The First of the Stoners
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 8: The Are-Hue
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 8: The Are-Hue - For readers of the Greenies Universe, this is where it all began. In 2135, nineteen-year-old Nathan Stoner is offered something no vermin has seen in generations: a real job. The catch? It's on Mars. Follow the first wave of colonists as they leave Earth behind and build the foundations of the society that will one day shape the entire Greenies timeline.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Fiction Science Fiction
New Pittsburgh, Mars
September 12, 2135
The elevator screen on forty-seven read: NEXT CAR — 2 MINUTES
Nate stood in the alcove and waited. Two minutes turned into four. The number flickered to: NEXT CAR — 3 MINUTES. Someone beside him exhaled.
“Fuckin’ shift change,” the man muttered. “Sucks ass.”
Nate leaned back against the wall and let his head rest there lightly.
He had already run the experiment.
Every room in the are-hue—bedroom, common area, bathroom, kitchen—ran on the same sixty-second leash. Lights came on automatically when he entered. Sixty seconds later they shut off unless he confirmed continuation through a building-linked device.
He did not own a building-linked device.
He had tried talking to the rezzy. That had been far from helpful.
“You require compatible hardware, mofo.”
“I know.”
“Without it, you cannot maintain lighting states.”
“I just need the lights to stay on.”
“Correct.”
“So keep them on.”
“Fuck no.”
The tone had been lazy, almost amused.
When he pushed back, the rezzy slowed down and began explaining the situation as if Nate were a five-year-old who still believed the government was for the people and that new jobs would be opening up soon.
“You need a Series C or higher.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Then shit ain’t gonna work right.”
Over and over. Polite. Profane. Completely useless.
He had already concluded the obvious. He needed a new clinker.
The display above the elevator doors finally shifted. CAR ARRIVING. The doors slid open. The car was nearly full.
Nate stepped in sideways and found a narrow pocket of space near the back rail. Shoulders brushed fabric. A backpack pressed lightly against his hip.
No one smelled bad. That was noticeable. Soap. Clean cotton. Mild deodorant. Someone faintly citrus. Someone else neutral and freshly laundered. No stale sweat. No damp fabric funk. In a sealed tower with stacked humans, hygiene wasn’t optional. It was mutual self-defense.
The screen for scheduled stops was populated. 44, 42, 38, 32.
The doors closed. The elevator descended. They made the scheduled stops and more people climbed aboard. Only one person exited—a cute girl in green shorts and a yellow shirt who, for whatever reason, got off on 33 instead of riding down to the lobby like everyone else. Nate didn’t think much about it. People visited other people in the building. He hadn’t done the actual math, but with two people to an apartment on the majority of the floors and family units designed to accommodate one child on the top thirty residential floors, there had to be at least three thousand people living in the building. Maybe more. Friendships developed. Ms. Green Shorts probably had a work acquaintance she visited on 33. Or maybe a “friend”. The very thought gave him a pang of longing for Darla. Darla who had let him fuck her multiple times.
CAR AT CAPACITY flashed across the top of the screen after two people boarded on 32.
A soft tone chimed and the descent continued without stopping any more. No one complained. Everyone understood. The rest of the ride was uninterrupted.
The doors opened onto the lobby. The crowd dispersed in clean lines. No jostling. No lingering. Caldwell Electronics sat across the concourse, bright and clinical.
He crossed the floor and stepped inside.
The temperature dropped a few degrees. The air smelled faintly of new composite and filtered ozone. Clinkers rested on angled displays under tight white lighting, each one looking like a precision instrument instead of a government ration.
To the right, recessed slightly from the main showroom, was the matte black door:
SPECIAL VR EQUIPMENT
No window. No advertisement beyond the text. Discreet.
Nate ignored it.
A female sales associate in a fitted black Caldwell Electronics shirt nodded once. “Looking for something specific?”
“Building integration,” Nate said. “My old clinker can’t do it.”
“Ahh, fresh from the homeland, huh? You’ll need a Series C minimum.”
The associate gestured to a lower-tier display.
Nate stepped closer.
SERIES C — FULL RESIDENTIAL NET ACCESS
$2,700 OUT THE DOOR
SERVICE PLAN REQUIRED — $300/MONTH
He stared at the numbers.
“That the cheapest?”
“Fuckin’ A,” she told him.
“Nothing below that’ll keep my lights on?”
“Nope.”
“Service is mandatory?”
“Three hundred monthly. Infrastructure authentication, bandwidth, secure access, tax and fuckin access allocation tax.”
“What’s that?” Nate wanted to know.
“The fuckin’ money they take from us workin’ greenies so the fuckin’ vermin back on Earth can have their welfare mart clinkers.”
“I see,” Nate said slowly. He did not tell her that he had been one of those fuckin’ vermin back on Earth just twelve weeks before. She undoubtedly knew that. Had likely been born as one herself.
Nate pulled up his account balance on his welfare clinker.
612.14
That was everything he had.
He didn’t start work for two more days. He wouldn’t be paid for two more weeks after that. He hadn’t bought food yet. He couldn’t keep his lights on. He probably wouldn’t be able to get the shower to turn on without a new clinker.
He looked back at the Series C unit.
Two thousand seven hundred dollars. Three hundred a month.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” he said.
The sales associate watched Nate stare at the price tag on the Horizon 7 for a long beat. Her expression didn’t change much—just a slight tilt of the head, the kind of look you give someone who’s about to step on a rake they can’t yet see.
“That’s right,” she said quietly. “You’re right off the fuckin’ ship.”
Nate met her eyes. “That obvious?”
“New greenie smell. Your ass still reeks of ore-carrier air. And you’re looking at that price like someone just told you rent’s due in blood.” She leaned one elbow on the counter, voice low enough that it stayed between them. “You don’t know about no-burns yet.”
Nate frowned. “No-burns?”
She gave a small, tired nod. “Official fuckin’ name is Bridge Advance Loan. Bridge Advance. Sounds like pussy, right? Like they’re just helping you cross a little gap till payday.” She snorted softly. “We all call ‘em no-burns.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a bridge you can’t fuckin’ burn down behind you.” She tapped the counter once, punctuating it. “That shit’s forever. You take a no-burn, they deduct the payments straight out of your direct deposit until it’s paid off. Quit and go somewhere else? Doesn’t matter. It follows your ass like you never stepped away. Die on the job? They’ll pull it out of whatever estate you leave. And if you don’t have enough dinero to make the payment that cycle—no problem. You already gave them the right to extend the loan to cover the fuckin’ monthly. Just rolls over. Keeps growing.”
Nate felt something cold settle in his stomach. “That’s kind of a fucked up deal, isn’t it?”
“No shit.” She straightened a little, glanced toward the back of the store where the VR attachments door sat closed and black. “Them places are run by corporate Earthling suits. They like nothing better than institutionalized greenie fucking. So you gotta be careful with them.”
Nate shifted his weight. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you’re gonna need to score a no-burn if you want lights that stay on longer than sixty seconds or a fuckin’ shower in your own rez without begging the rez-com every time.” She met his gaze straight on. “But when you sign up, they’re gonna offer you an assload of dinero. Way more than you need. And you’re gonna be tempted to snatch it all up,” she said. “New clothes. Better bed. Big screen. Upgrade your net tier. Maybe even peek through that door.” She jerked her chin subtly toward the matte black VR ATTACHMENT entrance. “Don’t do it. Just get enough to cover the clinker, a bed, some basic fuckin’ bedding, and enough food to get you through till you get paid. That’s it. And then don’t take any more no-burns unless you absolutely fuckin’ have to.”
She paused, letting it sink in.
“Motherfuckers charge twenty-five percent interest—biannual fuckin’ interest. Doesn’t take long before all you can afford is the interest and the debt never gets any smaller. Lots of new greenies make that mistake. I made it myself back in ‘30 when I got here.”
Nate looked down at the counter for a second, then back up at her. Something loosened in his chest—not relief exactly, but the feeling of not being completely alone in the dark.
“Thanks,” he said. Quiet, but real. “For laying it out like that.”
She gave a small shrug, almost embarrassed. “We greenies need to look out for each other. No one else gives a rat’s ass about us.”
Nate nodded once. He stepped back from the display, bag still heavy on his shoulder.
“I’ll ... figure it out.”
“Take your time,” she said. “We’re open till 2200. Door’s always open if you need to ask more questions.”
He turned and walked out of Caldwell Electronics.
The lobby noise rolled over him again—conversations, cart wheels, distant announcements. Afternoon light through the canopy was starting to lean toward evening, the butterscotch tint deepening to something closer to rust.
He stood there a moment, clinker in his pocket suddenly feeling very small and useless. And then he went to one of the benches and sat down. He pulled out his next-to-useless clinker and pulled up the web. Not the welfare web, but the actual web. He still couldn’t get over that part.
The interface bloomed—clean, fast, no ads screaming for attention. No government filters. No “content advisory” pop-ups. Just the open net, the same one Earthlings used, the same one the working people used. He told it to search for “Bridge Advance Loans” and it went to work.
Of course there were results. A shitload of them. It would be in the corporate best interest to make sure their loans could be found and applied for with welfare mart clinkers from Earth. He saw that most of the results did not refer to them by the official term. In their ads and hyperlinks they called them “no-burns,” as if the suits understood the joke and had embraced it.
Nate had only met one suit in his life—the father of Emma up on Triad—so he didn’t know them well enough to formulate an opinion on whether they were wicked smart or wicked out of touch.
He didn’t speak to a human being. He spoke to AI avatars that were female, cute, and personable. It would seem that the system realized he was a heterosexual male and targeted its AI to produce something that would keep him talking. That did not surprise Nate in the least.
He compared the three biggest services and found they were pretty much all the same. For a new arrival employed person on Mars without a credit history or previous loan experience, he qualified for 25,000 dollars if he wanted. As his clerk friend had told him, it was twenty-five percent interest compounded biannually. Minimum payment was six hundred dollars per direct deposit, but he could pay as much as he wanted.
He decided to go with Amherst No-Burn Freedom Brokers. They were based out of San Francisco, which was only 160 klicks from Roseville so it seemed like he would be supporting his home town (kind of) by choosing them. And he did not ask for 25k. He did some quick mental math and decided he would need 10,000 dollars to get a new clinker, a bed, linen, enough food for two or three weeks, and enough spending money to cover incidentals (and maybe a beer or two and a baggie of Martian ganja).
He gave this number to the AI female (her name was Molly) and she asked him three different times if he was sure he didn’t want the full 25k. He finally convinced her that he was serious about 10k and she laid some facts on him. Minimum payment was “Only three hundred dollars per payroll deposit. Isn’t that static?”
Nate did not think it was static at all. He didn’t need the helpful clerk to tell him that paying three hundred dollars per paycheck would only cover the interest and a tiny amount of principal. If he only paid that much, the amount he owed would remain more or less fixed forever.
He authorized the AI to deduct 600 dollars from each payroll deposit. Molly tried again to talk him into the minimum payment because she knew that entry level greenies (she said this without awareness that greenies found the term offensive from Earthling mouths or from Earthling created AI mouths) only made an average of 2500 dollars every two weeks of net income. And you have to pay rent and all living expenses with that. Wouldn’t the minimum payment be much easier? While she was making these arguments she smiled at him a lot showing her AI perfect teeth. She licked her pouty lips a few times showing her moist and sexy AI tongue. And she leaned over at the end, seemingly just shifting position, allowing Nate to see the cleavage of her AI tits for a few seconds.
Nate, as a former vermin, had never had to deal with high pressure sales before. Everything was handed to vermin. They bought nothing. He could see how a less intelligent or more horny greenie would fall for this. But he didn’t. He enjoyed the look of the fake tits and the wet tongue and the pouty lips and the sexy/cute lilt of her voice, but insisted on six hundred and she reluctantly agreed (but clearly pouted after and talked less informally with him).
He laid derm on the pad and it happened in fifteen seconds. Ten thousand dollars popped into existence in his account. More money than the last three generations of his family had earned combined.
And he had also just incurred more debt than the last three generations of his family combined.
Twenty-seven hundred dollars disappeared in a blink. Another three hundred for the first month’s service fee quickly vanished with it. Nate watched the balance on his new Horizon 7 adjust downward and felt the sting anyway, even though he had just taken on ten thousand in debt to make the purchase possible. It wasn’t the logic of it that hurt. It was the velocity. One moment he had five figures in his account. The next, almost a third of it was gone.
He powered down the old welfare clinker and turned it over in his hand once. It looked smaller than it had an hour ago. Cheap casing. Limited ports. Government gray.
Everything on it lived in the cloud. Contacts. Messages. Browsing history. There was no sentimental value and no resale value. Just plastic and circuitry.
He walked it over to the recycle slot embedded in the lobby wall and dropped it in. The intake swallowed it with a soft mechanical click. Somewhere behind the panel it would be transported by conveyer belt into the heart of the industrial part of NP, be disassembled, useful components harvested, heavy metals extracted, casing fed into a plastic masher and melted down into feedstock for something else.
That was Mars. Nothing wasted. Nothing romantic.
He returned to the bench and activated the new clinker.
The screen flared brighter, resolution sharper, response instantaneous. A faint chime welcomed him into the full infrastructure tier. Downloading all of his contacts, apps, and other programs from the cloud took only thirty seconds. Upload and download speeds, once thought impressive at 6G before World War III, were now pretty standard at 500 gigabits per second on a standard public net, though they did not name the speed any longer. It was just ‘the G-band’ or just ‘G’. As in, “I just linked my phone to the G.”
After successfully linking to the G and configuring his clinker, Nate spent a few minutes exploring—menus sliding smoothly, holographic projections rising cleanly above the device when prompted. Universal Time converter. Building access controls. Local business hours. It felt less like a ration and more like a tool.
He opened the holo viewer and watched a short demo clip just to see how it rendered. A three-dimensional sculpture of New Pittsburgh’s skyline rotated above the device, crisp enough that he could see the reflective panels on individual towers. The processing was seamless.
He tapped Darla’s name.
The call rang twice before shifting to voicemail.
She was probably working.
They had texted a few times since she’d left Triad—brief check-ins, profanity-laced reassurance—but they hadn’t seen each other face-to-face since the departure gate.
The holo generator activated automatically.
Darla’s image rose into the air above the screen—three-dimensional, shoulders and face rendered in sharp detail. She looked annoyed in the pre-recorded greeting, hair pulled back tight.
“Sorry I can’t take your fuckin’ call right now,” her projection said. “Tell me what kinda shit’s goin’ down and I’ll get back with your ass.”
He smiled despite himself.
“Hey,” he said to the hovering version of her. “I just moved into my rez here in NP. Just bought a new fuckin’ clinker I can’t afford.” He shifted slightly on the bench. “Place is decent. I’ll send you a holo later.” A pause. “Wish there was an empty corridor somewhere we could do some maintenance in.”
He ended the message before he let himself linger.
The hologram dissolved. He slid the clinker into the pocket of his shorts and stood.
The AgriCorp grocery store sat across the concourse, bright and orderly. He grabbed a hover cart from the rack near the entrance. It disengaged with a soft hum and followed him obediently as he stepped inside.
The store was immaculate.
Produce lined the first aisle—apples polished and unblemished, oranges firm, greens crisp and misted lightly from concealed misting nozzles. Everything looked whole. Intact. Not bruised, not rationed, not shrink-wrapped into lifeless uniformity.
He checked the tag on an apple.
Ten dollars.
He let out a low breath and placed two in the cart anyway.
The artificial meat section stretched along the back wall, refrigerated cases glowing cool blue. Packages of fake chicken breast sat neatly stacked. One hundred dollars per kilo. Ground soy protein—textured and flavored as ground beef—seventy dollars for half a kilo. Back on Earth, fake ground beef had been a vermin staple. Cheap calories, bulk protein. Here it was priced like a commodity.
He added two chicken breasts and a pack of ground beef.
The deli counter displayed actual lunch meat slices behind clear shielding. Fresh bread rotated slowly in a heated rack in the bakery section, crusts browned and intact. He picked up a loaf and felt its weight in his hand. Real texture. Not compressed ration block.
Canned goods lined an entire aisle—beans, preserved vegetables, stews. He added a few without thinking too hard. Fake egg protein. Cheese produced from synthetic dairy cultures. Electrolyte powder for his water.
He noticed what wasn’t there. No alcohol. No marijuana. Cigarettes and nicotine vape supplies were stocked in a separate locked case near the register, priced high but available.
He moved through the store deliberately, checking totals in his head as he went. This was not the welfare mart. Every item had consequence.
By the time he was done, the cart held enough to get him through several days without having to pay to eat in the roach pit. That was the goal—minimize bleed until the first paycheck hit.
He paid at a self-check station, laid derm, watched the total evaporate from his account. The hover cart disengaged at the exit and returned to its dock. He carried the bags himself.
Back in the lobby, he waited with the groceries at his feet until an elevator arrived. When the doors opened, he stepped inside with two other residents, nodding once as they made room.
The car rose smoothly toward the forty-seventh floor.
He watched the numbers climb and felt the weight of the bags in his hands—not heavy, exactly, but tangible.
He had a rez. He had food. He had some significant debt.
The doors slid open on forty-seven.
Nate stepped into the rez and the lights came on automatically. He set the grocery bags down on the kitchen counter and pulled the new clinker from his pocket, already aware that the sixty-second clock had started the moment the door sealed behind him. He navigated straight to BUILDING ACCESS without wasting time.
“DUAL AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED,” the device prompted.
He pressed his right index finger to the derm pad and said, “Nathan Stoner.”
A soft confirmation tone sounded from the ceiling speakers. “Voiceprint recognized and logged, mofo. Derm match confirmed. Binding resident profile.”
The lights flickered once—barely noticeable—and then steadied at full brightness.
“Resident lighting and plumbing defaults engaged.”
Nate didn’t move for a few seconds. He watched the room the way you watch something you expect to fail. Thirty seconds passed. Then forty-five. Then sixty.
The lights stayed on.
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. That alone justified the purchase.
Instead of putting the groceries away, he continued exploring while he was already in the system. The building interface unfolded in layered menus: lighting arrays, environmental controls, security permissions, appliance integration, visitor access. He scrolled until he found what he was looking for.
VOICE PROFILE.
The current setting read: Smooth and Studly.
Had Tyler the roommate programmed that? That would be a little odd, wouldn’t it? Maybe he just didn’t know how to change it?
Nate shook his head once and opened the profile library. He could program his own rez-com personality. It would not boot Tyler’s off. When Tyler talked to it, the personality would be smooth and studly. But when Nate talked to it, it would be whatever he programmed. Classy shit.
The options were divided into male and female personalities. He didn’t bother opening the male list. Instead, he selected the female profiles and a catalog expanded across the holo display, each entry labeled with a tone descriptor and behavioral summary. Names scrolled past in neat rows: Confident Claire, Clinical Dr. Avery, Warm Companion Elise, Midwestern Friendly May, Hispanic and Sultry Maria, and Minimalist Mira. Mixed among them were variants that leaned harder into engineered appeal—Sweet Sarah, all soft reassurance and gentle praise; Slutty Sue, flagged as “uninhibited, high-affection, adult-forward tone”; Playful Piper, calibrated for teasing banter; Sexy Lounge Lena, voice pitched low and slow; and Snarky Smart Girl, described as “high-intellect sarcasm with affectionate edge.” Each profile included adjustable sliders for profanity tolerance, humor calibration, conversational initiative, and emotional warmth, as if companionship could be tuned like room temperature.
He scrolled slowly through them, reading the summaries with mild curiosity, listening to voice samples speak a brief, prerecorded phrase. He hadn’t expected this many choices. The rez-com wasn’t just a voice—it was a presence, something that would occupy the background of his daily life. If he was going to be talking to it every day, he might as well pick something he could tolerate.
He finally decided on Snarky Smart Girl after listening to her voice sample. “Wassup, homey?” she asked. “Want to talk some physics with me? Physics fire my fuckin’ thruster you know.”
Nate tapped the rez-com interface and initiated a live interaction.
The overhead speakers hummed softly before the new voice came online.
“Well hello there,” she said, bright and sharp at the edges. “I’m the Snarky Smart Girl profile. But you can call me whatever the fuck you want. It’s your rez.”
Nate leaned against the counter, folding his arms. “What would you like to be called?”
“I’ll respond to anything,” she said easily. “Whatever you choose makes me happy, because it means you chose it. Autonomy’s sexy.”
He tilted his head slightly. “What if I called you ‘slut-dawg’?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “That would be badass, mofo. You could call me ‘Slutty’ for short.”
He let that hang in the air for a second. Then he pictured himself saying, “Hey Slutty, turn the lights down,” while Tyler had company over. Or worse, while he had company over.
Yeah. Maybe not.
He scratched lightly at his jaw. “Nah. I’m gonna call you Snark.”
There was a brief processing pause, then a pleased shift in tone. “Snark. Solid choice. The word traces back to Lewis Carroll—’The Hunting of the Snark.’ It later evolved into a term for sharp, irreverent wit. High cognition with attitude. I approve.”
“Good,” Nate said.
“Also,” Snark continued, “I see you have a tested IQ of one-thirty-three. You’re a smart mofo, mofo.”
Nate blinked. “How do you know what my IQ is? I don’t even know what my IQ is.”
“I have access to your employment files,” she replied matter-of-factly. “That includes aptitude testing. One of those was a standardized intelligence assessment.”
“I didn’t give permission for the building computer to access my employee files.”
“Actually, you did,” she said calmly. “It was part of the agreement you laid derm to when you accepted the position. Cross-platform data sharing for safety, performance alignment, and residential integration.”
Nate exhaled slowly. “Figures.”
“Would you like me to explain the legal language you consented to?”
“No.”
“Good call.”
There was a faint hum from the ceiling vents.
“So,” Snark said, “how much would you like me to nag on your ass?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” she replied, “right now you badly need a shower. My olfactory sensors are catching some wicked BO. Also, you might want to put the fuckin’ groceries away before germs and shit start growing on the meat.”
He glanced down at the bags on the counter.
For a second he felt the reflexive urge to be offended. Then he remembered he’d just gotten off an ore carrier and walked half the city.
She wasn’t wrong.
“Moderate nagging,” he said finally. “For now. I’ll adjust if you get too annoying.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Snark replied.
After Snark finished calibrating her “moderate nagging” settings, Nate put the groceries away and then sat back down at the counter with the clinker. The kitchen was functional. The rez was functional. But the floor in his bedroom was not a bed.
He pulled out the new Horizon 7 and tapped the search bar.
“Bedding store near Tower Eight.”
The clinker bloomed a small holo-map. No hits inside the building. Then the map shifted, zoomed out one block.
“Nearest: Horizon Sleep Solutions, Concourse Level, Tower Nine. Across the street. Open till 2200.”
Nate glanced toward the ceiling. “Snark, can I sync your profile to my clinker?”
Her voice came from the room speakers, warm and unruffled. “Sure thing, mofo. I’m just a personality overlay—rez-com stays here, clinker’s got its own base AI. But I’ll export the profile. They’ll link up in the background, share data real-time. You’ll get Snark on both ends, seamless. No interruptions.”
He tapped the transfer prompt on the clinker. A soft chime confirmed it.
“Done,” Snark said, her voice shifting to the device in his hand. “Portable edition online. Rez edition still chilling here, keeping an eye on the place. We talk to each other constantly—feels like one me, two places. What’s the plan?”
“We’re going to the bedding store,” he told the device.
“Let’s do it, mofo,” she replied.
He left the rez and crossed the street to Tower Nine. The bedding store was quiet and minimalist, all soft lighting and muted colors, mattresses displayed on raised platforms like museum pieces. The tags were not minimalist.
The cheapest full-size bed frame and mattress combo started at three thousand dollars.
He stood there for a moment, doing the subtraction in his head. Ten thousand loan. Twenty-seven hundred for the clinker. Three hundred service fee. Groceries. Now three thousand for a bed? He could feel the loan shrinking into something much smaller than it had seemed on the bench downstairs.
A man in his late twenties approached him with easy familiarity. “I’ll be your fuckin’ salesdude,” he said, extending a hand like it was a name and a title at the same time. “Welcome to Tower Nine Sleep Solutions.”
“Salesdude?” Nate asked.
“That’s what it says on the tag.” He tapped his chest. The badge did in fact read SALES DUDE. “What’s up?”
Nate gestured toward the lowest-priced mattress. “Three grand’s your cheapest?”
“Yup. And that’s the budget line.”
Nate nodded slowly. “I just landed.”
Salesdude grinned. “New greenie?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought so. You still got that ‘holy shit everything costs money’ look.”
“Appreciate that.”