File 002: Sam's Story

I've got something special for you chummers today. This is an interview with a chummer of mine, name of Sam. Sam is a private investigator and has been for the past seven years, so he has more than a few stories. We just happened to bump into each other recently at Dante's Inferno, and he so graciously allowed me an interview.

So, without further ado...

The feed goes black and flickers briefly, static snow blowing though an eletron void. When the picture comes back in, the picture is grainy and a timestamp is visible an in inlay in the upper right hand corner, suggesting it was filmed on a cybercam.

After a second's blurriness, the picture comes into focus on an elven male. His hair is cut short, cropped close to the skull, with faint sideburns running in front of his ears. A hint of five o'clock shadow stubbles his face, darkening his complexion slightly. Most of his body is covered by a rumbled tan trenchcoat, but what little else of his attire that can be seen hints to the rest of it being only slightly less disheveled. The repetitive thumping of club music can be heard in the background, muted, presumably from somewhere else in the building.

From off camera, a voice with a slight Hispanic accent "Go ahead Sam, we're rolling."

Sam nods and clears his throat.

"About a month ago, I was meeting a client. She wanted to meet someplace out in the open, so she chose some cofee shop in a mildly disreputable section of town. Compared to the places i usually operate, it was very uptown. For her, it was slumming. To each their own, I suppose."

Sam shrugs, reaching into his trenchcoat, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a tarnishsed silver lighter. "Regardless, she never showed." He thumbs a butt from the pack, pulling it out with his lips. "Slotted me off, but it happens." He flicks open the lighter with a metallic click and strikes the flint, bringing the flame to the smoke as he inhales deeply. "At least i'd get home in time to watch some Neil the Orc Barbarian reruns."

He takes another drag off his cigarette, the glowing orange tip a stark contrast to the dimly lit room. "As i'm walking back to my car, i see this guy getting rough with this little girl. She couldn'a been more than fifteen - sixteen, tops. It really burns me to see a grown man slapping around a kid like that, so I go to them and tell him to lay off. The guy takes offense to that, and decides he wants to start something. I bounce his head off the pavement a few times, and he nixes that idea real quick and hightail is out."

"The litttle girl looks at me, all smiles and says 'Thanks mister!' "

The rumpled elf takes a final drag from his cigarette, burning it down the filter. He exhales, the smoke billowing out of his mouth in wispy lines as he snubs the butt out on an ashtray in his lap. "I've never done the whole knight in shining armor thing, so we're dead in the middle of an akward silence. After a moment, she speaks up and says 'So mister, you want to go have a good time?'. I couldn't think of a thing to say. She threw me a smile, 'I'll even give you a discount for being such a nice guy' "

"I was speechless, so i blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. Something about a girl her age shouldnt be out on the streets at night. She flipped me the bird and said 'Frag you, buddy. If i don't work, i don't eat.'. Then she turned and started walking down the street, her body language that of a real pro. A girl that age."

"It wasnt long before a car pulled up to her corner, and after a little talk, she hopped in. I caught a look of the guy behind the wheel, and my stomach churned. I don't know what it was. Like i could tell he had a head full of bad wiring."

Entering the frame from the left, part of a waitress carrying a tray with a bottle of beer. She sets the beer down on the table between the detective and the camera. "Here you go, Sam"

Sam looks up at the unseen waitress, smiling. "Thanks, darling" The waitress turns, and walks off camera and out.

Grabbing he bottle, the elf continues, shrugging: "I suppose i could have given her some cred anyway, so she could have some food or something. Instead, i just stood there like an ass. I just couldn't figure it out. What was so bad about her life that selling her body to creeps was considered a plus. I couldn't help but feel bad for her. But I guess that's the sprawl. When it isn't busting your balls, it's breaking your heart."

From off camera, the latino voice: "What happened to the girl, Sam?"

He looks down into the beer bottle, as if trying to scry some great cosmic truth, his voice hardly above a whisper. "They found her in some coffin motel the next day. She overdosed on a combination of BTL and novacoke."

The latino voice again: "Dios mio, Sam. I'm sorry"

The elf takes a long pull from the bottle, letting out a slight burp when it comes away from his lips. "A few days later, i was going through the morning screamsheets, and i come across this article about Lone Star serial rapist. I dropped my soykaf all over the sink when I saw the picture of who they busted. It was the guy in the car. Apparently, he was cruising for a trick and picked the one that just happened to be Lone Star undercover. They were going to charge him with simple solicitation, but he wound up singing. According to his confession, he had a thing for young girls. He'd take them somewhere, fill them up with BTL and do his business while they were rolling out of their mind."

Sam raises the bottle to his lips, taking several large gulps. "He confessed to the girl I helped, and she wasn't the first. There were at least a dozen others he accidentally overdosed, and ditched when they took a turn for the worse." He takes one last gulp from the bottle emptying it.

"He was sent up to Hollywood Correctional, and got shanked within a week. I guess he ran into someone else who didn't take kindly to people who hurt kids." He lets the empty bottle fall to his side with a loud clink and clatter.

"I tell myself the good guys prevailed. The bad guy got what was coming to him. I tell myself all is right with the world. Then i think about that girl, and how i just stood there like an idiot. If only I gave her some cred for a room, or a hot meal, she'd still be alive. She didn't deserve the end she got.

Sighing heavily, he reaches into his jacket again, producing the same pack of cigarettes, pulling one from the pack and lighting up. "I guess sometimes, a happy ending just isn't enough."

The feed cuts out, flickering back to blackness

There you have it folks. It gets pretty ugly out there. Keep your heads down, look out for your own, and maybe we'l get out in one piece.

Barrio Billy, signing off.

File 001: The Ballad of Kato and the Redmond Ripper

I can't really put to words why i've decided to do this feed, so let me tell you a story.

Almost twenty years ago, where I grew up, there was a couple of blocks where people just didn't go. For the better part of a year, someone was murdering transients and locals. It never made front page on the screamsheets downtown, because hey, who downtown cares about a bunch of winos and hood rats getting cut up, right? However, I know a few news feeds ran small stories about it. If you scan news archives from 2054 and query "The Redmond Ripper" you can still find them.

In this hood, there was a guy. No one knew his name, but everyone called him Kato. Because...well, because he was asian, and there just weren't a lot of asians in the area back then. No one knew where Kato came from. No one knew anything about him, really. All we know, is one day he just showed up and became a neighborhood fixture. He only seemed to be around at night, and it was always in one of the bars on the block. According to the waitress at one of the watering holes, the only time he ever said anything was when he ordered a drink.

People talk. So naturally, there were a lot of rumors going around about Kato. Some saying he was on the run from one of The Megas, others he was a hitman for the Triads or Yakuza. The most common story was that he was The Redmond Ripper. It seemed to make sense to a lot of people, since he first showed up shortly after the first body was found. It didn't really help his case, when he'd disappear a for a few nights after a murder.

Every couple of weeks, a new body was found all slashed up and barely in one piece. This went on for ten months. People were scared. Who could blame them, right?

One night, a girl who made her living turning tricks on the corners got the ire of one of the local gangs. She wasn't from around here, and the gangers took great offense to that. I guess they thought she was keeping business from locals, I don't know. Regardless, they were giving her a hard time one night, and one thing led to another. They drew blades on her, and the girl from off the block ran. She ran with the type of swiftness characteristic to someone running for their life.

Like I said, this girl wasn't from the neighborhood. She didn't know where she was going, and she sure didn't know what she was getting into when she wound up in the Ripper's block. When the RIpper found her, she was caught blind. She ran like hell. Later, when she would burst through the door of a local Stuffer Shack, hysterical, she'd say she was attacked by something "that looked like a deformed mutant troll, with big fraggin' claws and teeth".

How did she escape the Ripper, you ask? I'm getting to that. After she turned and ran from the Ripper, she hauled hoop around a corner and ran smack into someone else. It was Kato, stoic as a stone. She says he merely looked at her and grunted, nodding his head to tell her to keep running. That he'd take care of it. She said the last thing she saw as she looked over her shoulder one last time, was Kato drawing a sword - an honest to god samurai daito, from her description - from a sash on his belt, and assuming a fighting stance.

No one knows exactly what happened between Kato and the Redmond Ripper, or exactly how it went down, but they say you could hear the two of them fighting well into the next morning. All night long, bestial snarls and the sounds of steel and claw violently clashing against one another like a bloody lullabye to darkness of night.

That was the last time anyone ever saw Kato. It was also the last known instance of the Redmond Ripper. There were no more killings after that.

Don't feel bad if you've never heard the ballad of Kato and the Redmond Ripper. It may have been before your time, or it may have just happened in a different world than yours. But still, it happened and no one knows. Everyone involved in the story is a long time gone; Kato's bartender, The Girl from Off the Block, even the gangers who harassed her. They were devoured by this thing we call The Sprawl.

I think ultimately, that's why I'm doing this. Because The Sprawl keeps going, moving with a monolithic persistence, completely and utterly uncaring about the people in it. It rolls over some, and casts others away like nothing, but it keeps going.

It lives in a place of static and noise pollution. We all scream into the night sky, and go unheard, merely adding to the cacophony.

Everyone has a story to tell. They make us who we are. They make us individuals among the masses of huddled meat which passes as civilization these days.

That's why I'm here. To tell those stories. As many as i can.

Barrio Billy, signing off.