Harold sweated in the cop's presence. He gestured to the broken glass lining Aisle Two and explained, "The thieves --"

"Sorry, but you shouldn't be making assumptions. Just say 'people'."

"The people came in, four of them. They were in the snack food aisle first, which as you can see isn't locked down." Most of the Banner Market's products were behind clear plastic. "So these four wore puffy coats and I saw them stuffing things into their pockets. Emptying racks. Not hiding it."

"What then?" asked the cop, recording him.

Harold still shuddered. "I came out from behind the counter, saying, 'Hey'!"

"Did you have a weapon?"

"Pepper spray, officer. Legal here; I checked."

"Not a gun? They said you had a gun."

"No! There's video footage; I'll get you access."

The policeman nodded, thinking. He had Harold go over how the thieves fled but one tripped and hurt his ankle, which let Harold capture him with the spray for long enough for a cop to arrive fifteen terrifying minutes later. Harold had needed to kick the guy in the crotch twice. The other three had left him.

Then the cop said, "You'll probably need to issue an apology."

"What."

"This could turn into a criminal charge against you, for gun possession --"

"I didn't have a gun!" Harold said, adding an expletive.

"And kidnapping, since you detained him with violence. If you're lucky you can escape a civil suit. It's going to depend partly on how interested the media gets."

"*What* depends on media coverage?"

"Whether you get prosecuted and sued. Stay the hell off social media."

Harold imagined looming shadows in bulky coats. "What about the thieves? Are they in jail right now?"

"No. The merchandise amount was too low; they won't be charged."

Harold swore.

"Don't look at me, sir. I'm just doing my job."

He shut his mouth before he could say anything to hurt himself.

#

Within the day he got called by management. Someone in Banner Market's "Shrinkage Department", wanting to go over the facts again. But then he got pulled into a video conference with Cindi in Regional, in charge of the chain across the tri-state area. The boss' boss. Harold's nerves had only started to recover.

She saw his face and smiled, trying to reassure him. "You're not fired, Harold. I legally can't say you did the right thing, but it's not blameworthy."

"The police suggested writing an apology."

"I do too. It doesn't mean anything anymore; I'll have the legal department write it for you. I think they're using AI these days."

"That's it, then? I go back to the same shop and get robbed again next week?"

"We're shuttering that store. It's ceased to be profitable."

Harold hung his head. She saw the gesture and said, "It's not you. You were a successful manager in every way you could control. That's tough to find these days and we want to retain that talent."

He was pleased to hear it, but the words still fell on him like cold rain. He'd been working retail for years toward this management position. How could he be "successful" if he oversaw a business that died? Two, really. Rampant theft and junkies doing drugs in the bathroom had doomed the shop before this one, where he'd been assistant manager.

He said, "I want to prove I can handle a new store."

"You can," said Cindi. "Because this one's special."

#

And so, after signing a humiliating apology for "causing harm and distress to the community through my misunderstanding", he had a week of paid leave.

The new shop was deep in the city, where all the grass had died. The building had safe parking in back: a lot shielded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, with a keypad-activated sliding gate. It was 6 AM and the other workers hadn't arrived yet. He entered through the back door.

The Banner Mart employee area had a heavy locked door to the small front room, which was stylish and barren of products. Instead it had bolted-down chairs, and wallscreens advertising shampoo, candy, over-the-counter medicine, beer, and sandwiches. Three ordering consoles stood out. Sleek, modern, easy to clean. Harold discovered the back area was bigger than he'd thought, and contained the entire inventory in organized bins. There were under 200 product codes, far fewer than normal. He'd been told to expect simplicity.

Harold whistled, impressed and appalled. They didn't have his favorite brand of pretzels or soda, but were well stocked with beer. He set about inspecting the inventory and doing a test purchase of one bag of chips. The ordering kiosk forced him to pay first, then assigned an employee (himself) to fetch the goods. A wallscreen showed him a needless animation of the food and a hot woman eating it.

The back door rang and two guys showed up, brothers apparently. "Mister West? We're Luke and Mark, new minions."

Harold shook their hands. "Good to see you." He checked their IDs and got them signed into the order system. "Got you both on duty today, and then tentatively it's two of us on a given day."

They opened up. There was no ceremony, not even a "Grand Opening" banner, per management orders. Just a shop that from outside, was a big tan brick with a freshly paved sidewalk. Ready to serve.

A woman came in with two toddlers in tow. She looked around, bewildered. "Where the diapers at?"

Harold smiled and showed her the ordering machines. He had to explain how to pick a category and item and hit "Buy". She used an EBT card, government funding. He went to the back, where the system wasn't quite roboticized but highlighted where everything was. He came back to find her trying to buy cookies. "You have to swipe your card again, ma'am." So shopping was a struggle, but she'd get used to it. She went away without thanking him. He was a glorified vending machine, after all.

More customers arrived. Harold, Mark and Luke were nearly useless behind the counter but could lean over it or come from behind it to explain the machines. The ordering kiosks had a tutorial button but everyone wanted the human touch, understandably. Harold tried to converse with people, make them feel welcome. A few buyers appreciated that. A bewildered old man said, "It's like one of those old-time Indian trading forts."

For exactly the same reason, thought Harold. Zero trust. He said, "Over time, it might get better again."

#

The first theft attempt happened on the second day. Five of what the local news would call "youths" ran in and jumped the counter, shoving Harold and Luke aside. One of them yanked at the door to the merchandise, but it didn't open.

Harold had been caught so off guard that he was paralyzed for those few seconds. Then he struggled until one guy flicked a switchblade open and said, "Open up." He smelled of weed.

Harold shuddered, then remembered the little fantasy he'd played out in slow moments yesterday. "Okay, yeah. But it doesn't unlock for us till you place an order. Then I've gotta unlock the bins back there for what you want. So go put in a list of what you're taking."

"Then gimme the cash."

"It's all on cards, man. No cash. But you got me, so go hit the buttons so I can unlock stuff."

The youths argued and cursed, and then one placed an order for beer, jerky, and chocolate. "Now what?"

Harold said, "So put in your card, and then I get the stuff and void your order so it doesn't cost you."

Their tech genius put in his card to pay, and got a printed receipt. Harold took it while the other guy held him at knifepoint. Harold slowly disengaged so he could scan his employee badge at the door while pretending to scan the receipt. He said, "Luke, go get it."

The ringleader held Luke back. "No. You do it." He followed Harold in.

So Harold collected all the stuff the group wanted, showing he couldn't even unlock the bins for other things, then wrote "VOID" in big letters on the receipt. That done, he handed the merchandise over to the customers and said, "You win. Okay. Have a nice day."

When they were gone, hooting and flipping him off, Harold slumped over the counter and shuddered.

Luke was worse off; it was his first time being robbed. Harold straightened and patted his shoulder, giving him a quivering smile. "More profitable than usual, anyway."

#

Management apologized, saying, "The security glass was on back order till now; sorry. It's been in high demand. From now on, don't go to the customer area unless it's empty and the front door is locked."

The next morning, he was there with Mark and the customer area was walled off with thick plastic. No way to touch a customer except by unlocking a half-door or reaching through the airlock-style package portal.

When customers arrived, wanting to know how to use the kiosks or the phone app, Harold had to instruct them by voice alone. Awkward. He figured management would throw more technology at the problem, like giving him a camera view of the customer's screen.

Sales were okay, though people grumbled at the poor selection. Harold promised they could do special orders. They pointed out that someone had left trash in the customer area, and Harold locked the front room afterward to clean it up. Outside, someone had spraypainted a scrawled name on the wall. Harold told himself it was for the best that the shop would fit in, and that the customers could get milk and cereal, meat and bread. He was doing the community a service in what was branded a "food desert" where most grocery stores had closed.

He got through the first week with his two helpers. The company praised him. On day eight, a local leader visited.

His arms had tattoos of red scales. He approached the counter and asked for the manager, then said, "Do you know of Los Lobos?"

Harold shivered. Their motto was *Silver or lead?*, a question they asked government men. "Yes, sir. We sell to everyone."

"We do charity work. Starting a food program for the poor. You're from out of town so maybe you don't understand. This store's not your idea, no?"

"No," Harold muttered. Luke had already backed away from him, to near the robbery panic button that could summon an unarmed mediator in half an hour. "The chain designed this after we had trouble elsewhere."

"Heard about that. A shame. That kind of thing is chaos. Los Lobos doesn't like it. So maybe we set up a charity program through your shop, and put word out not to mess with you."

Harold gulped. "Everything's so locked down, it's hard for me to do anything like that. I physically can't get you a loaf of bread without an official order. I'd probably have to go through corporate."

The representative glared, sizing him up, then laughed. "Sounds like what I heard. Pitiful, really. So, go talk to your owners. We'll work something out within a week, yes?"

"I'll tell them, yeah."

#

Manager Cindi told him, "We're getting similar requests elsewhere. We'd like to handle this in an orderly way to fit in with the community and work with local leaders."

"You know exactly what this is," Harold told her.

She sighed. "We don't dare name it. I suggest you don't either." She forced a smile. "So! This will be the Community Giveback Program. We'll set aside goods to be redistributed this special way. And a little cash. We can make this work and still profit."

"I don't know if we'll really get protection."

"From our new partners? If I were one of the youths who bothered you last week, I'd be very concerned about offending them."

#

But a different group of teenagers arrived two days later, looking like trouble. One pulled a knife on him and said, "Open up."

Harold was behind the thick glass. "It's locked, sorry."

The man said, "Open or I break your stuff, manager," more colorfully than that.

Harold was instinctively afraid, but figured he wasn't in real danger. "Sorry, man. If you place an order I can get you a beer and void the receipt."

"I'm not buying! You think you can rip us off with a fake store. You tell your rich bosses to build a real grocery shop."

"I'll tell 'em."

The man slashed one of the display screens on the way out, cutting a dark line without ruining the whole thing. It was a well-designed device meant for graceful degradation.

#

Harold couldn't work every day, so after the second week he began delegating to Luke and Mark as assistant managers, keeping two people on duty for the store's eight operating hours. Harold assigned himself to be there seven days after the Los Lobos man's first visit, and was ready with a printed corporate statement about the new charity effort. He pushed it over like a holy seal to fend off vampires.

The tattooed man read it and nodded. "We can work with this for now. The goods?"

"Use the 'special order' code."

The donation counted as a prepaid sale, prompting Harold to fetch several large bags worth of beans, rice, and bread. He shuttled them through the counter's airlock.

"Thanks. You should know, we really do distribute this stuff to the poor. We're making a difference. The politicians don't care; we do."

He left in something resembling peace. But this was going to be a weekly thing. Harold figured the company was doing what it needed to, and could eat the loss. Wasn't this taxation better than random theft?

The next day he found someone had spraypainted some kind of Aztec skull-headed guy on the store's front, in red. He made the connection to other businesses that had gotten the same stamp of approval. The concrete had filth and a needle on it already, but the store was protected.

Cindi was cheerful when they next spoke. "No issues this week?"

Harold laughed. "Do you classify armed robbery as an 'issue'?"

"I'm not sure what else to call it. Anyway, I like how the IT department was able to set up the donations as a charity transaction. Saves us all some headache. I'm also looking into whether we can get a coating on the wallscreens, maybe a translucent cage."

"Is this a working business model? I'm afraid we're going to have to switch to delivery only, and then worry about the drivers getting robbed. Or drones."

Cindi chewed on her lip. "I worry too. The answer is, you're one of a few people answering that. Worse, delivery is becoming impractical too. If this type of store quits the cities, the community will only have small-time markets with no distribution network. It'll look like the nineteenth century. We'll have to see if the technology makes this work out, so we can live in the future."

#

Luke was spooked when Harold showed up after one of his days off. "Mark almost got robbed yesterday."

"What? Is he all right? He didn't tell me."

"Just shaken. The guy had a gun. But there was nothing he could do; Mark ducked behind the counter and the robber decided not to waste ammo."

"Didn't call the cops?"

"Tell me it would've helped. Go on."

Harold sighed and looked out to the storefront. Three women came in together with a teenage guy, like a defensive herd. Their shopping let him delay answering. "At the last store I ran, before the robbery that ended it, I called the cops on a crazy guy threatening people. Got told I shouldn't be calling emergency services for that. A tough man grabbed him and shoved him out, and that was that. But we get mostly good, honest customers. Never forget that."

"So what's wrong? Sir."

Harold stared through the door into the city. "A few bad apples."

"Are you willing to walk alone through this street, in the daylight?"

"No. But if you want to give up on this whole neighborhood, you can take your two weeks' notice."

"My brother could've been shot, boss. For what? So that these good apples can buy Toast Tarts?"

Harold turned to Luke and laid a hand on his shoulder, which was against policy. "I don't mean to sound harsh. But there's more at stake than the company's profits or our pay. Our customers, our neighbors, largely pay by government money. Their housing is subsidized. They're rarely paying utility bills. We've created zero jobs for them, so we're not helping them earn more. We're contributing little in taxes. It's possible that Banner Market is here so it can claim its losses as a writeoff and look good on its social credit score for the stockbrokers at Onyx Capital."

"Then what are *we* doing here?"

"Making it possible for modern civilization to exist. I can't fix what's wrong with the housing, the crime, the schools. But I can provide simple, cheap stuff so that people can begin putting this city back together. Like getting a castaway one or two of the things he most needs. Whether they can do the rest of what needs to be done, I don't know. That's why it's worth some risk to me. If it's too much for you, I'll understand."

Luke kept quiet through the rest of his shift. But he called afterward and said, "Mark and I are still in."

#

For a month the routine kept up. Most customers were okay. An outreach representative visited every week for donations. Harold looked into the charity situation and found it was in the open now: public giveaways of food and other necessities, praise be to Los Lobos. In unrelated news, a judge had been found dangling from an overpass with several body parts missing.

The man with the tattoos came back, smiling. "How's business? Any trouble?"

"It's been all right," Harold told him. "The people don't usually try anything lately."

"Good. So there's a little party we like to throw for business owners who make it through the month. You should come." He named an evening time and a street that made Harold go pale from thinking about.

The outreach man laughed. "That neighborhood is safe if you're with us. Come; there are a few other guys we want to welcome."

He left, and Harold retreated to the back rooms to sit and breathe deeply to calm down. He didn't want "welcome" from that group, just toleration. Some notion that he was doing a little good and was no threat. He imagined a wolf sniffing around, and himself only wanting to go unnoticed.

He considered asking Cindi in management, or even inviting her. But this was his invitation. At least his employees hadn't been asked. He had to play along, be social. He'd done nothing to offend the gang and they'd promised his safety, just like the store had. He let the logic of it and the gentle hum of computers and refrigerators numb the racing of his heart.

#

He had a light meal and a very-rare beer before the sunset appointment. An unfamiliar man arrived and rapped on the counter with a hand bearing the same skull-head mark that was on the shop's outer wall. "Ready?"

Harold said, "Yeah."

He got led from the clean, electronic building into a warren of streets. The pavement rapidly grew cracked underfoot, and the buildings had iron-barred doors and windows. Rust had claimed every car and the windows were often missing. The few people outside at this hour hustled to get their errands done before sundown or sat on porches. Most were badly overweight but for the lean, hungry men who watched Harold and his minder.

Then the gang's man led Harold from merely decrepit roads into an alley where spraypainted names faded into unintelligible scrawls. Little of the fading sun reached here. He startled at the sight of fire, but his escort laughed. Little lanterns stood out on corners, each lit by oil or a greasy rag. A streetlight overhead was hung with moss that made it look like a hunched-over giant. The path ahead turned and opened into a new street. There stood a barricade of wood and a car whose hood opened wide like a jaw.

Bass music thumped nearby. A burning trash barrel lit the way to a peeling, cracked building with no door. Harold found himself drawn inside and welcomed by laughing, dancing people. The tune shifted from salsa to something with a flute and drums.

A fire burned beneath a torn-out ceiling of rebar. Oily smoke lingered overhead and meat grilled below. Harold found two other men who were out of place. Their clothes were clean, their expressions stony and wide-eyed like his. Some of the comfortable locals were wearing feathers on their headdresses and arms. Obsidian glinted somewhere nearby.

A man pressed through the crowd, bare-chested, wearing little bones. He started a chant: "Mict-lan-tec-uh-tli." What it meant Harold didn't know, but he *felt*. It was old, from a way of life that made sense to many people long ago. A reassurance that all would be well, if the toll was paid.

The first of the businessmen squawked as he got nudged toward the fire. The bare-chested man gestured and received a black stone knife, which he dipped in alcohol and set alight. He cut a strip of meat and handed it over, speaking in a language Harold felt he should recognize. It had been around longer than convenience stores, longer than his homeland. The man who received the offering gulped and chewed the stringy flesh, to the cheers and applause of the crowd. There was more chanting, then a wolf howl from the throats of many. Then a man was ushering the second shop owner forward, and the knife was cleansed once more in liquor and flame.

Harold dared not articulate exactly what he was seeing. He knew it was a bargain, with benefits and a price. It had a set of rules that his clean, safe education and happy family had shielded him from. In a sense he was weak, tiny, and naive. Powerful forces would be happy to receive him, and he would more fully know another world.

Fear paralyzed him, but what shook him out of it was the light. The cooking fire lit the room, yes, but it was a tainted flame that would reveal only things nobody should want to see. So he slipped away while the revelers were feeding meat to their second recruit, and in the chaos of noise and dancing bodies he began running.

Faster and faster he went. Outside to the blocked-off street. Here people looked at him like an unfamiliar animal. The most pristine wall wasn't spraypainted; it was carved, showing a hooded, black-haloed skeleton with a scythe and a broken pair of scales. Around the figure were stylized carvings of jaguars, human faces, and birds. Candles burned in a cinder-block holder. Harold turned away to the alley he'd come from. There, a man staggered, shadowed so that Harold couldn't tell if what he held was a bottle or a knife. Harold ducked and feinted, imagining himself as a rabbit fleeing the huntsman. Then he was back on cracked, trash-strewn streets. A modern city, but with the alley entrance just beside him. It must have been his imagination as the sun fell, but he thought he saw the old designs surge and shift, pulsing outward a little farther.

Harold's lungs burned. Someone tried to grab him but with desperate haste Harold leaped away. He feared he'd made a wrong turn but no, the Banner Market stood ahead, its blue-tinged electric lamp still lit. Locked, the door was locked! Harold found his keys, finely made glittering metal, and unlocked the front. Now he stood in the customer room, facing an unmanned counter. He locked the door. The shop signs stood dark.

He unlocked the counter, retreated and locked that behind him too, then went through the door to the employee area. Now he was in a softly lit, humming place with air conditioning and Internet. There was a bargain involved in keeping such wonders running, too, but he vastly preferred it to the other.

He hesitated only long enough to catch his breath. Out to the parking lot, where his car was miraculously intact behind razor wire and a locked gate. In the absence of any real peace, only barriers like these held back the old way.

Harold pulled out to the crumbling street and drove through the night, hurrying to the nearest highway and towards his home... no, a hotel, in case anyone came to meet him tonight. Once he was locked in an anonymous room, stripping off his sweaty clothes, he could begin to think about what to tell the company.

#

The next morning, Cindi responded to his e-mail with a call. "What's the meaning of this?"

"I can't do it. I've told Mark and Luke, as you saw. They should quit too. They should go far away like me. God, Cindi, I don't even know how I'm going to move out of my apartment without getting murdered."

His boss said, "Calm down. Getting mugged happens. It's a rough neighborhood and you know it."

"You don't understand. What's out there is *old*. It was here before us. We drove it away for a while and built something much better, but when it began creeping back we refused to put our foot down. We had no self-confidence. The shop doesn't belong in a place like this. It's going to be replaced by something worse than a cartel."

"We really shouldn't be using the C word."

"Ignore reality that hard, and the old way will come back that much faster. You have me on the front lines and I'm telling you. We've gone way beyond 'too much crime'. That's just the outer wave of it. There's a sickness."

Cindi let him rant a little longer, then said, "I understand you're having emotional issues." She ignored Harold's bark of laughter. "But you're leaving your employees hanging."

He imagined them dangling from an overpass. "Command decision. I'm not opening the store today and I've advised them not to, either. They'll probably call me before long."

"I'll sign off on you calling in sick, and having the shop closed for the day. Take the time to think about this, what you're throwing away if you quit. It's not just your career. We serve a whole community that needs us. You've said so yourself."

"Yeah. I still agree. But I'm still not going back without a team of priests with holy water, and guns."

"You're exaggerating."

"Not at all." Harold was seriously considering slinking into a church today. They probably understood, there.

Cindi sighed. "Get some rest, Harold. I'll call this evening, all right?"

"Fine."

She hung up and he flopped back onto his bed. He'd had gym clothes in his car, so he felt decent. Like part of the crowd that'd hop on a treadmill and watch TV and chat online with friends. He wanted that world to survive. Although it had its own flaws, it was designed to improve. Now he'd seen another world where the sun needed payment to rise each day, where safety and logic came from a very different set of rules and obligations. At this point, it couldn't be fought with cheap prices on cola and cereal. Something deeper needed to change, to shove the old gods back to where he'd once thought they remained.

Harold shuddered and made plans to retreat, but not surrender.