“Huh?” Ken took in his surroundings.
He was laying on a stool somewhere.
Aside from slight numbness, the sensation of his left hand mostly returned. He did try to fix it by twisting left and right, up and down, did that work?
Where was he anyway? Only questions filled his mind.
A mountain of meat suddenly filled his vision.
It was the doctor, but with just a pant and apron Ken received the impression of meeting a butcher.
“Ken Martinez, I assume?” said meat mountain... err, the doctor. “The surgery was a success. She is stable now but hasn’t come to her senses yet. Of course, it might take a few nights to recover.”
“Huh?” Ken almost smiled, then the words settled. His lost eyes gradually gained life in them, “Can I see her?”
Maybe they had managed to save her after all!
This world was more advanced. Even replacing a heart was hardly worth mentioning.
“No can do,” the butcher’s shoulders shrugged, “It’s not included in your package, after all.”
“Right,” Ken accepted. If the doctor thought he had judged their financial level correctly, he was right.
However, he made one mistake.
“It’s fine, upgrade to a package that makes visitation possible.” Ken didn’t go overboard. Gloria just received her payment, it wasn’t impossible for them to pay.
Arasaka Academy could go to hell.
No, fuck every reason. It was worth everything if she was alive.
“Eh? Th-that would be hard–”
Ken interrupted, pointing at the black bag. “Is that mom’s stuff?”
“Y-yeah.” Ken operated his holo interface.
He received the bag from the doctor and inquired, “So, you are saying, mom’s surgery went without a problem.”
“Right, yes.”
“Then I would like to visit her, upgrade the package to one that allows visitation now.”
“No can do, kiddo. It doesn’t work like that.” The doctor defended like those in high-position do.
“How does it work then?” Ken’s gaze chilled. The brightness his eyes gathered had once again extinguished.
He had worked with a shady ripperdoc to sell extreme braindances to rich kids.
He was not especially learned when it came to street works. But Ken had picked a thing or two about how XBDs were made.
And corpses? They were one of them.
“She is in intensive care, cannot be visited.” The doctor’s voice remained still but the hand holding the screen visibly shook.
“It’s fine, I will just take a glance.”
“...”
Ken took a deep breath and made his holo screen visible to the doctor. “Just in case, let me tell you, I’ve been recording the conversation and it is one thought away from being sent to NCPD.”
NCPD stands for Night City Police Department. Like any world, they were always late when it mattered, but for this matter? It would be enough.
The doctor backed a step away, and panic became visible.
“Relax, what’s the big deal, choom? You wouldn’t be holding a dead body and asking payment for surgery, would you?” Ken spoke, relaxed and chill.
Almost casual.
And it frightened the doctor.
It was his mom they were talking about?! Why the hell did this kid look so nonchalant?
“Ok, I’m done waiting, I’ll send it ou–”
“Wait! I’m sorry, we can t-talk this over.” The doctor tried to close in and stop Ken.
Ken didn’t dodge the hand.
“Talk about what exactly? Are you admitting that you forged a fake surgery and medical report, on top of that you tried to scam the customer by admitting to perform a surgery on a dead...corpse.” His voice shook when he had to address her–address Gloria–as a corpse.
However, this made the stake become a lot higher.
If the former matter got reported to NCPD and investigated, at most it would be a fine.
This? Now, heh.
His medical license fell on the line, a fat fine, and years of imprisonment. And in Night City, that often meant only one thing.
In a matter of seconds, the doctor went from casual dismissal to sweaty mess.
Ken Martinez was a streetkid living in a garbage dump, but he was also the best student of Arasaka Academy–the publicly acknowledged number one academy in Night City–of his batch. He didn’t know every law, but if he thought calmly he could arrive at an accurate range of punishment.
And how Ken Martinez stood there without blood on his hand, even he didn’t know.
But one thing was for sure.
Cold fury spread further than hot anger.
“Take me to see her.”
“O-ok, but can I prepa–”
“Now.”
The doctor’s shoulder dropped, “Follow me.”
Ken kept his eyes open.
Gloria’s corpse was in an ICU room.
Not for her surgery, no.
The tools near were not such precision equipment. They were there to cut and never sew it back.
Tears uncontrollably flowed from Ken’s eyes.
Thankfully, thankfully he had persisted and followed his gut feeling.
Otherwise, even after death, Gloria might have been used by Night City. If taken a step further, they might even create XBD–no! Ken stopped himself from getting more emotional.
The tears blocked his views, and he didn’t want to end up in the operating table.
He touched her corpse. It had yet to run cold, more like room temperature.
Her heartbeat?
No sign.
“Prepare a proper, high-level funeral for her.” Ken turned to the doctor, “You will bear the cost, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes. Please let me.” The doctor practically begged. By now, his apron was soaking wet. His exposed back looked wet. “Leave everything to me, I will see to it myself.”
“Do I look like I trust a meat wagon like you that much? Do it, now.”
The doctor pushed the operating table to the cremation chamber. He glanced at Ken and operated the machine.
Ken watched from three meters away. The distance he kept from the start.
His vision zoomed on the screen. The doctor didn’t try anything funny. He packed a high-level package. Not the highest. That was too expensive.
Ken did not push.
The screen flashed and the machine moved immediately, pulling the body in.
[Reserving Crematorium]
[Contacting Herschel’s Crematorium]
[Spot Unavailable]
[Contacting Danner’s Crematorium]
[Cremation Spot Available]
[Contact Info Set (Ken Martinez)]
[Reservation Successful]
[Beginning Automatic Process]
[Confirm Payment]
It asked for 1200 eurodollars (eddies).
It would be cheaper by 300 eddies if Herschel’s was available.
Shaky, the doctor still paid without complaints.
[Payment Received]
[Beginning cleansing]
“Your address as the relative is already set. Danner’s Crematorium should contact you within 3 business days to inform you of the details.” The doctor informed Ken.
The latter didn’t move. He didn’t reply.
He just eyed the cremation chamber.
“I really don’t have any more authority with this anymore, please. I won’t be thinking of charging for the death certificate either.” The doctor begged.
Ken didn’t reply.
The cremation chamber beeped.
[Cleansing completed.]
[Drying.]
He couldn’t see anything, but the machine beeped and announced the progress.
Ken waited a total of 20 minutes and the burning finally started. Only then he turned to the doctor.
“Everything from here is automatic, even the hospital doesn’t have any authority to touch anymore. The contract with Danner’s is for 20 years,” still seeing no change in Ken’s gaze, the doctor frantically explained. “Of course, you can take the urn back or extend the contract by paying extra at that time.”
A part of Ken wanted to squeeze the doctor dry. He could get more benefits out of the latter.
However, the stronger part of him felt nauseated of even thinking of taking benefit from Gloria’s death.
‘It will make me look weaker if I don’t push him more!’ argued a part of him fiercely. After all, the doctor hadn't paid even a fraction of the fine he would have to.
He pointed at the bandage on his head and shot numbly, “Did you bandage this?”
“Eh? Y-yeah. Of co–”
“I don’t know how you got your license anyway.”
Ken walked out of the hospital in disgust. If he stood there even for an extra minute, he might really force money out of that shit.
The next thing he realized, Ken was already standing before his apartment door.
The way back was a complete blank to his head.
A big red [Access Denied - Rent Overdue] floated on the holographic screen.
A mocking smile forced on his lips. Was this the universe kicking him low?
He looked up at the vent and forced his way from there. Casually putting the black bag on the table, he moved to the bathroom and ran cold water at full force.
Ken had no idea what to do. He found everything in this world unfamiliar.
But he had lived his life here!
He hated blue corpos and loved edgerunners–whose everyday life was a step away from their gonk brain getting blasted from a bullet.
It was his dream to be an Edgerunner!
Yet, it didn’t feel like his.
It was so confusing and frustrating that he felt like churning his gut out.
Ken fought the irritation inside and avoided punching the mirror.
He checked his face.
Carefully this time.
There were double shard slots on both sides of his neck, just below his ears. He knew these were the slots from his basic cyberware.
His hand ran over his body. It was mostly organic, left for the Interface Plug and Chipware Socket.
But that wasn’t all.
He turned back. He had left the door open.
The other side of the window was barely visible. His vision flickered, now it looked really close. A 3x zoom, max capability of a basic cyberoptics.
Cyberoptics were a must in this world. It doubles for your communication device, like a whole digital device for your eyes.
A strange hollowness grew inside him.
No.
It was there for weeks now. It only grew larger and noticeable.
Noticeable that something was wrong. What though?
The answer didn’t come.
And it wasn’t the time to ponder. Being alone felt hopeless, however, he wasn’t without purpose.
Top of Arasaka Tower.
But the wish to be an edgerunner was even stronger.
He was on a tight budget with no idea what to do from now on.
Rent? Academy? Tuitions? Updates? Damage reparations? Living expenses? David had never thought of those issues, Gloria managed everything like–
“That’s right...” Ken’s breath stuck on his throat. “Why couldn’t I remember that name until now?”
Ken opened his holo student ID.
Ken Martinez
Age: 17
The face bore no resemblance for someone of Latino descent.
Ken searched through all the pictures he could find, digital, hard copies, everything.
Nothing looked out of place, nothing aside from his face and name.
Was he kidnapped by Serpo’s once again?
But the mistakes were too obvious for it to be their alien technology.
Not to mention, he had tried during the car accident, but Ken could no longer summon the powers of Turbo Granny.
“If I’m Ken Martinez, who is Takak–”
The water from the shower froze. Even Ken, and the world itself froze.
All the frustration, irritation, and hollowness stilled.
All matter suddenly stopped mattering.
No—not quite. They remained, only now as energy forms; the world of transparent, visible forms of energy in different spectrums.
A panel popped up.
Same with the world around it.
Transparent. Yet, it made him aware it was there.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Life
Singularity Record detected.
Uniquity surfaced.
Singularity Record - Current World;
Protected.
Singularity Record - Origin Universe;
Protected.
Singularity Record - Origin World;
Protected.
Warning.
Singularity Record - multiple worlds.
Concealing Singularity Records...
Complete.
Checking Singularity Record Access
Non-World Access Entity: None.
Ending Life Process...
Conflict.
Mysticism Erosion in Origin World Record.
Mysticism present in Singularity.
Searching Adaptable Singularity Survival Paths...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A transparent mask became visible.
Ken had seen the mask.
In the comicon.
Right, he went to one because there was also a big alien event. As he was checking for other events some disturbances led one thing to another, and he had picked up this mask.
What happened after that, he couldn’t quite recall.
But he did find himself in his room the next morning.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Life
Compatible authorities found.
Authority: Observer
Authority: Gaming
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ken understood none of it. He read them many times, but they didn’t change. When the words settled in him, the texts ceased to exist.
Everything vanished.
All that remained was the choice.
“Survival path and authority?”
Was he in danger? Then just observing won’t save him, would it?
But gaming?
What are authorities anyway? Either way, there was no explanation no matter what he tried.
He was never good at observing, but game? He had played quite a few.
Mostly alien and UFO games.
Between the two options, he was only familiar with the latter, so he chose that.
__________________________________
Life
Requesting Gaming Authority.
Life process complete.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
When Ken absorbed the meaning, the world resumed.
No, a simple glance at the window said it was already morning.
Checking the time, it was around 4 am. When he returned from the hospital, it was only past 11.
The world didn’t pause, only his perception got jumbled.
“Where’s the gaming authority? What does it do anyway?” everything felt like a dream and a mess, and if he already didn’t have enough, unknowns kept piling around him.
{Alternative Titles: Life; Anomaly; Concealed; The Hidden Record; The Wrong Name; Ghost; WHO AM I?;}