Two days had never felt so long to Ken.
The presence of gangs and corpos felt more prominent than ever.
Because Jackie and Viktor had emphasized their motive, it put him on an edge more than he would have liked to admit.
‘Sigh.’ Ken relaxed his shoulders. Even as he stepped inside Danner’s Crematorium, he had to avoid three groups of gangs.
Aisle G221
The aisle itself was the size of a person standing. Inside a wooden rack lay Gloria urn. When Ken stood before it, a full body screen rose featuring Gloria.
Ken stilled.
Gloria in the hologram had a smiling face, she was looking at her left. Ken had cut the other half of the picture. It was a picture of three years ago when he just got admitted to Arasaka High School.
He cropped it because it felt confusing, and nauseating.
Was he still David Martinez back then? Or Ken Martinez already?
He had no idea, nor could he figure it out. But one thing was for sure. In his impression, David didn’t always have this Japanese looking face. So all the pictures of him now looking to be the him of now–of mostly Ken and part David–always made him feel like he was denying a very part of his own existence.
“Sorry, mom. For being so late.” Ken said. The word ‘mom’ felt both painful and unfamiliar. Yet, the annoying thoughts slipped away. “For thinking of disturbing things. For... not being a good son. For failing to understand your pain. Your sacrifices...”
Tears spilled from his eyes. When Ken realized, he tried to hold them in.
“I’m sorry for being so awkward. Even though a man shouldn’t cry... not in front of their mother.”
He held onto his tears for dear life, but they... they just did not listen. He clenched his teeth but they shook. Like a dam broken, tears kept spilling from his eyes nonstop.
How he had refrained from bawling all this time, was a mystery in itself.
ALARM 04:30PM!
ALARM 04:30PM!
The alarm rang for a minute before Ken stopped it and stood up.
“I’ll visit again, mom.”
/ / /
Triling
“Welcome.” Misty greeted him immediately.
“We seem to encounter each other at the door too much.” Ken gave her a tired smile.
“Hmm, Ken, right... eh, are you alright?” Misty asked worriedly.
Ken maintained his smile and inquired, “Eh? What makes you ask that?”
Ken seriously thought for a moment. He might have cried. Ok, let’s admit, he cried, so what?
Even grown men cried. Anyway, the advantages of having artificial eyes meant they don’t turn red and expose men of their weaknesses.
To top it off, Ken had even washed his face to avoid being picked on by Jackie or Viktor. Truthfully, he felt better than ever.
“How do I say it, the noise around you feels... down, or would muted be a better fit?”
“Muted, I see, hm. Thank you.” Ken relaxed. “Is Viktor inside?”
“Yeah, right! What are you making Viktor do? I haven’t seen him that busy or troubled in a while.”
“Eh? Shouldn’t be related to me. I am just getting a bit bulkier, that’s all. See ya later then.” Ken nodded to himself and headed inside. Getting chromed with a Sandevistan did make him a tad bulkier.
Ken opened the door to Viktor’s underground clinic and immediately grimaced.
Just before the door sat a serious looking Jackie Welles. About him, how to put it, Ken found it hard to deal with this guy.
Two nights ago when he left Viktor’s clinic, the guy stopped him in Misty’s shop. Crossed his gorilla-like arms around Ken’s shoulder, and from Kid, Ken became brother. They exchanged holo and from then on, the guy called every few hours asking if he changed his mind.
Honestly, Ken might indeed have changed his mind in the last two days.
However, considering that even a well-doing Solo mercenary like him wanted this baddie so much, he scratched the idea long ago.
“Y-yo, brother Jackie.” Ken greeted as he passed by.
Jackie jumped out and grabbed both of Ken’s shoulders. “You. Really aren’t thinking of backing out? Your brains will turn into tofu, think again, hermano!”
Viktor punched Jackie’s head away and chided, “If you make another scene in my clinic, I’m throwing you out.”
“What’s Jackie doing here anyway?” Ken asked.
“Leave that gonk alone, apparently he mutters Sandy even in his dreams.” Viktor spewed harshly.
Jackie sighed in disappointment and left them with a message, “I’ll be with Misty, call me once you’re done...”
After that, Ken followed Viktor’s instruction to stretch his back and laid on his stomach on the operating bed.
“Try to relax your mind. You’ll only feel like you just had a deep sleep, the rest should be done in a jiffy.” Viktor put the spine in an antibiotic tank and explained the procedure to Ken as he himself also got ready.
“Thank god you are going to use anesthesia. I only saw Doc using anesthesia twice, what kind of surgeries require using anesthesia?”
“Huh?” Viktor gave Ken a pitying look. “Unless the patient has a pain editor or something, any invasive surgery requires local anesthesia to general anesthesia.”
“Fuck, that’s the same a normal hospitals.” Ken cursed. The academy only taught legal things, so he had thought operations like Doc’s without using anesthesia were normal at local ripperdocs. Even his leg reinforcement, though small, was done without any anesthesia.
‘That fucking garbage of a ripper...’ Ken felt his consciousness fading even before he finished the thought.
/ / /
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Downloaded 98.261%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
‘Huh? The gaming authority’s windows? Where am I anyway?’ Ken wondered. He was in a world of darkness.
As much as he was curious, the absolute lack of light made a foreboding creep settle on his heart. So he forced himself to focus on the screen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Downloaded 99.071%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The download speed was unusually fast.
Even this morning, it had only been around 78%.
According to his estimation, the download will only complete after he went to sleep tonight. Normally, 1% of downloading took a few hours to finish, but he realized that when he slept or daydreamed, the download speed became faster.
But this speed was absurd compared to anytime before.
‘Is anesthesia induced sleep counted as deeper form of slee–’
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Download Complete
Extracting...
Pack Information Detected.
Installing Gamer System
Type: Standalone/Self Core (Custom)
Permission Classification: Administrator
Authority: Starter Level–Lowest.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Hmm, whatever that meant, ok. At least you’re not throwing me errors.” Suddenly, Ken remembered about the operation. “Damn, Vik’s operating on me, I just hope that this won’t create any problem.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Installing 0.003%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Oh, if it follows this speed, then it shouldn’t be a problem!” Ken let out a sigh of relief.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Installing 3.123%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“...” Ken deadpanned, ‘I’ll just keep my mouth shut...’
The speed of installation was not linear, sometimes it jumped by a few percent, most often it moved at 0.002 percent per second.
With nothing to do, Ken focused on something.
Even trying to look at the outside darkness chilled him to the core, like a resistance from inside himself. However, focusing on his own body shouldn’t be a problem.
His hand, no, his body looked transparent. Not the bluish transparent neon of Night City, but more of a clear transparent given form.
Touching his head, there was no hair.
“Is this what they call spirit body or soul?”
As he was checking whether his little brother and family jewel was still there, Ken noticed tiny things crawling around him. No, they expanded. Slowly but sometimes rather blindingly fast.
Suddenly, Ken noticed something that didn’t exist here before.
A transparent mask.
The same mask that appeared before Ken on both worlds. Different from his transparency, it was glittering transparent. Same as it looked in the physical world.
Unlike how it appeared last time, it did not have the half black part now.
‘Should I touch it?’ Ken hesitated.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Installation Complete.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Eh, already?!”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Lowest Level Gaming Administrator
Deploying Administrator Authorities...
Using the Authority of Independent Administrator to request connection with the world.
Changelog:
Physical Authority: Gaming Body Lv. Max has been replaced by Astral Body Lv. 1
Mental Authority: Gaming Mind Lv. Max has been replaced by Astral Psyche Lv. 1
Please Note: Physical Authority and Mental Authority has been replaced by your sponsor.
Please Note: Lack of Gaming Body / Gaming Mind may cause error with other Admin Authorities.
Installation Complete.
System Deployment Successful.
Changelog explanation complete.
Sys.AI’s role has ended.
Sys.AI ceasing operation.
Decommission process started.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Wait, wait. There was an artificial intelligence, why are you decommissioning?? At least help me get used to the system!”
“Hey, System?”
“Sys.AI are you there?”
However, no matter how much Ken tried, it never replied.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Manually Placed Cyberware Detected.
Kiroshi Optics Mk.1
Would you like to mount it?
▶ Yes / No
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
‘Kiroshi? Aren’t those the best commercial optics available on the market?’ Ken knew of it very well.
Last time he checked, the Mk.1, commercially sold, was 1700 euro dollars.
What he originally had was a pair of basic optics from a no-name brand called BudgetWares.
‘The AI, it is really gone, I guess. If I had someone or something to help me with that would have been great...’ Ken shook himself away from those thoughts and said “yes.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mounted: Kiroshi Optics Mk.1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Immediately after, another box popped up.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
World Connection Successful!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“What does connecting with the world even mean? Just keep it in mind, Ken, just keep it in.” Helpless Ken moved onto the next window that appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Admin Authority: Gaming Immersion
Detected Local Game
Loadable Framework Found
Loading Local Framework
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Err, do I get options to choose?” Ken asked with some hope of explanation.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RED Framework
Load Successful!
New Profile Created!
Check Profile?
▶ Yes / No
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Great, now you ask?” Ken grumpily moved on, “Yes.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
YOU ARE GAMING!
GAMING SUPREMACY
DOMINANCE ASSERTED.
SUPREMACY ELEMENT: ERROR/GAMER’S BODY NOT FOUND!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A screen popped up and abruptly stopped, before frizzling away in the next moment.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ken Martinez
Level: 0/99
Body: 4
Reflexes: 4
Intelligence: 6
Technical Ability: 5
Cool: 3
Cyberware
Street Cred: Unknown
Reputation: Unknown
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The screen background changed.
Compared to the cool looking clear ice-blue screen, it now looked like a gradient between red and black with occasional bleeding sparks.
‘Oh, now that looks like...’ something straight out of a game.
“Any explanation for the attributes?” Ken asked, not hoping for an answer anymore. The other screen closed too soon for him to contemplate but the words remained in him.
The screen answered with something else.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Detecting Cyberware...
Unnamed Sandevistan
Cyberware Quality:
Legendary+/Iconic
Would you like to mount it?
▶ Yes / No
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Oh, Sandevistan! Yes! Eh, a quality section? Legendary grade? What does Iconic mean–Wait wait...”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mounting...
Mounted: Unnamed Sandevistan
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ken let out a sigh of relief as he felt nothing different.
Then he tried to make sense of what happened this whole time.
“Hm, so let me get this straight. I have this [Gaming Authority] given by life’s survival protocol. Let’s think that I am in deep shit and have to survive.
“Now, I’m a lowest level gaming administrator, which has other authority. It found some red framework and loaded, the screen became red from blue. Does it just change the color of the screen? But then the cyberware quality also became visible... most likely due to the RED framework? Or just because my Sandevistan is that preem?”
Ken tried to understand and digest the information as much as possible.
Too many unknowns and too many mysteries surrounded his life.
“Are you the cause of all these...?” Ken looked at the mask. It was there, not floating up and down like him. Like space was a hard matter for it, and it hung onto a wall.
‘Hmm, I guess you won’t answer.’ Ken moved away from it.
“Profile?”
It popped up once again
Ken gave it once over before focusing on the Cyberware. Even without words, a new screen popped up.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Cyberware
Neural System
• Heavy-Duty Neuroport
• Unnamed Sandevistan
Ocular System
• Kiroshi Optics Mk.1
Hands
• Interface Plugs
Neural Interface
• Chipware Socket
Legs
• Basic Ankle Reinforcement
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ken tapped on the specific cyberwares hoping for some information about the quality section, but they never budged. Neither saying it out loud, nor his thoughts moved the screen.
Defeated, Ken went back to the profile section.
‘The attributes... Eh...?’his vision swam.
{Alternate Titles: YOU ARE GAMING!; Gaming Administrator; Initialized; Local Game: RED; RED Framework, Just a skin?; More Errors; 101; Finally system drops; The First Framework; Ghost in the Framework; Connection Established; Standalone; Boot Sequence;}