Chapter 3
Our new pad was not awesome. This was made instantly apparent via the large blood stain just inside the door. Sara had gotten one of the cheapest apartments she could find. About the only selling point for the place was the 500c per month price tag and the fact that it was right in between megabuilding B9 and Doc Brown’s ripper shop, being about a half mile from both. The megabuilding gave us a place to buy pretty much anything we could need and the ripper gave us a place to get fixed up in the almost guaranteed potentiality of injury.
The apartment was technically a two bedroom. Although the second bedroom, the smaller of the two, was barely large enough for the bed. The only storage in the bedroom was a slim series of drawers under the thin mattress. Sara, of course, immediately called dibs on the larger bedroom which actually had a small desk and a closet she could hang clothes in, in addition to the drawers under her mattress.
At least the bedrooms had sliding doors that locked, the bathroom was not so well accommodated, with just a bead curtain separating it from the cramped living room our bedrooms adjoined from the same wall as the bathroom. A minimalist toilet cramped in between a tiny sink and a shower that could just about fit one person was the entirety of the provided facilities. There wasn’t even a mirror over the sink.
The narrow, windowless, living room had a couch along the wall opposite our bedrooms and faced a holographic TV that was mounted in between them. That was pretty much it. I suppose the grime and filth ingrained into the walls and linoleumesqe flooring were free, so there was that. At some point in the past, someone had spray painted a series of dragons all over the walls in Sara’s bedroom. She rather liked them, and I had to admit they were pretty artfully done. However, in my room, it looked more like a rabid child had been set loose on the walls with a permanent marker. It seemed they’d had a penchant for drawing male anatomy, as that was obviously the predominant theme. The phrase ‘Fuck You Dad!’ was scrawled across the back of the door dozens of times. I’m sure that kid was just a delight to share a tiny apartment with.
Sara had plopped me down on the couch, after giving me the very brief tour of our new digs, while she headed back to her parking spot in the basement parking structure to bring up our stuff, one load at a time. Fortunately we didn’t have much because we really had nowhere to put it.
While I waited, I was making use of the TV. Cyberpunk: Noir TV wasn’t quite as bad as I expected from what I’d seen online prior to getting flattened by truck-kun. I suppose it makes sense that they only programmed in so many things to watch for the game, so at least there was a more substantial variety in this reality than I was expecting. My internal agent connected to the TV easily and allowed me to change channels with a thought. I surfed from channels that literally showed nothing but ads, to game shows that seemed literally insane, and I’m pretty sure actually killed some of the contestants, to corpo sponsored news programs that were essentially propaganda and ads interspersed with the latest massacre to keep the lookie loos watching. I stopped briefly on a movie about a netrunner that was kinda interesting since it showed a lot of scenes of the net. It reminded me a bit of Tron, if gravity was optional. Ultimately I couldn’t understand a lot of what was going on, but based on the protagonist’s companions' constant gasps of surprise it was very impressive. After a bit I went back to surfing and ended up on a boxing match between two hulking chromed out behemoths punching each other in the face with metal fists that looked like they could bend steel.
Sara came back in periodically and dropped off boxes of random stuff. Most went to her room though she did drop one off in mine. Eventually she came in with what seemed to be the last box as she set it down on the floor by the couch and settled in tiredly next to me. “We should talk about what we’re going to do next,” she said as she turned off the TV.
“Ok,” I said. “You’re the boss, what’s next?:
She sighed. “Well I’m going to find a job at some store within walking distance. Batteries to fuel the car are expensive as fuck, and we’re not wasting juice driving to a job that will pay less than what it costs to drive there. Once I’ve got enough cash together I’m going to get some subdermal armor and look into merc work. It tends to pay well enough that I can progressively chrome up even better and we can decide what happens from there. Meanwhile, you need to do your exercises as much as possible to get on your feet pronto and start earning creds somehow too.” She looked at me questioningly as if uncertain if I’d agree to her plan.
“Sounds perfect,” I immediately concurred. “I’ll get mobile ASAP, and from there I think I’m going to look into chroming up enough for merc work as well so I can watch your back.” I could see her eyes tearing up with emotion. “What? Like I’m going to trust some rando to keep my sister alive? I literally owe you my life like a hundred times over for getting me out of the badlands still breathing. I may not remember you from before today, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what happens to you. It’s going to be tough to find people we can trust in this city. Best we at least have one person we can count on.” I stated definitively with a nod. And then immediately found myself being crushed in a hug. “Ack…can’t…breathe ... .being attacked by…gorilla…help!” I gasped out, only to be hugged even tighter for a moment before she let me go.
“You always were a moron, good to see that hasn’t changed.” She said, her voice thick with emotion as she got up and headed to her room. “Do your damn exercises and get some sleep. I’ll be getting up early and looking for work.” Her door closed behind her.
I pulled the exercise shard out of my pocket and contemplated it for a moment before pausing and looking at my sister’s closed door. Shit, how the fuck am I supposed to get to my bed from here by myself?
==
In the end I’d just zoned out watching TV for hours until I passed out hard on the couch after drinking the pouch Doc had given me, a single serving of UberWater, ‘the finest desalinated/detoxified water’ from TedCorp. When I woke up around 8AM I found a message waiting for me in my agent from Sara telling me, “Went out to interview for a job. Back soon if I don’t get it, back late if I do.” I shrugged and decided to get a start on my exercises in the hope of being able to crawl to the bathroom at some point.
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I scrolled through the shard Doc had given me and focused on the ones I figured I could do sitting down. Just lifting my leg off the floor to point straight out was a massively monumental task that took the better part of five minutes to accomplish, only to need to repeat it with the other leg. I kept going back and forth between them for the best part of an hour when suddenly-
+100 Body XP
My lifted leg dropped to the floor and I froze in place at the implication inherent in that popup on my HUD. I pulled up my Character screen and again tried to select Body. This time it brought up another screen showing: Body XP 100/500. A grin started crawling across my face. Ok, FUCK two months of rehab. I’m going to be back on my feet inside a week.
With that increase I found a wellspring of motivation that had me switch over to working on my arms, lifting and extending them in accordance with Doc’s exercises. I was drenched in sweat a half hour later when the expected happened.
+100 Body XP
I flopped back with a smile, breathing hard. Ok, I’m maybe two hours in and already up 200xp. If that holds true I may be able to hit Level 0 in Body before Sara even gets back. Huh, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Guess she scored a job.
My muscles were aching like hell, but I had a goal: Get to the point where I can walk to the bathroom. I seriously wanted that damn shower. I felt totally gross even before I started exercising, and now, with the addition of flop sweat, I straight up needed it.
I turned and flopped onto my back along the couch and started doing crunches. It took longer this time, but I was really doing a number on my muscles. Finally, two hours later, it happened.
+100 Body XP
I lay there, gasping. Maybe finishing the entire 500xp before Sara got back was a touch ambitious. As I finally got my breath back I felt sleep pulling me down and let it. Plenty of time to finish up tonight or tomorrow.
==
I woke up on the couch again and noted the time was 3AM. I again had a message waiting for me. “Mal, didn’t want to wake you when I got in, but I left some food beside the couch. Got a job at the BurgerDepot across the street, down a bit towards B9. It was…interesting. Ended up getting promoted to assistant manager on my first day, but that’s a story better told in person. Anyway, I pulled a change of clothes out of the box in your room and left them by the food. Make sure you change out of what you’re wearing and leave it for me to get cleaned. You smell like a locker room.”
I chuckled as I sat up and looked down beside the couch to find a fast food style cup with a straw in it and a plastic bag next to a pile of clothes. I grabbed the bag with an eye searing BurgerDepot logo prominently displayed, and pulled out its contents. Two cheeseburgers by the labeling. I sighed at the cold, congealed, greasy sandwich I revealed when I unwrapped the first, but gamely took a large bite. I needed the calories…and it wasn’t actually half bad. Of course this body hadn’t had solid food in months, so being literally starving might have helped with the flavor a bit as I all but inhaled both of them and washed them down with warm orange soda.
Next order of business, I laboriously stripped off my funky clothes and dropped them in a heap on the floor. I stopped as I finished taking off my pants at what I discovered. God damnit…that’s a fucking diaper isn’t it? I pulled up my inventory tab and saw my anorexic-looking self dressed only in what appeared to be padded tighty whities. I sighed to myself as I focused on it to see the details. ‘SeniorSolutions diaper. The finest in adult diapers. Guaranteed to hold up to five kilos of solid/liquid waste while keeping covered skin healthy. If you have to wear a diaper, it sure as fuck better be SeniorSolutions.’ I felt my face blush as I realized my sister had been regularly changing me while I was in a coma. Or was that previous Malcolm?…or was it just a braindead empty vessel? Gotta stop thinking about this shit before I spiral down into an existential crisis. I took a deep breath and stripped off the diaper and added it to the pile of dirty clothes before putting on the clean ones. I still felt pretty gross, what with not having had a shower yet, but it was still infinitely better than I’d felt when I woke up.
Which immediately made me wonder why my muscles weren’t sore anymore. I’d really been kicking my own ass with those exercises, why wasn’t I-...Holy shit…the REST FUNCTION! YES!!! Every time you slept in Cyberpunk: Noir it removed status effects and healed you to full health. Well as long as you got at least 8 hours of sleep anyway.
The lack of a timer showing up when I went to sleep had thrown me off. I’d completely forgotten that the timer that allowed you to pick how long you’d sleep wasn’t a basic function of the game but was instead a function of a person’s internal agent. It had actually been one of the biggest complaints of the beta testers when they first started playing the game, right up until one of them upgraded his agent and found that he now had that ability. What had started as a complaint had eventually become praise for the game makers as people seemed to enjoy the realism of earning the ability from chrome rather than just being handed it.
WIth a smile I realized I could push myself as hard as I wanted to. Pulled muscle? No problem. Torn Ligament? No big deal. I immediately launched back into my exercises with a renewed zeal. Leg lifts, arm curls with no weights, crunches until my stomach felt like it was on fire. I pushed even harder than before and was quickly rewarded with the last XP notification I’d been after.
+200 Body XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)
I felt a surge of energy flowing through my body that was almost intoxicating in its intensity. As it finally settled back down I could instantly tell the difference. My muscles were no longer useless noodles. They were now almost useful noodles. I felt at my arm and could feel some actual muscle lining the bones that were still significantly more prominent than I would like. But it was a step in the right direction. I pulled up my Character tab and checked Body. Yep, now showing Level 0 for Body. When I clicked into the body to check my XP it now showed me Body XP 0/1000. I knew that if it held true from the game that it would increase by an additional 1000 XP each level I advanced it. That rested bonus was going to speed things up even more…too bad I didn’t sleep long enough before exercising that first time.
I almost immediately tried to stand and found that I could in fact make that happen…slowly…and with shaking legs that threatened to dump me on my ass at any moment…But I was STANDING! With tiny, slow, shuffling steps I made my way to the bathroom. I sat on the poor excuse for a toilet and stripped my clothes back off, stood back up on my shaking legs, and took the most glorious shower of my life. Or my first shower. Whatever, it was good.