Velistra: Failed State

Velistra is a small Balkan country with a regime that has just fallen. You run a repair shop in the capital. People bring you whatever still has some life in it: radios, tape decks, TVs, and later VCRs and the first mobile phones.
TAKE IT APART
Unscrew the case, lift the boards out layer by layer, clean off decades of dust, swap what's burnt, solder what's loose, put it back together and switch it on.
NO SPARE PARTS
There are none in the country. A drive belt cut from a bicycle inner tube, a fuse wrapped in foil, a spring bent from a paper clip — makeshift parts work, each in its own way.
WHAT'S INSIDE
Some devices come in stolen. Some hide a seal, a stash or a bug planted long ago. Remove it, solder it out, and unlock what the device was never allowed to do — like a radio that catches the stations that used to be banned.
THE COUNTRY OUTSIDE THE WINDOW
You never leave the shop — the country comes to your counter. From the collapse of the Eastern Bloc to the early 2000s, the street outside changes, and so do the orders: new devices, new faults, new tools.