Cyberpunk: Night City Shop - Chapter 2: Toward the City (Patreon)

El Capitan went into Night City without John. John had no identification, his car had never been registered, and Night City's local network had no record of his existence. For now, he had no choice but to remain at the town motel. The alternative was to be detained as an illegal immigrant at the border checkpoint or blown to pieces by an automated turret.

Afraid of running into Wraiths, John shut himself in his room for several days and lived on packaged synthetic food. He had exactly one thing to say to All Foods, the company responsible for producing it.

“This stuff tastes like absolute shit.”

The tortilla wrapped around a large burrito had the texture of cardboard. Inside was a sticky paste allegedly called beef, seasoned with an industrial flavoring that seemed determined to beat his taste buds into submission.

Orgiatic, the supposedly “organic” food, was somehow even worse. It was a greasy, soft mess blended with artificial flavors that left him feeling sick for ages after a single mouthful. Then there was the Yikes Tofu Bar, which was as hard as a damn brick. He almost chipped a tooth trying to bite it.

At least the experience convinced him that everything he'd brought in the car was worth serious money.

Before crossing into this world, John had earned a mechanical engineering degree and spent several years working in a factory in a small city. The pay wasn't anything special, but the job was steady, with enough vacation time each year to visit his family.

Perhaps fate had arranged things this way. His parents had died one after the other not long after he'd reached adulthood, and the only family he had left were distant relatives he visited around the holiday. No one would be devastated by his sudden disappearance.

In fact, it was on his way to visit those relatives that he had inexplicably ended up here. That was why the BMW's back seat was packed with holiday presents from the city: cigarettes, liquor, tea, imported snacks, and medicine and supplements for the older members of the family. The trunk was crammed with things his relatives had given him, from homegrown fruit and vegetables to chicken, duck, fish, pork, cured meat, and sausages.

Then there was his phone. Unless he was mistaken, it was the special advantage that had accompanied him into this world. All his old apps were gone, leaving an app store through which he could install Night City's own software. Shopping, watching videos, getting in touch with people... he could do all of it without having a neural interface implanted.

Alongside the ordinary local apps were four unusual ones: a shopping app, a video app, Camera, and Black Box.

Each special app needed Points to unlock its functions. He earned those Points according to the income he made from working in this world's real economy.

The shopping app let him order products from his original world. The video app showed him videos that shouldn't have existed here. Camera revealed basic information about whoever he photographed, and Black Box gave him a game-like display through which he could check and improve his attributes.

According to Black Box, John possessed six basic attributes.

Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence, Cool, and Empathy. That last attribute didn't exist in the video game. It represented his humanity and determined how much Cyberware he could install.

[Body (BT): 2/10]

[Reflexes (REF): 3/10]

[Technical Ability (TECH): 7/10]

[Intelligence (INT): 5/10]

[Cool (CL): 2/10]

[Empathy (EMP): 7/10]

The six attributes could be raised through ordinary training and study, while Cyberware could increase their upper limits. Unlike in his previous life, however, his efforts were guaranteed to pay off. Each attribute had an experience bar. Learning and exercise always added experience, and filling the bar would inevitably raise the corresponding attribute.

Once an attribute met certain requirements, he could also spend Points to purchase special skills. The strongest of them were practically superpowers.

John spent a full day working out what his strange phone could do. Then he lay on the motel couch and spent the next four days scrolling through the video app. He had to admit that short-form videos in 2074 were a whole lot more addictive than the ones from fifty years earlier. He only stopped after four days because El Capitan finally came back from the city.

“Here's your new ID. I pulled some strings inside Militech to have it rushed through. Says you're John Lee, born in Georgia in 2049.”

Muamar drew a thick stack of paperwork from his pocket.

“Driver's license, vehicle registration. I've smoothed things over at the border checkpoint, too, so you can drive right into the city. And since you mentioned wanting to open a shop a few days ago, there's your business license and your permit to sell imported goods.”

John carefully stowed everything in his backpack.

“I can't thank you enough, El Capitan. You've saved my ass.”

“I found the shop and apartment you wanted to rent, too. Those don't come with physical documents. I sent the electronic certificates to your phone, along with copies of all the other paperwork. I also set up your personal account and put five thousand Eurodollars in it. Don't forget to change the password.”

Muamar pointed toward John's trouser pocket.

“Gotta say, I never thought you were such an old-school guy. Still carrying a phone, not even a neural interface in your entire body... What are you, a Buddhist?”

“A Buddhist? No. I don't believe in gods.”

“Didn't think so. You don't look religious. Still, in Night City, the only people with no Cyberware at all are newborn babies and maybe a handful of Buddhist monks.”

El Capitan suddenly clapped his hands.

“Hold on. Don't tell me you're some kind of martial arts master!”

“What?”

“You know any traditional fighting styles?”

He leaned close, brimming with the excitement of someone who'd just discovered a whole new continent.

“Come on, show me a few moves! Let me see what you can do.”

“No, seriously, I don't know any martial arts.”

John waved both hands in denial.

“Why would you assume I did?”

“I heard some traditional martial artists stay away from Cyberware because it interferes with their training.”

Disappointed, El Capitan continued studying him with suspicion.

“If you're not Buddhist and don't practice martial arts, why haven't you installed anything?”

“Beats me. Maybe I just don't like pain.”

“Hahahaha!”

...

The black BMW 733i left the small Southern California town of Yucca behind. It passed the checkpoint without trouble and followed the straight highway north toward Night City. On the left, countless white greenhouses filled enormous protein farms. On the right, rows of solar panels stretched as far as the eye could see.

John was struck by a powerful sense of unreality. Everything felt alien, and he couldn't help asking a question.

“What's in all those greenhouses?”

“Bugs. Biotechnica raises them.”

El Capitan drove with one hand on the wheel, staring ahead as though the view was the most ordinary thing in the world.

“Grubs, earthworms, crickets, locusts. Probably cockroaches and rats, for all I know.”

John stared at the white structures amid the steel pipes and pictured them packed with squirming insects. A shiver ran down his spine.

“Wait, so all the meat they sell in Night City comes from those things?”

“Most of it.”

El Capitan lowered the volume of the car stereo a little. He seemed rather fond of the old pop songs John had collected around the turn of the millennium.

“You've basically got four kinds of meat for sale in the city. At the bottom are plant-based meat and synthetic meat. They're the cheap stuff. Plant-based is made from soy protein. Synthetic meat, that paste everyone talks about, comes from those bugs.

“Then you've got what's usually sold as animal meat. That sounds promising, but it still comes out of a laboratory. Corporations grow it from animal cells, and that's the cultured meat most middle-class restaurants serve. All Foods has its Slaughterhouse range, too. They advertise it as real meat, but it's the same lab-grown stuff.

“Finally there's actual meat from animals that lived and breathed. Pigs, cattle, sheep, that sort of thing. Don't even dream about it. Unless you're a big shot at Arasaka or another megacorp, you could go your whole life without tasting any.”

[Then I spent the first half of my life living like royalty.]

The thought felt absurd, but John had a more pressing question.

“Is real meat really that expensive? Couldn't an ordinary person save up for a while and at least try some?”

“It's not that simple.”

El Capitan sighed.

“A single piece can cost an ordinary worker half a month's salary. But the price is only part of it. Even if you have the cash, you can't necessarily buy any.

“The only kitchens allowed to use the genuine article belong to fancy restaurants for the upper class. They screen customers carefully. Even an ordinary corporate employee like me would struggle to get inside, let alone anyone else.”

“So regular shops aren't allowed to buy and sell real meat?”

“It's not exactly illegal. Chicken's the exception. You can't sell that at all because of the Avian Extermination Act from eleven years ago. Pork, beef, and meat from other animals can legally be bought and sold.”

He took his time explaining.

“But there aren't any privately owned ranches capable of raising livestock left around here. Maybe the Republic of Texas still has some, but I can promise you Night City and the NUSA don't.

“The big corporations control every ranch, mainly Biotechnica and its subsidiary All Foods. The ranchers aren't technically employees, but the corporations dictate everything, right down to which animals they raise, what they feed them, and which drugs they're given. The corporations also decide exactly where and how the ranches' products are sold.

“If an ordinary food vendor wants to stock real meat, bargaining with a rancher won't help. He has to deal with a corporate representative. And there's not an independent merchant alive who could afford those outrageous markups and contracts written entirely in the corporation's favor.”

John spent a moment considering all of that. In the end, he could only come up with one response.

“God, corporations are the worst. I wanted to sell real meat as a specialty to bring customers into my shop.”

“Can't argue with you there.”

Muamar nodded with conviction, apparently forgetting he was still wearing his Militech uniform.

“But why a shop all of a sudden? I thought you wanted a job.”

“That's because...”

John lowered his eyes to his hands. They were callused and covered in tiny scars, but every part of them was still flesh and blood.

“I, John Lee, have a dream. I'm going to become a business titan in Night City. If corporations can't be brought down from the outside, I'll take them on from within.”

“Beat a megacorp through business?”

El Capitan pulled a face.

“Maybe you could pull that off in some other world, but not here. Not in Night City. Besides, wasn't your dream to travel around the globe?”

“Fine. The truth is I don't want to work sixteen hours a day.”

There was no chance he was signing up for an ordinary corporate job. From what he'd seen on the video app, fourteen- to sixteen-hour shifts were standard in Night City's megacorps. The worst places demanded eighteen hours a day, with no days off all year. A man made of unmodified flesh like John would probably wind up in the cemetery with the city's legends within six months.

“I'd like to remain an actual human being. Is eight hours of sleep a night really too much to ask?”

“Whoa, listen to the rich kid. Which corporation's heir are you supposed to be?”

El Capitan laughed, then delivered a rare dose of sarcasm.

“Even executives don't dare dream of getting eight hours of sleep. And you expect it? I haven't slept more than four hours a night since the day I started working.”

John sighed helplessly.

“Which is exactly why I don't want a job.”

“Because you're scared.”

El Capitan continued teasing him. When John didn't reply, however, he waited a moment and reconsidered.

“Still, if you're serious about selling real meat, I might know a way.”

“Oh? I'm listening.”

“Remember that license I got you for selling imported goods? In theory, as long as what you're selling isn't contraband, you can stock just about anything. Unless, of course, the NCPD decides to conduct a very thorough inspection with you specifically in mind.”

He chuckled.

“That means your only real problem is supply. Most Nomad families, from what I've heard, carry portable greenhouses. If they find decent ground, they can grow vegetables and keep a few animals.

“I was exaggerating when I said ordinary people never get to taste real meat. There are a few shady little stores in Night City's back alleys that sell it under the counter. They get their supplies from Nomads.

“You drove all the way here through the Badlands from the east, right? You must know a Nomad family or two. Just arrange for them to deliver regularly.”

“Nomads, huh...”

John fell into thought. The only Nomads he knew anything about were Panam's Aldecaldos. Unfortunately, knowing about someone wasn't the same as having that person know you.

They continued straight past the protein farms and solar arrays until the city finally appeared ahead, beginning with Rancho Coronado in Santo Domingo.

Calling it the city proper was generous. It looked more like Night City's ragged outskirts. There were almost none of the high-rises that dominated other districts, just wooden detached houses scattered across the barren ground and endless clusters of corrugated-metal shacks.

“Welcome to Santo Domingo. My hometown.”

El Capitan didn't drive into Rancho Coronado. Instead, he turned toward Arroyo on the opposite side.

“Next to Westbrook up north, this place is a slum. But compared with Pacifica and Dogtown to the south, at least you can live a relatively peaceful life here.”

Eventually he drove into the depths of an immense building and parked. He led John up to the fifth floor.

“Megabuilding H4. One of the few megabuildings in Santo Domingo that's still functioning properly. For a rookie who just arrived in Night City, you couldn't ask for a better place. The building's practically a city in its own right. Every five floors there's a little commercial center, and the other levels are residential.

“There's such a huge population that the NCPD runs regular patrols through every megabuilding, so security isn't too bad. Unless you're really unlucky and run into a cyberpsycho. Then all you can do is pray you live long enough for MaxTac to show up.”

From inside the hollow central atrium, they could look up into a pitch-black, starless night sky. Pushing through bustling crowds beneath neon holographic signs, they reached a small storefront with a notice advertising it for sublease.

“This is the spot I found you. Pretty good, right?”

There was no hiding the pride in Muamar's voice. He raised the roller shutter to reveal the shop.

“Only eighteen square meters, but look at the location. Several thousand people live in this building. Regular workers, mercs, corporate employees, even NCPD officers. All kinds. Which means somebody will buy pretty much anything you decide to sell.

“I sorted out your living quarters, too. Go up those stairs to the sixth floor. Room 626. Shop rent is 2,800 Eurodollars a month, or you can pay by the week. The apartment's 500 a month, plus a hundred to use the appliances. I paid for the first quarter. You're covered for three months, but after that you'll have to handle the bills yourself.”

John walked around the shop. As promised, it wasn't particularly spacious, but it had two distinct areas, a row of transparent display cases, a black storage cabinet, an open-flame cooktop, and a large refrigerator. It was almost exactly what he'd had in mind.

He took the BMW's keys from his pocket and placed them in El Capitan's hand.

“A deal's a deal. My beloved car is yours. Take good care of her.”