Chapter 26

I was leaning against the wall of the shower, and just as the shower switched to warm wind rushing out of the ceiling to dry me off I noticed it. There was a small red dot in the bottom right of my vision indicating that I was currently recording video. Wait, does that mean that last night…? A quick thought and my IA brought up my recordings, including my current one, and yes I had indeed been recording last night. Well, that would have been useful to know earlier. Guess I never bothered to turn it off after the gig, just cut out the bits of the recording for the vid for the bartender while it continued to record in the background. Hmm, looks like this is barely even putting a dent in my total storage too. This IA is no joke. A few thoughts set my IA to keep a week’s worth of recording at a time before recording over it, in the future. Never know when you’ll need video evidence.

Finally dry I exited the shower and got dressed while I started playing the recording in a small box in the corner of my vision. As I watched the video of myself getting to The Drunk Kitten last night, I strapped on my guns and threw on my coat as I headed for the door. I’d gotten in a good long run around the outside hall of level 150 after Lizzy left, thus necessitating the shower, and I was now headed out to do some serious shopping.

I’d mentioned to Lizzy and Sara that I wanted to check out a particular gun shop up on 200 but wasn’t certain if I spoke Japanese or not, I was pretty sure, but I’d never tried it before. Lizzy had popped a data shard out of her slot and tossed it to me in response. Slotting it in and accessing the TV show it contained showed me a bad corporate anime with fantastic CGI that was entirely in Japanese with English subtitles, that I found I did not need. My IA was indeed translating in real time. It was like a switch in my head flipped and suddenly I not only could understand the language, I could also speak it. The looks on the girls’ faces when I started blathering on in Japanese was pretty amusing. Anyway, with Japanese apparently part of my skill set I should be able to check out the shops up there.

I’d asked Lizzy her opinion on how to get into the whole netrunner thing and she’d just shrugged and told me to pick up a data shard at a netrunner targeted store. Apparently they sold data shards on damn near anything netrunner related I could want as a newbie, though the more advanced stuff wasn’t for sale in stores and could only be acquired within the net itself.

I was idly on the lookout for just such a shop as I strode through the business area of level 150 vaguely window shopping. There really were a lot of random businesses. I passed what I believed to be my first pet shop in Noir City and was interested to see something referred to as EternaKittens and EternaPuppies for sale. Seeing the adorable puppies jumping up against the window brought me back for a second look. A closer examination of what seemed to be baby rottweilers drew my attention up to a hologram above their clear plastic pens up against the store’s glass wall abutting the thorofare, attempting to draw customers into the store with happy bundles of fluffy furred critters was a classic ploy for good reason. I was quickly informed by the hologram that these genetically modified creatures would never get any larger, making them economically viable pets that didn’t eat very much, made very small messes, and now lived almost 5 years on average. I honestly wasn’t sure how to feel about them. Puppies are great and all, but 5 years seemed like a pretty short lifespan. I recalled how losing my dog to old age in my last life had been incredibly sad, and it almost seemed like it would be worse if you were losing a happy little puppy. In the end I just shook my head and continued on my way. If I’m going to go through the heartache of losing a pet I at least want them to have lived a full life.

Examining various neon signs and holograms as I wandered showed me a variety of services I hadn’t been aware existed in this city. Sandwiched between a smallish casino/bar and a shop with holograms advertising unrealistically sized sex toys, I saw my first church. It was quite small compared to a lot of shops on this floor, but it seemed to be getting a decent amount of traffic, with people coming and going from its decorative automatic doors. The neon sign above the entrance told me it was the ‘All Encompassing Church,’ and a decent sized hologram told me in no uncertain terms that all religions and denominations were welcome to worship there for a very small fee. Different religious symbols flashed on various portions of the church’s wall indicating christian, jewish, muslim, buddhist and other faiths I didn’t recognize. I shook my head in amusement and continued on, not interested in buying what they were selling.

One of the largest shops I happened upon was a BioTech branch. I hadn’t planned on going in, but as I was examining the large ad-covered storefront, I saw a holographic ad for something called BioTech MealBars that looked kind of interesting. I figured I’d check the prices and maybe grab a few to see if they were actually any good, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to actually keep a little food in the apartment for a change. Walking in, I found a large holographic representation of the ubiquitous temp app prominently displayed in front of me. The rest of the large, white walled, white floored, white ceilinged, wide open space was all but empty save for a dozen or so various shoppers that seemed to be just randomly wandering about. With a thought, I started the app up, and it seemed to somehow link into my Kobayashi eyes, because a moment later a kind looking elderly latino gentleman seemed to appear in front of me in some sort of augmented reality that looked extremely high quality. Though I could see through him when I focused my eyes, it was extremely realistic. He smiled at me and then seemed to glitch as he suddenly turned into a similar looking black man, and then a black woman, then an asian woman. Flick, flick, flick, the avatar in front of me jumped through dozens of interactions in the space of a handful of seconds before finally settling on a buxom blonde haired blue-eyed woman wearing a low cut button up BioTech logoed shirt that showed a lot of cleavage. Okay, what the fuck was that? My IA helpfully showed me a bit of information on the temp app that indicated that BioTech had just used my microexpressions to select the ideal salesperson to assist me while shopping in their store.

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“Hi, there! Welcome to BioTech, Malcolm. Our records show that you’re probably stopping by because you’re interested in our fantastic BioTech MealBars. Follow me, and I’ll show you what we have available!” she said in an overly cheerful and enthusiastic manner, waving me to follow her as she turned to walk farther into the store. With a sigh and a shrug I followed. As much as I want to be irritated at BioTech for picking this avatar, it probably says more about me than them…Must have cameras or something on the outside of the shop that detected which ad I was looking at earlier. Big brother’s got nothing on these corpos.

I walked along behind the avatar, doing my best not to check out her all but gyrating ass as she wound her way through and around a large variety of augmented reality style holograms that had sprung up when I ran the temp app to fill up the entirety of the no longer empty sales floor. I didn’t actually see a single actual product that I could pick up and take to the front counter. Again my IA came to the rescue and showed me some information from the app that indicated that I would essentially order whatever product I wanted to purchase through the app and it would just be waiting for me at a counter located off to the side near the front entrance.

I passed by a young gal that seemed to be car shopping in front of a hologram depicting an expensive looking shiny gold levcar. The girl was turned away from the car itself and seemed to be arguing with thin air, her own digital salesperson I assumed.

We weaved our way through a variety of different products. Vehicles, chrome, medicine, houseplants, home appliances, and clothing all passed me by as we walked. I came to a stop when I saw a hologram of myself looking imperiously back at me. “Oh, are you interested in the latest in BioTech’s fashionable armor options?” asked the blonde. The me hologram staring back at me was wearing the stupidest looking helmet I’d ever seen, complete with BioTech logo across the forehead.

“Well, I am in the market for a tier 2 bulletproof vest if you guys sell ‘em I guess.” I said with some doubt in my voice. Doubt that was proven unsubstantiated a moment later as the helmet on the hologram disappeared along with its trench coat, replaced by a heavy duty looking black bulletproof vest similar to Sara’s, albeit with a prominent BioTech logo across the chest. As I stared, it morphed through a few options, probably judging by my microexpressions if it was what I wanted or not. I watched as the vest grew veritable pauldrons over my image’s shoulders, a skirt extended down below the crotch and bulletproof pads lined the tops of the thighs for a moment before disappearing along with the skirt. A moment later the pauldrons vanished as well, and then the entire vest seemed to shrink down closer to what I would have considered standard for police officers in my last life. I raised an eyebrow. That was almost exactly what I’d been thinking of trying to find. Their customer interaction software is no joke. “Does it come in Sakura pink?” I asked facetiously.

“Of course,” my sales rep stated confidently with a gesture at my image. A moment later the vest changed color to perfectly match my hair. It looked pretty damn good.

“Can I get it without the BioTech branding on the chest?” I asked. The white lettering of the BioTech name moved and resized itself to now go up and over the right shoulder instead of across the chest. “Nice…can I get it without the logo entirely?” I queried.

“No,” her response was immediate and the tone of voice actually came across as less than polite for the first time. Huh, I wonder who programmed this thing.

“Alright, I’m interested in the model I’m looking at as it’s shown,” I walked a slow circle around my image, the vest looked a bit thicker than I’d have thought, but if it’s going to stand up to tier 2 weapons I supposed it’d have to be.

“Can I see it with my coat back on?” My trench coat immediately reappeared on the image. It looked like it’d fit just fine. Even with the coat’s recent tailoring that fixed the length and the sleeves it was still a bit loose in the chest as things stood. If anything it looked like it fit even better with the bulletproof vest.

“Definitely interested. How much?” I asked.

“The current model with Sakura pink coating will run 112,593c, should I add it to your cart?” she asked politely.

I almost choked at the price, but I supposed you get what you pay for, and I really wanted something to armor up my nanite organ to guarantee my ability to continually fix myself as I took hits so…”Yeah, I’ll take it, add it to my cart. And, as long as I’m here, can I check out some clothes too?”

A good fifteen minutes of checking out various clothing options on the digital me mannequin resulted in adding several black tier 1 T-shirts, two pairs of black tier 1 pants lined with spider silk, a couple of pairs of black silk boxer shorts, and just for fun I’d had the app all but design from scratch a hawaiian shirt with white palm trees against a Sakura pink background, liberally interspersed with BioTech logos of course. Apparently it was literally impossible to get clothing from this shop without the branding.

A short jaunt from the clothing section brought us to the MealBars display I’d intended to check out initially, before the distraction of the perfect bulletproof vest. I just bought a few dozen of them in a sample pack. Most of the flavors were fairly normal, chocolate, strawberry, raspberry, peanut butter chocolate, and so forth. But I did make sure to get a half dozen weirder flavors to try out of sheer curiosity, turkey dinner, pepperoni pizza, cheeseburger, etc.

By the time I’d picked up my packaged clothing and MealBars at the front checkout I was down a solid 131,155c. I smiled as I walked out the door, on my way to carry my packages back home before my planned trip up to the higher floors to continue shopping. I’m just getting started.