CyberPunk RED - Short Story.pdf

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2 AM-SHE CALLS
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2 AM-SHE CALLS
2AM - SHE CALLS
Story by:
Tomasz Marchewka
English Adaptation:
Aniela Pramik, Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz
Editor:
Paweł Ciemniewski
Layout and DTP:
Dilara Ozden, Paulina Łukiewska
Cover:
Dilara Ozden
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2 AM-SHE CALLS
2071 AD
In Night City, it’s the little things. Like this bang-up noodle shop in Kabuki.
Little place called Nuan’s. Nuan mops up the counter grunge, then wipes her
ladle with the same sad rag. As she spoons out your noodles, you think the
filth should’ve stayed where it was. You also think the meat might be sewer
rat, but if this is sewer rat, you could eat these noodles every night. Long
as they came slathered in Nuan’s extra-hot.
Little thing about cab driving – if I wanna eat, I switch off the combat
comms, pick my spot, park... and eat. Love it. Triple-patty melt yesterday,
baby back ribs today. Master of my fate. It’s a nice change of pace after the
NCPD grind – there, you eat when you can grab a minute to yourself. After
punching out your twelve hours, or on the job and on the run. Once you’re
done with the gig for good, you grab any chance to eat like a civilized human
being. Don’t take my word for it. Ask the ex-cons who do the same thing
once they’re out.
I’m half-sitting on the hood of my Combat Cab, slurping down the last of
Nuan’s noodles. My comms pings. The private one. I know the number. It’s
one I never decline.
I reach into the car through the open window and punch the connect to
dispatch. One-two-three.
EN ROUTE - VACANT – PICKING UP CLIENT
The three messages flash quickly, blend into one. My empty noodle box
lands in a greasy rustle on a heap of forty others in the can outside Nuan’s
door. I don’t bother to check the address. Downtown. I always pick her up
downtown.
Half past midnight. Atypical. Too late to be getting off work, too early to
be leaving a party. Usually calls around two. Did something happen? No, if
something’d happened, she wouldn’t be calling me. Means like hers, she’d
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2 AM-SHE CALLS
call the NCPD, Trauma Team, private studiocorp huscle or all three. Maybe
she already did. Maybe I’m just another gonk in a whole fucking retinue of
gonks tripping over each other to save the saucy dame in distress. I glance
at the message again. Just the address. No sign, no signal, no cry for help.
I gun it anyway. Just in case.
Once downtown, I start looking for trouble. Old habit. And I’m good at
it, usually spot trouble before it spots me – another parting gift from my
time on the force. Except downtown, it’s not always so simple. Up in Kabuki,
trouble flies out the biz end of a semi-automatic or caves your skull in with
reinforced brassknuck implants. Downtown? Downtown trouble dons kid
gloves. Maybe a starched white collar, too.
No trouble on my way to the pickup. I pull to the curb at the address on
my display. Some new place I don’t know. Floor-to-ceiling glass, the ceiling
arriving around the fourth floor, where fussy chandeliers clash with the
otherwise pervasive Japanese minimalism. I see a throng at the door,
waiting to get in. A choom stands behind a thick reservation book. His head
does nothing but nod, but he’s gotta be telling one would-be guest after
another how
terribly
sorry he is...
There she is. My fare. She gets in, slams the door. The meter flinches
into action.
PICKING UP CLIENT – EN ROUTE
Ora Dominguez, or as the city knows her, Ora Di. Di as in deep. As in
desire, delight... demise? Olive skin. Jet-black curly hair shooting out of her
head like a fistful of razor wire. Good-looking, very, but no model – more
like the hottest girl on the block. Deep, raspy voice. The slightest accent, a
whiff. Hazel-brown eyes that reviewers like to dismiss as “boring” but that
Ora stubbornly refuses to swap out for implants. In the braindance world,
she’s a type – a “gangerchick.”
“Hey, Frank. Glad to see you.” She lights a cigarette. “Let’s go home.”
“Which one?”
“The real one.”
Vista del Rey it is. We drive.
I gently adjust the rear cam so it shows less road, more Ora. The cam
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2 AM-SHE CALLS
feeds to a monitor a little left of and under the wheel, keeping my view
hidden from hers. Leather jacket, ripped jeans, knees exposed –
La Catrina
grins out of the left tear. Leather spike heels, too.
Ora’s smoking like it’s going out of style. More pissed than stressed, I
think.
“Shit party?” I offer, courteous as always. Maybe a chat will calm her
down. Her, me, either of us, both? “Little early to be headed home.”
“Shit date. Blind,” she replies, trying to be nice. Can’t be sure if it’s for
me or if it’s the braindance biz poking through. “Ever been on one?”
“Not my style.”
She grins.
“Wasn’t even a real date. Media ploy. You know, studio sets you up with
someone you might scroll with. To see if it ‘sticks,’ if people see us out
together and like it so much they just gotta talk about it... You go to some hip
new spot, have a drink, sit there bored while pretending not to be. Ideally,
you sit where the paparazzi can see you. And if it sticks? You make page
two, maybe three in a normsheet, page one of the screamers.”
She ends her sentence with her smoke. Before it dies, she lights another
and tosses the glowing butt out the window. Stress it is. I sense there’s
more to the story. Can’t remember a time she was ever this worked up
about, well, work.
“Tellin’ ya, Frank. Grab one of the screamsheets tomorrow, first thing.
If you see Zane Magnum made a gangerchick swoon, that means I stand to
make some serious scratch. Fuck.”
She never liked braindance. Said once that she might as well be pushing
boosters down on the corner, but, wouldn’t ya know it, scrolling braindance
pays better. I see Ora start to fidget on the monitor. The smokes aren’t
helping.
“Choom not your type?”
“Not really.”
Another smile cuts across her face, different now. Sincere.
“Too short?” I venture. “Too tall?”
“Let’s just say I think a man’s ink should mean something.”
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