The Beast’s Ledger – Part 1 – A Cyber Punk Short Story

J-Red stood in front of the seven headed beast. Every black scale on the seven long necks stood out with perfect precision, which was an improvement over last month when he first found it. The mouths on the long snouts held rows of sharp white teeth that were stained yellow near the gum. The clarity made it easier to avoid the beast’s attacks. He hoped this new resolution would keep him from dying too much this time around.
The bright blue laser shield buzzed in front of him, spider web arms connected the plasma defense to the bracer on his right forearm arm. He held Draco VonDumket’s Saber of Light in his left hand. Its plasma blade threw neon green light onto the beast’s three remaining legs and cauterized stub of a tail. J-Red had defeated VonDumket months ago, earning the sword. For some reason it was the only weapon that could tame this dreaded beast.
The beast perched on the old magnetic monorail track that was lowered below the brown tiled floor that J-Red stood on. The shattered glass windows, stained with dirt, made an ineffective roof. Rain came through forming rivers in the grout and pooling in slick where tiles were missing.
I-beam pillars that once held balconies up were bent from the monster’s claws, causing the higher levels to slope downward. The beast’s lair was once a train station but this world had gone to ruin and places like this ran amuck with nasty creatures.
A month ago, when J-Red first explored this area, the lair looked like a cave. That was before the generation was complete. The pillars were blurry stalactites and the roof was an opaque dirty brown. The train station was a nice improvement and J-Red was glad to see the AI that ran this game trying new things. Even if the logistics of a train station this far away from the nearest town strained the in-game logic.
Blue plasma armor, that matched his shield, covered his chest and legs. It’d taken some hits from the beast and the battery was low. At the edge of his vision, where a microfiber screen would be if he wasn’t in the game, a stream of messages came through. Some were encouraging, others were encouraging him to be more optimal in his attacks.
His audience was growing. Battles with the Baltimore Beast, named after some of the words found in the simulated train station, were popular this month. No one was interested when J-Red first explored this area. But enough players had explored this area that the AI generated resolution, and eventually Ki-El fought it in a highly dramatized manner, as was his style, that the scene became popular through the valley.

J-Red had done his best to this point to add drama to the battle. He’d chosen the wrong sword for the fight, which is why the beast had 7 heads instead of the original 2. He’d let his battery and his health go low. The audience size was large enough to give him a good number of credits from his supervisor, Watchet.
Which is why he wanted to investigate the smell that’d been lingering around for the past few minutes. Every time he fought near an arched hallway he smelled hot-dogs. Those were a delicacy of a food, and J-Red’s health was low. Killing the monster would maintain his views, but once he finished most people would drop for the night. Dozens of gamers had already streamed that beast’s death. J-Red wanted to do something original, or at least interesting to him.
J-Red cast a doppelgänger spell to distract the monster. A mirrored version of J-Red stood in front of the beast, ineffectively swinging the sword and doing its best to dodge its strikes. The beast caught clone’s coat tails but failed to grasp anything of substance. An intelligent foe would notice the illusion immediately. The beast wouldn’t notice until its gullet failed to swallow the doppelgänger.
J-Red wandered past plastic signs with illegible advertisements for products he couldn’t access this world and couldn’t afford in Galleria Valley. He followed the smell of hot dogs down a stone arched hallway while the beast crashed against walls trying to catch the decoy.
The hallways of the train station were still underdeveloped. As he walked through the blurry stone arches storefronts began to reveal themselves between gaps in the arch supports. The contents advertised in the window were fuzzy around the edges and the AI that ran the game would only resolve them if he investigated them further. It mostly looked like clothing or electronics, both of which would be withered by time in this post apocalyptic world.
He found a room filled with tables, they didn’t look particularly stable. Sitting on them seemed as effective as trying to sit on the clouds above the Valley. Smells came from different stands that were littered around the wall. Some smells were rotten, others were pungent with earthy spices like the rat vendors at the bottom of the Valley.
The silhouette of a person stood behind a number of them and J-Red approached the one that tickled his olfactory sensors.
Echos still came from the battle that was raging at the other end of the stone arch hallway. The chat in the corner of his vision was livid with comments as the numbers dropped. But he noticed a few true fans encouraging him to crawl behind the counter and push against the game’s limits. He smiled as he greeted the person at the counter.
“Want meat-sleeve, do ya?” the NPC said. She’d resolved into a female figure, her clothes and hair were loose and wavy but didn’t have the fine detail of individual hairs or woven fabric.
Her dialogue was limited and the language was broken. Her intelligence would increase the more J-Red or other players interacted with her. But for now she knew enough to give him what he wanted.
“Two please,” J-Red planned to store one for later.
She pulled some crusty buns out of a metal box, if it was a steamer it was broken by time long ago. Some murky water held the “meat-sleeves“ and J-Red wondered if the apocalypse had made the water that way or if that was authentic to the dish.
The NPC wrapped them in foil and handed them to J-Red. He gave her a few coins, and noticed his purse was running low. Art did always seem to imitate life. The coins materialized into her pockets. J-Red began materializing the dog into his mouth.
The taste was remarkable. It was simulated to his senses through his microfuser, and would never sit in his belly but he didn’t care. It tasted better than anything he’d had in the valley, not that he’d had many delicacies there. The tubing that held the surprisingly homogeneous meat was crisp and every bite had a snap to it. J-Red didn’t know what was in it but if this was the flavor of real meat from olden times he would happily live through the apocalypse to enjoy it.
The AI had the taste of hotdogs down, there was nothing fuzzy or blurry about this. It was a treat it’d been rewarding J-Red and other players with for years. He couldn’t eat well out of the game but in the game he could live like a king.
The chat in the bottom of his vision cursed and jeered him. Either jealous of his ability to get a good meal or just bored and looking for a fight. Some warned him of the sounds but all he wanted to hear was the snap of his treat.
The black scaly beast blew through the stone arch hallway knocking the carved stone bricks, which had come into focus due to his time in this room, towards the edges of the open court. Three of its heads let out a harmonious roar. It tossed cloudy tables to the side as it limped towards him on its remaining three feet. The NPC woman screamed and hid under her stand.
Two of the heads sprung towards J-Red. He transferred his second foil wrapped hotdog from the counter to his inventory. His handbag of engulfment would keep anything in it for his next life. It was full of junk and he threw an old sword out to make room for the hotdog.
He plopped the last few inches of his hot-dog into his mouth. Two of the Baltimore Beast’s heads snapped at him. They’d been synchronized well enough so one went for his torso while the other went for his legs.
A black screen with hovering red letters covered his vision. It read: GAME OVER.
J-Red checked the time and dwindling chat messages, the only remaining ones were teasing him for dying such a mundane death. He was happy with the performance, most players were only able to be killed by a single head. It’d be hard to get his numbers back up this late. He decided to end the session.

The face mask pulled away from J-Red’s mouth and nose with a wet slurping sound. The olfactory sensors, which had crawled deep inside his nose as he played, made his sinuses feel open and empty. The silver flatworm cable that connected his microfuser, and his mind, to the game slithered back to its home in the rented headset.
J-Red stepped out of the gaming booth and onto the factory floor. A grid of similar black phone booth sized stations sat under the second floor mezzanine. Smaller, less sophisticated stations were placed at desks in the back. Nearly all of them were unsurprisingly empty this late into the night.
The mezzanine that surrounded the factory floor had a railing covered in yellow and black spiraling paint mostly chipped to show the rusted silver metal underneath. Watchet, the factory’s supervisor, leaned on the railing, gripping it with his sage green ‘hanced arm.
His baggy cargo pants and jacket were filled with various electronics and tools needed to maintain the old gaming stations. Above the man’s glare his hair was shaved close to the skin on the left side exposing the grey plats of his microfuser. The rest of his hair was greased to the right. It was a standard #52-b ‘glom haircut. It was as uninspiring as it was corporate.
The bangs of J-Red’s natural ash brown hair hung limply over his eyes. It was a shame the mask always deflated his hair like this. He pushed it back trying to interlock it with some of the hair on the back of his head that still had mouse in it. He did not have a standard ‘glom cut. Hadn’t had one for years, instead he used deep valley barbers to shave and braid patterns into it. But right now it needed a wash, and he looked forward to taking care of that when he got home.
J-red wiped his face on the bottom of his tank top leaving an oily stain from the gaming mask’s interface. He slipped on his sandals and insulated vest which hung outside his booth. His ‘hanced arms didn’t feel the cold anymore but his natural chest and shoulders still did. The arms were an old relic of when he needed two extra digits to operate the old style controllers. He kept the six fingered hands now because he was used to the convenience of extra opposable thumbs.
His ten toes always got cold in the sandals but right now they felt cozy in the overheated factory. Gaming booths running during the day made it sweltering hot and the place had yet to shed the heat. Once he left his feet would be covered in wet runoff from the streets. But it was better than sloshing around in cheap boots.

“You coming down here to pay me?” J-Red asked. The stairs of the factory’s second floor had gone out years ago, and he wasn’t convinced it was a natural degradation of the old building.
“Pay you what?” Watchet barked. “You bombed peak interest and cost us a few thousand credits worth of views.”
“I should get royalties on all the views Baltimore has gotten you by now.”
“You’ll settle for the two cards I give ya.” Watchet leaped over the railing and landed on the factory floor. The landing, combined with the weight of the electronics, pulled down his cargo pants revealing the seam between his ‘hanced legs and hairy stomach. He adjusted the pants with a grin. J-Red’s head cannon was that the man took the stairs out himself so he had an excuse to use the spring loaded legs on a regular basis.
“Two cards?” J-Red groaned. “Just give me the one temp card like normally.”
“Can’t.” Watchet recited business as emotionless as a cheap AI. “Execs got logs on your play time and view counts. You did well enough today that I can’t hide it. Besides you’ve played for the past week; it’d look suspicious if I didn’t pay you out. I can’t have the audit dogs sniffing around.”
The man pulled a handheld terminal with a swipe lane bolted to the side. There were only a few devices like this limping around and it was the reason J-Red played here instead of somewhere more reputable.
Watchet punched in some numbers and scanned J-Red’s registration card. The cursed card linked every single debt J-Red owed. Most of the debt was the ’hanced arms but there was some unpaid bar tabs, malcompliance tickets, and outstanding rent charges still linked to it. It would be easier to outrun the Baltimore Beast than it would be to avoid debt in Galleria Valley.
“All said and done you’ve got your protected ten percent on the card.” Watchet turned the terminal to face J-Red.
Some damn union years ago had lobbied for a protected ten percent of income to not be pulled out due to debt. The goal was to keep people from starving and freeze on the streets. In reality J-Red found it just gave people enough rope to wrap themselves into more debt. And that was likely the reason the conglomerates agreed to it.
He read the total on the terminal’s screen. “9.37 in credits?! I did over $100 creds in views today.”
“Sure, sure,” Watchet agreed. “But I’ve got maintenance and renting costs and I’m allowed to take that off the top.”
“You coulda charged me that all week.”
“You insisted I put it off, because of unexpected expenses,” Watchet said the last in a mock whine. “Plus I can’t have you paying off your debt too quickly, you might start streaming higher in the valley.”
“You’re insidious Watchet.” J-Red swiped his registration card and the pitiful balance transferred to his all but empty account. “What’s that leave me on the temp-card?”
Watchet’s mouth seemed to grin and frown at the same time, but it may have just been the scars of the imbedded microfuser that made his mouth look so twisted. “15.21 after other fees.” The man swiped a temporary unregistered card through his machine and offered it to J-Red.
“What other fees?” J-Red asked.
“Cleaning fees,” Watchet said with a shrug. Watchet pinched the card between two of his sage green fingers. He scissored them to make the card wobble back and forth. “Take it or leave it?”
“Whores get paid better than this sewage you’re giving me!” He snatched the card out of the supervisor’s hand pinching it with his two thumbs and lifting his middle two fingers at the crook.
“Do some squats to get that butt of yours looking good and you could be in business.” Watchet gave him a wink with his unornamented right eye then yawned. “But until then get out of here. I’ve got to clean this thing and get to bed before first shift comes in in a few hours.” He pocketed the old terminal and pulled out a filthy white rag.
J-Red pocketed his cards and went to face the cold trying not to think about the cleaning process of the mask that was just leeched onto his face or the leeching process that just cleaned credits out of his pocket.

The narrow hallway stretched from one end of the tower to the other, the sight line only a bit impaired by the concierge desk. It wasn’t a particularly high floor, so the small rooms allowed doors to be cramped next to each other. Thin walls let the sounds of fighting and lovemaking echo through the hall. The smell of cheap earthy spiced food cooked for dinner hours ago still lingered around.
J-Red looked at the screen on the apartment door in front of him. In crisp digital letters it politely informed him that his balance was outstanding and he’d been evicted for not renewing the daily lease this afternoon.
It was supposed to auto-renew. He didn’t need to review his registration card to know why that didn’t happen. Additionally, J-Red’s credit was corrosive like seawater, so the automated system cleaned his stuff out preferring to leave the room vacant for the tax benefits over giving him the comfort of paying late.
He didn’t care about the bed or the shower. A few cheap stim-pills could keep him awake through his next round in the game booth. A public shower, only a step above sewage, could get him clean enough. But he wasn’t going to take that until he got his stuff back.
He stormed down the hallway to discuss the matter with the concierge bot that ran the floor.
A cheap chainlink fence ran from the ceiling to synth-wood desk. The desk had a small trough cut into it for passing cards and impounded items back and forth. A rosy metal concierge bot sat behind the desk, graffitied with rude remarks, obscene pictures, and numbers to call for a good time. The wire fence seemed to be ineffective in deterring this. Especially as it had a few obvious repairs to close up cut sections. Behind the desk were scraps of trash small enough to fit through the gaps in the fence and boxes labeled with room numbers.
It was cheaper to buy a bot to handle these interactions than pay a human employee. The execs that ran the floor’s management weren’t even willing to shell out for janitorial staff to clean the place up. Repairs to security were somehow an acceptable expense though. If J-Red had a writing utensils on him he’d add a line or two to the bot’s stupid bald metal head.

“How may I help you patron?” the robot asked. Its large spherical eyes rolled around inside the eye socket but the servos weren’t quite calibrated correctly giving the bot a lazy eye as it looked up at J-Red.
“Room 2304-E. I need the stuff from it.”
“Your items are in impound it will be 10.90 credit convenience fee to retrieve them.”
J-Red shook his head unable to believe his luck. 10.90 was more than he had on his registration card. But if he used the temp card to pay it the system would suck the card dry applying the income to his debts. It’d be generous enough to leave 10 percent behind. But by his microfuser’s math that was a percent of a credit short.
“I see the box with 2304 printed on it. It’s an arms reach away from you. I’m not paying 10.90 for your automated ass to hand it to me.” The damn thing was in sleep mode two minutes ago, it’s not like it was inconvenient for a bot to move stuff. That’s what they were built to do.
“Your items are in impound. You have 2 days to claim them otherwise they will be sold at auction.”
There was only one thing of value in the box and he doubted it would make any money at auction. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, it’d once again come loose from its place, he needed a good haircut. But right now it wasn’t in the budget.
He looked at a weak part of the fence that had been repaired a few times. Placing his gunmetal hand on the wire he gripped it with his two thumbs then wrapped his fingers around the links. His hands and arms weren’t made for strength, but they were better than a flesh hand.
“ATTENTION:” the bot said in an amplified voice, “destruction of Polystand Apartment property is prohibited. Any damage will be added to your account Jarron Elias Renuth.”
J-Red considered pulling on it. Letting the servos and hydraulics rip the whole frame off. The concierge bot wouldn’t chase him. The thing couldn’t get out of the chair it was bolted to. But the fine could follow him for years through the valley.
He shook the metal fence hard, the rattling sound echoing down the hallway. The rosy metal concierge bot repeated its warning. J-Red let go in frustration.
“Just one item out of the box, how much does that cost?”
“Fee for impound is 10.90,” the bot repeated.
“I’ll pay you 5 creds directly, no need for Polystand to know about it.”
“Fee for impound is 10.90.”
Damn bots couldn’t be bribed. Probably paid for themselves in that feature alone. “What if I get a bucket of seawater and splash it through this fence.”
“Destruction of Polystand apartment property is—”
“I know, I know. You useless heap of scrap metal just hand me the damn box.”
“Fee for impound is 10.90,” the bot repeated it’s cheap automated voice grated against J-Red’s nerves.
The bot could go at this for the short bit of night left and well into the morning. J-Red could barely stand two more seconds of it. He needed to come up with 10 cents of credits registered or not, if he had any hope of getting things under control.
He pulled his hair back out of his eyes. What he need before anything else was some food. The simulated hot dog had wetted his appetite for something salty.

The story continues in part 2…