Baptiste, Redmond Barrens, Seattle

Empty pizza boxes, dirty cups filled with a zip of old, gooey soy-caf, long overdue laundry and a smell not easily put into a category, fill the room. The cleaning drone has been inactive and out of power for over a month now. Maybe longer.

But at least it’s quiet.

The certified credstick in my palm reads 5000¥. Picked it up this morning from a locker at the train station. Another 10,000¥ were wired in small amounts to a handful of shadow accounts, all authorized to cash out to me. The process of laundering money; within the next four weeks, I will be 500k nuyen richer. Half-a-fraggin-million. Enough to shut me up. Enough for me not to worry. Yet, something about this run irks me in places that shouldn’t ever irk me. It was too easy to get in, too easy to get the data that is worth five-hundred-thousand nuyen. I know it didn’t look like that, but even getting out was too easy, considering the gun shots on ‘Raku property and everything. I don’t even recall an alarm, come to think of it.Read More »