The quiet city
Neo Sakura City was built on a bay where the cherry trees bloom twice a year. It had everything a city needs: towers full of offices, a harbor full of cargo, ramen counters that never closed and a pagoda on the hill that everyone visited for luck.
But its streets had gone quiet. Corner shops shut one by one. People hurried home through dark sidewalks with nowhere to stop, nothing to sip and no one to say goodnight to.
The Blackout Bloom
On the first night of spring a storm rolled in off the bay. Lightning struck the old power station on the harbor, and for one strange minute every light in the city went out at once while the sakura petals glowed pink in the dark.
When the power came back, 2,222 vending machines in a forgotten depot under the harbor blinked on together. They had never been switched on before. They had no owners, no stock and no street to stand on, but each one had a display window full of six bright cards, and each one was humming the same note.
"I heard it from the ramen shop," said old Mrs Hanabi. "A sound like two thousand fridges all saying hello."
The Six Cards
Every machine carries six cards in its window, and every machine's cards come from one of seventeen great collections of the old chains: apes and penguins, punks and kongz, cats and goats and outlaws. Nobody knows why each machine chose its collection. The Vendkeepers believe the machines remember art the way people remember songs.
The cards aren't for sale and they don't move between machines. They are the machine's memory and its personality. Two machines showing the same collection will still argue about whose cards look better.
The Vendkeepers
A machine can't choose a street on its own. It needs a keeper: someone who claims it, finds it a good corner, fills it with snacks and soda, and polishes the glass on rainy mornings. The city council called these people Vendkeepers. To switch a sidewalk plot on, a keeper burns VEND, the spark that powers the city. Once it is burned, the plot's lights belong to that machine.
Some keepers chase the crowds of Downtown. Some prefer a lonely corner in Residential Hills where theirs is the only light on the block. Some move their machines with the festivals, following the crowds from the park to the harbor and back.
City Credits and the Street Ledger
Every can and every cup sold is written into the Street Ledger, the city's great book of trade. Keepers are paid in City Credits: a currency that only works inside Neo Sakura City, good for stock, repairs and upgrades. You can't take Credits out of the city. That is the oldest rule of the Ledger, and the reason the streets stay friendly.
Rarer machines shine in chrome, cyan or gold, but the Ledger treats every machine the same. A Common machine on the right corner will outsell a Legendary one hidden behind a warehouse.
Growing up neon
Machines that are loved grow. With parts salvaged from sales and a few credits, a keeper can add shelves, then a sign on the roof, then a full neon crown. Legends speak of the first machine to reach level ten: a gold star appeared above it, and that night every lamp on its street burned a little brighter.
"Keep it stocked, keep it lit, keep it kind." — the Vendkeeper's motto
What comes next
The depot under the harbor is empty now, and the machines have spread far beyond Sakura Bay. Some rolled south to Coral Cove, where the palms sway over the lagoon. Some climbed to Frostpeak, where keepers sell hot cocoa by the frozen lake. The boldest went to Neon Bay, a city so bright it never really gets dark.
And the old power station still hums. Keepers whisper that there are more cities out there, waiting for their first spark.
Whatever is out there, the city will need keepers.