How To Live as a Cyberpunk Solver

49. service

The wind in Junk Town was bitter and sharp.

Grinding a rubber tire on asphalt, setting it on fire, and fanning it with rotten eggs was roughly the same. It was normal if the imagination didn’t go well. Because it smells unimaginable.

“This is the exchange rate for gold! You’re home!”

“…It’s a golden homecoming. Still, the exchange rate is a bit novel.”

Max was in a good mood. Because Leonard opened an account in Max’s name and put 20 credits into it.

It’s hard to realize how much the fixer earns and spends, but 20 credits was a pretty big amount by Junk Town standards. If you buy an energy bar, you can eat it for ten days, and if you add a few trash, you can buy a pipe gun.

“Shall we buy something to eat? Shall I buy clothes? oh! It’s a rat!”

“Do you have any plans to save money?

The old gentleman of the Big History Foundation was satisfied with the clean work and sent 20,000 credits the same day. Jake, the “intermediary” with tight corporate connections, paid 13,000 credits excluding commissions, etc., with his mouth torn apart.

When the money came in, my breath was relieved. I understood that the daughter-in-law solver was only in charge of corporate requests. The hotel bill is 292,000 credits, but at the current rate it will take less than three years. I had time to catch my breath.

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Junk Town Market was dirty and smelly but fun. Wherever a person could set foot, there were street vendors. Whether business went well or not, there were various things to see. There were restaurants that sold rats, snakes, and worms on skewers, hardware stores that put bolts, nuts, screws, and hinges in boxes and sold them by weight, and general stores that sold baseball bats, steel pipes, and pocket knives that were hand-cut.

“Who are these, the 9th floor Walker brothers?”

Among those shops, there was a familiar merchant. It was on the 8th floor of 11-1 Street.

“How is your business?”

“Ha ha ha! As you can see, they only fly!”

Leonard and Max casually entered the shop and looked for a chair. It’s a temporary building, but it had a ceiling and walls to block the rain and wind, and it was good to take a break because there was a fan and a warm fan.

“How much do you pay for this?”

Max pointed to an unidentified canned food on the shelf. It was obviously made in the old days. It was unrecognizable because the wrapping paper was worn out.

“The ones over there are a bit expensive.”

“Ahem! A lot of that credit!”

Max took out a cell phone from 10 years ago and showed it. The number 20 was embedded in the account. Usually, money is transferred and withdrawn with a brain chip, but Max, who is still in the Paleolithic era, had to pay with an external device.

“Oh, little walker, now I see you’re rich?”

“I received a fair price for my labor.”

“There is a thief-like hacker next to you, so be careful.”

“The credit the thief gave me.”

Max picked out some canned food for 4 or 5 credits each. I couldn’t eat cyborg food, including energy bars, so I spent a lot of money on food.

Leonard sat with his arms crossed like a shopkeeper and watched the street. There are some enthusiastic merchants who solicit customers, but most of them fanned it with a bored face or looked for pirate broadcasts on a simple TV. Also, there were not many guests. There were more backstreet scavengers picking up trash than Junk Town residents bringing credits.

“Is the market a bit empty?”

The spatula who was serving canned food in a paper bag scratched her chin.

“Gangs shoot every day, public security officers come and do things when they are bored, and now they even install psycho cyborgs, so why not?”

“Apart from the front and back, why is the public security? Since when have you been interested in the Junk Town market?”

“Oh, that’s a bit…”

The spatula chin stuttered in an unremarkable way. Leonard’s eyes narrowed. Even if he looked stupid, he was a veteran with war experience and a career as a solver.

“It’s fine if you don’t know. Whether this market goes bankrupt or not is none of my business.”

“You’re talking harshly.”

“Max, let’s go.”

“Oh, wait a minute. This looks delicious too…”

“They are over 30 years old. Stop buying it if you don’t want diarrhea.”

As a service, Jugeotteok prepared a canned food that looked ‘delicious’. Max nodded and followed Leonard, who had left first. The service effect came right away.

“I think Mr. Jugeokteok is really nice. Is it because you don’t look like people these days?”

It was true that giving a child something to eat would increase his liking. Leonard advised with the wisdom of an adult.

“Don’t trust people too much.”

“Are you a protruding chin?”

“Including the protruding chin. Don’t trust anyone.”

Leonard stopped as the cannery moved away. Max put his nose in his back and looked up. Leonard took out a piece of candy and bit it.

“Everyone has a secret. Especially for a scavenger who lives in a shithole like this.”

“It’s my hometown, but it’s a little poop…”

Leonard waited patiently. Max, who was short and had poor eyesight, could not be seen, but Leonard, who had a high-end implant eye-hexagon module, was peering into the cannery store several tens of meters away. Contrary to the complaints that business was not working, there were many customers in the store.

“Is Paris a bit big?”

No, it’s not buying canned food, it seems that the business is not working. There was also the familiar implant giant fly. It was a giant cyborg who followed Mr. B of the Liberation Front.

@

As I said earlier, Leonard was a veteran.

From the time the terrorist went to and from the office, he guessed that there was an assistant nearby. Among them, the prime suspect was the protruding jaw.

“I don’t know if it’s natural or set up, but if you’re far away, it’s not strange to meddling here and there.”

It was also suspicious that he had connections in 50,000 places while selling canned food in a corner of the market. Of course, it was today that I became convinced.

“Mr. Jugeokteok is a terrorist? The Liberation Front?”

Max made a shocked expression.

“Your name is so corny! What is the Liberation Front? Rather call it the Eastern Front!”

“Are you concerned about that? I agree, but…”

The joke was cut short. Max hugged the paper bag and rolled his eyes.

“Are you going to inform the police?”

“why me? Who do you like?”

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Just as the public security hated the solver, the solver hated the public security. It would be difficult to lose money if the company really went bankrupt, but there was nothing to worry about because the megacorps that dominated the ground couldn’t be ruined by a single terrorist organization.

“Just know, don’t pretend to know.”

“How are you?”

“Fixer rule number eight. Don’t be fooled by uncredited work.”

It’s been a while since the rules came out. Max pursed his lips.

“Are you going to tip when the credits roll?”

“I’ll think about it when the bounty is around 10,000 credits.”

“A person without blood or tears.”

“The implant ratio is high, so there is little body fluid.”

Leonard and Max continued shopping. Young Max got into a fight with a passing scavenger because he couldn’t concentrate, but he solved it by pretending to be a mistake and showing his gun. Again, the gun was synonymous with kindness.

“I’m out of my pocket money.”

“I am not.”

“It would be nice to be rich.”

Leonard glanced at Max, who was full of luggage, and headed somewhere. It was at the end of 12th Street in terms of the administrative district. It was a place that Max, who was born and raised in the area, had never been to.

Passing through an alley without a signboard and going down the underground stairs, I smelled a familiar smell. It was the smell of strong oil.

“Is there a gunsmith in a place like this?”

Max looked around curiously. It wasn’t a normal business place like the street vendors above.

“Ms. Layla must be sad.”

“You go there often.”

“I’m going to say that I’m cheating on you.”

Leonard didn’t come up with a fixer rule.

“There are things you can only buy here.”

I knocked on the iron door at the end of the basement. After a while, the side door opened and a man with a prosthetic eye poked his head out.

“Leonard Walker? What is the kid next to you?”

“I’m scared.”

“If possible, introduce yourself as an assistant.”

The artificial eye man rolled his eyes and closed the side door. There was a clunk – clack – and the iron door opened completely.

“come in.”

Leonard patted the prosthetic man on the shoulder and went down to the basement. When I entered the room, there was a strong smell of oil. Someone spoke from the other side of the darkness.

“Aren’t you our regular? I thought it was closed these days because I hadn’t been in business.”

“I have been a bit busy.”

“Is the kid next to your son?”

“If you say that one more time, you will regret it.”

As the lights came on, the bearded old man shook his bottle. Max, who does not have a scanning function in his eyes, showed more interest in the bottle than the implant. It was ‘real’ whiskey made from grain, not for cyborgs diluted with industrial ethanol.

“wow! Real rich!”

“Don’t be fooled. Only sickness is real.”

As if he was right, he took a cheap drink next to him and put it in a bottle. Kim is missing. Well, a real heavy drinker would live in a high-rise villa in Whitetown and not hide out in the basement of Junktown.

“Still, it’s important that the disease is real.”

“uh? Is that so? Where can I get something like that?”

The answer was the same reason Leonard came here.

“Underground city. That inspiration smuggler.”

@

Today was a day associated with crime. It’s been like that ever since I pretended not to see the terrorists.

“Smuggling?”

Transactions with underground cities are not legally blocked, but they are strictly controlled at the federal government level, and huge fees of up to 1,200% are required. Even if you buy a 100 credit toy, you have to pay a 1,200 credit fee, so ordinary citizens did not even dare to trade.

“Where do you think the Gun & Guns guns you use came from?”

“Ah…! okay! I was already a criminal!”

The self-blame didn’t last long. Unlike others, he had no intention of obeying the law, and it was unclear whether buying contraband was a crime. The laws of the New Human Federation were not very meticulous. And my worries flew away from the things that inspiration showed me.

“It is the ’79 model ‘Air Force’ of Gun & Guns. Using the old Webley design as it is, only the material was changed to titanium while satisfying the 20th century sensibility. It’s the same set as the ‘Army’ I’m using now, so I won’t need to adapt.”

Like an old gunslinger, Leonard rolled one forward and one backward, then removed the cylinder and inspected the barrel. The old man laughed grimly.

“Isn’t it a funny title to be an air force in an underground city?”

“If you think about it that way, the army is also strange.”

Leonard bounced the ball a couple of times and was satisfied. Overall, it was lighter than the ‘Army’ revolver. The old man emptied his bottle and flicked his finger.

“3,200 credits.”

“what? Didn’t you get 1,000 credits higher than last time?”

“The game is not good these days. My kids have been hurt a lot too.”

“Then let’s do nothing.”

Leonard put down the revolver without hesitation. There weren’t many customers who would buy Underground City weapons in Junk Town. The guts worked. Inspiration stumbled.

“Well, with a temper… don’t you know how to bargain?”

“Where are you going?”

“Three thousand cres…”

“You did a good job watching. Let’s go, Max.”

“Two thousand and five hundred! No, for 2,000 credits! This is original price!”

Leonard grabbed the revolver with a smile. But the smuggler’s inspiration wasn’t easy either. He quickly covered Leonard’s hand.

“But, please listen to this one request. The service duduk will take care of it.”

Rejection wasn’t easy. The Walkers seemed weak in service.