The Protagonist System

The PetroChem corpo that had arranged the whole thing, had been smart and remotely monitored the operation. Why was that smart? He knew the exact moment he had to run. When a red beam had ended the armored hit squad and then proceeded to cut the PetroChem logo out of the Coronado Dam.

Even with most of the evidence destroyed, there was a small chance that it could be traced back to PetroChem and to him, so he bolted. Being a failure might be a usual occurrence for corpos; but, being caught was not an option in his mind.

He transferred his assets to a numbered account and only packed an overnight bag. Anything else he needed he would buy after arriving in Europe. Since flights left the spaceport every hour, it was easy to book a seat on the next flight and he calmly hired a taxi to drive him there.

As luck would have it, he wasn't married and had avoided that whole mess. He might have had a kid or two roaming around on the street somewhere; but, he didn't care about them any more than he cared about the women he had picked up at the bars over the years. Easy pickings were usually easily convinced he had used protection and he easily denied any accusations.

He was almost bouncing on his feet by the time the taxi showed up and he angrily snapped at the Delamain driver for it and told him to step on it to take him to the spaceport for his flight. Delamain didn't respond to him and pulled back into the busy traffic. He also didn't comment about the event that nearly everyone in the city had seen with the Coronado Dam being gutted, since it was a PetroChem operation and this man obviously wanted to get away from it.

He sent a priority message to his friend Veder, since he knew Atlas was busy building the new water canal heading towards Arasaka Tower. After a moment, Veder responded and said to deliver the man and not tarnish his reputation by failing to complete his job.

Delamain appreciated how thoughtful that was and kept his silence as he drove the rest of the way. He did take a few risky but well calculated chances to slip through traffic, giving his passenger a feeling of reassurance that he was doing his best to get him there as soon as possible. What he didn't tell the man was he could have called for an AV taxi and gotten there much sooner. He dropped the passenger off in the departure lane and the man tried to jump out, only to find the doors locked.

“Let me OUT! I'm going to be late!” The man shouted.

“You need to pay the fee, sir.” Delamain said, calmly.

“What?!? I already...” The man paused and cursed at himself, checked the price, and initiated the transfer.

“Thank you.” Delamain said and unlocked the doors. “Have a nice trip.”

The man cursed and jumped out and ran inside the building. He bumped into a few people, didn't apologize, and ran on. He had taken this flight many times over the years, so he knew what gate to run to and that security only checked you if you looked suspicious.

He reached the right gate and confirmed his registration, sighed with relief that they were bording immediately, and he strolled down the walkway with a smile on his face. As soon as he entered the plane and the flight attendant had turned to greet the next passenger, the man found himself inside a much smaller space with a cot, a bench, and a hidden bathroom in a closet.

“I think you and I need to have a conversation about this afternoon.” A voice said behind him and he turned around and looked out through a slightly blue see-through electric wall at a youthful face.

The man barked a laugh. “A snot-nosed kid like you won't get anything from me.”

The youthful face smiled. That's what you think... and you are wrong.”

Before the man could do more than gasp at the mental weight that hit him, he fell into a mental construct of a theatre and watched the big screen as a third person observer while he attended the PetroChem meeting that set the decision on what to do about Atlas Incorporated and then he saw his own actions to handle the hiring of the distractions and the bait.

Thank you. The youthful face's voice said and the man lost consciousness.

*

Dexter DeShawn had been so confident that the job would be successful, he was already out and celebrated as he spent a good portion of the corpo payoff on dancers and joytoys to play with in Lizzie's Bar.

He enjoyed having the new short and tiny joytoy with long silver hair deep-throat him, because she choked on it and made him feel like he was more well endowed than he actually was. He also successfully ignored the small suspicious bulge in her panties and dismissed it as extra hair, which he would avoid later, because he hated a hairy input and would take her ass instead.

He unloaded down her little throat and she moaned, as if she was already locked into the program he hadn't loaded in yet, and then the door to the room opened. Before he could do more than shout at the intrusion and that his time had barely started with the joytoy, a small red beam hit him in the chest and he slumped down, unconscious.

The reprogrammed joytoy didn't notice and kept enjoying herself as she licked him off, then she climbed on top and rode him as hard as she wanted. She was at the point that she almost hurt herself with how rough she was being, and a gentle hand grabbed her shoulder and forced her to slow and calm down.

“Easy, girl. He's not going anywhere.” The soft voice said.

She turned her head around and saw a very handsome young man, which made her very horny and she tried to hop up off of what was deep inside of her and jump on him. He held her down as he let out a little laugh and pointed at the plump black man she still had inside of her. That reminded her she had a good dick to satisfy herself with already and she turned back around and went right back to doing just that.

“He'll stay hard and won't wake up until I come back for him.” The voice said.

“Thank you so much.” One of the other dancers said and her naked body leaned into view as she helped the joytoy by sucking on her very erect and hard nipples.

“AHHH!” The joytoy screamed with pleasure as she came so hard that she almost fell off. Almost. She caught herself just in time by grabbing the dancer's shoulders and kissed her deeply in thanks. After taking a moment to recover, the joytoy leaned backwards a little to put some extra tension down there and kept moving her hips to grind on the free dick as much as she could.

The deep itch she always had was a little less after that and then she felt the dancer's mouth on her own dick, which popped right up for her. The dancer moaned at that and worked her over fairly quickly. The joytoy moaned indecently as she came from being both sucked on and deeply penetrated at the same time.

“You are the best thing to ever happen here.” The dancer said and straddled the unconscious black man's belly, then she slid herself onto the joytoy's still hard erection. She started bouncing on it and hungrily kissed the joytoy as the two of them had a great time with their captive audience.

*

“That was a short bathroom break.” Denise commented when I returned to her office.

“I would have invited you along if it wouldn't make the others even more jealous.” I said and she gave me a knowing look.

After we had our successful little tryst in the stairwell, her three friends had also wanted to have the experience. Since we didn't have that many breaks in the day and we actually needed to eat when we had a food break, there wasn't time today to indulge them.

So, I made them an offer. There were enough days left in the week that they could each have a turn in the stairwell before the weekend, or they could wait until we went home and we could recreate the event in the stairwell in that building instead.

The three of them whispered and talked about it, the pros and cons about the compromise, with Denise weighing in with her own opinion, then her first friend gasped and stared at me. The others also looked at me, then at her.

“He... he said... when we get home.” She said, her voice low, almost a purr.

The others caught their breath as well and Denise gave me a very intense look, so I nodded. Four squeals of delight came from them and I was mobbed by kisses and more than a few gropes by four very happy women. The would save so much money by moving in with me permanently, too.

We worked for the rest of our long shift and they had smiles on their faces the entire time. I walked them out to Delamain and thanked him for everything, then went back inside to go down to the garbage duty in the basement. It was dredge work and I continued to do it without complaint, because I always did it diligently and could rub that fact into the face of my boss.

*

Atlas dropped off a very happy Panam where she had parked and he paid her parking fee, which earned him a glare from her. He kissed her and defended his action by saying she wouldn't have parked there if he hadn't asked her for a date, so she relented. He also agreed to let her pay if she asked him out, just to distract her, which it did.

Panam couldn't help but start considering what they could do if she was the one that asked. Atlas gave her a kiss goodnight and climbed into his own car and drove off. He kept an eye on her, just in case, and drove back to the office. He hadn't received a call from the clerk, so he was pretty sure that Maine and his crew hadn't shown up while he was busy out on his date.

To his surprise, he entered the storefront and saw a very happy woman sitting behind the desk. She presented him with a large sheet of purchases and he easily decided that he was wrong. Maine had to have shown up, since a lot of the mechanical cybernetics had been bought, as well as a bunch of memory chips and cybernetic eyes.

“A big guy that barely fit through the door with a bum hand and a bunch of his friends?” Atlas asked.

The clerk nodded. “They were shocked at what we offered, then spent a good half an hour just asking me questions about everything.” She said and then laughed. “I didn't even have to lie!”

Atlas laughed, too. “A few were about me, right?”

“Only a few weren't.” The clerk answered. “The tall woman with short blonde hair spent more than a few minutes staring at the surgical area in the back that I didn't intentionally leave open when I went to the bathroom.”

Atlas shook his head. “They wouldn't accept such a blatant offer.”

“Not right then.” The clerk said and handed him a piece of paper. On it were two appointments, one for the morning and one for the afternoon. Reconstruction surgery with Kiwi in the morning and a programming discussion in the afternoon with Lucy.

“Nothing for Rebecca?” Atlas asked.

The clerk snorted. “She tried to yank out one of her eyes to replace it with the basic one we sell. They had to leave to check in with their ripperdoc to fix the short she caused by crushing the old one.”

Atlas laughed. “She rushed out instead of calling me? That's like a five minute fix, easy.”

“She said something about not letting you see her like that and took off.” The clerk said. “The rest ran out after her.”

Atlas nodded and handed the sheet back. “Thank you for sticking around so much. I don't know what I would have done without you here.”

“Nothing, obviously. If I wasn't here, no one would ever come in here.” She responded.

Atlas opened his mouth to counter that and realized she was right. He hired her because he didn't want to sit there and do nothing all day. “You deserve a raise.”

The clerk laughed and tucked the paperwork away on her desk before she walked towards the door. “I'm going home. Lock up and go to bed after the garbage run.”

“I will.” Atlas said and watched her leave. He kept an eye on her until she was safely inside a Delamain taxi and locked the office up.

Despite the streets being a lot safer from the gangs, that didn't mean normal people weren't out there committing crimes. Muggings, robberies, assaults, murders, you name it, it was still happening. It just wasn't as blatant or obvious as it used to be.

Atlas drove back to the underground facility through a tunnel and parked in the underground garage. He went up into the warehouse and saw the crews checking the cargo hauler over. He thanked them for the work and boarded it, went through the pre-flight checks, and filed his flight plan with the Arasaka AI. It was the same as it always was, since he did it every night and followed the same procedure.

He made the run in record time, since he didn't have to delay along the way to collect anything new. The dumpsters he had seeded all over the city were doing their jobs and kept a constant flow of matter into the industrial replicator and produced materials constantly. He had been storing a lot of it, because when he had enough of it, he could built a particularly potent object in orbit.

That thought made him laugh, because he was sure everyone would think he was restricted by the same things the other space stations were. He wasn't. Having artificial gravity generators and inertial compensators really made a huge difference in construction plans and severely cut down on the mechanical engineering needed to build things.

The next biggest thing he thought he could get away with, he wasn't sure if he should. Perhaps if he spent a few weeks cleaning up the other dump sites first, it might become a viable option to install in the mountains. The climate control facilities that regulated planetary weather patterns were usually hidden and mountains were easily converted and were high in the atmosphere already.

That was a project for later, though. A space station was first and he was sure that a lot of people that already lived on one, or on the moon, would want to visit a new area to explore. After a few minutes of contemplation, Atlas had a great thought. He could recreate the DS9 space station.

It wouldn't look out of place among the other round stations in orbit, which would fit better than a large and futuristic looking Starfleet Starbase. It would be easier to construct, since he had a copy of the original Cardassian database in his inventory. He would have to ditch the dirty brown metal look they favored, though. Sleek white and grey would be the chosen colors for the exterior.

With that decided, Atlas picked up the garbage at Arasaka Tower and he felt a modicum of pride as he looked down and saw how many people were still gathering around the new water reservoir at the old Arasaka bomb site. He figured the novelty would wear off after a while and he flew the cargo hauler back to the warehouse.

*

Emperor Saboru Arasaka sat in his luxurious office in Japan and felt every day of his advanced age of 158 years, despite the many organ replacements, cybernetic implants, and surgeries to keep him alive.

His only reassurance that his long life wasn't going to be wasted, was his decades long project to preserve his consciousness in a digital form. The scientists he had working on it were very close to finally completing that goal.

He entered his secured password that only he knew to check on his life's work. It cost a small fortune for him to use a digital signal across the planet to reach the Mikoshi Digital Fortress under the Arasaka Tower in Night City. It was a pittance to someone like him and he waited for a response from it, only for him to receive a prompt asking him what he wanted.

That has never happened before and he entered his password again and sent the same inquiry again. What was the progress on the company's main project?

After ten seconds, the returning signal finally reached him.

Status of Secure Your Soul Digital Preservation Project: 0%.

Saboru stared at the response and it didn't make sense. It had been at 88% the last time he had checked it and it wasn't possible for that to change into the negative. He spent the next few minutes checking other things and they all came back positive. When he checked the main project once more and waited, the response came back as the same. It was at 0% and there was nothing else.

After a few minutes contemplating the impossibility, he hit the button to call his aide. “Ready the company jet. I am heading to Night City.”

The voice on the other end of the call sputtered that it would be handled immediately and hung up.

Saboru nodded and slowly stood. He held in his signs of weakness, namely groans and awkward movements, and walked to his bedroom. His attendants would pack for him and they would head to the private spaceport. If he couldn't get answers he wanted through the net, he would get them in person.