal. No need to let them be wasted as fanciful ideas used only for peacocking.

  After school, Mother meets me at the gate with a short nod that means come along. We don’t go home. We turn toward the rail yards and the sheds with the corrugated roof.

  The market Mother takes me to lives under that roof. It is aisles cut into rows. The air smells like hot dust, old solder, and cabbage steam from a cart someone pushed too close to the power tools.

  Mother takes my wrist, not my hand. “Stay to the right,” she says. “Left is for carts and men with more testicles than brain.”

  I blink. Doesn’t every man have more testicles than brain?

  We pass the gate where a laminated sign explains nothing: SURPLUS / REPAIR / SALVAGE / CASH ONLY. A militia clerk sits on a stool counting vouchers.

  Mother talks as we walk. Instructional, clipped. “This place breathes in containers. Jumpships drop mixed lots from Alrescha. Brokers buy by kilo. They don’t sort. It ships here by rail and boat. We sort. We repurpose. Anything with teeth, heat, or wire becomes something we can sell to the garrison or ship back out as ‘reconditioned.’ The rest turns into slag that is reused.”

  The aisles have their own logic. She points with her chin.

  “Row A — Bulk Metal & Dead Weight,” she says. “Motors, gearboxes, pulleys, shafts. If it spins or grinds, it lands here. Pay by mass.”

  “Row B — Boards & Brains. Mixed PCBs by the sack, pulled without care. Wave-solder scars, hand-iron fixes, lifted pads. CPUs from ’81 up to whatever survived a warehouse fire and isn’t obviously useful. Good for harvesting sockets, regulators, connectors.”

  “Row C — Power. Transformers, rectifiers, old UPS guts. If it hums, it works. If it is silent and should not be, don’t.”

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  “Row D — Instruments. Meters, scopes, test heads. Serious sellers can power and probe what they sell. Scams sell ‘as-is, no test’ and complain if you touch the knob.”

  “Row E — Military Adjacent. Harness, mil-spec connectors, heatshrink by the meter, lock wire. Prices and paperwork are non-negotiable.”

  She teaches the signs without slowing. “Quantity is important here. Ten of a thing means a cleared line or a factory death. One of a thing means someone’s junk drawer. Both can be useful. Price speaks too. Too low is a trap; too high is a test. The serious will quote one number and it will stay the same for a week. Scams change price when your eyes show interest. If a seller flinches when you ask to weigh it, walk.”

  We pass a table mounded with power bricks. Another with fans in neat grids, each tagged with voltage and current in two different hands. A servitor pushes a dolly stacked with cable spools; two sellers step aside without being asked.

  Mother loops us into Row D first. “Sensors first,” she says, and stops at a stall where an old man sits like a hinge. Crates at knee height, an oscilloscope with burn-in lines humming on a cart, a sign: TEST BEFORE YOU PAY.

  “Sifu Huang,” Mother says, bowing shallow. “I brought you Longjing.” She slips a flat green envelope into a tin beside his cash box and sets a small vacuum pack of tea on top. He doesn’t look at the envelope. He does weigh the tea in his palm and nod once.

  “Meiyu,” he says. His eyes go to me. “The child?”

  “Jun-Tao,” she says. “My son. He won’t waste your time.”

  “Good,” he says, and flicks the scope’s trace with a cracked thumbnail. “Nice to see you haven’t scared your husband away.” His corners turn up a millimeter. Crochety old men with hearts of gold.

  After a short conversation and payment, we move to Row B. A woman with ink under her nails flips a tray to show the solder side. “Wave,” Mother murmurs for me. “See the sheen, the tails, the bridges? Iron is smaller, cleaner, slower.” I nod and pocket the picture in my head: both methods on one board, the story of a factory trying to keep up.

  “Sister Fan,” Mother says, and sets a green envelope on the ledger as if keeping a page flat.

  Fan smiles. “I am sure I have what you need.” She pulls out three bags.

  Mother’s chin tips a degree. Agreement. “He will come alone next time. If he is short, he is not lying. I will be here later.” Fan glances at me and arranges the bags so the prices face outward.

  Row C hums. Everything here is heavy enough to bruise me.

  “Uncle Petar,” Mother says to a bald man with a soldering burn that crosses two knuckles. Green envelope slides, bigger than the last. “Do you have what I asked for?”

  “For Meiyu, I have,” he says with a heavy Russian accent, and produces a bin from under the table. “No varnish stink,” he says. “No flood rust. You teach the boy right, he lives to come back and spend money next time.”

  “I’ll try,” she says.

  We cut through a narrow seam where Row A spills into the walking lane: gear-motors stacked like chess pieces; a bucket of sprockets; a crate of pulleys with one missing set screw each. A poster of a grinning youth in overalls—EARLY CONTRIBUTION BUILDS TOMORROW—flakes at the edges.

  Mother’s voice stays level. “This market,” she says, “feeds the city. It also eats it. We take apart the things other worlds throw away. We put the pieces into our machines and call it thrift. The garrison buys what keeps drills moving and vehicles starting. The rest we sell to each other to make the week a little easier.”

  At Row E, a narrow man with a clipboard and clean fingernails arranges mil-spec connectors like jewelry. The prices are written in a hand that looks like it belongs on forms. “Magistrate-licensed,” Mother says low. “This means the official prices are for those with connections. Don’t ask why it costs more than the tag says.”

  She bows a hair deeper. “Inspector Wei,” she says. No envelope this time. Just my name and her name and the little pause that equals respect. “The boy will need heatshrink and lock wire soon.”

  Wei glances at me. “Heatshrink by meter. Lock wire by the coil only.” He sets two examples on the felt when Mother puts down some money. “Bring House Qing-Liang’s seal if you want discount. Without the seal, you pay ten percent to the schedule.”

  “Of course,” she says. She pockets them without looking surprised by him asking for a bribe.

  We loop back to Huang, then cut across to a corner stall where a woman sells only fans, all wattages, all sizes, each with a slip of paper wired to the frame: 12V / 0.16A / 24V / 0.45A.

  Mother sets a small green envelope on the table. “Auntie Hua,” she says. “I want to show you my boy.”

  Auntie Hua makes some small talk and smiles while looking for something, then plucks two fans from different piles—one low, one mid—and presses them to my palm. “Listen before you buy,” she says. She touches each fan to a battery under the table. One purrs. One chatters. “If it chatters, it has to be fixed before being used. If it purrs, you can try to sell it without looking inside.”

  I spend some time looking around and thinking while they talk about business and fans.

  Mother’s gifts are small, precise: tea to the man who values tea; nothing to the inspector who cannot take from unofficial sources. Every envelope is green, because red is reserved for celebrations. Every envelope disappears without comment. Everyone is helpful and friendly as if they always knew me.

  I think about the difference while they talk over my head. On Old Earth, the word was bribe with a spat at the end; here the word is guanxi with a nod. One is a criminal act, the other a constant of life. Only one can be spoken of in daylight. In the Confederation, the line between the two is drawn by who benefits: if the network strengthens House and Nation, it’s virtue. If it only helps you, it’s rot.

  The news speaks often enough of executives being caught and judged by the courts for that to be obvious for even the dumbest. After all, if they show that publicly, what do they keep off-screen?

  Mother steers us toward the exit, our bag heavier by a handful of parts I didn’t know we could afford and lighter by envelopes I didn’t see her prepare. “These are reliable,” she says. “If they cheat you once, it will be because you forgot to ask the right question.”

  “What’s the right question?” I ask.

  She turns the fan box in my hands so the spec sticker faces me. “What problem are you solving for them when you pay?” she says. “Petar needs the transformers to move to make rent. Hua needs buyers who won’t return a good fan and shame her face because they wrapped it in a blanket and cooked it. Huang needs students who will come back next week with a better question. You solve their problem; they will help solve yours.”

  At the gate, a patrol flips a coin to the militia clerk for a cup of boiled water. No one checks our bag. No one has to. They all saw who we spoke to and how.

  On the street, the market noise falls behind like a machine winding down.

  “You will come back alone,” she says. “You will bow to the same people. You will not haggle for sport. And you will carry two small envelopes, just in case someone offers you help.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “Then let’s go home.”