Despite it being the year 2247 in the 23rd Century, the Dragonbyte Retro Tech and Repair store persisted, even though it was years and years away from when people would actually care about the tech that was sold within its walls. It had a nice little spot within the Dragonwood Plaza, one of many plazas that could be found within the confines of the gigacity known as Archfield.

  If one was looking for tech from before the year 2000, they could find it at the Dragonbyte. Knick knacks from the 90’s? An odd accessory or add on from the 80’s? Music players from the 70’s? It was all there and if it wasn’t at the Dragonbyte in Archfield, there were other Dragonbyte Retro Tech and Repair stores located not just in other gigacities but even off world. There were a number of locations throughout the galaxy that one could visit.

  No one on Earth really understood how it was able to persist. A few employees had their suspicions about how it was sustained but they didn’t have anything concrete. One employee that figured it out but chose to remain ignorant of it was none other than Cassius Reyes. He had no reason to care about why it persisted, only that it did.

  For him, the Dragonbyte checked off numerous boxes for the sort of place he was looking for. It more often than not had no customers. There were only a handful of employees that worked at the store. The Managers were eccentric but not overbearing. And most importantly, the pay was quite high. It maybe afforded him more money than a teenager should ever actually have but he saved it regularly and rarely splurged on stuff.

  It was his refuge away from his friends who could get extremely chaotic. Most of his coworkers were a lot more relaxed than his friends but they still had their fair share of quirks. It made for the perfect place to just get away from his problems for a while.

  When he signed up to work there, he was unaware that the Dragonbyte had its own share of problems to deal with. Most of those problems came from the tech store on the other side of the Plaza.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Across from the Dragonbyte Retro Tech and Repair was what people referred to as The Crown Jewel of Dragonwood Plaza, the APEX Tech store.

  Unlike the Dragonbyte, Apex Tech was a monolith.

  It was the center store in the North Building of the Plaza. Five floors of every sort of modern tech one could get their hands on. At least a hundred employees were on the clock any given day of the week, and it was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Plus, Apex became the major draw for people to come to the Plaza and traffic within it increased quite a bit once they moved in.

  The exact opposite to the Dragonbyte in every possible way.

  For reasons unknown to Cassius, APEX would send employees over to the Dragonbyte on occasion and have them commit various acts against the store. They were done in an attempt to either scare off the workers or get the store shut down completely.

  The Apex employees were quickly dispatched by Cassius the first time they attempted something while he was on the clock. It wasn’t anything personal, but he took it personally. He had designated the Dragonbyte as a place for him to just let his mind be quiet and they had trespassed upon it.

  To which he dealt with them accordingly.

  Afterwards, he was informed of some of their previous attempts to attack the Dragonbyte. It hadn’t been anything too extreme, nothing the employees couldn’t handle.

  All they knew was that that specific APEX Tech store was doing everything it could to try and remove the Dragonbyte Retro Tech and Repair from the Plaza. Apex even prided itself on being better than every other tech store in every way possible. They would specifically call out the Dragonbyte, but most people really didn’t get it and they didn’t care to begin with.

  None of the Apex customers were aware of the intricacies of the Plaza drama. Even if they did know what was going on, it probably wouldn’t have affected their opinion of the place anyway. Not like they were going to get their 23rd-century phones at a tiny little Retro Tech Store.

  In the time since Cassius joined on, they ramped up their attempts but as long as he was there, they would continue to fail