An invitation to a party appears on various university billboards inviting people to the Kappa Alpha greek house located in the mostly finished Castle Commonwealth mall on the edge of town. The notice instructs people to follow the access road at 67 Lost Nation drive and enter through the back door and promises that signs will be posted to guide people to the party itself.
"There was also the postnatal area in the clinic, and some of the games in the cupboards were pretty juvenile," Riley notes. "To be clear, I don't want to have kids."
Alex grimaces. "I'm not really pleased with the implications either."
Claire looks at her feet and frowns.
"I can't even afford one of those things. And my parents are too Catholic to pay for it. But not Catholic enough to care if I buy contraceptives with my own money."
"It was in the encyclopedia, I checked while I was reading. I'm pretty sure I can install them for anyone who wants one."
Emily tilts her head to one side then the other. "I think that might be nice, just in case."
"No thanks," Claire says her voice carefully neutral.
"Sure. Especially if we can't get a hold of the pills. I have a small stash of the emergency ones I brought with me just in case but of course I didn't bring the regular ones."
"Presumably the pharmacy will have like condoms and stuff, we can grab some of those. So IUDs are not necessarily urgent on the scale of days but I might take you up on that later."
"Works for me. I don't see tools around to attach the trailers to the bikes. Maybe we should check upstairs," Riley comments.
The brochure is apparently a map of bike trails. One that suffers from a lack of labelled landmarks. The map shows the area of a not quite diamond with a much smaller hexagon near the middle of the top left edge. Given the number of paths being marked the area must be enormous.
Everyone crowds around to look over her shoulder.
"Well, that puts 450 km of mall into perspective. I wonder what the scale is on that map," says Alex.
"Can't really tell without landmarks or something. So it's interesting but kind of unhelpful."
"I feel like the hexagon is important somehow, maybe it's meant as a scale. But then why are there paths inside the hexagon?" says Riley.
"Maybe," agrees Emily.
After looking for another minute Riley starts walking towards the ramp. "Anyone else coming upstairs?"
The upstairs has more bikes but it also has side cars big enough to hold an adult and a small workshop suitable to servicing bikes and installing things like cargo trailers. "Well, this looks like just what we need," says Riley.
"Yeah, and there's even a ramp instead of stairs. Though there were no stairs back at the complex either so maybe whoever made this place just doesn't like stairs."
"I think I saw stairs in the back of at least one of the stores we passed, I wasn't looking too closely though."
"I definitely saw stairs," agrees Emily. "All the stores seem to have upper levels."
A few minutes later they have several bike trailers hooked up and everyone has found a bike they like. "Where to next Emily?" asks Riley.
"There's a pharmacy about a kilometer from here. There's a few clothing stores along the way if one catches anyone's eye though."
They make all mount their bikes and assuming nothing catches anyone's eye they're at the pharmacy in short order.
"So, what are we getting here?" asks Riley. "I think we said first aid supplies and hygiene stuff. Is there anything I'm forgetting? I'm not sure if it has prescription drugs but we can check if anyone needs those."
"Was going to go find condoms, and if we can get prescription drugs birth control pills would be great."