Back then, during the Prohibition days, she used to run an evil haberdashery empire. The decade was the 80', and she was flying high. She owned the Island. She was the Zip Lady, the Pin Queen of a raggedy army of yarn pushers and button peddlers who brought a constant flow of illegal money to her cramped shop in Level -5. To her visitors, she liked to describe herself as a public service, a true blessing for the whole society. Actually, she was in for the money, but some social awareness could help if things turned bad. Or if the Ban was lifted. She half-believed her own sales pitch. She kept repeating that her unrelenting efforts gave back to the people at home the dignity they were denied in the street. Thanks to her, one could wear in his or her own house decent, properly sewn clothes instead of the ill-fitting, unbuttoned rags they were forced to put on in public. The Thread Police had trouble arresting offenders at home, because most suspects tore up their clothes and flushed down the haberdashery at the first knock on the door, thus destroying evidence. On the seamy side, she had to kill people to stay on business. Small-time competitors frequently ended up stitched alive in a shroud and hurled into deep space. Hit men with knitting needles had disposed in a noisy way of the rebellious family of a smuggler killed by the unexpected burst, in his stomach, of a button-filled condom. However, the greatest threat to her empire were those righteous citizens who thought themselves to be her best allies in her supposed crusade against the Ban : the Abolitionists. One by one, they met unspectacular deaths, but, as people rediscovered through her work the pleasure of good clothing, the dreaded abolitionists were ever more numerous, even in the inner