Cyberpunk: Night City Shop - Chapter 5: Could He Become a Fixer? (Patreon)

“Quick, get me something to eat. Hurry...”

The figure in black didn't even finish the sentence. Their legs gave way, and they dropped to their knees, head tipping sideways and striking the counter with a thud. The pain brought them around a little. Groaning, they pulled off their mask and struggled to push themselves upright.

“Hey, hey! Don't you dare die in my shop!”

John nearly jumped out of his skin. For a moment, he thought some scammer had come to cause trouble on his first day of business. A closer look suggested that the stranger's blood sugar had simply crashed. He hurried to the cabinet, tore the wrappers off two pieces of chocolate, and fed them to his visitor.

“Chomp, chomp...”

The stranger didn't even check what John was holding. They bit down, chewed a couple of times, swallowed almost without stopping, then fell silent again.

Quite a while passed. John was starting to wonder if his customer had died when the stranger suddenly slapped both hands against the counter and sprang upright.

“Ah! I'm alive!”

Then they stuck out their tongue and licked the chocolate smeared around their lips.

“What was that? It was amazing! I was so close to starving that I didn't even taste it properly. What a waste...”

The stranger's wild swings in behavior made John uneasy. If they hadn't been so thin and apparently free of extensive Cyberware, he might already have considered calling MaxTac.

“It's chocolate. Your blood sugar probably dropped too low. I gave you two pieces. That'll be forty Eurodollars.”

“Who do you think you're fooling? I've eaten chocolate before. Chocolate doesn't taste anything like that!”

The figure licked their lips again and looked up suspiciously. Only now, in the better light, could John see their face. Beneath the black hood was short white hair, delicate brows and eyes, very thin lips, and hollow cheeks. There were no obvious facial implants, and their appearance still gave no clear indication of gender.

“And since when does a tiny piece of chocolate cost twenty Eurodollars? You can get a huge bar out of a vending machine for five!”

“Then why didn't you get something to eat from a vending machine?”

Judging by their appearance, John guessed they lived in the building. There was probably a vending machine right in their apartment, too.

“Because I hate corporations. I even dismantled the vending machine in my place.”

The stranger pursed their lips, then counted out four ten-Eurodollar notes and put them on the counter anyway.

“Since you saved my life, I'll let the extortion slide.”

“Whoa, watch what you're accusing me of.”

John protested while putting the forty Eurodollars into the till.

“Extortion? This is genuine chocolate made with actual cacao, not that fake crap from the machines! Forty is practically what it cost me. You couldn't buy chocolate like this anywhere else even if you wanted to!”

“Real cacao? In this rundown hole? Are you serious?”

The stranger looked the little shop up and down, disbelief written all over their face.

“Besides, weren't the world's last remaining cacao plantations destroyed in the South American War a few years back...?”

“The South American War? A few years ago?”

John knew there were almost no cacao plantations left anywhere. That was exactly why he'd priced his twenty-gram pieces of chocolate at twenty Eurodollars apiece. But a South American War? At this point in history, wasn't the Unification War the only conflict he should have been hearing about?

“Never mind.”

Unfortunately, the stranger changed the subject rather than explaining.

“Got anything else to eat, boss? I don't know whether that really was made from cacao, but it tasted great. I've never had chocolate that pure in my life.”

“Sure do!”

The mention of another sale instantly revived John's spirits.

“It's only our soft opening, so house fried rice is the only cooked meal today. I've also got cookies and pork jerky.”

“Forget the cookies. Is that pork jerky made from real pork?”

“Of course. No fake goods in my shop.”

John could say that with complete confidence in Night City. Everything he'd brought was made from genuine ingredients. Even products he might later order through the shopping app would count as natural luxuries compared with the chemically engineered food that passed for everyday meals here.

“Then I'll take some of that. And a bowl of that... what's-it-called fried rice.”

The stranger rubbed their stomach.

“I haven't eaten anything in two days. I really did almost starve.”

As soon as they finished speaking, their eyes brightened, apparently because they'd connected to the Net.

“House fried rice,” John corrected absentmindedly.

He handed over a small packet of pork jerky and went into the kitchen.

A few minutes later he returned with a steaming plate, just in time to catch his customer painstakingly tearing tiny pieces from the last slice of jerky.

“If you like it that much, buy another bag. You don't have to ration it like that. Anyway, here's your fried rice.”

“You don't understand. This is the first real meat I've ever eaten.”

The stranger carefully slipped the remaining half-slice back into its packet.

“Besides, you charge twenty Eurodollars for one little piece of chocolate. I don't want to eat myself into bankruptcy.”

John handed over disposable chopsticks and a spoon, taking no notice of the complaint.

“Relax. Real pork isn't anywhere near as expensive as real chocolate. That little bag has three slices and costs just ten Eurodollars.”

“You call ten Eurodollars cheap...?”

The complaint stopped the moment the first spoonful of fried rice went into the stranger's mouth. Silence fell over the shop once again, broken only by the sound of enthusiastic eating.

Unlike Pablo, however, this customer rushed through only the first couple of mouthfuls. After that, they slowed down and started savoring each bite.

Near the end, they even used their chopsticks to pick out a strand of dried scallop from between the grains of rice.

“Boss, what's this?”

“Dried scallop. It's made by drying scallops in the sun.”

John explained, but the expression opposite him remained blank.

“Scallops. They're marine animals. You know what a seashell is, right?”

“I know seashells, but I've never heard of scallops.”

The stranger shook their head without interrupting their meal, taking another spoonful of rice.

“Aren't the oceans full of torpedoes and oil anyway? Where the hell do you get seafood?”

“That's my business. Don't underestimate my suppliers.”

John smiled mysteriously and refused to elaborate.

“Fair enough.”

By the time they finished talking, the plate was empty. Like Pablo before them, the customer gave the spoon a reluctant final lick and ended the meal.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Fifty Eurodollars, please.”

Pablo had paid fifty for his fried rice, but that was after the dish had stirred a flood of memories, and John knew he'd been unusually generous. Ordinary customers weren't likely to have a 6th Street member's spending money. John had therefore settled on forty Eurodollars per plate. Add the ten for the jerky, and the remaining bill came to fifty.

Still, if the sea really was filled with torpedoes and oil, marine life must be exceptionally rare. Perhaps he ought to put fewer dried scallops in future batches, or leave them out entirely.

“That's a little cheaper than I thought.”

The stranger let out a satisfied burp, then discovered that the cash left in their hand wasn't enough to settle the bill.

“Hey, boss, do you have a personal account? For some reason, I can't transfer money to you directly.”

“That's because I don't have a neural interface.”

Most Night City residents with neural interfaces were automatically connected to the local network. They could send money directly by looking at the recipient and selecting them. But John was entirely unmodified. Fortunately, he had an alternative.

“See the QR code on that wall? Scan it and send the money there.”

“No neural interface at all? What a weirdo.”

The stranger muttered under their breath, glanced at the QR code, and completed the transfer.

“You run a little street-side shop, but you're selling natural food even fancy restaurants can't get. Boss, you didn't time-travel here from the last century, did you?”

“You've watched too many black braindances.”

John brushed off the comment and checked his account on his phone.

“Received fifty Eurodollars from AP. AP?”

“Yeah. That's my handle. Like how yours is Lee.”

AP answered carelessly, taking a mask out of a pocket and putting it back on.

“Don't go telling people, all right?”

“No, Lee isn't my handle. It's literally my name. John Lee.”

“Well, John, thanks for saving my life. I'll stop by and spend some more money once I get paid for my job.”

AP chuckled.

“But seriously, get some tables and chairs. Making customers eat standing up is pretty undignified.”

“Will do.”

John agreed and watched the dark-clad figure walk away.

For a long time after AP left, no other customers appeared. Even the usual foot traffic through the megabuilding seemed to have dried up. Only an occasional passerby crossed the fifth floor.

Once John remembered Night City's working hours, however, it made sense. Factory employees regularly worked fourteen to sixteen hours. Someone starting a shift at seven in the morning might not finish until nine or even eleven at night.

It was only ten in the morning. Of course the building was quiet. Megabuildings might house the poor, but most of their residents at least had steady jobs. People who couldn't find work had usually been driven out onto the streets.

After thinking it over, John decided to spend some time on his phone. He wasn't looking to lose himself in short videos again. This time, he wanted to find out whether the video app could locate information that had been concealed from the public.

He first searched Night City's regular local network for the South American War. There were plenty of results, but almost all concerned the two Latin American Wars in the previous century and the early years of the new millennium, plus the events surrounding the collapse of the old United States.

Those wars had involved a number of countries in Central and South America, but clearly neither was the conflict AP had mentioned as happening just a few years ago.

John opened the video app and entered the same search. This time, an unfamiliar result appeared.

South American War (2068)

[2068? Didn't the Unification War begin in 2069?]

John thought back to everything he knew about the Unification War. Had the New United States been involved in this earlier conflict? If so, it had apparently finished fighting in South America only to start another war almost immediately afterward.

If that was true, President Rosalind Myers really was a full-blown warmonger.

He selected the result to read more. A window popped up instead.

[Spend 1,300 Points to unlock?]

Thirteen hundred Points? His account held only twelve. Who knew how long he'd have to work to earn the thirteen thousand Eurodollars needed for that many Points? Even if he had the money, he wasn't going to throw it away just to uncover some buried historical secret.

After a moment, he entered two letters in the search field: AP.

There were very few results. The first concerned an access point, or AP. The second was an entry for an individual.

AP (Netrunner)

[A Netrunner? So, a hacker.]

John thought about the small figure in black who had just left the shop. The mask, the hidden face, the air of secrecy... it certainly fit the way people imagined hackers.

He tried opening the profile. This time the unlock price was 468 Points, the equivalent of 4,680 Eurodollars. Apparently, finding out everything about a stranger wasn't particularly easy in 2074 either.

John hadn't learned any useful facts about either subject, but he had confirmed what he'd wanted to know. With this phone, he could theoretically obtain almost any piece of information he wanted, provided he had the Points to pay for it. He could even uncover the identity of a mysterious Netrunner right on the spot.

And in this world, information was arguably more valuable than gold.

An intriguing possibility began taking shape in his mind. What if he became a Fixer?

Once the thought appeared, he couldn't shake it. Fixers acted as intermediaries between clients and mercenaries. They found trustworthy specialists for people who needed work done. They also supplied mercenaries with steady jobs, the information needed to complete them, and payment once the work was finished.

Every part of that business depended on intelligence.

A Fixer had to know the district they operated in inside out. They needed contacts, a network of reliable, capable mercenaries, and an understanding of everything happening on local streets, from major incidents to minor neighborhood disputes. That was how they gave Edgerunners the information they needed to do their jobs.

For Fixers, information was the lifeblood of an entire district and of their own livelihoods. Others had to struggle to maintain relationships between the corporations and the street just to get by. John, on the other hand, had a way to seize that lifeblood for himself.

There was a problem, though. All the intelligence his phone could provide was ultimately just words on a screen. He didn't have enough real-world connections to bring in the clients or mercenaries a fledgling Fixer would need.

The only trustworthy mercenary he could remember from the game was V, the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077. But he didn't even know whether this world's V was a Corpo, a Streetkid, or a Nomad.

Still, when it came to making connections in Santo Domingo, there was one person John knew he could approach.

He opened his contacts, found the name beginning with M, and sent a carefully worded message.

“El Capitan, do you think I could make it as a Fixer?”