Two months before killing themselves, the Heaven's Gate cultists bought a $3,600 computerized telescope to study the flying saucer they believed was shadowing the Hale-Bopp comet.

A week later they asked for their money back, complaining that the refrigerator-size telescope wasn't showing the UFO.

- Chicago Tribune

Soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GqVFa5GBA


Night City
August 30, 2045

In the City Medical Center, Daphne Copeland twists and turns in her bed, not quite able to shake the feeling that she's not alone, that something is hovering just outside the corner of her eyes, hunting, whispering, telling her something she just can't make out.  But if she stops listening, even for a moment, the panic sets in.  Then the tremors.  On a monitor, her parents watch their daughter struggle.  Her father grinds his teeth in frustration and fear that someone will use this moment to strike against him.  Her mother clasps her womb, feeling the dull ache that comes with a piece of her flesh in danger.  All Daphne wants is a data connection, the only thing that makes the void go away.  She just wants to Listen.

In her Heywood apartment, Pandora D'Angelo paces.  Holes decorate the walls, fist size chunks of drywall missing from the shitty light weight construction.  The table behind her is covered with pill bottles, whiskey bottles, and a large pistol that has been in her mouth twice today alone.  The solo can move but she can't work.  No way.  Not with the noise ringing in her ears.  It won't stop and the ripperdoc put her into a seizure when he tried to disconnect the work.  She knows addiction and this is it.  Chemical.  Psychological.  Cybernetic.  If she even sees a Listener she's going to find out what they did to her if she has to draw it on the wall with his brainstem.  For now, she's forced to Listen.

At the Aldecaldo camp, Emil Salerno refuses to leave his trailer.  Food has to be brought to him.  When his sister pulled the power on his net connection, he put a gun against her forehead and snarled something less than human.  That was the last time anyone tried to intervene directly.  His uncle has the IP address of the node he's connected to, but everything downstream is so heavily encrypted he can't make heads or tails of it.  Someone else will have to try to crack it.  Emil sits and stares at the walls.  Listening.

Ji-Hoon Kim tries to run his business.  His wife tells him not to.  His customers tell him they're glad he's back, but he doesn't know what to believe.  The world is full of liars, he just can't prove it.  But he knows it.  And the whispers tell him he's right.  At least, if they're speaking Korean they are.  There's wisdom in the madness, he just can't quite figure out what it is.  Every free moment he has is spent with noise canceling headphones strapped to his head, Listening.

------
At 2132, four agents ping simultaneously:

Conrad's Bodega
0130 Tonight
Contract Pending
   -Black Jasper 

Martin's agent emits a discreet alert tone, providing a merciful interruption of the night's study session.  Martin closes the battered management textbook, bookmarking his place with a sheaf of purloined quarterly reports from Orbital Air's aerodyne division, and reaches for the device.

Conrad's Bodega
0130 Tonight
Contract Pending
   -Black Jasper

"Huh," he remarks to no one in particular.  The textbook thumps onto the conapt's coffee table atop the pile of hardcopy detritus from last week's conference security gig.  Martin stands and wanders to the bedroom closet.  The meet is at Conrad's, and after midnight, so his mental style guide has a preset for this... and he has time to figure out a dinner selection and do laundry.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:10, Mon 10 May 2021.

Traveling via NTC requires a blend of humility and patience that Kenji finds difficult to muster. Not for the first time, he finds himself regretting the sale of his motorcycle, a transaction that he pursued only half-heartedly and exclusively out of financial necessity, his termination for cause from TTA precluding the receipt of any severance pay, and his drug addiction recently having entered its very expensive, grief-fueled terminal phase.

The long bus ride from Little China to Pacifica presents a panoramic cross-section of Night City society, skewing towards the lower echelons, the top tiers only hinted at by their complete absence of representation among the bus's passengers. At this hour, most of Kenji's fellow riders consist of construction workers and overnight office cleaning crews on their way to work in the government district, or minimum-wage service industry workers on their way home to the overpacked suburbs of Rancho Coronado and Santo Domingo. The clientele thins out a bit and takes on a slightly more well-scrubbed, aspirational appearance as the route approaches the shiny-new corpo retreat of Pacifica.

Conrad's Bodega is located off the freeway in the interstice between low-rent Heywood and the ballooning real-estate prices of Pacifica Playground. As Kenji exits the bus, bass hits from MetalStorm's industrial sound system, located several blocks to the east, beneath the southern ramp of the Southbay bridge, throb against his chest. He checks his Skinwatch. NTC service is called many things, but on-time is seldom one of them. According to the bus schedule, he should have had at least 15 minutes to travel the final block to Conrad's. He's got one.

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This message was last edited by the player at 15:04, Mon 10 May 2021.