Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.6

1.6

+++

To my legitimate surprise, I wasn’t able to add all three accounts to the Agent. Both the man upstairs and the woman downstairs were paired just fine, but whatever that third guy had as a part of his systems, it was apparently enough to stop the pairing from going through.

After the Borg woman, I honestly hadn’t been expecting it. Still, the fact that one of them had something resembling actual cybersecurity didn’t matter very much, because I’d already gotten what I’d need from the first two.

The first guy didn’t have a whole lot in his account. My reviews of his transactions indicated that he had some rather really bad habits with spending money as soon as he ran above a certain threshold. Drugs, alcohol, BDs, XBDs, a genuinely concerning amount of pornography... The man could have saved up tens of thousands of Eddies in his line of work, but all he had in his account by the time I found was a mere two thousand.

By itself, that probably would have been enough to get the registration and bank account. I’d have been flat broke afterwards, though, so the additional six thousand in the woman’s account was a welcome sum.

Turning it into cash was the next step. As much as I’d like to take the eight thousand directly, that wasn’t going to work.

As it turns out, this was ironically the easy part of the process.

Any Data Terminal in the city could point you towards an automated kiosk, of which there were many. These kiosks could handle the digital-to-physical transactions perfectly fine, and neither asked questions nor made annoying corporate-mandated small talk.

The real annoying part, I couldn’t help but think, was how damned slow the machine was in actually dispensing the cash.

The beep of the machine drew my attention, snapping me out of my musing. My eyes focused again, and I looked down to see the bright yellow kiosk slowly dispense a single one hundred Eddie note. It ground as it did, ticking out ever so slowly.

Then, finally, it finished, and I pulled the note away, tucked it into a pocket, and held up the Agent to it, again.

The corner of the screen briefly flashed with a red notification, and the machine slowly started up again.

One would think that a machine designed to hand out cash at such a high exchange rate would be quicker. Easier to use, perhaps. After all, for the owners, it was literally free money. Apparently, cash really was just so discouraged that it broke through even corporate greed.

Well, if nothing else, the air was moderately cleaner and didn’t smell so heavily of blood like the warehouse had.

Still smelled, though. As it turned out, I’d ended up wandering into Santo Domingo, along the southern parts of the district. My ultimate destination, the warehouse, had been right along the somewhat fuzzy borders of Arroyo. On one side, you a semi-abandoned industrial district that was only just starting to crawl to life again, and on the other side, you had the site of provisional camps for thousands of homeless people seeking shelter, the recently completed H4 Megabuilding that held tens of thousands of desperate people in a single, very cramped building that somehow still managed to be corporatified by having the upper layers be intended for the wealthy rather than hosting people.

... It also gave me time to read up on the city on the Agent. I remained vulnerable to wiki-diving, but I had mostly focused my efforts on going through the minutiae of the contracts and legal details that I was soon to be navigating.

I had to say, I disliked pretty much all of it. The amount of privacy that was constantly being given up at each and every single turn... Night City bank gave itself the authority to collect every single bit of information available in your account, and do with it whatever it fucking pleased. Sell it? Sure. Offer it up to collation algorithms? Of course. Bill your account for the vaguest of reasons and not telling you about it? The only reason it didn’t happen more often was because they didn’t want to provoke some possible competition.

Banks were being run like megacorporations. Greed truly did choke this world at every turn.

The kiosk finished dispensing. I took the note, tucked it away, and started again.

When I was finally done draining the accounts, twilight was just beginning to start. Dawn would be coming soon enough, and with it, people.

I made good on getting out of there while there weren’t any other people.

Both the registration office and Night City Bank wouldn’t be opening just yet. The reasoning was effectively the same for both: they opened after most of the peoples had gone to work, and closed before most of them got off, go figure, with all activity that took place outside of that lovely little inconvenient period of time being subject to additional fees despite the fact that you could only receive the assistance of a limited program that was prone to immediately dropping you if you did anything in the wrong manner... Unless you were a high-profile client, of course, in which case you immediately received full Human support at no cost because fuck the poors, I guess.

Calling was not an option for either of them. No registration, no way to pay the charges. No accounts, no way to pay the charges.

Hence, no service.

The sooner I hit the point of independence, the better.

For now, I merely made my way back to the warehouse, choosing to shelter there for the time being.

I still had a bunch of research to do, after all.

Getting a registration and a bank account were merely steps one and two. Things would not get any simpler from there, because the entire city, and indeed most of the planet, was still in the process of recovering from the Time of the Red.

The current Night City existed in a very delicate space, with many factors that were in constant flux leading to continuous changes in conditions throughout the city. The city was not self-sufficient, and relied on imports in order to keep existing.

Sea trade was just this side of impossible thanks to Arasaka unleashing self-replicating fully-autonomous mines into the ocean, which left air and ground travel the only real options. Over the last twenty years, train lines had been laid enmasse, and were sabotaged equally as often. For the air, the simple economics of the situation had led to blimps and zeppelins dominating for energy efficiency, but both of those notably lacked in actual speed, and so they handled mostly long-term, non-spoiling goods.

The Nomads were the ones who filled the gap, and they were actually quite an important factor for it. Fresh goods and timely deliveries? Nomads. Very occasionally, a corp would invest in jet aircraft, but considering the efficiency issues, that was usually for very high-value goods.

Food, in this day, was kind of a mess. The supply chain collapse had led to some people trying to grow their own food inside of urban greenhouses, though by now that particular problem was mostly solved. A corporation by the name of Continental Brands had made a point of cornering the markets by being the most reliable source of food in any given area, but in true megacorp fashion, they’d also sought profit by preferencing areas whose populations were more ‘loyal’.

If most of the population was buying food from them? Great. High quality food for them. Most of the population wasn’t? Low quality. And it’s more expensive, too. End result, people who don’t buy get wanted posters on the walls of the entrance to their supermarkets.

I’d had to stop myself from crushing the Agent in my hands when I’d read that. I’d instead crumpted a piece of metal into a ball, which I was now using like a putty stress toy.

But, enough about the unimportant things like the basic survival needs of life in general.

Technology was the other thing I was going to need.

I had a plan.

I wanted independence. More specifically, I wanted to be in a position where, if I could not immediately do something, I would have a way of bootstrapping myself towards getting whatever that something was as soon as possible, preferably with zero input for anyone else.

Was I asking for much? Well, if I didn’t have the mystical galaxy brain that came with being a Chozo, probably, but I do, and therefore, no.

The best way to get to that point?

Well, there were a few options. If I could get my hands on the tech needed to produce biological tissue, I could make a go for the biotechnology route, which I was reasonably confident in considering how many of the Chozo’s achievements made use of it. It might also be possible to reprogram already existing nanotech and start a loop of using the current tools to produce better tools, which would be absolutely great, but I’d need something specialized for that, no doubt.

Perhaps if I fucked around enough I’d figure out some more esoteric options, but both of the first two seemed much simpler, and the KISS principle existed for a reason. Some Ripperdocs had access to the tech, and Cassius Ryder had been around at least since 2015, so he was a solid bet if I could make contact.

But, all that was for later.

For now, I was simply waiting.

+++

I actually left the warehouse before dawn again. When I’d gotten back, I’d found the body in the office had been gotten to by insects, so I’d gone to toss out all three before the decomposition started in full.

Disrespectful? Well, yeah, but Scavs. So. My care for the matter fell somewhere around zero, because they had done much, much worse. About the only condition I had was that somebody else wouldn’t have to stumble upon their dead bodies in their normal days.

It wasn’t that difficult to find a spot for them. There were plenty of ditches in Santo Domingo, after all.

After that, it was literally just waiting.

An hour passed. The sun came up, and the city stirred back into some semblance of life. Soon, I started to hear the noises that came with it. Rumbling engines, screeching tires, industrial machinery from further into Arroyo...

I’ll admit, I’d half expected a visit already. The Scavs I’d killed had bothered to maintain some security, and so a sudden silence probably should have raised some alarms in whoever they were connected to. That they hadn’t... Well, either the communications weren’t constant, or whoever it was had cut their losses already.

Nothing to do about it, unfortunately.

Before I went out for the day, I first had to tuck the Agent away. After all, scanners were abundant in the city, and I had no doubt that the Agent itself would be pinged as definitely not belonging to me. That made it a complication, and direct evidence.

The cash likely also could, but it would be much easier to pretend ignorance. If it didn’t work... Well, it’d be unfortunate, but I wasn’t a squishy Human.

I was fairly certain that they wouldn’t be able to stop me from leaving if I wanted to, and that made this whole thing worth a shot.

I chose a vent, worked its grating loose, and had then opened the Agent’s casing and popped the battery out. Both went in, and both were promptly sealed up behind the grating again. If someone came in, they were much less likely to find it.

I had no real expectations either way.

After that, I quickly washed my hands again, took a look in the mirror to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and set out for the closest office.

I had to wonder whether I would make it all the way there before getting mugged.