The next morning we approached the mysterious building. I was rather nervous:The time for our next adventure was finally there: we would try to contact the fundless to have them join our cause of reviving the human species, and their squat closest to the Light District was our first target now. The composition of our little group was rather unusual: a boring-looking working man in his factory uniform, a long-haired semi-outcast dressed like it was the late 20th century, a casually dressed woman with long black hair, and a levitating self-projected AI monk. No-one seemed to have noticed us though. This might have meant that either all the people here were replaced by AI’s on autopilot that weren’t programmed to notice anomalies, or at best that the humans that were still walking around were in the same trance that I had been in for years. But even I would couldn’t have stopped myself from staring at such a group of people if I had bumped into them in the state of halflife that I had lived in for most of my adult years.

The building that had been referred to all the time as ‘the squat’ turned out to be even more ancient than the Ecstasy Nirvana, and in an even worse state. It was made of bricks that once must have had a better colour than the pale greyish they had now, and most of the windows were broken. There was a broken first-generation fundlock in the wooden door, with a weathered paper taped next to it. ‘Danger’ it said in big capital letters, hand-written with a thick marker and illustrated with a roughly drawn pirate skull, which also gave a very ancient feel. The others didn’t seem to mind this warning and just walked in, so I followed them without letting my fear show. I still had no idea what I could expect, but I supposed that the others did.

I entered a world unlike any place I’d ever been. The building wasn’t just dusty, but it was also strangely alive with all kinds of non-human organisms like insects and fungi. I even saw spiderwebs, like in an old-fashioned horror-holofilm. I almost expected a ghost or otherworldly entity to suddenly appear in front of us yelling ‘Booo’, but nothing bigger than a tiny black spider appeared, which was spectacular enough for me. Slowly the tiny eight-legged monster came down from the ceiling on a thread, completely ignoring the giant intruders. I froze up when I saw it, completely taken aback by the first non-human lifeform that I met so closely in my entire life. I heard Evelith chuckle. “Just let it be, it’s completely harmless!”

I didn’t want to lose face so I let the tiny creature be, and proceeded on my way through the squat together with my co-conspirators. “So, who lives here, apart from this creepy tiny eight-legged animal?” I asked Leste. “No-one in particular. Maybe no-one at all at the moment. The fundless are nomads without a fixed place to live. We have to check out any of their hideouts that we can find, and this is as good as starting place as any other one. Most others are further away, if we even know where they are. And this particular building is also a neutral zone where they sometimes meet up with, eh, regular people like us who want to trade something, so it’s a safe place for us. Not that that happens very often. And…” Leste seemed to be the biggest expert here, but he was interrupted by Evelith.

“Shht. There is something here. Or someone.”

We were silent now, looking in the direction of her pointing finger. Something vague, much bigger than the spider moved in the twilight of a corner, and then hid behind a pile of boxes and empty cans of food.

“That’s not an animal.”

“Stay here, I will go looking” Evelith said, switching her screenphone to lamp mode. “Won’t it be dangerous?” I asked? “I don’t think so.” She replied in a confident tone, following up with “Hey, hello, little one.” to a tiny human that she had caught frozen in the light of her phone. Huge blue eyes beamed with fear in a small face that seemed almost pale orange in this light, with messy hair of almost the same colour in all directions, a bit like Lestes dreadlocks. She wore strange multicoloured clothes that had seen better times in the past, and seemed to see us as a great danger.

“Don’t hurt me! Please don’t kill little Vi!”

Evelith turned off the lamp. “We won’t hurt you, little Vi. There is no danger from us.” The little creature trembled. “Why would anyone here hurt you? Why would anyone kill you?” She didn’t answer and looked shyly from her to me to San Yaoyao and then to Leste. “Are you alone here? Where are the others?” Evelith asked when no answer kame. The child remained silent for a while, and then said one little sentence, so silent it could almost not be heard.

“There are no others left.”

I heard Leste utter a silent curse, and Evelith turned back to the child to question her more. “What do you mean, no others? You’re only a small kid. You can’t be living alone here.” The girl nodded to her. “Little Vi been living here for eight octoweeks, there’s enough food and other stuff here for much longer. The gang left this place when the radical preacherman came with his people. No-one left a phone here and Little Vi don’t have a hackphone myself, so Little Vi couldn’t reach anyone. Little Vi tried to find Zap and Argon but she don’t know her way here. But they were not in the other squat here. And there are killerbots around outside. Little Vi saw them.”

This was a lot of information to process, but for now we had to focus on the child herself. She seemed to have had a rough time, without help from grown-ups and without funds. That was something I wouldn’t even have considered possible. “So did you check the other squats?” Evelith asked. She nodded “Little Vi wanted to, but she only found that other one two streets from here, and there was nothing there. So Little Vi been staying here ever since. And Vi been afraid of the fundslaves. They always told Vi that fundslaves are dangerous. Are you people not fundslaves? Are you not enemies of the free people?”

Evelith nodded. “We are fund-users but we are no slaves to anyone or anything. And we’re not enemies to the fundless either. We are looking for them actually with an offer of friendship.” The girl was visibly relieved but seemed still suspicious nonetheless. “I’ve heard the names of Zap and Argon before.” Leste interrupted. “They were together with Xando last time I heard news from the fundless through my informant on black market stuff. Are you from the Xando gang? I’ve heard good things about them.”

“Y… Yes! Xando is a good man. Little Vi was with his gang. They where the grown-ups who took care of me. But the radical preacherman came, and everyone went crazy. They wanted to kill Xando; He left, and only Zap and Argon followed him methinks. Little Vi hid, and the rest of the group went with the preachers. They seemed to have forgotten Little Vi, and she’s been all alone ever since.”

Leste uttered the same curse again between his teeth. This was very bad news, even though I didn’t really understand what all of it meant.