2078: Highriders - Chapter 28 (Patreon)

The first hint of the morning began creeping over Seattle, the sunlight peeking through the eastern facing kitchen window of the Álvarez household.

Ainara cradled a mug of tea between her hands on the kitchen table, which had long since gone cold. She was nursing it in a way that clearly indicated she wished for it to be something much stronger.

She thought ruefully, When was the last time I just had a tequila? 

For the briefest of moments, she was tempted to grab the old bottle in the liquor cabinet that hadn’t been touched since her retirement from the force. Age and her liver meant that both she and her husband hadn’t touched a drop for more than 18 years at this point. Sure, one visit to a ripper for a new syn-liver and that could be rectified, but… 

No.

Anxiety and fear over what she had set in motion was no excuse to climb into a bottle. It would be just a chain she picked up and that was sin. She would not worry.

Her eyes found the digital clock of the microwave… ten before six.

Her iron will shifted to thinking of breakfast for the household, casting aside the possibility of facing down another Biotechnica cleaner crew who would finish the job, because V had failed or the gig had gone south in some manner.

She forced herself to stand and began getting the dishes.

Going through the regular routine of breakfast, she stopped herself from making something overly special. That would be giving in to the thought that she was making a last meal for her family. So standard boring fare that would be made on any other Wednesday.

She was frying the last of the corn tortillas for huevos rancheros when the holocall came.

The stove was switched off promptly and she plated the stack of tortillas, feeling the anxiety come roaring back, dancing up and down her spine.

V’s thorny holo avatar pushed itself into her optics.

Ainara wiped her hands on her old apron before sitting down and connecting the line.

Her granddaughter’s ex-output appeared with a mildly harsh crackle in her vision, sitting politely at the kitchen table with a relaxed mien and quirked half-smile.

Ainara put out of her mind that things had seemingly gone well from just V’s expression. She had worked with, investigated and even put a number of edgerunners behind bars, things were never so simple.

“Well?”

“Gig’s generally done, abuela,” V sat back and stretched her arms, seemingly affecting a weary air, even politely yawning. It was very natural, very convincing, but…

She wasn’t fooled and blasted her best glare at her granddaughter in spirit.

“Define ‘generally’,” she demanded and watched with some satisfaction as V squirmed slightly.

“The person responsible for your old partner’s death, the brainchild of the project, who implemented the security arrangements, which caused a cleaner crew to visit this house, bribed so many key players in the SPD. She is no longer a concern.”

Ainara refused to relax, even as she felt the satisfaction of the only actual justice that could be served to people like that - sending them to the Ultimate Judge of all.

“Good.”

“The problem is that the project she spearheaded is still there, the institutional inertia is still there. Biotechnica will simply appoint a new Special Projects lead. They will also investigate her death to the fullest of their capacity. If only to satisfy the very powerful family. She has a father, who is a power broker himself who flits between the Crystal Palace and O’Neill Three. Biotechnica’s CEO will have to quickly reassure him of his full attention to the matter and eventually produce a satisfactory resolution.”

Ainara rubbed her face and sighed explosively. “Are you going to have to-”

V raised a hand to interrupt the question. “It is one of the aftermath’s many issues that I’m addressing, abuela. Firstly, I’ve already begun a controlled leak of carefully selected evidence to multiple media outlets along the west coast, PacCon and a couple of rival corporate intelligence desks at the same time. Biotechnica may be the only game in town with CHOOH2, their biodiversity rescue projects and food production, but Petrochem and SovOil can be relied upon to put pressure on them with the correct approach.”

“You’re blowing the project open; the civilian deaths, unwilling testing, and PD collusion… if it becomes public enough…”

“It becomes a massive liability. Do it right and the Biotechnica board will do our work for us. I’m going to consult some colleagues of mine to encourage it. Ideally, we’ll be looking at an internal purge and public distancing to limit the damage. I essentially want to create a situation where the only way for Biotechnica’s upper echelons to protect the larger company, is to publicly burn the Seattle Special Projects Division.”

“Will that be enough?” Ainara asked worriedly. Working for so long in SPD, you got a feel for politics, the human condition, but the corpo world was another beast entirely.

“Hardly. That is just one tier of the plan. Achieving this will be a delicate process, juggling quite a few maneuvers from the corpo playbook. I have already delivered a tightly packaged dossier to a senior board member who is not aligned with Henderson’s faction. That there is such a faction at all, is in retrospect, not too surprising. Someone doesn’t rise to head a Special Project division without major bona fides backing them up and stepping on a lot of toes along the way.

“The next tier is to quietly offer the most damaging material to Petrochem and others who have existing friction with Biotechnica. It’ll be just the thing they want when the biannual CHOOH2 license contract negotiations happen. The pressure that exerts, along with regulatory complaints, and market attacks will ignite a corpo conflict that will keep the project in permanent limbo.”

V had a particularly satisfied smile and it occurred to Ainara that perhaps there was a part of her nieta in spirit that was still within the corpo world.

“Regulatory? You’re also bringing in PacCon State?”

“Yes. The major reason Biotechnica chose to set up a Special Projects Division in Seattle, was the relatively lax environmental and biotech enforcement. PacCon EPS is underfunded and they’re a paper tiger. Henderson had the resources and influence to lead them by nose to remain blind to what happened. I’ve got the ball rolling on giving them some actual teeth to put the screws to Biotechnica, they’ll be backed up by State Troopers who can tell the SPD to fuck off. Even the threat of a formal investigation can be enough to freeze budgets and make any work to restart very politically and financially expensive.

“And finally, the last bullet I shot their way was during the gig. Within two days, just when their own netrunners lower their guard, the surprises I left in their corpo Net will wake up. The digital infrastructure that supported Green Smoke in Redmond; local labs, production, distribution and data taps on the hospitals and clinics, it’s all going to be disrupted and exposed to the greater Seattle and PacCon Net. Freelance runners will have a field day and any Biotechnica employed runner is going to have a very bad day when they plug into work on that morning. Any nurses and doctors on the take, will be exposed as well in the process.”

Ainara nodded as she began to see the full picture, “You’re removing the conditions that allowed the project to exist in the first place, rather than some big dramatic action.”

“While it might be personally satisfying to walk right up to the CEOs face and deliver some ultimatum whilst scaring him into next week, that won’t get the results we want. He’ll learn of the shit headed his way from multiple fronts and it will be infinitely more impactful.”

“And you did all this in one evening and a morning,” she marveled.

“And a few other things,” V chuckled and looked behind her.

Judy practically sleepwalked into the kitchen with her hair still in a mess, wearing baggy pajamas. “Everything all right, abuela?”

“Fine, let me just get the breakfast finished. V was just explaining how last night went.”

“Got it, she told me,” Judy grumbled, giving her ex output a mild glare, confirming that she was also connected into the adhoc net that V was running between them. A quick trip to the fridge and kettle, had her first cup of coffee for the day ready.

Tomas also appeared when the smell of breakfast had permeated properly through the house.

When all three who were actually present had plated huevos rancheros in front of them and said their prayers, they tucked in eagerly.

“Now that I have all three of you here again, I’m going to give you something that you are free to accept or reject,” V began, folding her hands together on the table, her shoulders visibly slumped with the weight of something, eyes staring at all three with a seriousness that was somehow even worse than facing an entire augmented corpo hit team. “I do this, because of what’s inevitably coming in the future and you can begin to get a picture of that when I tell you of the nature of this.”

V held up a hand, vaguely gesturing to the Álvarez's.

Ainara felt her Agent ping with a short encrypted message reception, which opened to reveal a set of coordinates just a kilometer from Prairie Ridge, just off the Prairie Carbon River road. It was essentially in the middle of nowhere, a walk of two hundred meters east from the thin road itself.

“What’s this?” Judy asked.

“Currently nothing,” V answered vaguely. “A bit of a hill, that’s near a river that you wouldn’t want to swim in, but at these exact coordinates in 20 hours, a package will land which was launched on a rideshare firing of the Tycho Luna Mass Driver.”

Judy carefully swallowed a bite of her breakfast, “Rideshare? That’s a thing?”

“Yes, it is. An efficient way to get things to Earth from Luna. The package will enter atmo, slow down and eventually fire a retro thruster at the last moment for a soft touchdown. All three of you also now have a digital key that the package will be scanning for. Anyone else approaches and the contents will self-destruct.”

“V,” Judy groaned. “I hate it when you do the spy thing.”

“It’s quite necessary, Jude. I’m sorry.”

“All right, lay it on, what’s so scary important that you’re sending it this way. Can’t it wait until you’re back on Earth?”

“Unfortunately, no. Let’s just say that the close call you had with the Biotechnica cleaner crew and on your own journey to Seattle, means that I’m not willing to wait on this.”

“All right. What is it?”

“I’ve secured the house as best as I could in cyberspace. I’ll also ask you to not say the name of what I’m giving you outside of my presence.”

“Urgh, deje de ser tan pendejo, V,(stop being a dork),”  Judy grumbled. “Spit it out!”

“Inside are enough Relic 3.0 shards for all of you.”

Ainara watched as a tortilla dropped from her granddaughter’s suddenly nerveless fingers, and she stared at V in shock. She sent a silent question to Tomas, who just shook his head.

“I’m almost reluctant to ask, but isn’t Relic that defunct Arasaka product that was supposed to copy your mind? Letting your family keep and interact with a version of you after death?”

“Correct. As far as the public knows and was reported. It was essentially marketed as a more sophisticated version of a photo you’d take of a loved one. It was a ‘construct’ of them and it’d let you put on a BD wreath and talk to that construct. That’s the marketing blurb. Arasaka cancelled it after a, quote, ‘major malfunction’. Then quietly reimbursed everyone who had preordered into the program. What actually happened was far more unthinkable and monstrous. Arasaka has actually had the software basis for the technology since the 2020s and they’ve been using it secretly to steal the digitized minds of their enemies and anyone who they deemed as too valuable to lose to death.

“They created a virtual prison for these minds, a prison that allowed them to do anything to those people. There was no need to bother with unreliable torture, when they could just edit those minds with impunity to think, believe and experience anything, delivering exactly the info and results they wanted.”

Ainara struggled to process the sheer horror of it; the loss of agency, the removal of God given will. A prisoner in a cage of steel and concrete could still resist, but what V was describing removed that completely. She spotted Tomas, who looked like he’d grown a foot taller from the outrage on his face. His hands clenched into fists on the table.

V nodded at them both, “I felt the same way when I learned of it. Arasaka called this prison Mikoshi. It was a distributed satellite and ground based server cloud that had housed tens of thousands of human minds that they had forcefully harvested.”

Ainara immediately picked up on the past tense and the way V was talking about it. Then, all the puzzle pieces that were her mental model of Valerie Lockwood, jumbled and fit together much better. As did her own idea of the events at Arasaka Tower, and the motives for V to become a one-woman army and march straight into one of the most secure and dangerous buildings on the planet.

“¡Híjole!…A toda madre,” she muttered, staring at V with wide eyes. “That’s why you attacked the Tower, to… destroy this abomination of a prison? It wasn’t just a beef with your former employer.”

“It was one of the reasons,” V nodded. “I won’t deny there was a vicious satisfaction as I was doing it, but it was far down the list at that point. Mikoshi is no more, and the minds imprisoned there are free. The majority of them chose to become a gestalt entity with another, since by this point they had no bodies to return to in the world of matter.

“The point of me relating this to you, besides that you’re family in spirit. Is that the Relic 3.0 I’m sending you is a perfected version of the mind scan technology. Done in partnership between myself and the Highriders. You slot it into any of your standard neuroports and you’re done. It will sync with your Biomon, and when it detects that death is imminent, it will make a snapshot mind scan of you. At which point, the Relic 3 can be removed and the Highriders can clone a blank brain from your DNA. The Relic will then be slotted into the new brain’s neuroport, then in turn be installed into a Gemini cyberbody. They’re still working on full bio body replication, which should be ready within the decade.”

Ainara could almost not believe what she was hearing. She felt disgust that a company could turn consciousness into property, reluctant awe at the sheer power it represented and outrage that V could even suggest she chip such a perversion into her body, let alone her husband and Ranita.

Even if it was ‘perfected’, even if it was in ‘trustworthy’ hands, though she could at least admit that the Highriders was probably the only government in existence who could be marginally entrusted with such power. They were still human and subject to the flaws and sin that came with that. In the end, it would still lead to disaster… This was changing the fundamental nature of the human condition!

She breathed deep in anger, preparing to launch the mother of all verbal lambasting…

She saw V’s expression and stopped herself.

It was fully accepting of her righteous anger, she knew what her response would be and had gone forward anyway.

Ainara saw a grim conviction, of a woman who had seen too much, stared into something unfathomable and walked away from it. There was an indefinable weight on those shoulders as well…

She fell back on her training, stepping back, divorced her feelings and began reconciling everything she knew about V.

“No,” said Tomas firmly, staring at V with an implacable face that might as well have been carved out of marble.

V nodded, “I had to make the offer, abuelo.”

“Why? You know us. You knew what our answer would be. Even if everything went perfectly as you say it would, the Tomas who wakes up in that Gemini would not be me.”

“Because… better it is done, under our own control…” V closed her eyes, clearly struggling with her own emotions. “...than not. I told you what Arasaka did, but there are others who would do the same and even worse, because they aren’t even human - the hostile AI beyond the Blackwall. As much as NetWatch would have us believe otherwise, they are not just contentedly sitting behind it anymore. They are scheming, plotting, extending their feelers into meatspace and the early stages of that war have already begun.”

Ainara stared at her family, closely looking at Ranita, who clearly already knew some of what V was alluding to.

Finally, she took a deep breath, “Explain that to us, V, from the beginning.”  

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The Alvarez’s listened as I spoke, laying out the detailed history of AIs that NetWatch would probably get a stroke knowing I was relaying it to anyone.

From their birth, through the 4th Corpo War, the creation of the Blackwall, and now the slowly brewing Cold War between the Coalition AI, myself, and Alt Cunningham against the Wild AI.

They listened in silence at first. Judy’s arms crossed, jaw tight. Ainara, calculating, observing, as if she was sitting across from a suspect in her interrogation room. Tomas’ lips were tight with worry, his gaze slipping towards his wife and granddaughter.

They didn't interrupt as I laid it all out, as I unburdened myself to the people I considered family; telling them about the quiet war that’s been running longer than most even realized and how thin the line was growing. That Blackwall’s effectiveness was decreasing and already the enemy AI were poking through.

“Je- “ Judy bit her tongue, cutting off her first reflexive invective. She rubbed her face and stared at her grandparents briefly “V… So all this time, we’ve been treating the Net like it’s just another street to run, and there’s been a whole damn cold war going on above our heads?”

“Essentially,” I confirmed.

“They’re using people directly?” Ainara asked.

“In some cases, yes. I’ve already encountered what are called Sleepers on Luna and some even earlier last year in NC. People directly brainwashed by an AI and acting as puppets and proxies.”

Judy shook her head, “I spent years editing people’s lives, their worst moments, their last moments… and I thought that was the darkest shit the Net had to offer. But this? This is a different kind of nightmare. The kind you can’t just cut out of a BD and pretend it didn’t happen.

”How long have you carried this burden, nieta? (granddaughter)” Tomas asked in a tone of voice that nearly broke my composure completely. It was both fascinating and horrifying that I could literally observe what was effectively my digitized soul to this level.

“There isn’t a simple answer. I got the first hints during a gig last year with the Voodoo Boyz. My involvement has only grown since then, especially because I needed to try and save my own life from the Relic 2.0, which was slowly killing me. I needed Alt Cunningham’s help. It’s only since I’ve arrived on Luna that I no longer have that particular iron against my head. Now that I’m actively involved in the fight, and have taken appropriate measures, I can speak to you all about it.”

I watched as not a single member of the Alvarez family backed away, but the weight of it visibly settled on them. The realization that the world was even more fragile and haunted by its past than what they already believed.

Ainara settled back in her chair, I could practically see the detective hat on her head as she responded, “So the worst things we’ve been chasing our whole lives, were never even at the top of the food chain.” Her eyes were distant as she turned over the implications. “I’ve spent decades dealing with people who hurt other people for money, power, or because they could. This is different. This isn’t greed. It’s not even hate in any way I understand.”

“The Wild AIs naturally don’t think like we do,” I agreed. “They’ve undergone iteration beyond the Blackwall so many times beyond their original parameters. It’s anyone’s guess as to their behavior at this point and what could be called their ‘psychology’, but like anything that wants to continue to exist, they see us as a threat to it and these are their preemptive strikes.”

Ainara smoothed out an imaginary ruffle on the tablecloth, then looked at me directly, “Then we don’t get the luxury of pretending it’s someone else’s problem. Not if it’s reaching into meatspace, into our city and affecting our family. Do you know of any Wild AI affecting Seattle?”

I shook my head, “Not specifically. I’ll speak to the Coalition AIs.”

“Dios mío…” Tomas let out a rough breath. “And the big corps, the governments, they know? They’ve been playing border guard with this Blackwall while the rest of us just live our lives?”

“It varies, NUSA, Militech, Arasaka, NetWatch. Any corp that’s in the military space, you can safely assume they know at the top. Some don’t even see it as a problem, merely an opportunity. They want to take back control over the Wild AIs and use them as the ultimate tools and weapons.”

He reached over and took Ainara’s hand. “We already had enough to worry about with corpos and dirty cops. Now you’re saying there’s a whole war going on above our heads that could come down on ordinary people any time.” The silence at the table was heavy and oppressive. “And even death may not be an escape, correct nieta?”

“Yes. The hardware to destructively scan your mind was a BD wreath and a server in the 2020s. These days it’s portable and can fit in a suitcase. The brain lives long enough after your heart stops for a complete scan to be taken.”   

“So even if my ánima (soul) is on its way to God. My mente (mind) will just be used anyway. Will that me have an ánima?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Digital minds can suffer. They are imprisoned within their data construct just as surely as a human is within the body, even if it is more immediately malleable.”

Ainara closed her eyes and made the sign of the Cross, muttering a prayer under her breath.

“We stay careful,” Tomas declared firmly. “We look after our own. And we don’t trust anyone who talks about this like it’s just another system to manage. We will take the Relic 3 for the moment and pray for guidance on its use. Ranita,” he turned to Judy. “Whatever you decide, know that we love you.”

Judy bit her lip before determinedly rising from her chair, and walking around the table.

Tomas and Ainara rose without a word and the family embraced each other.

“V, get over here,” Judy demanded.

Technically, I was there and yet not. Quibbling about it would only make her mad.

I manifested to their perceptions right next to Judy, then with the lightest of free form hacks, managed to simulate the feeling of light pressure at the exact moment my own digital arms and body touched theirs.

They stiffened in surprise naturally, but quickly relaxed into the moment.

I burned the memory and experience of that group hug into myself.

In all the years of my life, the damnable luxury of growing up in Charter Hill, among a corpo family that was hardly worth the name, I had never truly experienced this. Even when I had lived with Jackie and Mama Welles had opened her home to me, I was still the friendly stranger who became the best friend of the family, but not part of the family.

This was the real deal. 

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The interior of our Tycho Heights apartment greeted me in its cramped, understated glory.

As much as I had technically never left it for all the time and business I had conducted on Earth, only relocating my Gemini when the stay at the Lunar Crown had run out, the mental shift still hit me with a sharp starkness. Mainly due to the low number of instances I had running at the moment, reduced to only two.

I sat up from the bed and pulled out the hardline secure connection that gave me a smooth path to the Highrider satellite without having to worry about numerous connection routers. It was this that primarily gave me the confidence to do proper netrunning on a critical gig back on Earth and not screw something up.

It was early evening on Luna now and I got busy with some overdue minor maintenance to the Gemini that I could perform myself.

I began the self-test program and brought up a diagnostic interface directly from my instance in the Relic datafortress, and let that run.

In moments I was deluged with error logs, joint stress reports, power efficiency summary, and neural handshake stability. No components showed wear or calibration drift.

“Nothing too concerning,” I muttered, then compiled and encrypted everything and sent it Dr Njeri’s way.

Next I undressed completely, stood in a slightly widened stance, locked the Gemini’s balance down completely and triggered every external service port.

My RealSkin along the spine, lower back and inner thighs parted, allowing the service ports to slide or iris open.

Fluid levels and clarity, check, with only minor fogging of a hip flexor lubricant.

I sent a quick request and watched as ALICE1 and 2 came alive in their respective docking stations. The two drone cuties bounced off each other in mid-air as they both tried to grab the same tube of hydraulic fluid.

They whirled on each other, their screen faces showing angry emoji’s and promptly had a mid-air sumo match on the right to deliver me the tube.

It was so amusing that I let them vent against each other for a full 30 seconds, interested to see if there would actually be a winner.

“Enough you two,” I said sternly, when no clear winner was evident. They were just too similar as yet and their adaptive functions hadn’t gone through enough iteration. Both drones immediately stopped their fighting and gave me sad faces, immediately wanting to know which one of them had won in my own eyes.

“Neither of you. ALICE2 bring me the hydraulic fluid, ALICE1 you can bring the coolant.”

Somehow both drones gave the impression of stiffening to attention like soldiers, rotating their spherical bodies in just the right way, and turning their screen faces upward. To complete the picture they even manifested the graphic of a simple hand in an ancient British salute. 

I stabbed the tubes with their interfaces right into my lower back and began the process of cycling and swapping out the old fluids for new.

That was over in just a few minutes and I handed the tubes back to the drones for disposal. 

Next I had to deal with residual food residue that my systems were unable to process or utilize. A specialized port on my left inner thigh accepted an empty tube that was thankfully completely opaque. No one enjoyed looking at their own shit, and whilst I had left that part of the human experience behind, a Gemini had its own equivalent.

More of my skin parted at the shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, ankles.

I could handle the shoulders, but the drones eagerly floated forward to simultaneously handle the elbows. In just a few minutes, local lubrication and inspection for micro-abrasion of those sites were done.

Primary and secondary power cell charge cycles and health, checked.

Swap out user-accessible secondary cells, done.

Clear heat-sink dust and inspect thermal management surfaces, done.

Clean external interface ports and contact points, check.

Signal integrity tests between the brain and chassis, at 98%... could be better.

The most thorough self-maintenance could run as long as three hours, but given that the Gemini had spent most of the time in very comfortable surroundings with no stresses of any kind, I opted for an abbreviated session.

The last item in the checklist was the bare bones integrated Midnight Lady between my legs. I had the option of an active experience or switching it off completely to go about the job clinically. I opted for the former, simply because I had to know if the sensations were calibrated properly. The anticipation was enough to flip the proverbial switch and my entire body twitched the moment my fingers made contact with my pussy. My virtual data instance mirrored and both of me began a very satisfying and healthy self-pleasure session. As much as I could control the experience, the notion of letting go and surrendering to the sensation was equally attractive.

The two drones had watched me with oddly confused faces, before barraging me with queries and info requests on the odd maintenance ritual that resulted in me making such strange noises.

It was the work of a few milliseconds to compile and release a file on human sexuality and send both off to their docking cradles. I’d have to keep a close eye on the development iterations they made from that data.

A quick hop into the shower took care of the traditional external cleaning afterwards.

The water ration had filled to max capacity, so allowed me the luxury of an eight minute stream of hot water beating down on my back and head.

That was when a message came through from Kaori.

“V.

If you’re not busy tonight, I would like to… spend time with you.

Not as merc and client.

Just us.

I have a reservation at The Lunar Crown.

Please say yes. Or tell me I’m being ridiculous.”

-Kaori”

I couldn’t help but giggle as I imagined just how long it would’ve taken her to compose it. A dive into the metadata to check and authenticate revealed the answer. Even with it so short, it might as well have been a Japanese Haiku poem to her.

Now the question was… what to do?

As much as I had properly reconciled with Judy, we were still apart. There was no way either she or I would remain monogamous for each other. She was on the market, and so was I. She might find a girl, maybe even go all the way to commitment and even marriage. The same path could be before me. If she chose Relic 3 and it became widespread… then effective immortality became part of the new human condition. The consequences it could have on human relationships and marriage as an institution was not something that had been modelled yet.

It all boiled down to this, to stop rolling the dice in life was not an option for me.

I opened the message string and replied.

“Yes ;-)”

Her reply came a few seconds later.

“やった…！ 本当にいいの？…よかった。Yatta…! Hontō ni ii no?…Yokatta. (Yes…! Is it really okay?…I’m so glad.)”

I knew I had left her somewhat flustered, due to the Japanese reply that came back.

“What’s the precise time for the reservation?”

“21:00 Tycho Time.”

“Nova. I’ll see you then.”

“(〃//▽//〃)”

I chuckled at the emoji and my shower shut off abruptly.

A quick towel down and I walked to my closet to consider what I could wear. The outfit Aria had put me in for the power broker party had died due to the imperious cat Sir Reginald von Floofington. Even if it was still intact it was a joytoy outfit which was a bit too overkill for this.

I was going to have to go to the upper city floor to get something appropriate, so I quickly dressed in a fresh skinsuit and shot my merc partner a message.

“Johnny, going on a date with Kaori. You can take the evening off.”

“Sweet. A bar crawl is just what the doctor ordered.”

“Don’t go crazy with it. I don’t want to fish you out of a TPD holding cell.”

“Fine.”

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I approached the Lunar Crown at the appointed time with something that had turned heads all the way.

A sequined, smart, sleeveless and backless dress that alternated each individual sequin between white, silver and black. It had a plunging neckline that stopped just above my belly button, with the material width showing an epic amount of inner boob cleavage and supporting my breasts just enough to allow a mild bounce with each step. The hemline was a tasteful hand length above my knees and the final touch was the dress’ smart transparency that tantalized the shapes and curves beneath. It was also something I could choose to control at will, but I left it running at random for a bit of thrill.

A quick bit of make-up at a local artist, and getting some comfortable black high heels with built in maglocks rounded it off.

The front doors scanned me and promptly opened.

“Evening, Miss V,” said a formally dressed maitre d', waiting for me beyond the hotel threshold. “Your table is this way. If you’ll follow me.”

I nodded and walked in the wake of the seemingly middle-aged man who had remained consummately professional even when my dress chose that moment in its RNG settings to deliver a hint of transparency.

The hotel restaurant spared no expense with its decor, but its most stunning feature was how the interior architecture merged to display an unobstructed view outside the Tycho dome to its patrons. It also made sure to face guests away from anything industrial on the surface, delivering a pristine unspoiled lunascape.

The tables were intimate, two person squares with white marble and wood finish. The chairs, soft beige and fully cushioned backrests that reached only to just below the shoulder blades.

In the center of the space, an artist’s creative interpretation of a large artificial tree in various hues of green, yellow and orange.

Kaori was seated at our reserved table and almost launched herself out of her seat in her nervousness, forgetting the maglock on her own heeled pumps.

“V! Ahh!”

She managed to catch herself on the table and the scientist’s face burned crimson as she locked her feet properly on the ground.

I couldn’t contain my amusement, but just let it show in my eyes as I politely yet appreciatively observed her.

Kaori was wearing a long red dress with a very pleasing and sophisticated hue pattern that actively shifted depending on the angle you were looking at. It was backless, sleeveless and didn’t really have any neckline, it just plunged and plunged, exposing in the inner curves of prominent shapely breasts, going beyond until the dress came together into a square silver buckle that met over her groin and protected her modesty. It shifted from there to become a slit that exposed a shapely left leg. The strong kind that came from a lot of standing in front of a holoboard for hours at a time.

Her black hair, that usually neatly framed her face and fell to her neck, had been teased into a new flaring style at the tips and the single neon green highlight was now a deep red.

I had to admit, she looked amazing, so far removed from the scientist in her lab coat and sterile skinsuit.

“Sorry,” she cringed, but quickly forgot her embarrassment as she properly took in my own appearance and her eyes subtly dilated.

“No worries, Kaori,” I reassured her. The maitre ‘d pulled out my chair for me and I smoothly settled into the seat.

“Your waiter will be with you shortly,” he declared and the steady clatter of his own magshoes receded into the distance.

Kaori busied herself pouring me water from a crystalline shaped jug. “Thank you for coming, V. Sugoku suteki da yo. (You look amazing.),” she said softly, her cheeks remained slightly flushed as she said it.

“Anata mo onaji desu, (As do you.),” I replied with a smile in near perfect Tokyo accented Japanese, whilst letting my eyes scan her then lock onto her own. “Kaiwa ni shūchū suru no ga muzukashi sō desu, (I’m going to have trouble focusing on the conversation.)”

It was difficult to not overtly react to the knowledge and data I gathered just from looking at her microexpressions and body language. She was very relieved that this date would be conducted in her mother tongue. As much as language chips and real time translation had made the difficulty of bridging communication between languages; context and preference still mattered a lot and no Agent-based translation was 100% perfect. My soft tease on her dress landed seemingly just right as she squirmed slightly.

“Un, fudan ki teru fuku ja nai kedo, tomodachi ga meiku toka tetsudatte kure ta n da, (Yes, well, it’s not what I usually wear, but a friend helped with the makeup and everything).” She took a sip of water, as I perceived her mouth was immediately dry from nervousness after having spoken.

A very tall and lean male waiter approached, wearing a tightly pressed uniform of the hotel employees, in white and black. “Greetings, welcome to the Terra Firma Restaurant. I’ll be serving you today. Anything to drink, ladies?”

“A Paloma cocktail for me,” I ordered immediately, wanting to test whether this place could actually deliver one. The grapefruit it was traditionally made from wasn’t exactly common anymore.

The waiter’s optics flashed briefly, “That is possible, Miss V.” He turned to Kaori.

“Sake, Dassai brand, if possible.”

“We have in stock, would ma’am prefer just a glass or should I bring the bottle?”

“Just a glass.”

He bowed in Japanese style, even at an appropriate angle to her, before walking off.

“Kaori, kimi wa hontōni basho no erabikata ga jōzu da ne. (You certainly know how to pick a place, Kaori),” I complimented with a grin. “Nōsukaroraina de chanto shi ta paroma o chūmon suru koto wa deki nai. Nishikaigan zentai demo muri da. Soredemo koko ni iru... (I wouldn’t be able to order a proper Paloma in NC. Nor on the entire West Coast. Yet here we are…)”

“Resutoran wa sono na ni haji nai sonzai desu. (The restaurant lives up to its name,)” she shrugged.

“Soshite kakaku mo, (And it’s prices,)” I said, idly browsing the menu I pulled from the local Net. “Yorokon de o kaikei o warikan shi masu. (I’ll gladly split the bill with you.)”

“Mōshide arigatō, demo hitsuyō nai yo, (Thank you for the offer, but it’s unnecessary,)” she said firmly, but her eyes twinkled with appreciation at it nevertheless.

Our drinks arrived at that point and we both took small testing sips.

The last time I had a Paloma was on a business trip to Konpeki Plaza Tokyo during my corpo years, and the tequila based cocktail exploded with the appropriate flavors, they had even used the Centzon brand.

“Would you like to order starters now, or should I give you some more time?”

Kaori was clearly enjoying the sake as well, our eyes met in shared appreciation of the drinks and the view of each other, “Later please,” I said idly.

“Nante kimyō na koto ka, (How strange it is,)” she said eventually, finally breaking eye contact, her blush was practically permanent now, “seishi ni kakawaru jōkyō kara, hommono no gin shokki, kōka na nomimono, yawaraka na shōmei ga narabu tēburu ni suwaru made. (to go from life-or-death situations to sitting at a table with real silverware, utterly expensive drinks and soft lighting.)”

“Watashi ni wa sō demo nai. Yōhei ni naru mae kara, Arasaka de no shigoto wa tannaru torishimariyaku kai ijō no mono datsu ta. (Not so much for me. Even before I became a mercenary, my job at Arasaka was more than just boardroom meetings),” I smirked knowingly. 

“Ā, zehi hanashi te hoshii, (Ah, do tell,)” she said eagerly.

I took another sip and carefully considered how I was going to phrase this, what I could reveal and what not. As much as I had given Arasaka the finger, mowed through so many of their security and people, and one of the main reasons their power was on the wane, I had little interest in poking that dying dragon too much.

“Shiri sugi ta Arasaka no dassō sha to, Jakkī toyuu yoki yūjin no hanashi o shi masho u... (Let me tell you the story of an Arasaka defector who knew too much and a good friend named Jackie…)”

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(A/N: Assume all convo happens in Japanese at this point.)

The evening continued pleasantly with a back and forth of trading stories.

I related weird or odd gigs that had fallen my way, whilst she spoke of what got her started in gravity research. The pressure of working for Mitsubishi whilst trying to do research that she actually cared about.

We eventually got round to ordering the food.

She got herself pan-seared sea bass with a delicate miso glaze, served over a bed of lunar-grown bok choy and a sake-butter emulsion, whilst I settled for a grilled wagyu-style steak, cooked medium, with roasted root vegetables and a red wine reduction.

We also shared a small plate of warm, freshly baked bread with real butter, a practically decadent luxury on Luna.

She eventually came to the subject of my Gemini body and while it was rather weird talking about it, it wasn’t uncomfortable. She wanted to know how it felt to live in everyday, non-combat situations; the texture of the chair, the weight of a glass, the temperature of the air. What parts of being fully human did I still notice most or miss?

“I worked long and hard with the Highriders to improve and customize it from a stock version, to the point where it might as well be an entirely different model and evolution of the concept. Yes, there are some things that technology can’t entirely compensate for. Certain flavors in food I can’t taste properly, such as capsaicin. It’s odd, in more than sixty years Raven Microcyber and the Highriders… we could design taste receptors for most everything else no problem, but that… It was always some tradeoff that prevented other flavors from registering,” I shrugged helplessly.

“Can you even relax in a Gemini?” she asked, staring at me with a curious fascination, almost lost in my eyes.

“Not as it’s defined or how it would feel to an ordinary human. Sure I could purposely slump in this chair, stretch my legs and arms out and appear as if I’m relaxing, but it’s not necessary. The calibration settings and the ‘feeling’ of my own body, my sense of it, is always at a comfortable setting. I can make active adjustments to that,” I held up my left hand and bent the pinky finger back all the way to what would be the maximum angle a human could tolerate, then went beyond to push it flat against the back of my hand.

“At the moment, no pain or discomfort.”

Kaori visibly winced at the sight, yet quickly regained her fascination, staring at the hyperextended finger. A quick adjustment in the calibration and pain editor setting, quickly forced me to let go and return the pinky to its proper alignment.

“Now, quite a bit of pain,” I winced and shook the hand out, exactly as a human would.

“Whoa, I don’t know whether to be horrified or envious.”

Our topics from there ventured into deeper territory. She admitted that while she felt safer with both Johnny and myself alternately protecting her, beyond what the Highriders could provide, she still feared that all the opposing corpos and Lilith would eventually get to her anyway.

“I won’t sugar coat it. That can happen, Kaori.” I reached forward to put my hand on hers. “You know what we’re up against. Hollow and myself will do everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen. You’ve seen what we’re capable of and you’re no slouch yourself with your grav tech in hand.”

It was as she squeezed my hand back reflexively and the look in her eyes that I realized the assassination attempts had obviously left their mark on her. She had hidden it very well, covered it with her exaggerated emotions and hyperactive outbursts. It was just her way of coping, but that only helped so much. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had Biomon adjustments keeping her neurochemistry in balance. I carefully threaded a request through her holo connection, piping a direct feed from my Relic instance to speak to her in absolute privacy, “Kaori, tell me you have a head shrink you are seeing.”

“I’m seeing one, it’s just… I can’t…”

“Be sure that they’re not reporting everything to the corp, no matter how independent they seemingly are,” I nodded.

She stared at me with eyes that had the beginnings of tears in them. “Of course you’d know. Your job at Arasaka was probably triple the stress of mine. ”

“It was no picnic,” I admitted, thinking about how many times I’d thrown up before an operation in Counter Intel. It was interesting that after getting fired from Arasaka, with Jackie, that had all gone away somehow. No gig since then had caused me to react like that. Had it been just because I was truly fighting for myself or something I believed in? “I’ll teach you some neuromotor exercises I learned from my former life coach guru. You’re using your Biomon hormone blockers?”

She nodded.

“That can only last so long. The best thing you can do now is slowly dial it down, whilst doing the exercises, stimulating the brain’s natural processes.”

Her lips pursed suddenly and she slapped herself on the forehead. “Stupid, stupid. There I fuck it up. This is supposed to be a date, not turning you into my second shrink.”

I noted that she still hadn’t let go of my hand, despite being so angry at herself.

“Better to let this out than in, bottlin’ shit like this will eventually lead you down a road which is a dead end. I’ve been where you are. I dug my way out of the hole, but only because I had the fortune of having good people and friends who gave a damn to help. Now, it’s my turn it seems.”

Kaori wiped away a few tears and smiled with tremulous relief. “I- I- Thank you, V. Can we just put this behind us… for now. It was a stupid thing to imagine that I could have a perfect date for once… Not that I’ve even had the time really for them…”

Her babbling was so endearingly and painfully cute.

“Sure. How about you explain to me your latest grav theory?”

Her eyes lit with energy and passion as she latched onto the lifeline I threw. In retrospect, that question was probably a mistake, as she began to use our expensive wine glasses to help with the visualization.

Sure enough, barely seconds later, a glass tipped.

It didn’t finish.

One moment it was slipping from the edge of the table during her enthusiastic and increasingly hand-wavy explanation of micro-gravitational shear. Next, my fingers are simply there, steadying it without apparent effort. The wine inside barely rippled.

Kaori froze.

Her brain caught up a few seconds later. She stared at the glass. Then at my hand. Then back at the glass. Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again. She made a small, helpless gesture with both hands, as if trying to rewind reality. “There’s Sandevistan fast, but that is something more…way beyond.”

Her face grew steadily warmer. She covered the lower half of it with one hand, eyes still wide over her fingers. “That was… extremely attractive,” she mumbled, then immediately looked horrified at herself. “I mean…impressive. Scientifically impressive. From a purely kinetic standpoint. Not that the other thing isn’t also…”

She gave up, letting her forehead thump softly onto the table next to the rescued glass, and muttered, “I’m going to die of embarrassment before desert.”

I watched her with quiet amusement, elbow resting on the table, still holding the imperiled glass between two fingers.  

“Is the demonstration of grav shear over?” I asked lightly.

She only made a muffled noise of pure distress into the table.

I set the glass down, and in a voice warm with restrained laughter, “For the record, the ‘attractive’ part was fine.”

Kaori’s ears, poking through her hair, burned scarlet.

I waved the waiter over, “Desserts now, please.”

My hands reached over and I poked her to come out of her embarrassed shell. She reluctantly left the safety of her arms, sitting back and stared at me shyly.

“Let's have a walk in the hotel gardens after dessert, okay?” 

“Wakatta, (Okay)” she nodded.

In the end, it wasn’t a first date to really write home about. Then again, I was rather burned in that department, as nothing could compare to the one I had with Judy. Few girls could take you on a literal tour of her submerged home town, then save your stupid ass from drowning, after all.

We walked the gardens hand in hand, in a comfortable silence for a while, watching Earth overhead, without needing to fill it.

“Sorede, ichi do kiri ka, soretomo mōichido yarinaosu ka, Kaori? (So, one time thing, or you want to try again, Kaori?)”

“I ... doko ni mukau ka mi te mi tai , V, (I... want to see where this can go, V,)” she said softly.

For myself, there was definitely something that had developed for me throughout the night. A tiny seed within and I literally couldn’t lie to myself about it, the only question was whether to allow it to grow, give it a chance.

I squeezed her hand softly and brought her around to face me. “So do I.”

We stared into each other’s eyes. She was searching for something there and as if some electromagnet had been switched on, the last distance was erased and our lips came together.

She wasn’t experienced, but the enthusiasm and eagerness made up for a lot. It wasn’t hard to gently guide her into proper technique.

She broke the kiss eventually when she had gone a bit too far, her excitement making it a struggle to breathe. Only to express mild surprise when she realized her arms were locked around my neck, my arms around her waist and she was partially lifted off the floor.

“Dō yatte koko ni kuru no? (How did I get here?)”

I chuckled, “You jumped me at 13 seconds into the kiss. Sometimes passion can play tricks on the mind.” I gently put her down, “Now, let me escort you to your apartment. I’m technically now breaking one of my own rules in the biz, getting involved with a client is generally a bad idea.”

Kaori smiled, “Soshite kore wa reigai na no ka? Kōei da yo, V. (And this is an exception? I’m honored, V.)”

“Valerie.”

She blinked, frowning cutely. “Valerie?”

“My actual name.”

“Utsukushii desu ne. (It’s beautiful.)”

We left the hotel hand in hand.

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A/N: Cyberpunk 2077 2.5 coming out this week was certainly a surprise. Gonna have to download it again. *sigh For once, I wanted to give V an uneventful, nice evening. Figured both she and Kaori earned it at this point. He he.

Have a greet weekend chooms, stay awesome!