“Yes that’s right.” she said. “In the old days you needed quite a lot of ‘money’ just to survive. ‘Cost of living’ they called it then. It was sort of barbaric, people starving and living on the streets and such.

These days of course you don’t have to do that. You can always feed your body the free food, and it’ll be nutritious and taste terrible but it’ll keep you alive.”

But there was always a catch, wasn’t there? Ethan thought.

“Well yes, there is the peer pressure to not be a drain on the Aether that no one seems to acknowledge nowadays. Stiff upper lip and all that.”

I don’t want to be a Leech, he thought.

“Oh that is a terrible term.” she said, spiky protuberances on her avatar indicating her displeasure. “I wish you wouldn’t say such things.”

Sorry, I don’t mean to offend.

“It’s ok,” she said, savoring the lemon curried paneer. “Just remember, I didn’t always have the kind of credit it takes to eat out at a place like this, myself.”

Ethan filed that bit of knowledge away somewhere safe.