Paris laughed as Hank made the LEDs on his arms start to play a cartoon. It wasn’t the best resolution and didn’t have any audio, but she could make do. The show was about some yellow square and pink star running around a sad blue guy, it was an old show but she still found it funny.
Paris and Cee, Cee being C-13's new name, Paris having decided that his old name was too long and too weird, had been set up above Stepha’s Club for the past few days. Hank was able to convince the owner to let them stay rent free for a while. Paris had been enjoying her time there.
After they first arrived and Paris had scared not-so-tough-boy Hank straight, it turned out that he had known her mom, she thought that that was pretty cool. It had made her sad at first, the craziness of the city having momentarily distracted her from what had happened just a day or so before. Once they had settled in and Hank had finished helping Cee bring their supplies in from the truck, he started telling stories about her mom.
Hank told her about all sorts of crazy adventures they had had together. One in particular sticking out to her, he told her about this one time her had mom come back to the club one night after a huge sale. She was so distracted sending out messages to buyers that she didn’t notice how she had been tailed back to the club, a small-time gang having heard that she just scored big.
Hank said that the group followed her into the club and started a huge fight in an attempt to get to her mom. Hank and a bunch of patrons took them down pretty quickly but were surprised when they saw Sarah choking out one of the men.
She had taken one of the combat-stims she just bought to beat the guy. After throwing the gangbangers out back, Sarah came back and used the remaining duration of the stim to challenge anyone she could to an arm-wrestling contest, winning them all.
When Paris had asked him, Hank had denied having accepted her challenge, Paris looked deep into his eyes and knew he was lying. She had made fun of him for quite a while afterwards, the large man endlessly protesting his loss.
Cee, for his part, had been pretty busy during this time, scrolling the net on a phone Hank had bought for him, telling her that he had to research a bit before they could continue looking for Tom.
Hank had asked Paris how she had met the bot so she told him about how he was the only one left after the attack, how he had helped her and Tom.
“He’s pretty cool when he wants to be.” Paris stated.
“He is certainly something,” Hank replied, “Kind of creeps me out how human he acts though, must have a good A.I., makes me wonder what he’s doing with a rugrat like you.”
Paris didn’t really know what to think about that, she didn’t know much about bots. Cee had been there for her though, so she decided it didn’t matter that she didn’t know all the answers. She trusted him, he said he was going to help her get Tom back, he promised.
Having checked up on him after that conversation, Paris was told by Cee how he had found out a lot about the city since they arrived. He even tried convincing her that money was real and not some made up idea to make adults feel better.
She didn’t buy it.
“I’m just saying, if you tell me that the chip isn't really money, then say money is real, but I can't see it... Then you just sound like a crazy person.” Paris told off Cee.
“No, just listen,” Cee spoke out, his mechanical voice strained, obviously exasperated with the girl, “The chips themselves don’t hold value, but they are stand-ins for the real money in the bank servers. Just cause the money isn't physical doesn’t mean it's not real.”
“Sure.” Paris was done with his lunacy, leaving to go play with a VR rig Hank had lent her.
After the fiftieth game of ‘Cyber-Runner 9000’ Paris was a little motion sick. While Cee seemed to be having fun reading his data packets, or whatever the bot did, Paris was getting immensely bored. The club wasn’t really geared towards her enjoyment, she had always gotten stepped on on the dance floor whenever she tried to join.
She tried to get Hank to play the cartoon on his arms again, but he was busy punching a drunk guy in the face.
“Listen Paris,” The man bit Hanks thumb, “Ahhh! You bastard!”
*Thwack-Thwack*
The man went limp.
“As I was saying,” Hank hefted the man up by the back of his shirt, swinging him over his shoulder, “I’ve been slacking lately and Stepha is gonna kick my ass out if I don’t focus a bit more.”
Hank tossed the man out a back door and into a pile of trash.
“If I could watch cartoons all day I would, but I can’t, ya know?” Hank said as he brushed himself off.
Paris did not, in fact, ‘know’.
“I’m SOOOOO bored though, you have to have something to do, pleeeaaase?” Paris asked, making her eyes big, she wasn’t below begging if it gave her something to do.
Hank was a sucker for puppy dog eyes.
“Fine, I think I got something, but you better not tell Cee.” He pointed his finger at her.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Paris would be mixing drinks.
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I jacked back into the phone, the cord connecting my head and the device together dangling off to the side.
I felt a slight buzz as my mind connected to it, a little peephole in my artificial brain. I dove through the open tear, searching through the massive amount of information stored on the net. The mechanical parts of me sorting and digesting the material at a rapid pace.
After an hour or so my head started to hurt, I disconnected from the phone, cutting my connection. I could only dive so far before my mind started to feel ‘flaky’ and burnt out, the human side of my mind acting as the limiting factor. Despite this, I had learned a lot in that dive alone.
My mechanical host’s ability to find information was amazing, but still limited to what I could think to search. I learned a great deal about Las Vegas, Red Door Pharma, and the greater world as a whole, but still lacked much, only getting fairly general information. I tried to look deeper into certain archives, such as Red Door’s, but I was violently blocked by various firewalls.
I would need a way past security if I wanted to learn more ‘advanced’ information. The plus side though was that I was no longer flying blind. I was a learned man now, not so clueless now, am I Paris.
The world as whole was in pretty rough shape, at least according to what I found. The world over was run by corporate city states, the ‘old’ governments of the world, as they were called, had mostly fled to space, leaving a dying planet for the stars.
Learning what I had; I didn’t blame them.
The Earth was slowly drying up, the ocean's water being used up in a wasteful and irreplaceable manner, the resource mostly consumed. The plants and animals that once coated the planet’s surface and seas were all but dead, only the most resilient having survived. But that paled in comparison to the wars, for example; Europe, as it was once called, was gone. Evaporated in nuclear fire.
My personal memory of history is sketchy at best, and completely lacking at worst, so I had little clue on how this all happened, or what things lay before this, lacking the time to delve deeper.
Las Vegas, though, now that had quite a lot of info on it. While most of the documents on it related to different parties, drugs, and casinos available, I found quite a lot on its history, and its ties to the Red Door company.
Vegas used to be a city in the United States of America, a nation pioneering the colonization of space. When the oceans first started to dry up, the city was abandoned, the lack of water forcing the issue. Red Door, a fledgling company at the time, saw this as an opportunity and took over the city in a strange multi-million-dollar squatter’s rights claim.
Once the company developed its massive drug/pharmaceutical monopoly it was able to invest in the city. Water was pumped and shipped to it from every available source, a massive underground reservoir being constructed underneath the city major. At one point in recent years water in the form of ice was dropped from orbit in a controlled descent, part of a trade deal with the old nations of the world.
After that, it was secured and built up into what it is now, the world’s largest and most brilliant party. The immense amount of tourism the strip garners raking in hundreds of billions of dollars each year, the security of the strip flexing its large share of the budget. With some of the ‘recreational’ activities offered and the immense security around it, I could see why we were advised to stay away from it.
Red Door as a company was one of the biggest there was to put it simply. Their complete monopoly on quality pharmaceuticals forced others to play nice with them, no one wanted to be denied life-saving medication due to a bad trade deal.
I tried to find out anything about the settlement Paris was from and why Red Door was there, but the search turned up dry, the only news of the settlement being that it was there, even though it is not anymore. A search on Sarah, Paris’s mom, gave me a clue about that though.
Sarah had been a reliable ‘pharmaceutical saleswoman’ according to certain reports, but she had crossed Red Door somehow. She had a bounty on her head, a small ransom placed by the company, she was accused of stealing certain chemical formulas and recipes.
My mind flashed to the plastic folder Paris’s mom had clutched in her hands.
I was unlikely that she was the sole target of the attack, but perhaps a contributor.
Tom didn’t exist, at least according to any official records. No path of search could lead me to him in any way. I looked up disappearances relating to Red Door, and they were endless, though most of them were for the homeless or junkies. It was apparently an open secret that Red Door sometimes took less fortunate people for ‘rehabilitation’ from time to time.
It would take me some time, but there were several Red Door facilities in the city I could check out. I would like to narrow it down though before I started to kick in doors, the power of the money, especially the amount that the company had, was a good deterrent to random attacks.
Thinking it over I constructed a rough plan to try and find a way into Red Door’s archives, I needed just a bit more information. My plan mostly consisted of asking Hank if he knew anyone who could help me get past the safeguards on the databanks.
I appreciated the man; he had helped Paris and I out a lot. He kept Paris company while I worked, and he seemed like someone I could trust to keep her in check.
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“Paris! What are you doing!” I shouted out.
The little brat looked at me then went back to what she was doing, did she just ignore me?
Paris was standing behind the bar, liquor bottles in hand as she spun them around, mixing and pouring drinks for patrons. The club’s owner, Stepha, was behind her, guiding her along as she worked.
I was a bit dumbstruck. Not only at the fact that someone had thought it was a good idea for a ten-year-old to be mixing drinks, but that she was actually... doing a good job?
I leaned against a wall, watching the girl mix the drinks, her face lighting up as people gave her high-fives and fist-bumps when they received their drinks.
This must be the most wholesome club I have ever been to, even if it is the only one I’ve ever been to... It still counts.
I sat there for a while, deciding to give her this moment, as out of place as it was.
I spotted Hank attempting to hide from me behind a speaker, his glowing arms giving him away.
“Hey Hank.” I said.
The large man peeked around the large speaker, “Oh! Hey Cee! I, uh, didn’t see you there, how's it going?”
I stared into his eyes, then looked over at Paris, then back at him.
“Oh yeah, that, well, you see,” Hank stumbled over his words, the large man turning out not to be the best under interrogation, “I, um, just, noticed it! Yeah! I was actually going over to tell Stepha off right now, the bar is no place for little girls, ya know?”
He gulped, a single bead of sweat trickling down his face.
“Hank,” I leaned in close, the red of my eyes reflecting in his own, “There is no need to be so stuck up about it, let the girl have some fun, there’s no harm in it.”
Hank looked very confused.
I left Hank and walked over to the bar, finding an empty stool and calling out for a drink. Paris looked over at me and nodded, mixing things together in rapid fashion like a little mad scientist. Dropping a tiny and fruity drink that glowed in the dark on the counter in front of me.
“Thanks Miss.” I said, she nodded her head and went back to work, a small grin on her face.
I got up and walked over to Hank, giving him the drink, his large stature and small fruity drink causing me to chuckle.
I looked over at Paris once more, “They grow up so fast.”