Chapter 2
“Mal, wake up. We’re here,” my eyes cracked open at Sara’s head’s up. Without thinking I reached down beside the seat and found a switch that, when pushed forward, brought the seat up to a proper sitting position. Huh, just like my ex’s Accord. Suppose there’s only so many advances one can make on technology. I looked forward and my jaw dropped.
Noir City seemed to spread from horizon to horizon. Massive skyscrapers formed a veritable wall we were approaching. On the edge of the city they stood from twenty to fifty stories, veering more towards the latter, but farther into the city the building loomed hundreds upon hundreds of stories into the sky. Some of those massive edifices had to be miles in diameter. Which reminded me that the total population of the city was supposed to easily be in excess of 200 million, although no one knew for sure just how many people actually lived here as doing a census would require sharing information, which the corps would never allow. The buildings shone in the early afternoon sun in a hundred different colors, although various metallic sheens predominated. Tiny specks reflecting light flitted from building to building, levcars and levtrucks going about their business. “Wow,” I felt the word dragged from my lips as I stared aghast at the sheer magnitude that was Noir City.
“Right?” chuckled Sara as she drove towards an opening between two large rectangular edifices that merged together dozens of stories above streetlevel, forming what almost seemed like a tunnel, the only gap I could see in the wall of buildings.The cutoff was stark, like someone drew a line on the ground and said, ‘massive buildings on this side, desert over there.’ It took longer than expected to reach the buildings as they just seemed to loom higher and higher in the sky as we approached, until finally we slowed and entered Noir City.
It was like entering a canyon, and the bright sunlight cut off almost entirely. Suddenly, instead of brightly lit desert, we were surrounded by neon signs of every color and description. There were so many to look at I almost felt like it was making me dizzy, and my eyes jumped from advertisements for TechieTacos to bar fronts with intricate pictures that looked more like modern art than basic signage. Brothels advertised blatantly with two story tall holographic women in the nude beckoning whomever. I blinked in surprise as I saw a McDonald’s advertisement with a holographic big mac being endlessly munched on by a beautiful woman with bright blue hair and bright blue lipstick. That’s right, Cyberpunk:Noir had had product placement, totally forgot about that. Pawnshops, gunshops, restaurants, liquor stores, drug stores, convenience stores, clothing boutiques, chrome shops, stores that purported to cater to netrunning needs, the myriad businesses all passed by in a blur. I’m pretty sure I even saw a shop that sold fucking robots. My mind whirled.
About 30 minutes of this passed as I stared in wonder out the windows, while Sara drummed on the steering in time with an upbeat song on the radio. “We’re almost to the ripper,” said Sara, jolting me out of my reverie. I noticed that I could no longer see the sky at all. The upper levels had their own streets that ran in between the buildings up there, and here at ground level it had become a permanent night lit only by the signs and ads of the ubiquitous businesses. I guess street lights would be a tad redundant with all these signs.
As we approached our destination I started paying attention to the people lining the streets. While traffic wasn’t too bad, the sidewalks were packed with people nearly as colorful as the signs covering almost every available surface. Neon colors abounded, hairstyles that seemed gravity defying in eye wrenching color, clothing that in some cases literally glowed, skin covered in patches of metal and plastic. The fashions varied widely, fluffy fur coats that would make any pimp jealous, leather coats or just leather straps that barely seemed to cover a person enough to be considered decent, folks just wearing a basic T-shirt and shorts, it all blended together to make for a wide, if somewhat schizophrenic, variety.
Once I started paying attention to the people, the random bouts of violence suddenly shot into sharp focus. Here, a group of thugs wearing neon blue jackets were kicking the crap out of some random guy on the ground between them. There, someone getting snatched off the street into a dark alley beside a liquor store. Even as I watched, someone appeared to be robbing that convenience store. Holy shit, they just shot the clerk.The people walking past the business didn’t even turn to see what the commotion was, they just moved a bit faster past the disturbance. Ok, yeah, definitely glad my sister left me armed.
I had to remember that there were no cops in Noir City. If people wanted safety here they joined a gang or a corp…or just became so personally dangerous that they themselves were the threat to others’ safety. Whether that danger came from wealth, chrome, or weapons was up to individual choice.
Sara turned down a side street and a few minutes later declared, “Here we are,” A garage I hadn’t even noticed opened up as she turned towards a building and parked just inside. The solid looking garage door dropped back down behind us, leaving us in pitch blackness. A moment later bright light turned on and we found ourselves looking at a bare garage with only a single door in front of us. “Alright, hang on, I’ll come around and help you to the Doc’s office,” said Sara as she jumped out of the car. A few moments later she opened the door beside me and I tried to move my legs out of the car, only to find them unable to move more than a few inches.
“Fucking hell, I can barely move!” I said, exasperatedly.
Sara laughed, “Well no shit. You’ve been asleep for three months. Your muscles did that thing that happens when you don’t use them.”
“Atrophied?” I asked, realizing that it made complete sense that I’d be this messed up after that long.
“Yeah, that,” she replied with a grunt as she put an arm behind my shoulders and her other behind my knees as she picked me up in a princess carry. I barely managed to grab the bag of piss that was connected to my catheter in time. Now that would have hurt. She lifted me with what seemed to be very little effort, which raised my eyebrows.
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“Damn, Sara, you’re strong,” I said, surprised.
She just chuckled as she carried me to the sole door, the car door shutting on its own and giving off the telltale clunk of locks engaging. “Well thank you, unlike some people I’ve spent my credits on chrome instead of porn, and as such have decent synth muscles and titanium alloy bones. So yeah, you’re not exactly heavy to me.” She threw me a wink as she made the porn comment.
I winced. “Yeah well, that was the old Malcolm. I actually deleted all that porn the moment I found it. You know it was taking up like half my available storage? Old Malcolm definitely had a problem.”
She paused for a moment before awkwardly opening the door. “You know you could have put that on a shard and sold it right?” she asked with exasperation.
“Wait, what? Really? Aw fuck. Didn’t occur to me. I just really didn’t want that shit in my head,” I said with a defeated sigh. She just laughed as she carried me into another brightly lit room with a myriad of strange machines with esoteric blinking lights interspersed with a variety of cabinets and lockers around a very high tech looking chair.
“Alrighty then, what’re we looking at today? Kid in a coma right?” came a man’s loud voice. A chair on wheels that would look right at home in front of any gamer’s computer suddenly slid out from behind a bank of machines, coming to a stop next to the chair in the center of the room.
“Actually he woke up a few hours ago, so we just need a checkup. Hmm, I guess we need that catheter removed as well,” said Sara happily. I was less than happy at the prospect of removing a tube from my dick, but what’re you going to do? Sara set me down fairly gently on the slightly reclined chair and propped my legs up on the nicely cushioned lower portion.
“Oh?” the man hit some buttons on a tablet in his hands and various little arms jumped out of the side of the chair, as well as from the ceiling above me, and they began an odd choreographed dance around me as I found myself flinching away and trying to hunker down into myself. “Hmm,” the man seemed to consider his results. He was an odd looking fellow. He appeared to be wearing what I would have considered a white lab coat that wouldn’t look out of place on any doctor to my mind, but his shirt and pants were both a bright glowing red which bled through the coat and made it appear pink. His hair was white and poofed up in a manner that made me think it’d never seen a comb before, perhaps never even heard of one.
“He says he has amnesia. Can’t remember a thing before waking up,” Sara added helpfully.
The man laughed, “Makes sense,” he pointed to his tablet. “Kid got shot in the brain. That does tend to have side effects. Usually death. But looks like you got lucky, kid,” He whipped his tablet around and shoved it in front of my face, showing me what seemed to be a brain scan. “Looks like whatever hack yanked that bullet outa yer skull did almost as much damage as the bullet itself. That said, they did remove the bone splinters, and you’d definitely have died if they didn’t take the bullet out. Looks like it was resting right near your brainstem. Bit of a miracle ain’tcha?” He took back the tablet and began looking it over with interest. “Pretty nice patch job over the hole in your skull though. Hmm, BioTech Titan Alloy, very nice.”
He dropped the tablet to his lap and leaned back in his chair, “Unfortunately there’s not really anything I can do for the memory loss. With an injury like this, it either comes back eventually or it doesn’t. Not much anybody can do for ya. Just depends on how your brain heals. Given the extent of the damage, and the fact that you’ve already had months to recover, and regained consciousness with no memory? I’d estimate your odds of full recovery somewhere below ten percent.” Sara’s face dropped into a sad frown upon hearing this. The old man shrugged. “On the plus side that means this visit will be a lot cheaper. I can help a little with the atrophy. He zipped on his chair over to a cabinet and pulled open a drawer. A few moments of clatter as he dug around in the drawer and he zipped back, handing me an inhaler. Take a hit of this once a day and make sure to exercise as much as you can and you’ll be back on your feet in a month or two.” His eyes glowed blue for a moment and then he reached back behind his ear and pulled out a shard. “Here, some basic exercises you can do to rehabilitate your noodle muscles.” He chuckled to himself, then paused and started patting at his pockets. “Here,” he said, pulling a silvery pouch out of a breast pocket and tossing it to me. “Drink that, you’re pretty dehydrated.”
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, accepting the drink pouch and inhaler and immediately taking a hit off the latter. It had a decidedly chemically taste to it. “What do we owe ya?”
“Huh? Oh, right. Um…” his eyes flicked around as he seemed to be checking a program on his agent. “Looks like…meh, call it 200. 100 for the checkup and 100 for the muscle grow. It should be 120 for the grow since it’s BioTech brand, but I don’t get many muscle heads looking to bulk up that aren’t just buying synth muscles anyway, so it’s been sitting on my shelf for years. Just remember to come back to Doc Brown when you decide to chrome up, yeah?”
I smiled as I sent 200 credits over, watching the -200c pop up on my HUD. “Definitely, Doc. It’s been a pleasure. We’ll just get outa your hair, if my white knight would be so kind as to carry me back to her noble steed?” I said, looking at Sara.
“Oh, one last thing,” said Doc. I felt an odd lessening of pressure in my bladder and then the doc suddenly reached out and grabbed the catheter tube where it was coming out of the waist of my pants. My eyes barely had time to widen, before he yanked hard and out came the catheter, treating me to a small spritz of urine. The pain was exquisite, and I’m embarrassed to say I let out a rather girly shriek. “No charge for the catheter removal, that’s included with the checkup.” The doc just laughed as I clutched my groin and cursed under my breath in agony. Fortunately it was fairly short lived and with some deep breathing I managed to get a hold of myself and pretend that horror never happened.
Sara just rolled her eyes, “Just let me pay and we’ll get outa here.” She sighed.
Doc Brown held up a hand, “Kid already paid me, you’re good, miss.” He turned his chair and zipped away backwards.
Sara just looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “What?” I asked. “I still had a little cash left, and you’ll need what you got for rent and food and stuff.”
She picked me up and made her way back through the door to the garage. “Fine. But tell me first next time…Wait, how many creds do you have anyway?” She eyed me suspiciously.
“Oh I’m rich as fuck. I got 23 whole creds to my name.” I stated proudly and started laughing when I couldn’t hold a straight face.
She snorted in amusement. “Good, that should keep you out of trouble for a while at least.”
I just smiled. “I’m pretty sure the lack of muscles is going to keep me out of trouble more so than the lack of funds for the foreseeable future. But I’ll take that under advisement.” The car door seemingly opened by itself with no input from Sara, must be some kind of remote function she can access with her agent. She dropped me into the seat unceremoniously and pushed my legs inside the car before walking around the front as the door closed itself.
She hopped in and looked over at me as the garage began opening behind the car. “Ready to go check out our new pad?” she asked.