Graverobbing for fun and profit

“Explain it to me again”, T-bug asked for the fourth time. Still as incredulous as ever.

“I want you to help me find all the still active cryofreezer contracts that have been active since the 2020s and are set to expire within the next 2 years”, J stated matter of factly.

“Now explain why”, T-bug stated in the same matter of fact tone.

“I’m going on a treasure hunt!”, J responded with far too much enthusiasm.

“Sigh, of course you are. You are such a weird kid J”

“And you love me like a sister”

“And I love you like a sister”

“And you owe me one for all the debugging I do for free.”

“And I owe you for all the debugging you do for free. I found the info. It's 3 pods.”

“Three, that’s more than I expected. How did you already have this, were you stalling me as you ran a search?”

“I was stallin’ as I ran the search. It’s a good lesson for when you get your cyberware chipped, makes you look like a fuck’n Genie and Genies get paid more!”

J rolled her eyes in response while admitting to herself that it was a good tip.

“In your professional opinion, how much would it cost to buy those pods before they expire?”

“Well a good bribe would do it, but contacting them instead under a shell company offering to dispose of the bodies for less than they would normally pay for a little under the table? They’ll pay you to pick them up. Which you can hire a mover to do to get them shipped right to your apartment.” T-bug’s response was far too smug, suspiciously smug.

J responded by narrowing her eyes“You’ve already done it haven’t you?”

“I’ve already done it! Good, you're learning. Also just made a quick thousand Eddies…”

“How did you making Eddies, doing me a favor?” J responded incredulously.

“...and your packages will be dropped off at the drone pad on the roof in 15 minutes. Be sure to get Haru to get his boys to drop it, pick it up and drop it off in your room before some gonk Kleps it. Also I’m just that good.”

“Thanks! Love you T, you're my best choom!”

“Not like you have many”

“Still the best. Although Mama Welles comes in damn close. That Chili sauce and those enchiladas~ ” J sighed, wistfully.

“Can’t blame you there. They are fire!”

“Okay got to go, thanks again T!” Taking a deep breath she dialed her brother

“Nii-san”, J infused infused her voice with the sweetness of a diabetic attack.

“What do you want Imouto?”

“What makes you think I want something? Maybe I just want to talk.”

“Bullshit, you only call me Nii-san when you want something now spill.”

“I just wanted to talk to my wonderful older brother~”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Wait fine, can you have some of your boys pick up some boxes at the drone delivery for me, its time sensitive and they’re to big for me to lift.”

“I’ll get Hikaru to drop it off, when will it be delivered?”

“Should be here in the next 10 minutes or so”

“What is it anyway”

“I haven’t seen Hikaru for a while. It will be good to see how she’s doing” J sidestepped the question without ease, which set Haru’s danger senses flaring.

“Kouri Misaki, what did you do?”

“Gotta go Nii-san, love you bye.” J swiftly ended the conversation before her brother could get in another word.

All according to Keikaku J smirked, leaning back and steepling her fingers.

Half an hour later Hikaru left, just as bewildered as everyone else. Although knowing that J’s bullshit was no longer her problem brought her no small amount of comfort and no small amount of amused schadenfreude towards Haru’s reaction when he got home.

J spent the next hour checking the pods. After hooking them each up to her deck to check their status. J confirmed two of the three were completely and irrevocably dead. Before opening them she used a cheap disposable bioscanner to confirm the contents. 2 were fine, but one showed traces of the Carbon Plague!

Okay, definitely not opening that one without a hazmat suit. Also… just going to Duct Tape this closed and write myself a note. Man, am I glad duct tape is still a thing (even if it is called Nano Binding Tape™.), I could not imagine how much harder life would be without it. Also free unedited nanomachines just ready for repurposing into Nanotechnix, those are impossible to find after the corpos confiscated all the remaining ones on the market!

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J proceeded to spray paint.

After confirming which freezer probably had Bartmoss in it she went to the other which contained a little girl. With a teddy bear Shit that’s sad. Double Checking she did find it was still viable, and that the medical records were still there. Lilly age 4 brain cancer due to Gene-tek experiment. No next of kin. Fuckers were experimenting on orphans, she must have been a sample they preserved for later experiments.

She checked the web to find the company did not survive the DataKrash. Well atleast I don’t have to deal with that shit myself. After hooking up this one back to an external power supply to keep it functional she moved on to the main event.

J went through a thorough inspection of the cryofreezer with Bartmoss’s corpse noting the specialized additions and long life secondary battery hooked to his spellbook as well as the signal amplifier. Also noting a large hole in his head which would insure that he could not be revived.

Taking a deep breath Here goes nothing, time to find out if I’m crazy or I actually reincarnated to this world which is very, very similar to a combination of all the Cyberpunk game versions, everything else so far, can be explained with social osmosis and familiarity making accurate depictions and picking up stuff on the web. If this is really Bartmoss and not some scrub runner with similar gear, I’ll know I’m right.

“Sigh, it's a shame the corpse wasn’t still salvageable eh Bartmoss” J address the corpse as if it was still alive. You never know with someone like Bartmoss. Using gloved hands she reached in and removed his cyberdeck and placed it in a copper lined faraday bag before connecting it to a second deck with all its wireless data ports disabled, set up to run as a sandbox.

Cyberpunk world may be more advanced in programming and hardware but using a digital sandbox to test software works just fine now as it did then, and it’s definitely a trick that wasn’t common in Bartmosses day, especially one using an emulated old OS on a custom built operating system.

“Ok Bartmoss, I know you're not dead. You aren’t fooling me.” Waiting some time without a reply, was beginning to get to J. Come on you old bastard, there is no way you kicked it while you were already dead. Cryofreezers and corpses don’t work that way. J was beginning to feel nervous that either this wasn’t Bartmoss’s corpse or that Bartmoss was actually dead. That would throw a hamper on several of her projects, and would strengthen the possibility that I imagined the whole thing.

“You know the devil’s greatest trick Bartmoss? It was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” J waited, and waited. She was beginning to feel a little silly about the whole situation. It just felt like a much more likely result of what Bartmoss would do, plus Nix always seemed to be full of shit in that quest. Maybe I’m wrong, overthinking things in my head cannon?

“How’d you know?” Bartmosses voice came tinney over the old cyberdeck's speakers.

“Please, anyone with half a brain and access to your medical records would realize you would hack and use soul killer on yourself when you were going to die and there is no way that someone who is as meticulous as you wouldn’t have a backup plan for when they found you.”

Shit, it was an educated guess but he doesn’t need to know that. I knew Nix was a lying piece of shit! The head cannon is confirmed. All hail the head cannon! Praise the head cannon!

Rache began to laugh. “This is hilarious, I fool netwatch, the Corpos and the netrunners. But some gonk kid figures it out. If you're so smart, what was I going to do next?”

“Well if I was you? I would wait till your cryo contract expired and the corpse was disposed of then set off a signal repeater, which I note you have. Then wait for some treasure hunter to follow the signal right to me.” J paused temporarily to see if Bartmoss would disagree.

“I bet you had a media blitz all planned for release so people would recognize your face just so they would take that deck to the closest netrunner to see if they could get some Eddies for it. Then you hi-jack their body using the your version of the Soul killer engram protocols and toss the other gonk some shit hacks claim it was just some and interesting texts, maybe toss them some Ennies, and your free and clear ready to start over in a whole new body with runner gear and cred to get you started.”

Digital slow clapping began after a few minutes. “Fuck, you got me. So since you know my plan kid, what's yours smarty pants. Gonna sell me to the highest bidder? Better be careful, people don’t live long knowing this kinda shit. The buyer will kill you as soon as I’m in their custody.”

“Well first, I just finished disabling your cryo’s signal generator and you're in a faraday bag so your wireless won’t work either. This deck I hooked you to is full of like 60 years of netrunner shit and media and I’m going to slow your processing speed down.” J said as she started to underclock the system.

Anxiously Bartmoss replied,”What kind of bullshit is that? Why?”

“Because you asshole, you are the single most prolific killer of Netrunners in the world. Your R.A.B.I.D.S. virus killed almost all the other prominent netrunners, destroyed or trapped most of the net allowing corporations and Netwatch to rebuild with heavily restrictions and monitoring process. Which went unimpeded due to again all the dead Netrunners For a man who professed his love of freedom that the web provided you, you sure have destroyed it for the rest of us. You brainwash and mindcontrol others like fucking tools. You are a hypocrite and an asshole and unlike most people I can definitely say that the world would have been better off without your selfish ass. You were a full on sociopath when you were alive, and I can’t have you mindraping someone else to use as your new host. I am taking you off the board before that can happen, enjoy your education on just how badly you fucked up everything you god complex in a box!” J was nearly screaming when she pushed the physical switch to lower the clock speed of Bartmosses deck while he was trapped within the sandbox.

“NOO! Wwwwaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiittttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........” Reaching over she shut off her deck's external mic, silencing him.

That will keep him busy for as long as I need. Damn that was satisfying. She didn’t feel bad about it either, she meant every word she had said and what she had done could a netgood just by removing him. For as much as Bartmoss was a legend and his writing were an inspiration and instructional to her as a child learning to code. The scales had been pulled back when she gained the metadata from her last life. He may have talked a good game but he was also a mind controlling, asshole who killed more people than anyone else in history through his R.A.B.I.D.S. and destroyed the net allowing Netwatch to gain control and corpos to further strengthen their stranglehold on information.

Pulling out a body bag she had ordered she bagged his corpse after stripping it of his other running gear.

J felt so much better, she’d stopped the resurrection of a monster confirmed the metadata she had was accurate. Proved her head cannon was also right too, and could finally feel more secure that she was not in fact insane.

Ego experience gained +400

Ego has level has increased

Ego +1

Experience until next level 700.

Some of the tension she was subconsciously began to fade, and her migraine became almost non-existent.

Now I just need to dispose of this body.

“Nii-san” She spoke in her sweetest tone into her phone's receiver.

“What now!”