Uncategorized

The knocks at my door grew louder, whomever it was losing any sense of patience. I was down to a pair of shorts and a tee shirt. I didn’t have my gun handy and it didn’t seem like I had time to go digging out of my bedroom. So, I grabbed a knife out of the kitchen and held it behind my back. The apartment wasn’t high tech. There was a camera by the front door, but once inside you had to rely on the classic peephole to see who was out there, or just open the door. I did the latter, spreading my legs and bracing one foot against the door as I opened it about a foot wide.

I recognized the boy on the other side. I said, “Larry.”

He said, “My name is Jae-Sung, slitch. You freakin know it.”

The boy wore a leather jacket and jeans that were tighter than they had a right to be. His tee shirt advertised a Seattle-based techno band, ARO dreams. He was scowling. He was also armed.

I said, “I prefer Larry. I also prefer you leave.”

Not-Larry said, “No can do, omae. Boss wants to see you. Says things aren’t square with the bet.”

“Bulldrek. I won that fair. Giants came through.”

“Yeah but he says you owe him anyway. Says since you didn’t put up the full up front there’s a tax.”

There is such a thing as being too sore of a loser. My bookie was definitely that guy. Here he’d sent this kid to do the lifting on what was obviously a shakedown, only I didn’t know why. My only guess was too many of the bets he laid out came back good for the other guy and he wasn’t willing to pay his end. Also bad business for a bookie. Out loud I said, “Bad business for a bookie to cut on his bets.”

Not-Larry frowned. He held a small pistol at his hip, thinking it would motivate me. It didn’t. By the time he brought that thing up I’d have the knife hilt deep in his chest. Then I’d have another set of problems. I started thinking that maybe that was my bookie’s play all along.

It didn’t come to that. Not-Larry said, “I leave and go back without you, I get yelled at. You wanna know what you get?”

“Another visit?”

He nodded and smiled and stepped away from the door. I closed it and like that he was gone. I sighed. I needed to be gone too then. All gangers like that needed was a reason to cause a problem. It was cheaper to cause a problem than to pay out on a bet–especially one as large as I laid down. See, I was confidant the Giants would win. So much so that I’d leveraged that months rent against the possibility of three. Big payout if it happened.

I sighed and started getting dressed. I had two choices this evening. Find somewhere safe to sleep, or go find my bookie and put an end to this proper like. I knew exactly what the right choice was, but I decided to go the other way.

I still wasn’t sure of the logistics of a snake having a kid. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I believed it was her kid. The thing about running is that it is a need to know environment. The Johnson always tells you what they think you need to know, never mind if what they tell you is a flat out lie. For them it is not a question of truth but one of ease and convenience.

There wasn’t any food in my apartment, at least not anything I could eat. The trideo still wasn’t working so the best I could do was ride my commlink into the matrix and find a postgame feed to let me know if I owed money or was due some. Lucky day. My team won. Pyrrhic victory though, the reports suggested our QB might be out for the rest of the season. I diverted from that disappointment down the long rabbit hole to figuring out who this person was I would be protecting.

Peter Choi was not a Naga. By all accounts Choi was a plain human with no evidence or history of magical ability. He was originally from Singapore, which made sense. Singapore was one of the places that accepted Naga as citizens, so if he was adopted it would mean that Ms. Johnson was a citizen of somewhere.

I jacked out when my proximity detector informed me that someone was ringing my doorbell. That didn’t make sense. I didn’t have a single neighbor who liked me enough to say hello. That meant whomever it was wasn’t from the building. That was also a problem, because nobody else was supposed to know where I lived.

It is strange to exist in an environment that at once strives on mediocrity and in fact enforces it, while at the same time heralds those who are extremely successful at any one thing. My grand parents used to use words like multi-faceted. My parents leaned towards words like specialized. I prefer niche, which is a way to say that there are a couple of things I don’t suck at. One of them is finding people. The other, apparently, is keeping them safe.

I was never good at the other side of that situation—the political and performative side where it’s less about talent and more about what you look like and how you act when you’re doing a thing. That lack of performative ability is what got me drummed out of the corps. It’s also what keeps me employed in the shadows.

The people who hire cut rate detectives are generally the ones who need a thing done right and not a thing done in the right way. That is where I come in. Unfortunately, this client was putting me in a space where those worlds would inevitably collide. According to my research her kid already had a security detail. Likewise, the cyberclinic was topline. Their security was solid from the matrix down to the doorman. It raised an important question. What was she so worried about.

Perhaps the better question was who?

Some Thoughts:

1. Off today. I’m experiencing one of those terrifying moments when it seems like the brain isn’t working, the people around you are pitying you, and you yourself are slowly descending into a sort of madness. Perhaps I’m the only one who goes through that.
2. Or, I might just be feeling my crazy actually blossom.

Greenpoint is a bit of a shithole. In spite of the shoreline location the neighborhood cannot seem to figure itself out. The closer you get to the shore, the more likely you are to find nicer apartments and stores. Worse people though. Once when I was still going to school, I tried to make the case that the quantity of terrible people increases in inverse proportion to the wealth of the area. That argument didn’t fly too well in the private school I was bussed to everyday. After a while they stopped bussing me–exceptional talent or not. That was fine. It was better to be around the people who made me feel safe. I’d rather be beat up for being smart than poor. At least when you fight back for being smart they respect you afterwards.

I pulled up my collar and shoved my hands deep into my pocket. Walking the eleven blocks from the train to my crappy third story wasn’t fun during a cold snap. New York was in the midsts of the freakiest weather she’d seen in decades. The folks at Columbia though it was tied to magical phenomenon, likely off shore and blowing the strange weather towards us. I just thought it was hard to keep up. One day it would fall to single digits, the next it was mid 70s and humid. It brought a twisted new meaning to in like a lion and out like a lamb. Apparently the lion and the lamb were chasing each other in circles now.

As I walked I thought about the job. Naga Johnson needed me to get into the place where her kid was being worked on and make sure he was safe. The way she had it set up was to get me on the list as a patient there, so I would be allowed into the clinic at the same time he was getting his work done. Why me? Well, it had to be the eyes.

Some Thoughts:

1. I did not get to finish the last chapter due to time constraints, so 4 here is really just an extension. in fact, the so-called chapter numbers are more akin to the time spent. day 4 vs chapter, etc…

I knew intellectually that astral projection was a thing, but seeing it up close was as different as knowing football existed and being in the huddle with the quarterback spitting out a barely intelligible string of coded commands and then expecting you to line up properly and execute.

I was still reeling an hour later.

The short version goes like this: Naga woman wanted me to protect her child who was in town to have some sort of cyberware implanted. Her child was apparently not the same as mom. As I understand it magic and tech don’t really mix on the physical level. The more tech one has in their body, the less likely they are to have or be able to effectively manipulate magic. I’m giving you the short version, because she gave me the short version. They always give the short version. As I road the train home from this impromptu meeting I was trying to figure out what the long version actually was.

The son was named Peter Choi. The name was easy to find, thanks to the specific SIN information she included in the data dump that was waiting for me on my comm. Choi worked for SeaFlower Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of Evo, one of the 10 largest megacorps in the world. I had the clear feeling that she did not work for Evo herself, most of that feeling coming from the fact that this was being done outside of corporate channels. If she worked for Evo she could’ve settled the issue with a phone call. Instead I was being brought in to observe the situation and make sure nothing went wrong with the situation. That part alone made me nervous for a couple of reasons. The first being that she thought something might go wrong. The second being that she couldn’t officially get me appended to Choi’s security team.

The G train stopped at Greenpoint. I stood up and exited the train.

Some Thoughts:

1. The hardest part of, well, anything, is getting on a good page with it.

There aren’t a lot of places you can meet and avoid being seen doing it. Surveillance is a basic service New York provides, along with clean water, and generally decent sewage and garbage pickup. Still, there are places you can go when you don’t want to be seen. One that gets overlooked is buildings scheduled for demolition. Obviously there’s a ticking clock on this one, but 5:17 on a Sunday afternoon gave me plenty of time to talk to whomever it was that snatched me out of that bar.

My first thought was to say thank you. I worked the whole thing up in my mind. I would say, ‘you got my hoop out of a possibly dangerous situation, so what kind of madness to you think I owe you for it?’ I made a point to lean against the crumbling wall of the lowrise apartment building. The two guards had deposited me on the 16th floor. we walked up. The power was out so the elevator was out as well. When the Johnson arrived I planned to compliment them on how good of shape they were in to pick the spot and then launch into my statement. It was better if I did it while leaning. I looked cooler in the long coat that way.

When the Johnson did arrive, all I thought to say was, “Oh.”

She wasn’t human; hell, she wasn’t even entirely there. The thing that materialized out of thin air had the long scaly body of a serpent. She circled around me once, studying me like I was a prey animal. Maybe I was. My experience with the supernatural is limited to the one time I slept with a mage and there were actual fireworks at the end. I don’t know what magical beings think, feel, or even eat. I was just hoping it wasn’t me.

She said, “I need your help. I need you to protect something very important to me.”

Overtime.

The Brooklyn Giants needed to get ten yards in four downs to avoid overtime. Of course they didn’t make it. If they made it then their porous defense wouldn’t have given up those seven points. If they made it I’d win that bet. But that isn’t what happened. Miller ran right up the seam and put seven more on the board, so here I was sitting at Tony’s bar not a mile away from the stadium and wondering if I could get to the exits before one of Tung’s big boys noticed I was trying to slip away.

Tony’s was emptier than I hoped on a Sunday afternoon. There were the regular day drinkers who didn’t care if there was a game going on or not. Usually you get your fair mix of fans coming around this time of year, even in a neighborhood like this. I mile away from the stadium is still close enough to see the thing, and close enough to feel like you’re part of the action.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t that kind of game. Nobody cared if the Giants lost to the LA Juggernauts. Nobody except for me that is. I had two hundred on the Giants winning. I only had 100 on my credstick. I was checking the exits again, trying to see which of the triad goons were focused on the doors and which were eyeballing the handful of people who had money riding on this thing when the front doors burst open. Everyone turned. You don’t crash into a bar like a cop unless you are a cop or something worse. I ought to know. I was a cop for about two years before I wasn’t.

The two men who came through the door were something worse. One was a blonde. The other was dark skinned like me, but not like me. They were vat-big, muscles showing under too tight suits. They wore sunglasses that they didn’t take off indoors and hard expressions that spoke of a corporate military upbringing. That all would’ve been fine if they were both staring right at me.

The dark-skinned one said, “Tojiro Mako. You need to come with us.”

The upside? At least Tung and his goons wouldn’t be beating me down today if I lost that bet.

Some Thoughts:

1. Since it is waiver Wednesday I decided to start this story with a sports moment. It also helped define the character a bit more in my head. Tojiro is coming together on the fly.
2. If anyone who reads this is an artist, hit me up at fastdos@gmail.com. I’m interested in getting a pic of this character.

So, I decided to have my partner roll out the specifics for this novel. I’m using Rory’s story dice as well as the random run generator from the SR6 sourcebook. She came up with some funky stuff and I am excited to see how this plays out.

The Details:

The runners go to a meet at a warehouse, loading dock, or other underused location for their next job. They are hired by a megacorporation for a protection job, targeting a bioengineered lifeform. The run gets complicated when security is unexpectedly high.

Elements to incorporate:

>> Hand
>> World
>> Arrow
>> Fountain
>> Bridge
>> Lock
>> Mask/alien face
>> Parachute
>> Weird technological device

I’m excited about this. The plan is to have one main protagonist–possibly a mixed race dude named Tojiro. I could make him a detective type because this is truly starting to feel noir in nature. I like it. I have no idea what it is going to be or look like (or if Tojiro is even a dude name). I’m excited to do the dang thing.

Some Thoughts:

1. Looking forward to summer vacations.
2. Back to the office tomorrow for the first time in a long time. Yikes. been a while.

Finished that novel today. Rolling through the revision of the second half tomorrow. Feels good. Feels like I am ready for the next project–which is already cued up. In terms of the blog I will be working on the bloganovella or whatever it is I am making. I decided on using the random adventure generator (courtesy of Shadowrun) in conjunction with the story dice I’ve been using on occasion for friday work. I will not be adding the freewrite friday as part of the blog. I will try to do this as much as possible on the blog. It won’t always be everyday but it will be more days than it is not. Tomorrow I will be rolling out the plot. In terms of character development, I think I want to make this about a solo person. It may be a runner or it may be someone else in that world… Should be fun.

I’ve even figured out the bloganovella after. I’m going back to the realms of fantasy and I will be building a new world entirely in the blog. Big things are coming to the ten minute rule… Feels like it is getting back on a good page.

Some Thoughts:

1. I still find it hilarious that Shaquille O’Neal is both an Honorary Deputy Marshall and Miami cop. I mean, really?

I read a post on twitter the other day picking at Kamala Harris for posting a photo of herself this weekend and saying have a great weekend off. The anger was directed at her lack of deference to the military in her post and her apparent vanity at posting a picture of herself. My first thought was, wow, you people are really two-faced reachers who hold democrats to an entirely different set of standards. My second thought was, are you a politician? yes. Yes it was a politician who is deeply invested in the new right–the anger first initiative that seems wholly predicated on an unspoken principle of white supremacy. The poster was a cuban-American, which means he is a man who enjoyed a certain level of privilege from the moment his feet touched American soil. That is the quiet trick there, isn’t it? Cubans don’t have to worry about immigration. They just get in at the front of the line as soon as they get here–no matter how they came here. In fact, despite the fact that Cubans almost always arrive illegally, they are not treated with the callousness of other so-called illegals. That to me reeks of a double standard and highlights the highly selective nature of our systems.

In other words, this is a rant about people and philosophies constructed on principles that are less about the people and more about ‘some people’ and are masked behind loud anger and double standards. To wit, I wonder what would’ve happened in the million man march or any black lives matter sourced event decided to raid the capital building. There wouldn’t only be a commission, but laws would be passed to weaken the ability of such groups to gather.

We are a nation of fear and we are afraid of the things the media reinforces us to be afraid of. That is why a black man is seen as frightening, a muslim man is seen as suspect, and hispanic and latin American boys are viewed largely as gang members in training if not gang members outright.

This is a blog to call out Fox News. This is a blog to call out CNN. This is especially for the OANs of the world who prey on people who have no reason to be afraid of people not like them, but live entirely in fear of such folk.

Some Thoughts:

1. Sorry, just needed to get that out of my system. I watch this kind of stuff happen all the time and watch my kids, half of whom are black and asian, be indoctrinated to this style of thinking every single day they are not with me. I’m tired of it.