Cyberpunk: Night City Shop - Chapter 4: The 6th Street Tax (Patreon)

[What the hell? Isn't Night City supposed to be a free city? Since when does the NUSA get to collect taxes here? And how the fuck does 6th Street hear about things so quickly? I only arrived last night, and they're already here asking for money first thing in the morning.]

John cursed to himself. He hadn't earned a single Eurodollar from his shop yet, and he had no intention of handing over a thousand. On the other hand, challenging the 6th Street cowboy in front of him to a quick-draw contest didn't sound appealing either. He'd only received his Unity pistol yesterday and hadn't even had a chance to fire it. So he considered his answer carefully and began with something agreeable.

“Of course. Every citizen has a duty to pay taxes to their country.”

From the flag sewn onto the man's clothes and his talk of collecting taxes for the New United States, John had him pegged as a dyed-in-the-wool redneck. He seemed to belong to 6th Street's fanatically patriotic faction, the kind that probably spent its days dreaming of bringing Night City back under NUSA control. With someone like that, it would be wise not to mention the city's independence.

“But surely there are regulations governing how those taxes are collected, right?”

John tried his luck. If the man claimed to be collecting taxes on behalf of the government, there had to be some kind of formal procedure. A government couldn't openly demand whatever sum it felt like on a whim. Besides, this particular cowboy seemed calm enough to reason with.

“I'd like to know the exact tax schedule.”

The cowboy's expression didn't change. His reply was just as concise as before.

“Every shop pays one thousand Eurodollars per month during its first year. After that, the amount depends on revenue.”

“But today's only my soft opening. I haven't made any money yet.”

John spread his hands. El Capitan had given him two thousand in cash, but he'd been counting on that money to buy supplies that afternoon.

“Right. Which is why your first thousand is due by July thirtieth.”

The cowboy gave a small nod.

“In return, 6th Street will protect your business.”

“What exactly does that protection cover?”

“If anyone demands protection money they're not entitled to, whether they're from the Animals, the Valentinos, or the Scavengers, you can come to 6th Street. The same goes for theft, robbery, or any threat to your personal safety.”

His voice was calm and utterly devoid of emotion, like a government official reading from a law book.

“On this land where the laws of the New United States cannot yet be enforced, 6th Street will see that justice is done.”

He sounded so solemn that John might almost have believed him, had he never played Cyberpunk 2077.

As John remembered it, 6th Street was marginally better than the scheming Voodoo Boys or the outright lunatics of Maelstrom. But they were hardly better than the Tyger Claws. The Claws did Arasaka's dirty work in Night City, just as 6th Street did Militech's.

The Tyger Claws had pushed even the dolls at Clouds, one of their cash cows, into rebellion. Was John really supposed to believe 6th Street would go out of its way to defend a little shopkeeper who could be found on any street corner?

Still, the promise itself counted for something. The man hadn't put a gun to John's head and demanded immediate payment. By Night City gang standards, that was positively courteous.

After thinking it over, John tried another question.

“If I can't pay in cash, would you accept merchandise instead?”

“Depends on the merchandise.”

The cowboy glanced up at the shop's sign.

“What do you sell here?”

“A bit of everything. Says it right there: Lee of All Trades. I'm Lee, John Lee. Right now, though, it's mainly food. Traditional dishes and a few snacks.”

John had invented the name the previous evening. It was a play on “Jack of all trades,” the English expression for someone who could do a little of everything. He'd simply swapped Jack for his own surname.

“Today's special is house fried rice. Interested?”

“Fried rice, huh? I've only ever tried chow mein.”

The cowboy rubbed his stubbled chin.

“How much for a plate?”

He was actually offering to pay. John was almost touched. It strengthened his decision to get on the man's good side. Sooner or later he'd have to deal with 6th Street, and a reasonable redneck was much preferable to one who wouldn't listen.

“You're the first customer on my opening day. This one's on the house, for good luck. Give me a minute.”

John got up and went into the kitchen, although the term was rather generous. It consisted of a refrigerator and a classic four-burner stove. He'd bought a wok, a stewpot, and some disposable utensils online the previous night, and they had arrived early that morning.

As for the fried rice, he couldn't possibly follow a traditional recipe exactly. He hadn't earned anything yet, so his phone still showed zero Points. He couldn't buy new ingredients and would have to make do with what he'd brought. Even if he could order eggs through the shopping app, there was no way he could sell them openly. Night City's Avian Extermination Act was no joke.

He'd already decided to serve fried rice today, so before opening the shop he'd used the stewpot to cook a large batch of rice. He'd added a little less water than usual. After sitting for a while, the grains had dried out enough to be suitable for frying.

He lit the burner, heated the wok, and poured in a small amount of oil. When it reached a moderate heat, he added the ingredients one after another: diced cured pork belly, sausage, dried scallops torn into fine strands, and rehydrated shiitake mushrooms cut into cubes. Once the rich smell of the sizzling fat rose from the wok, he added a bowl of rice and tossed everything together. A handful of dried shrimp went in during the last few seconds to deepen the flavor.

Strictly speaking, what he'd made had little in common with a traditional recipe. But this was Night City in 2074. If John called it his house special, who was going to argue?

He spooned it onto a disposable plate and carried it out to the cowboy, who was still standing in front of the shop. He even provided disposable chopsticks and a spoon.

The man breathed in an aroma almost unheard of in Night City. Surprise crossed his face for the first time.

“Didn't expect you to make your fried rice fresh.”

“Of course I do. You can't get that smoky wok flavor any other way.”

The familiar fragrance made John's own mouth water. After days of eating synthetic garbage, even the sight of a plate like this was enough to make him hungry.

The cowboy picked up the plastic spoon and took a mouthful of steaming rice.

Then he fell silent.

He ate half the plate in one continuous rush before finally stopping. He raised his head and looked at John with utter disbelief.

“Is there real meat in this?”

“Yep. Actual pork. It was still running around on a farm a month ago.”

John admitted it freely. The meat hadn't come from a corporate ranch, but what did that matter if it tasted good? Besides, El Capitan had already explained that his shop's import license covered him reasonably well. Anyone with time to investigate the origin of his pork would be better off dealing with the contraband sold all over the city.

“It's pork belly, the richest cut, cured the traditional way. Basically bacon. The sausages are made from pork shoulder. Smells incredible, doesn't it?”

“It does.”

The cowboy nodded firmly and resumed eating.

Two or three minutes later, the plate was completely clean. He even licked the disposable spoon several times, collecting every last oily grain of rice.

Another silence followed. Then the man seemed to return from somewhere far away and began speaking slowly.

“I've eaten bacon made from real pork twice in my life.”

His eyes were unfocused, as if he were staring at something only he could see.

“The first time, I was eight. Back then the corporations didn't have the ranchers under their thumbs quite so completely. Ordinary people could still buy real meat if they were willing to pay for it.

“That year my father got a new job, and we moved out of our trailer into a proper house. We were only renting, but Mom bought some real bacon to celebrate. That night we all had bacon and eggs, with mashed potatoes covered in gravy.

“I remember my little brother. He was five. He said he couldn't eat that much and gave me two of his four strips of bacon. Not long afterward, Dad lost the job, and we moved out of the house and back into our trailer.

“The second time was when I turned twenty-seven. I'd never made anything of myself, so I decided to enlist. The day before I left, Mom bought bacon again. But this time I was the only one who ate bacon and eggs. My little brother enlisted a year later. They sent him to a different unit.

“Five years after that, the Unification War broke out. My brother and I both went to fight. When the war ended, I was the only one who came home.

“I brought his dog tags back and found that Mom and Dad had both died, too. After that I came to Night City alone. And from that day until today, I never tasted bacon made from real pork again.”

For a man who'd barely spoken more than a few words at a time, that was an extraordinary speech. John was still trying to think of something comforting to say when the cowboy pulled his hat low, slapped a piece of paper on the counter, and spoke in a deep voice.

“Transfer the tax to this account once you've got the money. If you run into trouble, come find me at 6th Street. Name's Pablo Silva.”

John watched Pablo leave. He reached for the scrap of paper bearing the bank details, then noticed a fifty-Eurodollar bill tucked beneath it.

Fifty Eurodollars!

At a top-tier restaurant like Embers, that might not even buy an appetizer. But John's little place was hardly a luxury restaurant. It was a tiny street-side shop. An ordinary Santo Domingo resident spent three or four Eurodollars on a meal. Fifty was enough to feed someone for a week.

He carefully put his first genuine earnings into the cash box and immediately pulled out his phone to see whether he'd received any Points.

[Payment received: 5 Points.]

Just as he'd suspected, Points came only from legitimate income earned through work. Otherwise he could have asked someone he trusted to transfer the same money back and forth until he'd accumulated a fortune in Points.

He'd already spent the previous night in bed plotting how to use his first earnings. It was almost like being a young man about to start his first job, already dreaming of ways to spend his paycheck before he'd worked a single day.

There was still plenty of stock in the shop, enough to keep him going for quite some time. He had no plans to spend his new Points on inventory through the shopping app yet. Instead, he wanted to invest them.

Black Box displayed six attributes: Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence, Cool, and Empathy. Each came with its own skill tree, and each skill had five levels. Unlocking successive levels required one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand Points.

[Reverse Engineering]

A basic skill under Technical Ability. When John studied technology of a level compatible with the skill, provided he possessed enough knowledge to understand it, he could spend time dismantling and analyzing the item until he obtained its manufacturing recipe. Higher skill levels allowed him to extract recipes from higher-level items. At Level 1, he could only reverse engineer the most basic Level 1 products.

[Flash of Insight]

Another basic Technical Ability skill. If he studied technology matching the skill's level and already knew its manufacturing recipe, there was a tiny chance he'd discover a way to improve it and produce a higher-level recipe. He could attempt this with any given recipe once per day.

John didn't hesitate. He spent two Points on the first level of both abilities. He'd spotted a market practically nobody was serving.

According to the evaluation on his phone, the wastewater filters used in practically every Santo Domingo home were Level 1 items, the lowest grade. All he had to do was spend enough time reverse engineering an ordinary filter to learn its recipe. Once he'd done that, he could try improving it every day. Sooner or later, he was bound to obtain something better.

Perhaps the improved version would achieve the same results with fewer materials. Perhaps it would require more expensive materials but filter water more effectively. Either way, he could make a fortune in a district where clean water was a matter of life and death. The only question was whether his customers would be the poor or people who were slightly better off.

And the possibilities didn't stop at water filters. In the future he could use those two skills to reverse engineer all sorts of technology, learn how to manufacture it, then refine the designs into superior products.

He was in the middle of dreaming about everything he could achieve when another customer interrupted him.

The newcomer wore an oversized black jacket with an industrial look. A dark hood covered their head, while a mechanical mask concealed their face completely.

“Quick... give me something to eat.”

Their build and voice made it impossible to tell whether they were male or female. They staggered up to the storefront and slapped several brightly colored Eurodollar notes onto the counter with a shaking hand.

“Something high in calories. Anything! Just don't give me earthworm meat!”