NOVEL NEXT Book 3 - Chapter 146
Despite the late hour, the inside of the restaurant was still filled with customers. There were only two tables open, one near the window, and the other at the back near the kitchen.
Ko pointed to the table near the kitchen, and they quickly sat down. The menus were pulled up in their vision as they glanced at the embedded icons in the corner of the table. It wasn't a vast menu, only containing five items. Each one a sandwich of some type, along with a photo of what they looked like.
"Do you mind if we split our sandwiches?" Trace asked nervously. "Each of these looks good, and I really want to try more than one."
"I'm so glad you suggested it," Ko admitted with a sigh of relief. "I was thinking the same thing, but didn't want to say anything."
"Alright, so I'll get the hamburger, and what do you want?"
"The patty melt," She replied instantly. "It looks delicious."
"Alright, let's order those then," He sent the order through.
"Hmm, look at the information on the restaurant. It gives a fair bit of detail about everything about how the place works," Ko told him as she politely accepted the soda the waiter brought over.
Trace nodded, having already brought up the information. The restaurant they were in was part of a franchise chain model. Each location was owned by someone else, but they would buy the meat and other items from one specific provider. The franchise restaurant model used to be incredibly popular around a hundred and twenty years ago. However, when the world changed, so had the food industry.
In this case, the corporations that had been taking over everything had been unwilling to share their profits with anyone else. As a result, for a long time, all restaurants had been corporate-run machines. It was only within the last couple of years that the idea and franchising model had started to reemerge.
The page kept most of the information on who owned the actual chain, but that was where the net came into play. A few targeted searches revealed all the information he wanted. There wasn't anything secretive, or that needed to be hidden. But it did contain what he wanted to learn, mainly where they were getting their meat, and who the corporate owner was.
The meat issue wasn't really all that interesting in the end. They had ranching land in Montana, Idaho, and Kansas, among other places. At each location, they not only bred growth-modified cows, deer, antelope, goats, and sheep, but also chickens and geese. Each breed and species had gone through numerous gene editing procedures for fast growth, but also for maximum food absorption. That meant that they actually pooped less, but what they did was far more effective as a fertilizer than normal.
It was all regularly collected to be ground up and mixed together with a few other ingredients before being spread across another corporation's grow fields. It was actually rather interesting, though the level of detail he managed to find was a little odd.
Then, he came across the corporation who owned it, which he had never heard of before. His curiosity led to him looking them up, and eventually discovering that they were a subsidiary of a pharmaceutical corporation called 'ChemPly'. It was an odd circle and one that he didn't understand in the slightest.
The restaurant was called 'Meat Mouth', and the chain owner and meat supplier was rather aptly called 'MeatSource'. He wasn't sure how a pharmaceutical company fit into the equation. What he did know was that the hamburger and patty melt were delicious! Ko hadn't been exaggerating their sizes either. Both were absolutely huge. The prices listed on the menu were appropriate for something of its size and made of real meat. Meaning it was expensive, but it was so gloriously delicious.
Just in case, he kept an eye on the nanite notification window. Nothing popped up throughout the entire meal. Everything was clean. Well, as clean as greasy food can be. There were no added mind-altering substances, at least.
Just pure stomach-filling, wallet-draining goodness.
Ko patted her stomach in contentment after finishing the last bite of her hamburger. "That was so good. We need to come back here again, but uh, maybe only on special occasions. It's not exactly cheap."
Trace had finished his own food a couple of minutes before and was relaxing in his chair. "I can agree with that. I'm actually a little surprised that you finished everything. I didn't think you were going to be able to for a minute there."
"I learned young to never waste food," She retorted. "Maybe not to the same extent as you, but my mom and I still faced plenty of hard times."
He nodded. "You know? I don't think you've ever actually told me anything about your life growing up before the incident. We should remedy that at some point." He stood and helped her to her feet. "Later though, right now I'm about to fall asleep on my feet. This food is hitting me hard."
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
She yawned and nodded. "Yeah, it's getting late anyway. Come on, walk me home. It'll help wake you up enough to get back to your place."
"I'm a little surprised a place like this opened here instead of, you know, in New Denver proper," Trace said as they left the building.
"I think they're banking on my clinic doing well," She said with another yawn. "Being the youngest to ever pass the exams and graduate, without cheating or backroom deals, has brought a fair amount of attention my way. Besides, there is another restaurant in Denver. I think the article said they converted an old bookstore for its location. The 'Tattered Copy' or something like that. What?" She protested in amusement. "You weren't the only one looking up the place while we were in there."
"I didn't say anything," He said defensively, holding up his hands.
"Yeah, and it had better stay that way," Ko muttered, poking him in the stomach.
***
"Deckard!" Trace called out first thing the next morning. There were only a couple of minutes before Monroe arrived, and he intended to make good use of them. "We need to talk. I have some big news for you, and I'm not entirely sure how you're going to take it."
He hadn't been entirely sure if he should tell the other man what they had learned the night before. In the end, Trace had decided that it was better to just reveal everything instead of attempting to keep something like this hidden. This was Deckard's life, his family life specifically. Even if they were friends, which he liked to think they were by that point, he had absolutely no business keeping something like this from him.
Deckard needed to be told the truth.
The screens for the man's avatar flickered to life as Deckard appeared on them. "What's going on, Trace? Shouldn't you be getting ready for your trip outside the city with Monroe?"
"I should be, which is why this needs to be quick and I apologize in advance for that. However, what I have to say is too important to be left for later. This is something that you need to know about now as it directly affects you, in multiple ways."
The avatar's face drew its brows together and motioned for Trace to continue.
"As I'm sure you know, last night, Ko and I met with Atraxia." He had gotten the initial message and then a subsequent call from Ko while he was in the basement. "When we met with her, another person, or rather android, was there as well. G1gl3Myte, to be exact. It seems that after my capture, they settled their differences."
He sighed and took a seat at his desk. "Ko and I didn't get all the little details. There is a lot of history between them, after all. The point is G1gl3Myte is your father, David, and Atraxia is the main personality of your mother, Meredith."
"What?" Deckard asked simply, too stunned to react with more vigor.
"According to Atraxia or Meredith, however you prefer to refer to them, after the accident, your mother had your father's body cryogenically preserved. After she lost you, she began performing experiments with cloning, but they learned that it was impossible to create a working brain. As a result, she was unable to bring you back. She was, however, able to create a body for David and stick his original brain in it. After that, she crammed it full of nanites and let them slowly heal the damage that had been done due to a lack of oxygen. It took time, but it apparently worked, at a cost of most of his memories."
Trace continued to quickly explain everything that they had learned the night before, before standing. "Look, Monroe just arrived, so I need to get going. I thought it was your right to know all of this since they're your family. Take the day thinking everything over, talk with Ko, then try and contact them, if you can. Let me know what you want to do when I get back. Ko and I are here for you Deck, you're our friend and that is something in short supply in this world."
He winked and walked toward the stairs. "Also, if the matter with the credits has all been settled, start buying up everything you can on our list of items."
With that, he ran up the stairs and through his apartment. He found Monroe already in the warehouse and in the midst of moving duffel bags from his van to the bed of the truck.
"Did you get everything we need to dig through the rubble?" He asked, joining him in moving the last couple of bags over. Only the first few had been filled with anything, while the rest were empty and simply meant to be loot holders.
"Yup, I also grabbed a couple of flashlights, among other things," Monroe said, before reaching into the van, his hand coming back out with a case of ammo for Trace's revolver. "I know you don't fire it as often I as do mine, but here, it's always better to have extra."
"I can definitely get behind that," He agreed. "Especially since I'll be going in without my stealth suit. I need another day or so and a couple of items to get it back up and working properly."
All he would be wearing was some spare light armor. It would do the job better than the armor on the stealth suit even, but it was better to not be seen, in his opinion. Though it didn't seem like he was really all that good at that aspect of everything just yet.
They double-checked everything, and then Trace pushed the button to unroll the cover on the truck bed. It was time for them to go, just as soon as they gathered up some water and food.
On the road a few minutes later, Monroe took a sip of the cold water and moaned in pleasure. "I don't care what we have to do. When the time comes to replace all those filters, we are doing it. I never understood people's fascination with drinking water until I actually tried the pure clean stuff. I'm not sure I can ever go back to the filth they sell at the store. Sabrina, with her stories and you with actually making it possible, have ruined me."
"You make it sound so weird when you phrase it like that," Trace muttered uncomfortably. "Either way, at our current rate of consumption, the filters should be good for a long time yet."
As they neared the wall and the gates to leave, they spotted the lines in front of each of the guards.
"Ugh, this is going to be a pain, especially since we don't have an active mission this time." Without an active edger mission giving them a reason to leave and then come back in later, they were little more than jumped-up normies. Normally they would still be treated better than other people, but this was not a usual occasion.
Monroe clicked his tongue in annoyance. "I didn't even think about that. I figured whatever got their panties in a twist would have been finished by now." He ran a hand over his waxed head and then spread whatever clung to his fingers across the metal of his cyberware arm. "Whatever, we'll just have to be extra careful with whatever we find at this place."