Chapter 55

A few hours later I drove home.

 

Jun wasn’t at the apartment when I got there which let me flop onto the couch uncaring of the loud sigh I gave off.

 

Gig complete.

 

I had done it. Killed at least two of the monsters that I remembered from the game. There were others I was sure. But these two were what I remembered. Killing them was enough to at least lighten my conscience.

 

Would killing them make Night City just a little bit better of a place?

 

I think it would.

 

I reached over and grabbed the guitar.

 

I didn’t know what to play.

 

The ideas flowed through me. I could play something famous or popular, but I was a total nerd. I listened more to anime OST’s than radio pop.

 

So I just strummed a few times before the idea formed.

 

I couldn’t do it all, I didn’t have the electronic sounds needed for it, but I could play the guitar, and I was feeling in a pretty dark metal mood having just murdered a man in cold blood.

 

As I started the first riff, I was thankful there were no lyrics to this song, just sound from my guitar.

 

But I had to say something anyway, something that simply fit too much.

“The only thing they fear Is ME.” I growled my face turning into a smile as I lost myself in the music for a while. Playing through a few songs from the Doom Soundtrack that I liked, at least what I could do with just a guitar.

 

I would need a lot of extra equipment if I wanted to recreate the song in truth.

 

Which is why right in the middle of BFG Division, I realized I was a fucking genius.

 

“I’m a tinker, and a netrunner. Why the hell can’t I make the noise I want!”

 

I put the guitar to the side, and went to grab my laptop. Engineer it first, then tinker it into being.

 

Hah! See Rita!I was a perfectly sane and normal girl! Capable of normal sane girl things!

 

But first I needed to focus. I needed this to properly shred! How would they know that they should fear me, if I didn’t have an awesome theme song!

 

Honestly it was really easy. Using my CAD software I was able to build up the little box from bottom up.

 

When I finished the blueprints of my music box, I realized that while I could handle the outside of the system just fine. I had no idea how to properly program it. It was the same problem I had with my directional Mic. I could finish the hardware and get it running, but programming it to do more? I had no idea.

 

Even with my netrunning… Right now my ability was only at the level of script kiddy stuff. I could use programs already made, I was even good at it.

 

But Programming?

 

No idea.

 

With a very important part of my future music box unfinished I started hammering my head at the wall. The CAD software was of course capable of accepting some programming to test it out, but as I went through it I very quickly got nowhere.

 

I found myself wasting time, going in mental circles.

 

So I needed to program this thing. I realized I had a blank in my netrunning understanding. I was pretty sure I was fairly competent, with Intelligence and Breach at 6, even if my Quick Hack skill was lagging behind.

 

“This system is deeper than I thought.” I admitted realizing that I was definitely missing a skill. If Rockerboy was a skill under cool, and Driving existed, then obviously there were more skills in my system than there were in the game.

 

I just had to figure out how to start a new one.

 

I couldn’t help but sigh when I realized I had another skill to grind, no matter how much time I spent grinding away, there always seemed to be more!

 

Which was both good and bad as I liked grinding, but I didn’t want to admit that I liked it! I wanted to be irritated!

 

Fortunately I had an idea of how to get started. I went into my room and pulled out my mothers netrunning guide.

 

I popped in the shard and started browsing through it swiftly, until finally I found it. A small section she went over personalizing Quick Hacks.

 

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t long. She prefaced it with ‘99% of you will never bother with this.’ But it was there.

 

So I sat and followed the steps of my biological mother in altering just a tiny bit of the code of my Ping Quick Hack.

 

It was the basic of basics program already. My Ping wasn’t special, or anything. If I put it in game terms, my Ping was the white common rarity.

 

But as I pulled it apart, I was able to make a minor change that I followed along as my mother guided me.

 

And finally something I had done, was enough.

 

*Programming Experience Gained.*

 

*Skill not unlocked, no XP gained.*

 

*Programming Unlocked.*

 

Well that was level zero…

 

Let’s see what I could get a level before Jun got home.

 

—-

 

Turns out that unlike Rockerboy, Programming was fucking hard. I had ended up making a copy of my Ping Quick Hack. And basically tearing it apart over and over again trying to find ways to make it slightly better.

 

Most of the time I ended up spiraling the program into utter uselessness.

 

But the times I succeeded at least on not ruining the program I got that alert telling me I was one step closer to understanding.

 

Finally hours after I started and with a few clumps less hair on my head I altered the Ping so it would visually show a different color connection in my optics and the alert popped.

 

*100 Programming XP Gained.*

 

*Programming skill level up!*

 

And my eyes were opened. Breaching. Quickhacks? They were a tiny miniscule sliver of the net. Breaching was like learning how to move in the Net. How to bypass system security, or even just port access through different servers. It was what you needed to live in the net.

 

Quick Hacks was bringing the power of the net to the real world.

 

But Programming?

 

Programming was magic. There was nothing in the net you couldn’t do with the proper application of programming.

It was also incredibly difficult, easily the most complex of the three skills, and the one that the least amount of people used.

 

Real Netrunners didn’t have high Breach, or Quickhack skills.

 

They had high programming. The difference between a ‘common’ Ping Quick Hack, and a Legendary one was a layer of magnitude in complexity.

 

If someone who could use Quickhacks was a knight, the Programmer was the smith. The weapon designer.

 

A lone Netrunner could find weapons and use them.

 

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A lone Programmer? Could create an army.

 

I suddenly realized that Programming might very well be the most powerful skill I accessed. If I designed a Legendary Quick Hack. Or in the real worlds terms. A Quick Hack of insane complexity and power, I could sell it, or trade it for favors, for eddies, for power.

 

It was in a lot of ways making a magic weapon in a mundane world.

 

Eeeeee! So cool! I giggled and kicked my legs as I rolled around on the couch.

 

So I had the basics of another powerful tool.

 

Now I just needed to spend the hours upon hours to grind it out.

 

Since all I really had was Ping, that was my go to playground. I knew it could be improved after all. If I could practice with it enough, I could figure out how, and improve one of my only Netrunning tools.

 

Fuck I really needed to upgrade my deck.

 

I reached behind my head and touched the back of my head where it was installed. The little port hidden in my skull.

 

Was I ready for it?

 

I wasn’t sure. It made me kind of nervous. I was still working my way through my arms, trying to adapt to them, make them mind, and I still felt the effects of chipping them at times. The harsh reminder, always there niggling at me, and yet.

 

I didn’t want that spider ripper to win. To scare me away. I wasn’t afraid of chipping chrome. I liked the idea! I always had. Just in moderation and not adding in something stupid to myself.

 

But still. There was that itch in my shoulders at the thought. That, and the fear that slid down my spine.

 

I knew how close I had come to losing it. I didn’t dwell on it really. It was too easy to just ignore it. But before I had put the points into adaptation, I had truly been on my way to losing myself in revenge.

 

I hadn’t liked the person I had been becoming.

 

Which was part of the reason I hadn’t been hunting the Maelstrom Spider Ripper down afterwards. I didn’t want to admit to myself how out of control I had been thanks to the constant pain and trauma.

 

I sighed flopping onto the couch for a bit. Why was life so complicated? I just wanted to have fun and do cool shit.

 

But life was more complicated than that, and a Cyberpunk life more complicated still.

 

I would talk to Vik, I did still owe him a night where he would check on my healing. He had been nice enough to only say I was due for a checkup rather than the truth in his texts that I got every few days.

 

Stupid Dad Vik, making me feel bad for not seeing him. I was just so busy! I looked around at the multiple projects that surrounded me and sighed.

 

At least I had a few days before I would see Regina about payment for killing Jotaro. She was going to send me a text in a few days to fake an initial meetup. I guess I would be able to start taking gigs from two Fixers after that.

 

It was a step up. In a good direction even.

 

Maybe it was time to do some upgrades…

 

I pulled up my phone system.