I took a careful look through the stash he was showing me and from what I could tell everything looked good.  Still, as I was very unexperienced in such trades I was nervous and more than a little scared.

“So, kid, how’s it lookin?” the guy asked.  He wasn’t helping my nerves much.  He was very dirty and dressed in raggy clothes- I was at least somewhat clean- and he kept wiping his nose with the back of his hand.  It seemed to me that he had a drug problem although that was mostly illegal unless approved by the State.

“I, I dunno.  Looks ok I guess but I’m not sure.  Is it all here like I asked?”

“C’mon kid, I ain’t got all day.  Sure it’s all there.  Would I risk it?  Would I risk having you rat me out to the Greys?  I got a life to keep goin’ here and I need to survive.  You got the trade stuff?” he asked, appearing now a bit nervous himself.

“Yeah I got it in the box there” I answered, indicating the beat-up carry-box I had brought in order to help avoid suspicion if I was seen.  At one time I had heard you could be seen everywhere by the many electric eyes that had been set up everywhere.  But now, even though it was very illegal to do it many had been ripped out or destroyed by the Streeters.  The ones that remained often broke down or were not monitored around the clock as they had been in the gone days.  Only in the richer areas owned by the Inners were the eyes working and active and watched all the time.  For the most part they didn’t care about things down on the roads and in the alleys where we all were.

“Lemme see it, quick!” he grunted.

I pulled the box over and slowly opened it by my feet.  He looked inside.

“It’s all there” I said.  “It’ll last you a good couple weeks if you’re careful with it and don’t share none of it.”

“Great.  So, are we done?” he asked, again with a growing amount of nervousness.  Or so it seemed to me.

“Well, Jally said you were good for the stuff and that he trusted you so I guess so but I need to know where I can get something to, y’know, something to…”

“Put this in so you can use?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Look kid, that’s real tough to do.  They used to have them computers and some bigger players but they mostly disappeared.  And besides, they need power and even if you found one that worked and found someplace to plug it in that worked they would be able to detect it and track it and find you; maybe find me too.  They don’t watch the eyes much anymore but they are REAL worried about their power stashes” he explained as he rifled through the box which I had handed to him.

“So what can I do?  Tell me because I’m kinda new to this and don’t know” I tried to explain.

“Kinda new and kinda alone kid cuz nobody messes with this much anymore- they all just gave up.  But you seem kinda okay so I’ll tell you this.  Go up to the west end near what used to be called miller’s end, near the old broken down truckyard.  Ask around for a dude name of Banky.  He might be able to help you, find one of them old smaller players that used batteries.  But then you need to find some good batteries and you also need a set of them old wirephones you plug in to listen” he offered.

“Okay I’ll do that” I came back.

“Gotta run kid.  And remember you don’t know me and this never happened.  Don’t mention my name to Banky if you find him.  Just tell him you heard of him in the alleys and leave it at that.  Later kid” he said as he locked the box under his arm and ran off down the crumbled concrete of the narrow alley.  I noticed that he couldn’t wait though as I saw him quickly grab some of the trade stuff from the box and stick it in his mouth.  He must have really been hungry I imagined.

Now I had another challenge.  I had to get this other box of trade stuff back to the safe place.  Safe place- hah, I thought to myself, as if anywhere was safe.  The box was being loud as the devices inside rattled with each running step.  I tried to be careful as most of them no longer had cases.  I didn’t want to break anything even though I didn’t even know how any of them worked.

As I got closer to the safe place I thought about when I had first heard of these things from the old man.  They used to put music on these things and called them see-dees though I never learned what that meant.  People once were free to pick what they liked and buy it and then listen to it on a thing, what the old man and trader called a player.  But the old man told me that the Bosses one day began to listen and let some stuff be sold and some not be.  If they didn’t like what the music said or how it sounded they destroy it, everything, and the guys who made the music or the see-dee would be arrested on the spot so they all had to start being real careful.  And then the Bosses started to let some other groups help make the decisions in case something the music said was somehow offensive to them or someone they knew.  Or maybe they just didn’t like it for some reason.  Some of the see-dees were put out anyhow with the help of some of the underground people but even that stopped when the Bosses started arresting the people who they even thought might be involved and those people weren’t seen ever again so far as anyone who knew them ever knew- and no one who knew them ever had the guts to ask where they were.  So the players and then the see-dees disappeared and before long the music was gone as well.  There wasn’t no music anywhere that I had ever found.

I knew the moment the old man told me about all this that I just had to find out more for myself.  I had never heard about see-dees.  And I had never really known what music even was.  All I knew was what the old man had told me not long before he was taken away himself.