A bright light pierces its way through my hungover eyes and brain, slicing and penetrating my migraine-ridden skull like a dildo strapped to a hacksaw in a hazing ritual gone horribly wrong. I lift my head and open my eyes to see lots of puffy smoke floating all around–at first I think I’m still in the hookah joint, but as my eyes return to full focus, I realize I’m watching pillars of fog dance above the waters below through the bay windows in front of my desk. I guess God’s taking a vape break.
Through the fog I can finally begin to make out the source of the intruding neon light: the familiar clusterfuck of bright animated holographic advertisements floating above the ocean via the magic of zero-point energy projection. The Holo-Ad of the gorgeous Princesa Teta from The Princess of Ping Pong opening a bottle of lime Jarritos with her double-Ds always brings a smile to my face–God bless Southus.
It appears I’ve snoozed off at my desk, but I have no idea how I got here or how long I was out. My Space Invader tie is sideways, my shirt is half buttoned and three buttons too long on the right side, and my jacket is curled up in front of the window like a sunning (mooning?) housecat that’s been inexplicably vomited on. I’m straining to piece together the blurry memory snapshots of last night but the harder I think, the more I can feel my skull trying to break its way out of my head and the blurrier the visions become.
I activate my NeurOS neuro-implant-HUD-eyes-thing (CuntNETs? ContNETs. Right.) to check the time and see if I took any ocular snapshots, but all I get when it tries to boot is a garbled red flickering mess. “Tela, what fucking time is it?” I mumble, my head slumping back onto the desk.
“It’s 9PM, Señor Blake-san!” my digital anime chick assistant squeaks, her high-pitched voice tearing open my hungover skull from the inside out.
“What’s wrong with my NeurOS chan, Tela? It doesn’t look right.”
“Who’s Neuros-chan? Has Blake-san been cheating on Tela again?”
“No, you little--’chan’ is slang for neuronal implant enhancement, all the cool hackers say that now.”
“That doesn’t make much sense, Blake-san. The proper Company-approved term is ‘Telemplant.’ Enhancement doesn’t even have the word Chan in it, did you even think about that? I thought Blake-san had a fancy degree--”
“What’s wrong with my eyeball implants, damn it!?”
“Well, Blake-san’s vitals look okay, as does his NeurOS itself, but his right ContNET lens shattered last night, it appears.”
“Oh thank god,” I sigh, slumping back in my office chair. “As long as it’s just the glass part that’s fucked and not my eyeball.”
“Oh, Tela didn’t check for that. Let’s see. Oh no! Blake’s right eye is also fucked. When the glass lens broke, it appears to have also ‘fucked’ Blake’s cornea!”
I look in the full glass of clear liquid on my desk, observing in my reflection the bloody mess where my right eye should be. That’s never a good sentence to have to write. “Ahhh, fuck me, I need to get this taken care of, don’t I?”
“Relax, there’s no rush! Blake-san has already lost all of his eyesight in that eye anyway, and Tela has already scheduled an appointment for surgery with Dr. Yamata for ocular reconstruction and a new ContNET implant in exactly one week. Right now Blake’s new super special Detective mission is to drink some water, okay? Blake-san’s blood readings indicate potential signs of alcohol poisoning, and Blake knows how Tela worries!”
“Fine,” I mutter, grabbing the aforementioned glass of clear liquid and chugging the whole thing.
“Blake-san, no! That’s vodquila. That won’t help Blake-san recover from his hangover!”
“Whatever,” I mumble, slumping down against the desk, the alcohol hitting me all at once like a... very fast train… made out of... of… alcohol. I’m drunk now, damn it, I don’t know what you want from me. “Now, I… uh… want you to tell me what happened last night. Every detail. All of the details, alright!?
“I don’t know what happened to Señor Blake-san last night!” Tela chirps. Now that she can tell my left eye is working at full capacity again, she appears holographically in her chibi anime maid form on my desk and winks at me, doing that stupid thing where she sticks her tongue out to be cute but just looks psychotic. “Blake told me he was gonna get ‘hammered’ and left poor little me all alone here locked in his SEMP-shielded desk drawer with his Telaphone!”
“Fuck.” I slump back onto the desk again, staring half-consciously at my right hand as I try to remember how many fingers I was supposed to have. Wait, fuck me, when did I get that weird mayan-looking skull-mask tattoo thing on the back of my hand!?
“Tela, look up any interesting news from last night that might have anything to do with, uh, whatever I did to get this totally hackin’ but vaguely concerning tat. I need you to investigate.”
“Wasn’t investigating things your job, Detective-san? No wonder Blake got fired,” she giggles, making an insufferable little self-satisfied face, “Blake-san can’t even find something so simple without the help of his little anime girlfriend—“ Without really taking time to process what I’m doing, I open the top right drawer of my desk, grab my Telaphone, and chuck it, forgetting about the bay window. It smashes through with a beautiful tinkling sound as the impact causes the rest of the window to collapse upon itself, a gorgeous shimmering neon rain falling to the street below, each droplet catching the light of a different ZPE hologram outside like a really shitty screensaver on an ancient computer. I watch with great satisfaction as the hologram on my desk glitches out and then vanishes. She’ll be fine, she’s synced to the TeleCloud, but at least this way I get a little time to nurse my headache without her mandatory always-on little self and commentary. Good fucking riddance, you little green-haired kawaii-desu-Hal-2001-wannabe.
Now, back to what I was doing. Uh… let’s see, screensavers, cult-classic movie references--oh, right. “Tela, look up any information on this weird tattoo thing,” I mumble. No reply. Huh. Oh, right, cause I threw her out the fucking window. Haha. Fuuuuck me. I guess I have to do this solo. And by that, I mean I guess I have to go buy a new Telaphone.
“Detective’s log, Stargate 6909. I’m looking for the phone store, but I’m d-drunk and it’s hard. End of Line.” I mutter this into my flask, because my phone is at the bottom of the ocean and if I talked to myself, I’d look like an idiot. I’m also far drunker than usual, which is honestly saying a lot. I’m wearing my cool guy aviators to cover my fucked up eyeball and to make myself look suave and mysterious as I stroll through the open-air brine-scented outdoor mall in downtown Ocean View, and--bingo! A giant holographic projection of a Telaphone surrounded by flowers spins enticingly round above the entrance of the next store down. A happy little default-model brunette Tela is popping in and out of the phone’s screen, grinning sardonically and calling out “WELCOME TO TELECOM WIRELESS, HOME OF THE TELAPHONE, HOME OF THE TELA! BIENVENIDOS A TELECOM WIRELESS, CASA DEL TELAFONO, CASA DEL TELA!” in a voice almost as obnoxious as my Tela’s… on repeat. No way this’ll get old.
I sneak a peek up the giant ad’s skirt as I stumble under the projection and through the automatic door, smashing my wide manly shoulder on the frame and then smoothly and coolly catching my balance on the welcome mat with my face. Haven’t been in one of these joints since I had to switch to a civilian Telaphone about five years ago, and from a quick glance around, it appears I haven’t been missing much. There’s only one phone model for all districts now, so 10% of this joint is actual phones on display and the other 90% is kiosks for Tela merch and DLC and customization for the lonely perverts that have nothing to do but fetishize their damn GPS all day. Though some of the catgirl DLC was admittedly kind of cute--
Before I could finish very carefully perusing the full digital catalog of thigh-high DLCs to make fun of the sad sons of bitches that would actually get turned on by it, I’m rudely interrupted by some douchebag in a red 2-sizes-too-tight TELECOM WIRELESS shirt. He clearly thinks he’s so fucking hot with his stupid tan body and rippling biceps and lickable abs and luscious golden locks of fluffy, cloud-like hair and his sizeable and very visible crotch bulge which I didn’t even notice.
“Hey-hey-hey, buddyyyy!” he booms, his stupid rich baritone radio voice further cementing my opinion that he’s a real fuckin bitch. “My name’s Roy, boy! I’m gonna give you customer service you’ll want to PHONE HOME about!”
“Stargate log update 69.2,” I softly whisper into my flask. “Remind me to have Tela remind me to throw Roy out the w-window when it gets reinst-rainst-rinsed–put back in.”
“Erm, I can hear you, sir,” Roy says. “The whole store can, this is a bit inappropriate. Would you like a glass of water, and maybe we can discuss new phones once you’re a little more sober--”
“It’s rude to talk while someone else is drinking, you big bulge bitch boy!” I correct him heroically. He opens his mouth to say something lame so I put a finger to his lips as I chug the rest of the flask, then balance it on top of his head, where it stays for an impressive two seconds before falling to the tiled floor below.
“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to lea—“
“I need to buy a phone, b-beefcake,” I say, looking him in the eyes and ripping my shirt off. That’s what you do to assert dominance over the weaker, you see. Except for I wasn’t wearing a shirt so I just ripped off a fist-full of chesthair. That’s gonna hurt in a--yep, fuck me.
“Okay, fine, whatever. There’s literally only actual phone model here, the Telaphone, because it’s fucking perfect, and mandatory, and you legally HAVE TO HAVE ONE, so–”
“That’s what mandatory means, dumbass. Might as well give me your PIN Number so I can get in your ATM Machine while you’re at it, C-Captain Redundant McRedundancy.”
“Do you want a phone or not, asshole!? What even happened to your last one, these things are indestructible!”
“I accidentally threw it out a window,” I reply, smirking. “C-cool guys only have one job–to walk away from explosions. Now–I’m here to buy a phone and kick some ass, and I’m all out of ass.”
“Fucking fine,” he mumbles, shoving a box into my hand. “I’ll just take it out of your Telaccount. And you fucked up your one liner, idiot.”
“Or did I?” I reply, grinning ear to ear as I step out the door. I wait for a second just in case the building wants to explode behind me to make me look cool, but it doesn’t. Oh well.