Chapter 5
Shopping Therapy
We moved out of McHugh’s, Orion taking off as fast he could. I tucked my newly acquired pistol in the waistband of my jeans and followed after.
One short sprint later and a fair distance away, we were stopping at a quiet alleyway. I heard a familiar ding and looked to see what I got.
RUNNING SKILL UNLOCKED
With a wave of dizziness, I dismissed the notification promising to myself to take a look when I next had the opportunity. At least this unlock wasn’t that bad. Either this one was particularly less intense or I was getting used to it.
“What do we do now Orion?” I asked.
“I’m really starting to believe you were saying the truth chummer,” he said panting.
“Of course I was,” I shot back.
“At first I thought you were pranking me with how you keep calling me Orion,”
“Wait, your name is not Orion?”
“It’s not, it’s Justin dude,” he said and gave a chuckle. “Orion is just my handle.
“Well ok. Nice to meet you Justin, I guess,” I shot back sheepishly.
Orion sighed and said, “This is too weird for my tastes, chum. You are acting way too different to be lying. And you say you don’t have any memories?”
“Yeah, nothing,” I replied in a morose tone.
“Damn, a small lifetime at the orphanage and now the guy I know is gone.”
“We’re orphans?” I asked confused.
“Never mind that, we do not have the time. I’ll give you the lowdown later.”
Needless to say, I was feeling out of my depth here and was trying really hard not to dwell on how lost I was.
“Listen man, I know how strange it must feel but you need to help me out here,” I said, fixing him with a serious expression. “You’re the only one I can depend on.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it Jack,” he replied. “Look, I’m really late for work but we can meet up again tonight and mull things over drinks at the Paradise. Before I go though, you need to follow my instructions or you’ll do something stupid and get fragged.”
“Sure, I’m like a newborn fawn your word is law,” I said chuckling.
“I’m dead serious chummer. You go back home asap. Clean yourself up and get rid of your clothes as best as you can. Oh and avoid going to any other areas, there are Lonestar checkpoints everywhere and you don’t wanna get busted.”
“Sir, yes sir!” I said and gave a mock salute which got a chuckle out of Orion.
“See ya later, chummer. Take care,” he said and walked away.
I gathered myself for a second and took off as well.
Normally it would take me about 20 minutes to get back home from where I was. Trying to almost exclusively use back alleys and avoiding crowds it took me almost three times that. However, as an unintended consequence, trying to go unnoticed netted me 300 XP towards my Sneaking skill which was screaming at me how ineffective I was. Besides a few weird looks I got along the way, people didn’t seem that keen on paying attention to my bloody looks. I also didn’t encounter any police which seemed pretty lucky overall.
With my nerves frayed and on edge, I managed to make it back home uneventfully. I threw my dirty clothes in a trash bag the moment I walked in and tried to do a serviceable job at cleaning my boots.
Next I went straight to the shower. It took an annoyingly long time to get clean and I think I did admirably in removing all of the chunky bits from my hair. I swear, I even managed not to throw up!
Stepping out of the shower, my notifications chirped merrily with a message. I opened it up absentmindedly expecting a message from Orion. However I was surprised to see the account labeled as Building Admin.
“Oh,” I muttered.
This is your automated building admin service notifying you of dereliction of payment in regards to your outstanding monthly sum of 1060¥. A late fee of 25¥ will be applied to your account for each additional day your payment stays outstanding. Have a pleasant day!
“How the fuck do I pay for this?”
In a fit of panic I went to check my balance.
Balance: 918¥
“Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck…”
Ok Jack. No need to panic. I just need to find some work that pays quick. Maybe Orion could help.
“Wait a second!” I uttered in a flash of inspiration.
I ran to garbage bag with my dirty clothes and started fishing around. After a few seconds of rummaging around a pulled my hand out holding my loot in triumph. In my palm, all gunked up, I was holding the credstick the ganger had left on the table.
I put it under running water trying to wash the gunk away. My Computers skill told me that it was safe to do so as most devices were highly water resistant. I dried it as best as I could and when I was reasonably sure the connection was good, I slotted it in the datajack behind my right ear. A shudder of revulsion went through me at how alien the sensation was and then a screen popped up in front of me.
Certified Credtick [SILVER] 526¥ / 2000¥
I transfered the sum to my account and sighed in relief. That brought my new total to 1444¥. I could pay my rent right now and still have 388¥ left over. I looked around the room and sighed once again.
I had to be thrifty but I needed to purchase clothes and some other necessities first as I honestly had no idea how much things would cost. If I paid my rent right now, there was a strong chance I wouldn’t have enough money to buy the things I needed. And I knew for sure that I’d much rather not run around naked to avoid paying a 25¥ fee.
Making up my mind, to much consternation, I rummaged through my laundry and took out the dirty blue jeans I took off yesterday. Luckily, I still had a clean t-shirt and briefs so I wouldn’t have to feel too disgusting.
I opened up my interface to look up shops but decided to check up on my newly acquired skills.
Sneaking [AGILITY] Rank: 1 / 12 Experience required for next rank: 700 Need to get where you’re not supposed to be? This skill allows you to remain inconspicuous in various situations. Sneaking can cover moving in silence, obfuscating your presence, hiding or even blending in in crowded places.
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Pistols [AGILITY] Rank: 1 / 12 Experience required for next rank: 1000 If John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are your heroes then this skill is for you. Pistols governs the use of all types of handheld pistols, including tasers, single-shots, semi-automatics and revolvers.
Running [BODY] Rank: 1 / 12 Experience required for next rank: 1000 Running, as you may guess, is about how much ground you can cover quickly. Covers long distance running, sprinting as well as moving through unconventional terrain.
Damn these are gonna be really useful, I thought to myself. Even if I never needed to use them, I resolved to unlock as many skills as possible.
I knew I had to get going but I was itching to give my skills a try. I knew what sneaking and running felt like but pistols I haven’t given a go yet. I picked up my pistol and gave it a look.
Two things jumped out to me immediately. One was the make and model of the pistol, a Beretta 201T and two was that the guns wireless functionality was turned off.
Now, you might very well ask yourselves why would a gun have a wireless mode. There must be a good lore reason but from what I know in the world of Shadowrun everything is wireless enabled, even your trashcan. In the particular case of this pistol, it boasted two modes of fire, semi-auto and a three round burst. A wireless connection allows you to switch between modes or engage the safety all with a single thought. While actual smart-guns with insane features existed, this felt like a gimmick and my skill concurred, the benefit was minimal.
My skill told me that my Beretta used 9mm bullets and had an extended magazine with a capacity of 20 bullets. I ejected the magazine and noted that I had 19 left.
Pretty good, I thought.
The gun had black plastic grips as well as a black coating on the metal parts that in combination with the red accents gave it a dangerous look. On the lower back of the handle were grooves for attaching a stock to give stability and mitigate recoil.
I brought my gun to aim and marveled at how natural it was. I instinctively knew how to hold it, how to position myself and even proper breathing and sighting. I even had some basic knowledge on how to take care of the gun for safety and maintenance. Although I hadn’t became John Wick overnight, it was like I’ve been going to the range and properly training for months.
I debated bringing the gun with me but until I got a proper holster I wasn’t feeling to hot on carrying it with me. It might be stupid, but due to my skill I was hyper aware of all the bad things that could happen if I carried it inside my waistband. Not to mention that I was afraid of getting caught without a license. I engaged the safety and hid the gun under my mattress just in case.
With that done I started looking up places to go for clothes, which was a surprisingly difficult thing to do. One reason was that Downtown mostly had expensive boutiques and the nearest malls were pretty far from me, Aurora Village Mall at the border of Snohomish and Renton Mall at the border with Renton. The second reason was how difficult it was to look things up online.
I guess now is a good time to explain a few things about the Matrix. While I know almost nothing about the history the Matrix, being online in 2071 is extremely different from the internet we know.
One thing you have to keep in mind, is that everything is wireless and connected so that means any device and piece of information is theoretically discoverable as long as it’s online and you’re good enough. As a consequence everything is so complicated that it’s impossible for the every-man to interface with the Matrix the way we do today. Most things that have to do with the Matrix are done through Agents.
You can think of Agents as small AIs super specialized for specific tasks and a great example of that would be online searches. With the internet of today, you would hop onto a search engine like Google, you would type in a few keywords and it would display all websites that have to do with your search in order of relevancy. With the Matrix of 2071, you had two choices. If you had the know-how you could do a manual search of the Matrix like a virtual scavenger hunt or, and this is what 90% of the population did, you queried your device with whatever you desired and the relevant Agent would provide you with a number of “ideal” options based on your preferences, browsing patterns and most importantly, what advertisers wanted you to see. Of course better Agents would give you better results depending on your device’s computing power as well as the user’s skill but that was mostly in the realm of IT workers, Hackers and a small minority of power users.
All that to say that after fiddling with a few searches, netting me with 100 XP for computers, I managed to find a store that was close to me and had reasonable prices. I loaded the destination on GridGuide and was off to the races.
After a 40 minute walk, I found myself in front of a clothing outlet called Route 66. Besides the logo decals, the store had a huge rotating AR sign displaying the Route 66 shield with an American flag as the background. Beside the name in small letters I could read “By Ares Macrotechnology”.
The store was advertised as carrying Classic American Fashion™ and boasted that all products were manufactured in America. From my understanding though, that meant close to nothing in 2071. The clothing was most likely fabricated in some extraterritorial corporate sweatshops where child workers were paid 1¥ per day.
Walking inside I got a real culture shock. It was as if someone who is not American made a store that carried classic American clothing like jeans, flannel, cowboy boots etc but that person’s only connection to American culture and was what his cousin who went to the US on vacation once, had described to him. While everything was still familiar in some way, it also felt a bit uncanny.
Browsing around and with the help of an attendant who kept giving me distrustful glances I managed to pick up a few interesting things. The prices were pretty reasonable all in all. t-shirts were around 10¥, flannel shirts were around 20¥, jeans were at 35¥ and jackets were between 50 and 100¥. What I found really interesting was how common armored clothing was. From what the attendant told me, due to high crime rates everywhere, it was very popular for people to wear some form of armored clothing. Some articles boasted Blade-Tex weaves that made them cut resistant while others were made Aramid fibers that made them bullet resistant. The attendant also informed me that most synthetic fabrics were hydrophobic which made them extremely stain resistant. How true any of that was, was impossible for me to know and wouldn’t like to test them anyways.
I ended up picking up a couple of cut resistant black compression t-shirts and jeans, a gray flannel shirt with Aramid fibers and a really cool black armored synth-leather jacket that had subtle shoulder pads with hexagon patters that bulked up my frame in a very flattering way. I also snatched a pair of work boots with external metal toe caps that fit me really well.
The total came to 210¥ from which the cashier was kind enough to knock 10% off so I ended up paying 189¥. Needless to say, I felt really conflicted. On one hand, I could have gone to a thrift store and bought stuff for half the money, on the other hand, the quality of clothing here was night and day compared to the rags I was wearing. It came down to simple math. It was much better to have stuff that cost more up front but would need less cleaning and would provide safety than save some NuYen by buying bottom of the barrel stuff would need to be replaced every so often.
All in all, I left the store pretty happy with my purchase and set course for my apartment. On the way back I decided to make a stop at a convenience store to shore up on a few necessities.
What I found was Stuffer Shack, a convenience store that apparently operates 24-7 and sells food, clothing, entertainment and most things disposable. It was as if you had a vending machine with the size and variety of Walmart. By the entrance was a sign advertising a product called NERPS with vague tag lines like “NERPS! It's that simple,” or “1 out of every 16,000,000,000 doctors surveyed recommend it!” and was apparently “The Official Product Of The Urban Brawl World Cup!”. Reading the sign I could not for the life of me figure it actually was but if you were to go by the ads, NERPS did everything for everyone and it was all you would ever need. I knew that cyberpunk fiction went hard with wacky advertisements but this was simply out of hand.
Inside the store it was what could only be described as a fluorescent vending machine purgatory. Wall to wall and floor to ceiling it was all vending machines. Vending machines with food, vending machines with drinks, vending machines with clothing, vending machines with electronics and vending machines with toiletries. If you could think it, it was there and it was inside a vending machine. Besides the two security guards, Stuffer Shack was staffed with only a handful of employees going around restocking the vending machines or doing cleanup.
Out of sheer curiosity I set out to find out what NERPS was. After a bit of looking around I found a few machines stocked with jars full of purple goo with metallic shimmering bits that moved lazily inside the viscous fluid in a hypnotic pattern. Their label only read “NERPS! It's that simple,” with no instructions or information of any sort. To preserve my sanity I pretended I never saw it and moved on.
I did some looking around and ended up purchasing some cleaning supplies, a few bed sheets, a couple of rice balls for lunch as well as a shit ton of soy protein bars so I could have something to snack on. I was pretty restricted on what foods I could buy. Most perishables in general were out of the question since I didn’t even have a fridge back home. I also got some very interesting stuff. I got a cheap ceramic combat knife along with a sheath for only 15¥, a shoulder holster for my pistol at 19¥, a first aid kit for 11¥ and one more thing that I found pretty cool. They were called Slap Patches, they were one-use and came in four varieties. Antidote Patches which carried general use antidote for purging venom, poison and toxins. Chem patches which were “blank” patches to be loaded with the chemical of your choice. Stim Patches which would allow you to power through and keep you awake in difficult situations through a combination of pain killers and stimulants. And finally, Tranq Patches which carried a sleeping agent. Since they were pretty pricey, at 25¥ a pop, I ended up getting one Stim Patch and one Antidote Patch.
My purchases at Stuffer Shack set me back 135¥ which left me with a total of 1120¥. Enough to pay off my rent for the month and leave me with 60¥ for the foreseeable future.
Things were looking dire. I had no idea how I was going to survive the rest of the month but hopefully Orion would help me find some work even if it would be washing dishes.
I had to face the truth. There was no way that I could see to return to my old life. It was terrifying to thing how awful my prospects were in this new world and what I might have to do to secure a comfortable life. The only thing I knew is that my system would at least give me a leg up on the competition and if I played my cards right I might even live to see that day.
Determined to get my life in order, I made my way home.