Day: June 5, 2021

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.