Panel 1 — Included later
At a Pledge Market salvage stall, an unnamed seller offers Trey a small reading lamp with a hand switch and a separately priced reservation for a promised future automatic feature. The lamp is unlit. Only cropped hands and sleeves appear throughout.
SELLER: It will learn when you want to read.
TREY: Will it light now?
Panel 2 — Available now
The seller flips the ordinary switch. The lamp lights a scrap of paper. Its enclosed cell powers this demonstration; no endurance, charging service or automatic capability is established.
SELLER: By hand. The clever part comes later.
TREY: My hand's already here.
Panel 3 — The actual purchase
Trey pays four brass for the working lamp, declining the separate two-brass reservation. The future-feature offer remains at the stall.
SELLER: Four brass. Two more to reserve the clever part.
TREY: Just the lamp.
Panel 4 — What he carries
The seller switches the lamp off and passes it to Trey with plain cloth around its base. No future order, subscription or reservation is made.
SELLER: You're not buying the future?
TREY: I'm carrying enough of it.
Panel 5 — Not a key
Later, in an afternoon gap at the Upper Reserves, Trey sets the lamp beside the existing room drawing of the room he has considered renting. Abegale is at the work desk. This is not the prospective room.
ABEGALE: You took the room?
TREY: No. I bought a lamp.
Panel 6 — His light
Trey switches on the lamp beside the room drawing. It illuminates the paper, not a new home. Abegale's hand rests at the other edge of the desk.
ABEGALE: Where will you put it?
TREY: Where I want the light.