8bit Salvage

The shop. A tiny three-person salvage operation. Bob owns it — supremely confident, and reliably wrong about how everything works. Randy invented every machine on the floor, and quietly slides Bob a correction note whenever he explains one. You're the new hire. You do the actual work.

The work. Retired game sprites drift in and pile up against the magnet in the middle of the floor. Hold the spinning brush over one and the pixels come off. The vacuum inside the magnet pulls them up the hose, and at the end of the shift you sell the salvage. It is genuinely calm and oddly satisfying — every pass leaves the sprite visibly cleaner, and watching the mess disappear is its own reward.

Then Randy invents something. Acidic goo drips into a pile and eats through it while you're working the other side of the floor. Roller brushes bulldoze whole stacks. You stop cleaning one sprite at a time and start running a shop that cleans for you.

Then it gets away from you. Mutation waves sweep the floor and turn sprites radiant — or electric. Chain lightning jumps between them and sets the leftovers on fire. By the final shifts the screen is a storm of sparks and flying pixels, and it is still, technically, cleaning.

All of it is bought. Every machine comes out of a sprawling upgrade tree you fund with your own pay. Early on a single purchase is a whole shift's work and a real decision. Later the tree stops being sensible. Shifts run on a real workweek, too — earn overtime, unlock Saturdays, get your raise.

No sprites were harmed in this shop. We only take the pixels off.