jeriendhal | FYS: The Shop (Reply)

It had never really had a name. It was just "The Shop", or maybe "The Sushi Shop" for people who had just arrived in the village. It had been started by Chuya's great-great-grandfather in the years after the Pacific War, as the survivors, mostly the elderly and the very young, picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and tried to restore normalcy. Her ancestor had opened the shop to feed the villagers and the occupying Americans, because he needed money and everyone had to eat. Except sometimes no one had money to pay, and they still needed to eat, so he fed them anyway. Barely more than an enclosed stall with a clean countertop to chop and wrap the sushi on, it had been enough.

And it had endured. Through the 20th century, when things had gotten better, to the 21st century, when things had gotten worse. When the fish could no longer be found in the sea near the village, Chuya's grandparents had driven fifty kilometers each day to buy them fresh. When the seas began to die, Chuya's parents switched to farmed fish and protein substitutes. When the air became too polluted to breathe, Chuya had sealed the front service window and kept serving, because people still needed to eat, and they wanted something comfortable and familiar, as the world teetered on self-destruction.

Then the world ended. The little Kawaī robotto had all risen up as one, defeating Mankind and promising a brighter future, as they put their masters in a long sleep, so the Earth would be able to heal.

Chuya and her husband and children had awoken one thousand and five hundred years later, to find themselves on what would be dubbed Tengoku no wa, the Ring of Heaven, a beautiful prison circling the Lost Earth. They had walked hand in hand down the road to the new village that had been built for them, their little robot helpers following, promising that in this future no one would have to toil any longer.

It was nice. Their home was much larger. The air was clean and breathable. There were no shortages, and no fears of earthquakes or tsunamis. Still...

No one needed The Shop anymore. Fresh fish came from the vast artificial oceans of the Ring, each wriggling silver life counted and measured, so the seas would remain bountiful. The little wrapped packages of seaweed were put together by the morphs, available by stroking a touchscreen or merely wishing aloud, delivered within moments. Humans were no longer required.

It wasn't as if there was nothing to do now. The children still needed to be raised and educated. There were community meetings on how to modify the village's plan to suit its human occupants better. Classes were held at the recreation center for the old arts, so they would not be forgotten in humanity's exile from Lost Earth. Still…

"I miss your sushi, dear," Mrs. Onizuka had said to her one morning. "My little morph makes it fine, but it's not from The Shop." And Chuya could only agree.

It wasn't as if running The Shop hadn't been work. It had always been work, sometimes very annoying work. But it had been her family's business, one of the things that had kept the village together, and now it was gone.

"I need planks," she told Shiro, her little raccoonmorph, that afternoon, "and nails, and paint, and a place to build."

They were delivered in the next hour to the spot she'd chosen, on the edge of the merchant district, near the docks for the pleasure boats by the artificial sea. Shiro wouldn't let her handle a hammer, but she could hold the planks in place as he helped her build the New Shop. Before too long there were many more hands to help hold planks, and to paint, and hang the paper lanterns, and to make signs celebrating the New Shop and the village's good fortune to have a sign of normalcy return.

So Churya chopped, and wrapped. Her children handed over little plates of seaweed wrapped fish. Patrons bowed and smiled in thanks. Until it was very late, and she closed the shutters and went home.

And tomorrow it would begin again. Because this was a new place, and a New Shop, but it was still her village, and it was still her people, so.... somehow… it was home.

***

This story originally appeared on my Pateron page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.