Case Logic

He picked up the briefcase with the new Sanao SimStim and released himself from the  mattress. His sense of smell was off, probably a verticle feed through the chip. He staggered momentarilly as if he were to lose consciousness, then stabalized. The case files stored on the Sendaio in his cranium flash before his eyes, the daily wakeup routine, along with some stiff coffee and a slap on the face. "News" the wall above the bed fades to black, then fades to the news channel. A female reporter with red hair and dark, brown eyes comes into picture. Her voice high pitched, almost annoying. "A new tragedy amongst the refuges has come to pass, with the death of Almond Revoir..." He shut it off. The news was useless anymore, things came to pass, they blabbed on about them for a few weeks, then they forgot about them, the people forgot about them. He dressed quickly, almost curtly, trying to seem to formal in his approach. "Lights" a soft warm glow fills the room, almost indirectional. He just made it to the door when the screen came on with a pale, perfect face. "Aspernik..." the deep male voice echoed throughout his apartment. "Yah, Beatrice?" "What happened in the construct last night, i thought you meant to do tests not kill an AI" Scratching the back of his head, Aspernik forces a smile to his lips. "Well, it attacked" and with that he was out the door. As Aspernik walked the choked streets of the sprawl, neon signs obliterating any open view of the television sky, he proceeded to splay the case files over his optic nerve. A simple hitachi device implanted in the optic nerve between his eye and brain hijack the signal and insert a  display in the users vision. The rain began again, hundreds of tattered umbrellas could be seen popping up, almost as of by whim of the weather itself. A cold realization ran down Asperniks spine. A draught of water, a simple drop in the middle of a sea of sand, his thoughts raced. A parallel of lines crossing his face, sirens in the distance. Mega-corp-owned cops hit up the sprawl. Any bust was a good bust, and most likely a drug bust. But they never found anything useful. The controversy over how a megacorp has seniority over the populace is one never challenged. Even the government bowed to the megacorps, almost a subsidiary. He entered the Childe Cafe on the corner of Western and Telsommetrics, the biz here thrived on the constant influx of undesirables. He would find his target here, or at least a good lead. Amongst the jumble of conversations, only one strikes his interest. The slowly rotating fans on the ceiling spun up clouds of smoke, the lights in the back of the bar smothered and distorted. He could make out the faces of the wannabe entreprenures in the table next to him, just barely, even with his optic enhancements. "I think im burned out, i want out, i want out soon." The younger man said, his eyes were pure quicksilver. A band of microsoft jacks on soft steel covered his right temple. "The streets are getting hot now, too many Lonestar. I want my cut, can you do it by thursday?" Aspernik glanced at the bar, he noticed the suit. Almost inconspicuous to the untrained eye, the muscular asian man sipped slowly at his drink. The placement of his head was key to him picking up the entire conversation, although he was barely visible through the haze and crowd. He knew it without closer examination, vat-grown, microsoft-learned, souless assasin, or spy. It didnt matter, either way this kid wasnt making it out of the sprawl alive. Dead case, time to move on. Aspernik picked up the bill, paid and left a tip. Walking out he noticed the asian man's glance cross him. He blinked in the haze to refocus his after-market lenses and the man was gone. A suit amidst a tuesday-night bar crowd, was never there at all. He drew a pack of yeheyuans, extracted one and lit it with his box of matches he got at the table. The beginning of a long night on the sprawl. He stepped out of the cafe back onto the littered streets. He could hear the sound of a semi-auto going off in the distance. Some short, shrill screams died out into sputters then ceased all together. "Meh, " Aspernik breathed, "maby a change of career will help me." He walked the streets for several hours, incase he was followed, the direct path would not be clear, unless his tracker knew the sprawl as well as he did, even then it was likely they got lost. His suspicion died away as he entered the flat, and climbed the 10-odd flights of steps to his apartment.On the doornob, a notice of eviction. Aspernik swore and entered, the place was torn up, the only things untouched were his equipment, safely packed in a DNA-encoded lockbox. "Fuck me, fuck this place." he grabbed the two heavy cases, and walked out without even looking back. After reaching the street and standing dumbfounded for several minutes, he decided to find the closest coffin and setup shop.
          A static enveloped Aspernik as he laid his head back into the rest. The trodes were placed on his forhead, and a single wire ran into a jack in his temple. The coffin tunneled away as the marker for his jack-point flashed before him. The "sky" was a haze of blackness and swirling tangling tendrils of static. This was the lower sprawl's net base. A schematic-looking view of the city was below him. Above him various red and black blocks and hazes could be seen.

                [ was never finished ]