Cyberpunk: Night City Shop - Chapter 3: The New Neighbor (Patreon)

El Capitan helped carry every last item from the BMW into the shop, then handed John two thousand Eurodollars in cash and a Unity pistol. After that, he drove the 733i away from Megabuilding H4.

Before leaving, though, he made sure to add one last thing.

“Don't forget to check the parking garage. I left you a present.”

Curious, John went to have a look. Parked there was an off-white van with a handwritten note on the windshield.

“Villefort Columbus V340-F Freight. Best damn cargo hauler you can buy on a budget. The windows will stop most small-caliber rounds. It's five years old and secondhand, but drives like it just left the factory. Take it out and pick up some stock. Safe travels!

“El Capitan”

“You absolute bastard, El Capitan...”

John couldn't have been more grateful that Muamar had been only the second person he'd met after arriving in this world.

And the gifts didn't end there. When he returned to the shop, his phone showed a document El Capitan had sent him.

Night City Survival Guide: Santo Domingo Special Edition

The guide was short, but every page was packed with useful, important information. The first instruction alone was worth paying attention to.

“Always check the water filters in your home. If one breaks or stops working, buy a replacement immediately. Do not use any water from the tap until you are certain the filter is functioning. Santo Domingo's water is poisonous. Do not forget this!”

By the time John had read the whole document, he was beginning to despair. Living in Santo Domingo, or anywhere in Night City for that matter, was going to be much harder than he'd imagined.

Water was the first problem. According to El Capitan, Arasaka's factories in Santo Domingo had been pumping poisonous industrial waste into the groundwater since 2061. The contaminated water then passed through a barely functioning treatment plant, received the most cursory treatment imaginable, and went straight to people's faucets.

That meant the first necessity for surviving in Santo Domingo was a water filter. Each one cost fifty Eurodollars, lasted only a month, and, to add insult to injury, was manufactured by fucking Arasaka.

There were two faucets in John's shop and two in his apartment. That was two hundred Eurodollars down the drain every month just to replace filters.

The worst part was that filtered tap water still wasn't actually safe. Drinking it over a long period could cause irreversible harm. It was one reason people who grew up in Santo Domingo tended to suffer from all kinds of illnesses. Rheumatism, arthritis, even cancer could be traced back to the water they drank.

Why not buy safe bottled water instead?

A 300-milliliter can of Real Water, the still-water brand, cost three Eurodollars. An ordinary large bottle containing 800 milliliters cost four.

At two large bottles a day, a person would spend 240 Eurodollars every month on drinking water alone. An ordinary worker in Night City earned only around 1,500 a month. Anyone able to pay for bottled water every day had probably already moved out of Santo Domingo.

And water wasn't the only environmental hazard. There was the air, too. Beyond the neon-soaked skyscrapers, John's first impression of Night City could be summed up in one word: stink. Everywhere he went, the atmosphere reeked of fermenting garbage, industrial exhaust, and rust.

It wasn't merely the smell. The air felt abrasive going into his lungs. After only a few hours inside the city, his nose and airways had begun to ache. By comparison, even the dusty air in that little Southern California town had been much more pleasant.

There were solutions, of course. He could visit a Ripperdoc for a Nasal Filter, or replace his lungs with mechanical ones. Alternatively, a filtering mask cost seventy-five Eurodollars, with fresh cartridges running another ten a month.

If you didn't have the money, there was an even simpler solution. Endure it.

The air might stink, but at least it wouldn't kill you as quickly as the poisoned groundwater. And in Night City, nobody except the wealthy residents of Downtown and North Oak paid much attention to dangers whose effects wouldn't show up for years.

John, however, was still an ordinary man born around the turn of the millennium. He spent 120 Eurodollars online on a proper filtering mask and a portable water-quality tester. Both would arrive the following day.

Everything seemed to come down to one thing: money. With enough of it, living well in Night City was perfectly possible.

Unfortunately, money was precisely what John lacked. Rent, utilities, water filters, and other unavoidable monthly bills already came to almost four thousand Eurodollars.

There was also his own safety to consider. El Capitan had assured him that a megabuilding was relatively secure, but John had gone more than twenty years with hardly any visits to a hospital. The thought of dying unexpectedly in some random accident terrified him. He wanted Trauma Team coverage.

His online research turned up three membership tiers: Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

Silver, the cheapest, cost eight hundred Eurodollars a month. The member had to call for help personally, after which a Trauma Team AV would arrive within ten minutes. Surgery, medication, and ammunition expended on the rescue were billed separately, and the response itself incurred a further charge of one hundred Eurodollars per minute.

Gold cost three thousand a month, already far above the average Night City resident's monthly income. Platinum, the top tier, couldn't even be paid monthly. The annual fee was a hundred thousand Eurodollars. In exchange, you received continuous biometric monitoring. Even a minor scrape could bring a Trauma Team AV to pick you up within three minutes.

John set himself a modest little goal: become a Platinum member of Trauma Team.

There was only one way to make the money for that, and it was the shop beneath his feet.

He spent more than half an hour organizing everything he'd brought and writing an inventory. The quantity wasn't bad. Figuring out how to sell it was another matter entirely.

Food: Four five-kilogram bags of rice. Two five-liter containers of premium cooking oil. Thirty kilograms of cured meat and sausages. One kilogram each of dried bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, green beans, and preserved mustard greens. Two jars each of dried abalone, dried scallops, dried shrimp, and dried squid, with 250 grams in each jar. Plus assorted star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, dried chilies, and other spices.

He wasn't planning to sell any of that directly. Explaining where it had come from would be awkward, for one thing. For another, most residents of a megabuilding didn't cook their own meals. Many apartments didn't even have kitchens.

Instead, he would buy a wok, prepare the food himself, and sell it in individual portions. Real meat and fresh vegetables were luxuries in Night City, but he still wanted to keep prices low enough that ordinary people living in the building could afford a treat now and then. Until the food he'd brought from home ran out, he had effectively paid nothing for his ingredients. The dishes would serve mainly to draw customers through the door.

Snacks: Six large boxes of imported chocolates, five hundred grams each. Three kilograms of cookies. Five one-kilogram bags of pork jerky. Four one-kilogram containers of mixed nuts. Five kilograms of various dried fruits.

Snacks had relatively long shelf lives, so he decided to divide them into small measured portions, release a limited quantity each day, and save some for gifts.

Supplements and medicine: Ten boxes each of blood-pressure tablets, fast-acting heart medication, cold medicine, and painkillers. Five one-kilogram jars of honey and five one-kilogram tins of powdered milk.

John would keep the medicine for himself. He wasn't sure his body could handle whatever high-tech pharmaceuticals people used in the future. Honey and powdered milk, on the other hand, could be sold, and both were apparently valuable. A jar of completely natural honey could supposedly fetch a five-figure price. The obstacle, once again, was finding a buyer.

Finally, luxury goods: Four bottles of expensive liquor, four of premium red wine, ten cartons of name-brand cigarettes, and five tins of tea.

There was little point selling these over the counter. Hardly anyone in the building could afford them. He might be better off using them as gifts for arrogant corporate employees or Night City government officials.

For the time being, his plan was to operate a general store centered on prepared meals, then expand into other lines of business, particularly technology. His Technical Ability was already high, and he wasn't lacking in Intelligence either. Add the help of his unusual phone, and he was confident he could become an accomplished tech specialist before long.

Inventory finished, he turned on the faucet to pour himself a glass of water. One whiff of the sharp chemical odor was enough to stop him from even thinking about drinking it. After some hesitation, he pulled down the shop's roller shutter and headed for the vending machines instead.

Three machines stood near his sixth-floor apartment. One sold beverages. The other two dispensed ready-to-eat synthetic meals.

He was going to buy a large bottle of plain water when he noticed something astonishing. A 300-milliliter can of Cirrus Cola cost only one Eurodollar, far less than the same amount of Real Water.

He paid for a can, curious to find out what sort of cola could be cheaper than water.

“Whoa. That's sweet!”

Instead of the crisp, refreshing bite he expected from a soft drink, all he got was sickening sweetness. The syrup and ever-present artificial flavors overwhelmed everything. It didn't taste remotely like cola.

“Haha! You can't stand carbonated drinks either?”

A young voice came from behind him. John turned to find a teenage boy with an outrageous mohawk, dressed in a dark academy uniform. The boy was smiling brightly, as though he'd just found a kindred spirit.

“I thought I was the only person who hated this stuff!”

“Yeah, it's awful. I'd rather drink plain water...”

John nodded, setting his half-finished can beside the wall.

“Hey, I haven't seen you around before. Did you just move in?”

The boy gave him a curious once-over.

“I'm David. David Martinez. I live in 625.”

“That's a coincidence. Sounds like we're neighbors.”

John pointed to the door of Room 626 beside them.

“John Lee. You can call me John or Lee. I moved in today. Just opened a little store downstairs, too. Mostly traditional dishes for now, but I sell other things as well. Stop by sometime and I'll give you the neighbor discount.”

“Hey, thanks!”

David grinned. Then he glanced around, checked that no one else was nearby, and lowered his voice.

“Actually, I'm selling something too. Wanna buy some? It's pretty intense!”

“What?”

John was confused for a moment before a possibility occurred to him. His voice went cold.

“No. I don't touch drugs. And you really shouldn't either.”

Fucking Night City. Were even kids this young dealing addictive substances? Someone ought to set the whole place on fire.

“That's not what I meant!”

David's bright smile collapsed into embarrassment. He tugged John into a dim corner, looked around a second time, then pulled open his jacket to reveal the goods hidden inside.

“Black Braindances! I'm selling black braindances!”

John looked at the braindance recordings tucked inside David's jacket in packages resembling condom wrappers and realized he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“Oh, so you're selling discs. Got it, got it.”

“Discs?”

David tilted his head. Someone his age, still attending school, probably had never heard that word used in this sense.

“Basically last century's version of a braindance,” John explained offhandedly.

Then he remembered seeing that uniform in one of the videos on his phone.

“Wait. That's an Arasaka Academy uniform, isn't it? Why are you dealing in contraband?”

“Whoa, didn't realize you were such a retro-tech fanatic, John. You even know about stuff from before the Old Net.”

David sounded impressed, but he quickly broke into a sly grin.

“That's just it. Black braindances sell best at Arasaka Academy. It's packed with rich kids who don't know anything about the world. Show them a little forbidden excitement and they'll pay whatever you ask. Heh.”

“You've got a knack for business. Maybe when my store gets big, I'll hire you as a manager.”

John rubbed his chin as he studied the boy, who looked no older than fifteen or sixteen.

“Though I suppose you're headed straight for a job at Arasaka after graduation.”

“Uh... who knows...”

David plainly didn't want to dwell on the academy. He changed the subject and started pitching his wares again.

“Come on, John, buy a couple! I've got every kind, all top quality. Seriously! Even stuff directed by JK, Jimmy Kurosaki. He's my favorite!”

“I think I'll pass.”

John was genuinely tempted to try a couple of braindances. Unfortunately, he didn't even own the headgear needed to watch them.

“Next time. Definitely next time.”

“All right, you're on! I'll save you the good stuff!”

David looked disappointed, but he didn't press. He said goodbye and went into his apartment.

John returned to Room 626. The apartment wasn't much different from V's starting apartment in the game. It came with a computer, television, washing machine, and even an entire vending machine built into one wall.

Remembering the extra hundred Eurodollars he had to pay every month just to use those appliances made his wallet ache. And that wasn't even counting electricity.

After a quick shower, he stood by the window, looking out over the glittering neon city. Only now did it finally sink in that he'd really crossed into the world of Cyberpunk.

“Just watch, Night City. Sooner or later, I'm going to stand at the very top.”

His dream of becoming a business titan would begin with his first customer on opening day.

Unfortunately, when morning came, the first man to appear outside his store was nothing like the customer he'd imagined.

“One thousand Eurodollars a month.”

The order came in a low voice from a man wearing a dark brown denim vest and a white cowboy hat. An old American flag was stitched to the front of his clothes.

“What?”

John couldn't make sense of the demand. If he hadn't worried that throwing someone out on his opening day would bring bad luck, he might have done it then and there. Of course, the two gleaming revolvers at the man's waist were another reason to think twice.

“Tax.”

The stranger was a man of few words.

John hadn't expected a tax collector to show up before he'd even opened for business.

“You work for the Night City government?”

“It's not a Night City tax.”

The man lowered the brim of his hat.

“It's a tax for 6th Street. A tax for the New United States.”