NOVEL NEXT 22. Police Presence
It was an absolutely expansive undertaking. Ashley could see the police van parked next to the Bodega. Next to it? A steady line of cops.
As she watched, several police officers in white shirts directed the actions of dozens of officers in blue shirts. They had to be heading to the various dungeons around the city. Each one went into the bodega, looked jubilant and had to have bought at least 10 cards and then walked out with a summon or two out in front of them. It was like watching a grown man go to a pet store for the first time to get the first dog of his entire life. It was a dog that he's been wanting for years and years and years but never could justify getting. Now, the mostly male cadre of police officers could unleash the brand-new pets in the city to quell the deluge of dungeons.
At least, that was her best guess. Between the large trailer command center parked in the bus lane on second avenue and the police officers going in and out of the building that housed her first dungeon, the area bustled.
You always wrote your first, she said. Her stomach gurgled, and she realized that she'd rather go down there and eavesdrop over what was happening. Bagel was probably going to need someone to pack his head, at the very least.
And then there was the one guy that had showed up to work at the shop that she still hadn't learned his name. Maybe she would introduce herself and figure out his story. But 3 days out to the System integration it started. She was still on the schedule for her job the next day. It was rather unfortunate, like a landlord still seemed to be alive as she'd gotten a ping in her email. Clearly, she is going to keep you to keep paying rent for as long as she lived there. Hopefully that was enough to keep them... She stopped for a second. Would her landlord be able to stop Dungeons from spawning inside of his apartment building?
She looked up at her scavenged AI companion.
"Janet Two? How do I buy this building?"
The AI had a non-distinct way of speaking. "Boss, the system recognizes whoever buys it. First. The building that you're in will cost 900 credits."
Her building was above a laundry shop and a Thai food place. It was a four-floor walkup, and she'd only gotten it because she had to forge the stuff that the pay stub that proved that she could pay the rent. It was a ridiculous $2100 a month before the system integration and once your boss figured out the conversion rate; she was absolutely sure that her gloss would want her to pay in credits or some bull.
As if she even slightly cared.
Then she wondered about how it would be if she bought the building that the landlord owned or rather was just that the landlord owned her apartment. So if she bought the building, but he still owned the apartment. It was a useless thought pattern that wasn't going to take her anywhere. So she put on her short shorts, a cute top and grabbed a key. Checking yourself over in the mirror.
She looked damn good. That made her super happy that she'd survive the system integration. What she needed to do was to not scroll mindlessly and feel helpless in the face of such terrifying things. If they were doubling the amount of mobs, then she was going to have to do something. Or at least she wanted to. With her swarm, the more she took over, the better situated she would be. By her door. Door her swarm crab was thrumming with the rest of her mobs. There was one pizza rat that was larger. The 10 tiny ones, the non-Newtonian balloon tentacles and her AI drone.
Stepping out into the city onto her base stamp, she closed the door and breathed in a subtly cleaner in New York City. Either somebody was using their card scale to clean out the place around them or something had altered. It didn't look any cleaner, but in the back of her little monkey brain, she was thinking that it felt cleaner or with the smell or there was some sort of trick that the magic was playing on her brain and she didn't like it.
Ashley wasn't a fan of things that use dark psychology to trick her brain. No, she was more likely to like a straightforward advertisement selling her something. Then some sort of YouTuber nagging her to get her life together or something.
People have passed going up and down the street as if nothing had changed and for many people, nothing had changed. Most people didn't have decks. Couple of them startled when they saw her crab, but they walked around it when it didn't make any move toward them. See, I'd expected the calculator. Indifference. New Yorkers would stop and help somebody, but they would also curse them out for being inconvenienced, and it was just what you got used to. The casual meanness combined with a helping to punch you right where it hurt.
For a moment, a gurgle suppressed a gurgle. Or she tried to, her stomach deciding that now was the time to report that you wanted more. She was going to have to look into why she was so hungry now. Seeing as how she'd eating a lot of meals at the bodega, she thought about heading up to the Chinese food place or the Thai place. The Thai food place had a line out the door and she hadn't on Chinese food in a while, so she crossed the street and ordered some dinner. Girl dinner was going to comprise some spring rolls and maybe some general tso's chicken. But before that, she was going to check in at headquarters.
Inside the bodega, the place that sold her favorite drinks, unlike the Amish market down the street or the limited display of the Chinese food place, Ashley could get drunk or caffeinated. In New York, you couldn't walk around with an open container, but people accepted that you'd put a large 24-ounce can in a paper bag, and nobody would notice unless you let them smell it. Letting would someone in that close would feel like a very intimate way to get to know her neighbors?
She answered the shop and everything seemed in place. There were two police officers standing at the counter looking at the options and rolling them over and talk between themselves. She waved to the man with the black hair behind the counter.
Seeing him move, both police officers looked at her, and then immediately dismissed her. They did, however, take a long look at her swarm. Just having a small group of friendly mobs felt like having an extra pair of hands, ready to stab somebody if the need arose.
It was nearly dark, and her mobs had a dark affect
Bagel meowed at her. She considered meowing back but decided to have a seat by the grill really quick and examine the options. He wasn't going to ask her if she could pet him, but she knew. He was probably having a moment.
Nothing about the cat looked calm at that moment as the human behind the counter was actively having a whispered conversation with two male police officers.
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Bagel found her in the back.
"Are you doing okay?" She asked the cat.
"As well as expected." He said, pacing around on the floor. She fully grasped his goal: sitting on her thighs to be petted. And she wanted to actually give that to him.
"Well, I'm just going to take a brief pause here while I wait for my Chinese food to be done if you wanted to have a little chat."
"Ashley, "Bagel said. "These men in blue keep showing up here and keep trying to buy my stock and they don't leave. It's distressing. At least they bring back cards for me to sell, but it's like they're using my shop."
"These two have been here for a while?" she said, looking up to examine in the face of the two that remained. They had their faces twisted like they had just been told that despite being a doughnut shop, this place only sold spaghetti... and blankets.
"Well, it's more like they keep getting replaced by some friends. Then others replace those."
She found a pleasant fluff ball underneath her hands. Unconsciously, she petted the cat, feeling like she was stimming both herself and the cat. At the same time. It had to be like having a massage. She'd heard that people were to cat what bakeries are to baked goods, a thought that perhaps applied to cats living with typical owners. But so far as she knew, he had only ever lived in the bodega and nowhere else.
"It has to be rough when people you don't know are sticking around in your home? This is your home, right?"
Bagel was quiet as she scratched behind his ears and when she felt like it had gone on for too long, she looked down and saw the look of absolute bliss on his face. That was what she wanted for herself. She was looking for that kind of bliss. Why did that exact moment?
"Well, maybe not right now, but soon."
There was something about his childlike glee that she just accepted as the most pure thing, the most expressive way that the cat could present himself.
Clearly both of them need some sort of therapy or something, but Ashley was not going to admit that to anybody if she had a say about it.
"Is it? It's got to be rough with all these unfamiliar faces around and with all the shuffling and now you kind of know what's going on. I feel for you."
Ashley let that hang in the air.
"Do you remember before? Before you, you know?"
At this the cat stirred. "I have a vague recollection of the before, but it's mostly... I got the sense of people. Like I remember. Raul. I remember he was kind to me. Heck, I remember you. I've seen you before."
"I've been here before," she said. "I live just across the street. It's been my go to shop for months."
"See, I knew that," the cat said, his tail wiggling. "I knew something was up about how frequently you showed up in my memories. And all I remember is just the way you looked. And even that feels different now...."
That is a lot to unpack and I don't even know if I... Should she be talking to the cat this way? He was nice, but she wasn't a cat psychologist. She wasn't even good at what she wanted to be doing. She was just confident in herself. Or at least in her ability to do well at an audition.
She hummed a few bars from one of her favorite video games. She remembered it being calming, and it just felt like the time. And then she sang a little.
"I dig a hole. You build a wall...I dig a hole. You build the wall someday your wall is going to fall...."
Ashley had always been an Alto. This didn't mean that she didn't like chorus at her small Midwestern high school.
She just hated Sopranos and how they always thought that they were going to be the main Melody. Every time inquire that she had been part of a song that didn't feature Sopranos at the main Melody. She rejoiced. Especially when it went to one of the boy parts.
And that was part of the reason she turned to becoming a rapper and trying to make it in the big city. It was just tough in the Midwest to get any traction. But if she could get a season or two on Broadway, which your agent had promised her would probably happen really soon. Based on her auditions and the strength of her samples, she was a shoo-in.
It just so happened that none of those skills were going to come into play at any time during this period of her life, no matter what she tried.
"You know I came to the city trying to seek my fortune?" she said, really digging into the cat's tense muscles. "But I guess I could figure out a new way. If I have to be support for a dungeon dive, then that's fine with me. It's not like every single police officer has a deck assigned to them."
She was trying to talk soft enough that only Bagel and she could hear. Aside from the one cook that was out, it was just Raul. Janet and the two police officers who were talking to each other. She stacked up outside the door, looking for any signs of new mop spawns. She checked her watch. Nothing to do for at least another ten minutes at most. That was about the new time she had until her food would be ready next door.
She would not allow herself to mindlessly scroll her phone through this.
Bagel closed his eyes, beginning to purr. "What does it mean to seek your fortune? Is that a thing?"
"I thought I was going to be big and make it as a rapper. I might get a record deal or something, but it's just not a done thing. I practiced like Outkast on their earlier albums. Heck, I memorized The Black Album before I came here."
Ashley trailed off as the police officers both purchased ten cards. They would have the system and they immediately summoned a pizza rat each. Because of course they did.
One of them then summoned a concrete lizard. Thankfully, the lizard itself looked blue rather than the full gray concrete that she'd expected.
It was one of those fun things that you just figured out. Was blue the police officer's favorite color? She wasn't sure.
All of her swarm mobs were just a little blacker than the originals. Just enough so that she owned them. And yes, her favorite colors were black and pink, but she hadn't expected the black to come out so much.
It felt like the system was subconsciously deciding for her what her color palette was going to be and then imposing that upon her summons. She would take it, of course. But she wanted to have more pink or even purple in her life.
Bagel had the idea of outline a brand-new design for this block. The Chinese food restaurant, the Burp Bowl Cafe, had a lot of wasted space above it. The former health care store didn't have someone running it or a business. Did he want it to be used for a commercial purpose? No, the precinct was using it now.
In a row, the three buildings next to the bodega were all single-story buildings. This meant that there was a lot of unused space. Beyond the third single story building, the Amish market was a large multiple story multi use building. That, according to Janet, would cost him five thousand credits.
The road to that building was paved with a lot of dead mobs.
Five thousand credits would pay for the lot.
To his south, the other extensive building that dominated the front of the block would cost him ten thousand credits. That was the one that included the closest competitor to his shop. He could see a series of tubes overlay from the buildings that would break ground and provide a safer place for people to move about.
He might use Ashley and his scavenger ability to create more living space above those three one-story buildings, and perhaps even increase his main building a few stories. People were going to need a safe place to live, and perhaps he could do it.
The seventeenth precinct setting up shop next door and paying him handsomely for outfit their police officers would be the start of it.