Ch.259Work Record No. 037 – Keep Your Feet on the Ground but Fill Your Eyes with Stars (1)

The call sign Boogeyman was officially recognized by Panacea Meditech for preemptively attacking and eliminating assassins who were attempting to attack Polaris, as well as for continuing to provide excellent protection services.

Now I was a freelancer recognized by four corporations. Being recognized by multiple companies was perceived quite differently than the average freelancer. The companies that had certified me were all… distinctive, to say the least.

Belwether is Belwether. They were the company that set the paradigm for this high-speed era. They created the rules of this age and opened this era. I was first certified by the oldest megacorporation.

Typically, the next step would be to get certified by companies related to Belwether. Even as a freelancer, single-company certified freelancers were a dime a dozen, and not all of them had extensive connections.

However, the second company to certify me was Heroism & Hope Entertainment. Boogeyman naturally received certification in the entertainment industry, and I fully demonstrated why this time.

Having already been certified by two completely unrelated companies was unusual, but the third was even more extreme. It was New World Communications Corporation, a megacorporation known as the federal government’s mouthpiece.

It’s strange enough that a Belwether-certified freelancer would work with the federal government, but call sign Boogeyman managed it. I was able to do one job for them and get certified. Thanks to Belwether.

After all, my first meeting with Ms. Julia was at a Chance retrieval operation. So, I became a freelancer certified by the military industry, the entertainment industry, and practically by the federal government itself. But that wasn’t the end.

The fourth certification came from Panacea Meditech, which had been stubbornly refusing Belwether due to company policy. It’s hard to imagine how vast the combined influence of these four companies would be.

As Mia said, now anything I do would look like I’m acting on behalf of corporate justice. I never had a hobby of being political, but my very existence was becoming political.

I do have a way to deal with this. I can use the fact that I’ve been careful not to reveal my face and voice until now. Just for today, I decided to set aside my display helmet.

Instead, I picked up an old helmet that revealed my face. I did have another helmet, but… that one was for hunting mutants. Not for living life.

I had dinner plans with Eve in the evening. I would probably sleep at her hideout tonight. And tomorrow morning, I would meet Pastor Bill Weber.

What I needed to do now was something lighter. I connected a call to Noah, whom I hadn’t contacted since he last informed me that relations with Fitts & Morrison had improved.

The connection tone rang only once. Since Noah was a pure human who needed assistive devices, his voice sounded tilted, as if he was answering on something like the phone I used when I was an offliner.

“Ah, yes! Mr. Arthur!”

His voice carried a tone suggesting he was happy that I had called. His voice was energetic and playful, quite different from when he had been consumed by vengeance.

“You’re not calling to summon us, are you? Since you’ve backed us up so many times, we can deploy within five minutes if you call.”

Ah, this everyday feeling. Friends in the neighborhood connecting implants and setting up a mercenary company in their own district—this normal, everyday scene was almost intoxicating.

I might be drunk on that feeling for about a week if I visit the laundromat with Eve tomorrow. I naturally smiled and responded to his joking words with my own jest.

“Really? Then please deploy to the Hive within five minutes. I’m trying to enjoy a rare day off, and I’m curious how you’ve been doing since patching things up with Fitts & Morrison.”

“Oh, that’s the least we can do! See you at the Hive! Everyone’s been wanting to see you anyway, so no one would mind if I told them to go now!”

Noah seemed to have finally returned to his youth. Youth isn’t about being consumed by vengeance. It’s about living vividly as if you could die trying to achieve impossible goals.

Is the brain inside my torso really that of a special operations agent in his sixties? I found it quite amusing that I was waxing poetic about youth while looking at Noah, who was only three years younger than me.

I decided to dismiss my old-man-like musings with the thought that killing Hollowed Creek might just be that “living vividly while chasing an impossible goal.”

I naturally added a joke. It was about that trivial issue Noah had been concerned about.

“Riley isn’t particularly fond of this, is she?”

A groan came through the phone line. Then a voice filled with embarrassment returned.

“Ah, geez. How long are you going to tease me about that?! It was actually an important issue to me… While I was all about revenge, revenge, you were becoming a better freelancer… I felt like I was falling behind.”

“Then you should have chosen something more fun than revenge back then. Walking the smoggy streets with Riley, exchanging silly sweet words would have been much more enjoyable. Anyway, see you at the Hive.”

I decided to be grateful that Noah had regained such pure innocence, as if washed clean. I finished preparing to go out, for once pushing aside thoughts of killing people and such.

In the corner of my vision, I had pulled up a vehicle catalog from Pathfinder Logistics Corporation. These were cars customized with various options under the name of mercenary specifications.

What I commonly saw, weapon mounts between the driver and passenger seats instead of cup holders, was almost a standard option. Since I still couldn’t get a feel for it, I shared my vision with Chance.

Chance, connected to my vision, immediately began pouring out useful advice. I was glad I had kept Chance in my head. The page I was looking at showed common motor-driven vehicles.

“Assessment. First, I recommend purchasing a vehicle with a gasoline engine. A full hybrid that can run even if one system fails would be better for you. As for options… assessing. Still assessing.”

Vehicles or bikes with gasoline engines were quite reliable but noisy. They were so loud that even their slow cruising was noisier than my electric bike going at 200 km/h.

Since Chance’s focus was solely on practicality, it was my job to choose the interior structure while imagining riding with Eve. I eliminated uncomfortable options one by one.

I could select a suitable model, but I still needed to consult with Eve. If it had been a bike that I would ride alone, I would have chosen it myself and bought it on my way out, but a car was different.

I tucked Small Misdeed back into my waistband and went down from the apartment. The elevator was rather narrow, and I briefly had the silly thought that I could probably survive a free fall from the tenth floor.

It seems I wasn’t as much of a Belwether-made bioweapon or anti-personnel weapon as I had thought. Although the smog scattered the sunlight making the sky appear hazy rather than bright, today felt somewhat refreshing.

I’d been working too much lately. As a freelancer certified by four companies, I could probably request traffic coordination in normal situations, but today I deliberately decided to stop at red lights.

When I arrived at the Hive, I already saw a Kanun Corporation armored van with a mask and dagger logo. After parking my bike nearby and getting off, a familiar face emerged from the driver’s seat.

It was Jimon. The last time I saw him, he had been detained by Fitts & Morrison, but now he was naturally wearing a Fitts & Morrison prosthetic hand.

“You got him a prosthetic hand before a computational assist device? I didn’t expect relations with Fitts & Morrison to improve this much.”

“They’re the guys who took responsibility for our brother’s death even though they didn’t kill him, and they’ve been accepting our grudge all this time. If anything… I’m ashamed of what I did. So, is it okay for a big shot like you to come to a place like this?”

Now I’m proudly called a big shot. I sighed and pushed my mercenary license toward him. The virtual screen showed only “Arthur Murphy, 23-year-old mercenary,” with my call sign omitted.

“I need to pretend not to be a big shot if I want to breathe and live in the Hive too. All I’ve learned is how to deceive others. So, are you here to greet me?”

He slowly shook his head. The back of the Kanun Corporation armored van opened, and another familiar face emerged. Not part of Kanun’s group. A mercenary from Sin City Bitches.

She spun the Sin City Bitches’ signature 360-degree rotating elbow component once, then handed me the bag she had brought. The reinforced exterior indicated it was an implant storage bag.

As I took the bag, she spoke with a voice tinged with a sigh. It was a message from Talos, Mr. James McKernihy.

“Talos says he understands that a three-company… no, now a four-company certified freelancer is busy. But he wondered what would happen if you didn’t come to receive his gift. Were you really that busy?”

“I really was that busy. I’ve been so busy I couldn’t even find time to date my girlfriend until finally catching a chance this evening. So, what’s this gift from Mr. James?”

She pushed a virtual screen over my field of vision. It was a manual for a Fitts & Morrison voice module.

It was called the Calliope Module. After skimming through it, she began explaining verbally.

“You know our parent company’s engineers make a lot of weird things. Like trying to apply optical camouflage to closed-system power armor. This is the result of their desperate attempt to attach a sonic weapon to a voice module.”

Why would they put that there? Belwether also worked on miniaturization, but they made such things as external components for power armor, not voice modules attached to human bodies. Sonic weapons for incapacitation were useful tools.

“Hearing the word ‘desperate’ makes me think the performance isn’t quite there. But it’s still useful, right?”

She rolled her artificial eye as if she couldn’t lie, then sighed and nodded.

“It’s useful if you use it at close range, or, well… if you want to make a monstrous voice during a speech. It’s not as stable as Belwether products, but anyway.”

I checked the specs in the catalog. It was described as equipment that emits both infrasound and ultrasound simultaneously to cause pain and incapacitation effects. It would be an excellent device if not for its effective range of only twenty meters.

That’s not to say its performance as a sonic weapon was excellent. Since its performance as a voice module was better than my current one… I decided to think of the additional function as just that—additional.

“Somehow this feels a bit modest for a gift from the head of security of a megacorporation.”

She laughed as if she couldn’t deny it, but gestured with her chin toward the bike I had arrived on. She spoke as if she knew.

“That’s true, but… Fitts & Morrison at least knows whose hands that custom-made Talent & Tradition product ended up in. This is the limit of what Talos can do.”

I opened the lower storage compartment of the bike and showed her the Panacea rifle. A single-shot bolt-action railgun. What a ridiculous name, I thought as I showed her the part labeled “Panacea.”

“Well, since we’re at it, would you like to give it a new name? Either from Sin City Bitches or Fitts & Morrison? I’m from Panacea Meditech, so having my hometown’s name on a weapon feels a bit off.”

She seemed to be about to offer an idea after a moment’s thought, but I already had a feeling about Sin City Bitches’ naming conventions, so I cut her off.

“Ah, then…”

“Pimp Hunter is not an option.”

That seemed to be exactly what she had been thinking. Her pleased expression faded as she clicked her tongue and nodded.

“Damn. I don’t know how to name things the Fitts & Morrison way. They always use names that sound like they came out of Greek mythology, for whatever reason.”

They named their rifle Panacea. The voice module was named Calliope. I knew about Panacea, the goddess—she was the symbol of Panacea Meditech.

I asked Chance silently in my head. Mila’s original name was Prometheus. The anti-electronic warfare module installed in my head was called Aegis, and the war-era flame I received was named Phaeton Station.

‘I think we might know why, Chance.’

“I agree. It’s the American naming convention from that war period. Pre-war America was… corrupt, but at its peak. A peak so arrogant they named weapons after mythological figures.”

‘Then I should leave the naming to you. This is something only we know, right?’

“If you request it, I would name it Hubris. The arrogance of my homeland during that war period, and the arrogance of Fitts & Morrison, which uncritically follows the habits of that era.”

It was a word from what K had told me. Icarus without hubris. Come to think of it, K also naturally used metaphors from Greek mythology. The reason… probably because K was a film buff.

Someone who loved films from the 90s a hundred years ago would naturally have devoured films from right before that war too. He probably learned it naturally. The shadow of war looms everywhere.

I naturally placed my hand on the side of my face as if about to communicate, then removed it and smiled at the Sin City Bitches mercenary in front of me. I spoke as if I had naturally come up with a new name.

“Ah, I happen to know someone familiar with their naming conventions, so they’ll name it for me. I’ll show it to you after a complete repaint. Would you like to join us today?”

She shook her head. As if she had no reason to hide it from me, she displayed a list of wanted criminals in my field of vision. They were criminals that Sin City Bitches would hunt.

“Are there only one or two bastards in this city who need someone to act like a bitch to make them come to their senses? And you know that only freelancers can fully enjoy their days off when they want to.”

At that, she gave me her name. She first offered a cheap stage name, then clicked her tongue as if displeased and revealed her real name. I waved briefly to her.

“I’ll buy a drink in your name at the Hive, so have one next time you’re here. Well then.”

“Huh. What does a freelancer gain by being so generous to an old whore… Fine. I’ll gratefully drink what you’ve bought. Have a good day.”

Jimon looked like he wanted to call me a model student again, but the moment I acquired the brilliant title of a four-company freelancer, I had become someone who could afford to be a model student.