“Good, get us a nice vehicle this time,” Aya said as she started fixing her hair. Eventually, she gave up and just put her cap on. “Something nicer than the cramped rideshare we took last night.”
“We’re going to meet a lawyer?” Iris asked.
“Yep…” I said with a shrug.
“Um, sure, yeah. Just let me finish my coffee.”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
So I splurged.
We took a convertible aerosSUV, Lady C. and Aya in the back with me, Iris up front. The vehicle’s seats were made of an incredibly soft leather, the seats heated, our asses warm as we brought the top down and let the wind whip all around us.
Goodbye, Clinton Hills, I thought as I looked down at Brooklyn, which grew smaller by the second.
“This is an amazing ride,” Lady C. said, hugging my arm.
Aya stood, and lifted her sword into the air, crying out in Thulean. “Aye! Aye!”
“Simmer down back there,” Iris told them. “Do you want me to put the top back up?” she called out over the sound of the wind beating in our ears.
“Not in the least bit,” I called up to her.
“It’s cold but…”
“Screw it, right?” I called to her.
“Yeah, screw it!”
“Yes!” Lady C. shouted, standing as well.
We quickly made our way to the Upper West Side, buildings along the horizon poking at the clouds above, Manhattan endless, moving up the coastline to Harlem, Yonkers, Connecticut and beyond.
There was so much to explore in New York, so many places to call home, and in that moment above the city, I wished that I’d spent more time exploring my hometown.
And maybe I would...
It was a cloudy day, but the sun was there as well, peeking through a few of the gray clouds, glazing the sleek surfaces of the buildings with tangerine light.
“Chase, if you truly are a rich man now, this is how you will travel with us in your world.”
“Let’s not count our eggs before they hatch,” I reminded Aya.
“Nonsense, we will make scrambled eggs with those eggs if they dare hatch. If you’re lucky, I will make something that tastes like dragon wings.”
“Dragon wings?” I called to her over the wind.
“We Thuleans do not eat dragon wings, which are fried wings of baby dragons. So to substitute them, we use chicken wings.”
“So like the chicken wings we have here?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I do not know what you have here. But we do not eat our own kind.”
“I get that.”
“Would you eat a monkey or pig?” she asked me.
“I would eat a pig.”
“Then to each their own kind,” Aya said, laughing, baring her teeth as she threw her head back. She almost lost her hat, which she quickly caught, giving me an annoyed look.
I was glad that her blade wasn’t real; it was currently tucked between her legs, which made me question her swordsmanship for a moment.
“There are so many cute restaurants around here, I can just tell,” Lady C. said as our vehicle started to land.
“What makes you say that?”
“There are always good restaurants in the nice parts of the city,” she said, looking around. “That’s why you should take us to the nice parts more often. Instead of just Brooklyn. Well, I guess some parts of Brooklyn are nice. But wouldn’t you prefer to take us to a place like this?”
“Yeah, Chase, wouldn’t you prefer to take us to a place like this?” Iris asked in a mocking tone, turning around and looking at me. The vehicle beeped, the top coming up and over on its own.
“And, goodbye,” I said to the two huntresses as I closed the Monster Hunt app.
The aerosSUV settled and a soft tone told us we were now allowed to exit. I got out first and opened the door for Iris, smiling at her as she stepped out.
“Thank you,” she said as we turned and looked at a building, spotting a digital placard floating before it that listed the various businesses inside.
“Seventeenth floor,” I said, tapping my finger on Thomas Baker’s name.
We entered the lobby, only to be greeted by two men with thick accents, the building’s doormen.
They didn’t say anything to us, but one of them did look at me curiously for a moment, wondering why a guy wearing a loose military jacket, jeans and a band T-shirt was in such a nice office.
He didn’t say anything though as we took the elevator to the seventeenth floor, where we were greeted by a male receptionist with a perfectly styled haircut.
“And you are here to see… Mr. Baker, correct?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I told him, watching his pupils flash for a moment as he cycled through some options over iNet.
“Great, this will only take a minute. Please, take a seat, and let me know if you would like anything, like a bottle of water, or a latte.”
“I’ll have a latte?” Iris asked, looking to me for approval.
I nodded.
“Make that two,” she said.
“Remind me about this Ray Steampunk again,” I told Iris as we sat down in the lobby, the only two people there aside from the receptionist.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, so I don’t look like an idiot.”
“Ray Steampunk was one of the early developers of the Proxima Galaxy,” Iris explained. “He died in a car wreck, but as soon as he died, his RPC respawned in one of his favorite worlds, an active steampunk world called, well, Steam.”
“RPC?”
“Reborn Player Character,” Iris explained. “Similar to an NPC. People pay good money to live forever in the Proxima Galaxy after they die. Basically, all of the details are downloaded into an NPC, who takes on that person’s persona and continues their life. Haven’t we been over this before?”
“If we have, I’ve already forgotten about it,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Steampunk is still active in the Proxima Galaxy, and he was one of the people that helped develop EverLife. My guess is he put the Steeple in as an ultimate quest, and no one was able to solve it until you did.”
“I wonder why it took so long for him to get back to me though,” I said. “I mean, we got to the top. There was nothing there. Just a white room. You think the room would have told us something...”
Iris nodded.
“Mr. Baker will see you now,” the receptionist said as he approached us. He led us down a narrow hallway to a back room.
This lawyer was definitely living it up. A corner office, a great view of the city, updated furniture, a mahogany desk, it was very clear that this guy had some money to play around with.
“Mr. Knowles?” he said, standing. He shook my hand and encouraged me to sit in front of him, gesturing for Iris to sit in the other seat.
Thomas Baker wore a pinstripe suit, a tie with a tie clip that matched his cufflinks, his eyebrows perfectly manicured, a small amount of gel in his hair creating a natural part. His authority apparently came with his ability to dress well and the degrees on his wall, which he proudly displayed on a bookshelf near the door. Yale, Columbia, Harvard: the man exuded East Coast elitism.
“I’m his friend, just in case you were wondering,” Iris said.
“I figured as much,” he said, “that or his girlfriend.”
I exchanged glances with Iris, and she shrugged.
“No, friends,” I said. “Well, bandmates.”
“I see you are a musician,” Baker said, the look in his eyes telling me that he was checking into my details over iNet. “And the fact that you are a musician led you to discover the secret of the Steeple. So, congratulations,” he chuckled, “you have finally made playing music a profitable enterprise.”
“Excuse me?” Iris asked.
“Do you know any musicians who are rich?” the lawyer asked in a jovial way.
“I mean, maybe some famous ones,” said Iris.
“Exactly. But w
e’re not here to get into that, we’re here to talk about the money and property you’ve been awarded.”
“We still haven’t been briefed on the property,” I started to say.
“Yes, the Steeple. Did you not read about that in the message Ray Steampunk sent you?”
“It just said you would talk to us about it…”
He laughed again. “You know, I advised Mr. Steampunk’s RPC not to do something like this, but it’s his money and it is his idea.”
“Do something like what?” Iris asked.
“Just give this stuff away. The money, the property. You do realize how much that property in EverLife is worth, do you not?”
“I have no idea what it’s worth,” I told him. I caught Iris’ eyes lighting up behind her glasses, indicating that it was worth a considerable sum.
“You are fast,” the lawyer told her. “As your friend here has probably already found out, the property is worth more than the money you’ve been awarded.”
“This is just…” Iris said, wide-eyed now.
“Too much?” the lawyer asked. “That’s what I told Mr. Steampunk, but it’s his money and we’ve confirmed with his RPC that this is what he wanted to do. In fact, that was why it took us so long to get to you, or to schedule the message that he had already dictated.”
“Because you had to check me out?” I asked.
“Exactly. We knew that someone had cracked the secret, none of us on his legal team or anyone in his inner circle really knew what the secret was, but we had to do a background check on you to make sure that you didn’t do so in a cheating way. Which you didn’t. At least not that we can tell.”
“I actually did not cheat. I wasn’t even really… ” I shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t actively trying to solve it, but it was mostly just, I don’t know, an idea that came to me. Actually, we both kind of solved it, she was the one that helped me dig deeper into the chakras, and the keys they responded to.”
“So you would like to split the prize then?”
I looked to Iris. “Sure.”
“No,” Iris said. “Absolutely not, Chase, this is yours. You earned this.”
“I mean…”
“I don’t really care what you do with it,” Baker said, “but you know what? To save me some time, I’d be glad if you signed these documents now. If you decide to give her some of it, you can do so later. You can hire an attorney to take care of this for you, or you can contact our office and we will set it up.”
“Okay…”
“Also, you should know that New York taxes are going to hit you hard for this, so just save a little bit of it for that. Otherwise, you will end up owing taxes that you can’t afford. In fact, I can put you in contact with one of my tax guys, he’ll tell you what you’ll owe in the future. So just set some of that aside.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling overwhelmed with information.
“You could also set up a trust. You are on universal basic income, are you not?”
“I mean, I guess I was?”
He nodded. “Exactly, you were, but as of today you are no longer on UBI. Because you clearly don’t know what to do with this kind of money, I would have fun with the cash, sell the property, and put the proceeds of it in a trust fund or something, and set it to pay you out over the next fifty years. That way you won’t spend it all on a Lamborghini aeros, or some overpriced instrument. You get the picture.”
“Yeah,” I told him.
I didn’t like the tone he was taking with me, but it wasn’t bad advice. Not that I would go out and buy myself an expensive sports car, but given this kind of money, maybe I should preserve it.
“Is that all you have to say?” he asked after a long pause.
“And I can’t really think of anything else. Iris?”
“Um… no, nothing to say.”
Baker raised an eyebrow as he looked from her to me. “Would you like to arrange a meeting with Mr. Steampunk?”
“Yeah, of course, if he’s up to it. Does he ever visit EverLife?”
“He will be at the tournament. You are still participating in the EverLife Tournament, are you not?”
“I…” I glanced at Iris to see her nodding. “Someone from our group will be there. I can definitely say that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“The only reason I was doing all of this was for money, and now that I have it, I really don’t know if it’s what I want to do. I might just play music in the Proxima Galaxy, that’s more my style.”
He frowned. “It appears your bandmate here doesn’t have the same opinion…”
“We’ll figure it out,” Iris told him, a thin smile coming across her face. “Now about that paperwork…”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
“Chase, just stop for a second,” Iris said as we exited the elevator.
“What’s up?”
“Look, I know you feel like you have a lot of money now, but I don’t think you realize how much that property is actually worth.”
“It’s our money,” I reminded her. “And our property. I wouldn’t even be where I was if you hadn’t given me the code.” I paused for a moment, looking deeply into her eyes. “I mean it.”
“It’s your cash to keep.”
“Iris, I can’t keep all this… not with all the help you’ve given me. I mean, I wouldn’t have used the Monster Hunt app if it wasn’t for you.”
“We can discuss that later,” she finally told me as we stepped around a potted plant. “But back to what I just said: have you looked up how much the Steeple is worth?”
“No... ”
We passed a doorman attempting to look busy, but actually trying to burn out the clock.
“We’re talking more money than either of us have ever even considered before,” Iris said.
“All right.” I stopped near the building’s exit, waiting for iNet to fire up on my pane of vision. As it did, I took a seat in the lobby, Iris plopping down next to me as I mentally keyed in the term ‘EverLife’ on a Proxima Galaxy real estate site.
Once I was given a basic spread of the land and the twelve kingdoms, I quickly zoomed in on the center of EverLife, a red outline appearing around the Steeple of Litur and Industria. I focused on this and the price popped up.
“Do you see?” she asked.
“Holy…”
“Exactly.”
“I’m going to have to sell that,” I told her quite frankly. “I mean, we are. And I’m giving you half of that money. I really don’t want to be in the center of EverLife anyway, too busy, too many people vying for our attention. I prefer where we are now on the outskirts of Kingdom Lume.”
The number flashed away, and I couldn’t help but shake my head. At least a hundred million dollars? And not Proxima dollars, actual dollars…
“On the even brighter side, we can really pump up our dojo now,” I finally told her.
A hopeful look painting across her face. “So you’re not going to quit the Monster Hunt app?”
“Who said I was going to quit? I’m just not interested in playing the same way I was playing before, you know, for money. It’s just not as big of a concern of mine. So anything that would help me catch creatures that are worth more money, or tournaments, or Brawls, those types of things are less interesting to me now.”
Iris puffed her cheeks out as she thought this over. “Yeah, I guess I can understand that, but don’t leave me hanging at the tournament.”
“I won’t, okay?”
She glanced around, offering the doorman a quick smile. “Look, since we are in Midtown, I wanted to check out Mood Fabrics.”
“You’re into sewing now?” I asked her.
“No, nothing like that. I’m just looking for buttons, really. This place is famous, and it’s been here for like two hundred years or something. Well, maybe not that long, but definitely for over a century.”
“Should we walk then?”
“Do you really want to take an UberLy
ft just to travel a few blocks?”
“Good point, I guess this money really is burning a hole in my pocket,” I told her as we exited the building, heading west on Thirty-Ninth Street.
Eventually, we reached Seventh Avenue, and even though I had been to Times Square countless times, I couldn’t help but feel the urge to turn right instead of left on Seventh, walk a few blocks down and see the crowd.
It was always something to see, and sometimes I wondered how NYC accommodated so many tourists at once. But rather than head toward the lights and sounds, we turned onto Thirty-Eighth Street, a typical nondescript street in Midtown, one that looked like any of the others, lined with buildings with storefronts on the bottom levels.
Many of the large cities around the world were known for their architecture, and New York was definitely among them. There were iNet apps that merely gave me information on buildings, who had designed it, when it was built and other interesting facts about structure. I had tried this app out before, but it became too tedious at some point, considering almost every building in New York had a history.
“Are you sure it’s around here?” I asked her as we continued toward Eighth Avenue.
She nodded. “I have been here before, but it’s kind of hard to find. It doesn’t really have a storefront like the others. You have to look for…” Iris pointed to a location on the right-hand side of the street. “There it is.”
“You’d think they would have a sign,” I told her as we entered the building and found another doorman, this one a brown-skinned humandroid. He stood by the elevator in front of a placard that listed Mood Fabrics as being on the third floor.
Once we stepped up, he asked us where we were going and keyed it in on the elevator.
We reached the third floor, and I nodded to two white leather chairs pressed up against the wall, telling Iris I would wait outside for her.
As she entered Mood Fabrics, another elevator opened up and more women stepped out, followed by a guy wearing a silver dress.
The place was pretty lively for a hidden fabric store, people coming in and going out quite frequently. As I sat there, I took in the paint style of the room, black and white pinstripes, and stared for a long while at an old painting of a French bulldog on the wall.
Monster Hunt NYC 3 Page 2
