Chapter 14

Some indeterminable amount of time later I was still sitting on the red duracrete floor, listening to the girl, Abby, playing her guitar. Out of sheer boredom I’d been chatting with her on and off and had discovered that she was actually Lizzy’s little sister. Apparently, when Sara had asked Lizzy for recommendations on a good apartment, she’d recommended the one next door to her own. The discount we’d received was probably due to Abby playing her electric guitar at absurd volume, so it’d be hard to complain. Abby was playing in the hall since, according to her, playing at full volume in the apartment caused vibrations in Lizzy’s netrunner chair that caused its components to become unstable and messed with her connection to the net. I guess when you can just get chrome ear implants you don’t have to worry too much about permanent hearing loss.

“So where did you learn how to play the guitar in the first place anyway?” I asked as she finished a particularly frenzied song that was obviously meant to be played with far more volume than her gold guitar’s internal amplifier was capable of.

“Ah, I’m self taught!” she chirped proudly. “You can just get a shard at most music shops. It’ll teach you the basics. They’ve got shards for like every instrument you could imagine. They’re kinda spendy, but way cheaper than lessons would be,” she’d taken on the tone of a teacher explaining something to a particularly dense student.

“Oh, good! I was going to ask you to teach me to play the guitar, but if that would be expensive then I’ll just get one of those shards you mentioned,” I replied with a smirk.

“What?!” The chagrined look on her face did my soul good. “...Well…uh…Nothing can truly replace a talented teacher like myself. You’d have to be a genius to become as good as I have using only a shard like I did. Obviously you should get yourself a proper teacher like myself. It wouldn’t even be that expensive. A mere 50 creds per hour long lesson is nothing compared to the megacreds you’d earn once you become a massive rockstar! Which of course is guaranteed by the famous Abby School of Guitar!” She rushed through an obviously improvised schpiel to try and take me for some creds.

Her obvious desire to scam a moron put a smile on my face. “I dunno... That’s a little expensive, maybe if it was like 20 creds I’d think about it but…nah, I’ll probably just get one of those sweet music shards you mentioned,” I replied, putting some doubt in my voice.

Abby screwed up her face as she seemed to be thinking hard while her hands unconsciously began plucking away at her guitar. She really was pretty damn good. Her face smoothed as she looked at me with false pity in her eyes. “That’s too bad, and here I was going to offer you an introductory rate too. First three lessons 50% off.” She sighed loudly. “Well I guess not everyone’s cut out to be a world renowned rockerboy.” She went back to playing her guitar, something extremely complex to the point that it raised my eyebrows. It was a pretty good sales pitch, but it was ever so slightly ruined by the way she kept looking over to me to see if I’d bite.

Just before I could cave and take her up on her offer, the door beside Abby opened and Lizzy walked out. “Hey, Abby, wanna go get some- Oh, hey, Malcolm. What’re you doing out here?” asked Lizzy.

“He locked himself out of his apartment!” Abby interjected with amusement.

“That’s…” Lizzy paused as she looked me over. “New chrome?...Hmm, Oh! Some kind of problem with your IA?”

I smiled as she immediately realized what had happened. “Exactly right. Went for a run and couldn’t get back in. Didn’t know the apartments here work differently than the last place we lived. Unsurprising that a netrunner of your caliber would instantly realize what happened. Most people would just think it’s impossible to lock yourself out.” I smirked at Abby and got a blush and a pout out of her.

It was pretty satisfying, until Lizzy snorted a laugh at me. “Still pretty stupid to lock yourself out though.”

I looked up at her with an aggravated sigh, “I’m not stupid. I’m ignorant. It’s different. People always underestimate how much knowledge you lose when you suffer from permanent amnesia. I’m actually an unparallelled evil genius, but I still have to learn everything from scratch.”

The look on Lizzy’s face made her doubt clear as to the veracity of my unparalleled genius. “Well, genius, I was just going to invite my sister to come get a salad with me. Since you’re locked out, and presumably can’t buy anything without a functioning IA, you wanna join us? I still owe you from lunch the other day.”

“Salad!” chirped Abby, jumping to her feet and slinging her guitar over her shoulder to rest strapped to her back. “Salad, salad salad!”

I smiled as I got to my feet, wishing I had a shirt as it wasn’t particularly warm in the bare duracrete hall. “Sure, I could eat. Sara was supposed to pick up some food, but all I found in the fridge was beer and tea.”

“Come on then,” Lizzy waved me to follow her as she took off down the hall with Abby at her side. I had to jog for a few seconds to catch up and followed along behind them, which made me realize how sore my legs were from my earlier run.

We turned at the first hallway heading further into the interior of the megabuilding and quickly exited what seemed to be the residential area of the floor, finding ourselves in a shopping district not unlike the one down on the ground floor. The shops here seemed higher end than downstairs however. The holograms and neon signs on the various businesses seemed decidedly more expensive with crisper higher definition graphics and holograms that were almost indiscernible from real life.

A ten minute walk later and we turned into a restaurant named VegFresh, the holograms decorating its exterior with a plethora of dancing vegetables and fruits that appeared to be all but dripping freshness.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

There weren’t too many people eating inside, but it wasn’t empty. The few customers that were there all seemed to be in remarkably good shape. Maybe there is something to the whole ‘eating healthy’ thing. As we walked up to the counter to order Lizzy asked me, “What do you want?”

I looked around and found no menu to be seen, though the temporary app symbol did appear amidst holograms of vegetables on the wall behind the middle aged woman wearing a VegFresh uniform and hat waiting to take our order. I just sighed and said, “I’ll just have whatever you’re having.”

Lizzy blinked for a moment and then realized my predicament as she smirked and turned to the woman awaiting our order. “Two caesar salads, and…” she looked down at Abby.

Who slapped both her hands on the counter that her head barely poked over the edge of, “A chef’s salad with ranch and extra cherry tomatoes!” She said excitedly, getting a smile out of the woman who nodded politely to her. The VegFresh employee turned and walked a step over to the wall, which opened a previously unseen automatic window that slid open to reveal three clear plastic bowls that obviously held salads. She picked them up and turned to deposit them on the counter in front of us. “Have a VegFresh day!” said the woman in an overly cheerful way that betrayed the fact that she obviously said that way too many times a day.

I picked up my salad and followed Lizzy and Abby as they made their way to a nearby booth. I sat opposite them as I went to open my salad…and realized I couldn’t figure out how to open the sealed top of the bowl, much to the girls’ amusement. I was going to just watch how they opened theirs, but they seemed to be very specifically waiting to take as much amusement out of my predicament as possible. After a minute of perusing the container, I found a notch that looked like it would accommodate a fingernail and thought I had it figured out. I stuck my thumbnail in it and pulled, only to find myself holding a, previously invisible, perfectly flat plastic fork that had slid out of the lid. Apparently the defeated look on my face was fairly amusing as they both took the opportunity to laugh at my expense. Lizzy caught my attention and simply tapped a finger lightly in the center of the lid and it popped open on an unseen hinge. I followed her example and my salad finally opened itself. How the hell was I supposed to figure that out? The lid wasn’t marked at all to indicate that’s how it was done. The only labeling on the bowl was an indented VegFresh logo on the side.

After all that work, the meal was nearly worth the effort. I’d obviously had a caesar salad plenty of times in my last life, but this one was up there quality-wise. Abby was taking great pleasure in violently spearing cherry tomato after cherry tomato with her fork and devouring them, while Lizzy ate much more delicately and precisely prepared each small bite. I’d been hungry as hell for who knew how long at that point and practically inhaled the salad, finishing well before they did. Great, now I’m thirsty again. I waited politely while they finished their food, not like I had anything better to do. If nothing else, the seat in the booth was considerably more comfortable than the floor I’d been sitting on.

We chatted a bit as they finished up and then tossed our empty containers in a garbage bin on the way out the door. As we walked back to our apartments, my gaze caught on a glass display on the front of a shop, and I came to a stop. The girls quickly realized I wasn’t following and wandered over to see what had caught my attention. I’d stopped in front of a music store called The Last Note, and was ogling the electric guitars they had displayed for window shoppers.

Much like Abby’s guitar, these Noir City versions were more futuristic looking than the electric guitars I knew from my past life. There were no pegs above the neck to allow you to tune the guitar, the neck simply ended up squared off with nothing above the frets. The bodies themselves were similar to what I was used to, but almost to a one had some kind of neon lighting accentuating their sleek designs. They looked cool as hell. I wanted one. Stupid IA, guess it’ll have to wait.

“Looking to get a guitar?” asked Lizzy, curious.

“Yeah, stupid IA won’t let me buy anything yet though.” I grumbled.

“He’s going to pay me 50c per lesson!” added Abby helpfully.

“Well I was lucky enough to get a discount, so the first three lessons are half off,” I interjected with a smirk. “But yeah, I want one. I’m pretty flush with cash right now too. Annoying that I can’t use it for anything.”

“Hmm,” hummed Lizzy. “I’ll be right back.” She headed into the store without another word, leaving me and Abby to look at the guitars.

“So what do you think, sensei? What kinda guitar should I get?” I gestured at the display.

Abby tapped her chin a few times as she gave my question due consideration. “Well, the Deloreon in the middle there is obviously the best guitar there, but you won’t find one for less than a hundred grand. They’re all handmade out of super tough materials. I heard a rockerboy guy on tv say that they’re so tough you can use it to beat a guy to death and then go play a gig, and it’ll still be perfectly in tune” I felt my eyebrows shoot up. Damn, I had no idea they were that pricey. “Most people start off with something mass produced like a Fender or a Gucci.” She indicated a couple of different guitars with matching branding. “I’ve got a Samsung. But they’re pretty expensive too. Lizzy got it for me after she stole- er…earned a bunch of creds on a gig a few months ago. It cost more than 20 grand. I’d say you should aim for a Samsung or Deloreon, but you should start on something cheap like everybody does. I have an old Gucci back home that I started on.” She seemed to notice something and pointed at a flashy red guitar on the far right. “Oh, and stay away from Orpheus guitars. They look cool, but they break all the time. Real musicians complain about them all the time.”

We spent a few more minutes discussing the various guitars there while we waited for Lizzy, and I learned quite a bit about the various brands. Eventually Lizzy came out of the shop, carrying a guitar case. “Here,” she said, handing me the case. “You owe me 5100c. I got you a shard to teach you how to play for 100c and the guitar was five grand.” I took the guitar case, touched. That wasn’t a small amount of money to loan a new acquaintance.

I felt a smile pulling at my mouth, “Thanks a lot, Lizzy! I’ll pay you back tomorrow for sure. Hell, I could probably pay you back in like…” I checked my display ‘Initializing…85%’ was showing. “6 hours maybe?”

She waved me off. “Tomorrow’s fine. C’mon, let’s get back. I managed to get ahold of Sara and she gave me guest access to your apartment, so I can let you in. She thought it was pretty hilarious that you managed to lock yourself out.” She chuckled as she turned and started walking.

“Lizzy! Why would you get him that shard?! Now he won’t need my lessons!” Abby yelled at Lizzy as she followed along.

“Of course I still want the lessons,” I told her matter of factly. “Obviously, if you got as good as you did only using a shard to teach you, then if I use a shard and lessons I’ll become twice as good as you. Thus, I shall become the greatest rockerboy in the history of the world. This will add to my legend after I take over the city and then the world, as is expected of a proper evil genius like myself. Worth every cred for the shard and the lessons.” I nodded at her incredulous expression as if it was only logical. Lizzy just laughed as we made our way back to our respective homes.