Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.16 (Patreon)

1.16

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As I swept through the front door of the building, the only thought going through my mind was that if I never have to meet another Corpo again, it will be too soon.

All of two hours in her direct presence, and it still left me feeling like I needed to fling myself head-first into a pool of soap.

And that was with her on her best behaviour, unaware that I didn’t actually have a massive amount of Eddies behind me.

Eugh. The moment I have amenities set up, I’ll be taking a shower. And then I’ll catch a nap, because I’m currently fifty six hours in and I still haven’t slept yet.

...

It hasn’t even been three full days in this world...

Alright. I’ve gotten what I wanted. The entire depot was now mine, all the licenses and permits I’d needed to do whatever I wanted with the place acquired alongside it. It was still kind of a pile of junk, but I was officially no longer a murderhobo. I had a house.

All it had taken was supplying a shady woman with cartel connections and no small amount of desperation with enough Cyberware to create an entire of platoon of Borgs, each and every single one hitting at least ninety percent Cyberisation, with exactly none of it being known, declared, or even hinted at. Utterly untraceable, and of not inconsiderable quality, at that.

Was that a wise decision? Well, under most circumstances, probably not, but I had a feeling that most of the consequences would be blowing upon the Corporations more than anybody else.

If Theresa was smart, she’d sell all of it over the course of a few years in order to not get any large amounts of attention, but this is Cyberpunk.

Rational, intelligent people? Playing the political game?

A great joke, that.

It wouldn’t be enough to overturn her fate, I think. She was, after all, desperate, and the knowledge that she’d been spied on would only spur her on. She was too caught up in playing the Corporations’ game rather than flipping the board and making her own way forwards. The shape of the conflict to come was vague and shadowed, but it was the kind of shadows that spoke of sabotage and reactive violence.

As for the Cyberware itself... Well, she would shortly be doing her damned best to obscure it. Traces would eventually be found, but by the time came, it would be smeared and unclear.

The Corporations would go looking in the wrong direction, first. And, in complete honesty, it would be entirely fair.

None of the Cyberware had existed before yesterday. I’d gone through the... stock acquired by the Scavengers, looking for the pieces that approached something decent. Most Corporations could say that they had at least one product that was better than anybody else’s product, and so there was usually one clear winner amongst every example in a category. Kiroshi had basically cornered the market on Optics, for example, while Biotechnica was the go-to for any forms of biomodification.

‘Winners’ found, I had my Nanofactories strip them atom-by-atom, building an atomic blueprint from the examples. The only steps I’d taken from there had been to strip out any Corporate shenaniganry, blast off all of their logos, and then crack their code wide open so that people who weren’t authorised installers could handle them.

Then I’d simply replicated them until I had enough. The scrap I’d had lying around had been perfectly adequate feedstock, much like the Scavengers’ entire setup. End result; a few dozen identical models with no way to track their manufacturing areas. To the Corporations, it would seem like a half dozen disparate groups had provided numerous pieces of black Cyberware.

The logos may have been gone, but their engineering remained. Cross-referencing would reveal that, and leave the suspicion on each other. None of them would admit to it, of course, because it wasn’t the truth and they had all done shady shit before.

I’d gotten what I’d wanted with it already, though. The acquisition of the building was the main goal, causing trouble in the Corporate world was just a bonus.

The plan had worked beautifully, if I did say so myself. I’d done quite a few things today in order to get set up for it. Steps one and two had been to acquire a personal email account and a phone number so that my Autgents could link up to that system.

Step three had been more involved.

After all, I had to hide the evidence that there had been other people at the depot aside from myself. That was nothing that the Nanofactories couldn’t handle, though. They’d scrubbed the surface thoroughly of any hints, and left behind layers of dust and disturbance, which I had carefully calculated from every bit of weather data I could get from the last twenty five years. A little bit of chaos and noise on top of that, and it looked completely reasonable.

Theresa’s building inspectors had been completely fooled, at least, and that’s what actually mattered. They had gone ahead and confirmed the data that I’d already gathered, providing more data points to the ideas that I desired to spread.

Sadly, I wasn’t yet in a position to enjoy my newfound house.

There were just a few things I needed to do, first.

I stepped down the street at a steady pace, utterly ignoring the morning crowds that had gathered in the area. The further I went away from the administrative center of Santo Domingo, the less people there were, and soon enough, I sensed the lack of eyes upon me and immediately ducked into an alleyway, unseen.

Rather than immediately skulking off, however, I simply moved to where I felt I wouldn’t be bothered for a decent amount of time.

I needed a few things for this building, after all. First, the water and electricity needed to officially go back on, which meant that I needed to contact Night Corp’s Department of Urban Utilities. That, fortunately, was easy, because I could simply book that one online. Nice and easy.

With a mental command, one of my Autgents floated out of the empty space within my robes, and then projected a screen in front of me.

... Nice and easy, aside from this absolutely awful User Interface, that is. I keep forgetting how utterly sideways the Net developed compared to what I was used to. The CitiNet was not any better. It wasn’t quite the AOL-style mess of the Old Net, but it had achieved a new, equally horrid method of displaying information.

About the only thing forgivable in this state of affairs was the fact that emojis had never been invented in this universe.

Okay. Fortunately, Night Corp’s little ecosystem is right there on the front page, so I don’t have to engage in what passes for navigation in this system. Just click it, then start going through the entire list of subdirectories available... And the utilities section is there, so just click that.

The page that appears is the very definition of corporate minimalism, and I hate it immediately. Fortunately, I don’t need to look at it for very long, because booking a service is one of the first things on the page. Click that, type the address in, pay a fee of ten Eddies to get Night Corp to send a confirmation to the email I’d put down on the deed, open that email and type in the code, and then pay another few hundred Eddies to book it.

This city really is just an endless amount of nickel-and-diming. That’s not even the entire thing. That’s the investigation on seeing whether water and power can be restored.

It’ll be another one later on to actually do it.

Regardless, that’s the easy one out of the way.

The next one, unfortunately, requires a call.

The holographic screen shifted back to my email, even as the Autgent itself moved closer to the side of my head. The call starts, the tone ringing from the Autgent for a few seconds before it connected.

“Good morning, and welcome to Night Corp Construction and Development, the premi-” I completely zoned out of what the man was saying during his introductory speech, only tuning back in once he finally got to fucking point. “How may we help you today?”

“I require a temporary building enclosure.” I stated, in the same blunt, clear, and yet not overly loud tone I’d been using every time I had to interact with these corporate cogs. “Scale class five, type three moderate cover.”

The pause on the line was so brief that I immediately knew it was Cyberware. “Understood. If you could please provide the address?”

“San Amaro 874, South Heywood.” I answered. The pause went slightly longer this time, the man no doubt checking their system for the address.

“Are you prepared to confirm your ownership of this location?” The man shortly asked.

“Yes.” I agreed. Shortly afterwards, my account dipped another twenty five Eurodollars, the extra expense over the exact same process being because it was ‘manually triggered’... Despite the fact that they could have replaced this man with a pile of recordings and there would have been no difference.

Well, not completely. If it had just been a pile of recordings, I wouldn’t have received the slightly-longer-than-necessary silence that came after he received the confirmation, which in turn would provide a glimpse of who he was talking to.

“Excellent. For how long will the enclosure be required?” The voice stayed the same. The man’s nervousness did not reach his tone.

“One week.” I answered. “To commence today, and end on the tenth of January.”

“I’m afraid that short-notice work has an additional surcharge attached-” The man’s voice made the noises of apology, but there was certainly no regret in the tone. “Is that acceptable?”

“Yes.” The extra fee was annoying, yes, but I’d planned for it. The annoyance did not surpass the convenience of locking off the building from sight entirely as soon as possible.

I was still in something of a rush, here. The sooner that things got done, the better, especially if it was about things that other people might eventually try to talk about. Getting it all out of the way now would mean that life would be much, much easier.

“We thank you for your-” I tuned the man out again, once more waiting for him to get to the point before starting to pay attention again after he finished his spiel. “Do you require anything else today?”

“No.” I said, and promptly hung up.

My eyes closed, and I breathed in and out, slowly.

Dealing with them is so annoying. Somehow the most tiring part of all of this.

... It’d be nice to get something that tasted good right now. I should have enough time.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly researched the local food scene, so... Chozo Bullshit it is.

I felt for the swirls of fate. The vast majority of paths that I could take would end in disappointment, but not all of them.

Hmm. Promising... Alright, a bit more east than I currently was, so...

Through the alleyways I go again, speeding through them while dodging attention at every turn. Passage, turn, turn, straight, go up over a building and drop down the other side, then emerge onto a street in the brief moment where nobody is looking in this particular direction.

Then, continue down the street the normal way, until I arrive at...

Hmm.

It’s a moderately sized place. Flat and wide, with a big neon sign declaring “Camila’s” on the top. It’s an odd mix of old and modern, with thick brick walls, yet the entirety of the front being tall armoured glass panels. It looks like it also used to be two floors before one of them got knocked out, leaving a strangely tall space inside.

A Bodega... Still, it looks like it opened only recently, and the area around it is surprisingly clean, both of the general filth that infests most of Santo Domingo, and also general detritus. Its aura was also solidly on the lighter shade of grey, which was a first so far.

Well, why not?

I stepped forwards, and opened the door.