Working

I copied that datcore before we swapped it.  I had to do a lot of trades to get that gear too but I think I'd gone nuts without it.  Most folks have a basic set of hookups or they have really solid gear cause they are working code, but I never worked much code.  I could have if I wanted to, but if you want to be good you have to work it all the time and working code all the time is pretty stale.  My gear was pretty good cause I like running more than just vidstim, but I had to up it to copy that core though - it was pretty dense.  I traded a bunch of stuff to this old adam for some old work gear which was still pretty solid and I did run a lot of nav code on it so you know it was better than regular. I spent a lot of time with that nav stuff, and I was really hitting the search too.  That core had some files that went back way far and had lots of info about New Eden and Dublin Core and other systems in the cluster, even some really old stuff without interact or stim or anything.  I found it really interesting actually.

Some folks got on me about why I was wasting my share on gear if I wasn't working it or hacking on me about running  nav sims while sitting on some pile of old bact tubes.  They called me Er Highness and stuff.  I told them there wasn't much difference between a ship and a tunnel really since it's all simstim, but they were pretty stupid mostly and couldn't figure that.  I didn't even tell them most stuff I found out because they would just make fun of it.  They did like it when I played some of the old audibles though - no one had ever heard any songs like that before.  I did a lot of trades on the songs, so whatever I was still laughing.

I even went up to the city a few times looking for trades and gear.  I don't like the city because its hard to get around without a chip and even if you can spoof one you can't tell most people apart anyway. It's not like with folks where you can see who's what and who they run with, there's lots more clones up in the city and city people look all the same even if their mutie has a tell.  They still dress mostly the same, like for their job and stuff.  Eloi isn't really a mutie, and it's a hard tell cause we mostly look like kids and folks don't much look at kids - good ones anyway - so I get by fine in The Cut.  The city is worse though cause Eloi don't look so much like clone kids and most places you want to be up there won't let kids in anyway so you stick out.  I went by myself one time to scope some gear and then I had to extricate some old adam that wanted to play games - he would have been surprised anyway.

A couple times I went with Tom and played his boy while he got some code I wanted, but he's not good at trades like I am and so I had to watch and keep shut up and I know he loved it too.  We saw that pilot one time too.  Tom needed some stim and we went to this place and there's the guy.  We were all hot to run but he didn't do nothing and I saw he had a good drunk going so we don't and then he drops his hat and says "Hey you mind my hat!" So I run after it and sure thing there's a Qkey in there so I pocket that, and when I hand the hat back he's all "O such a fine lad!" - he's from Dublin Core so it's all Lad and Langers with him - but he gives me a quick wink too so I know he's working it.  A couple times after that he tipped us for a run too - good trades and no hard feelings.

So I was busy keeping my mind on things and didn't have it too hard for a change.  For a long while there before it was hard going for me, lots of fights and never getting enough of anything.  Even when folks are folks it's hard to get enough food in The Cut, but it got a bit easier after I proved I could use my knives and I could do runs.  If you're running you're working, and everyone respects that, even if you are small you get a share.  Once I was boss it got easier for the whole crew cause I played it right and we always had something good going.  I should have known that even when things are good though some folks will still be all hot and sometimes you can't make it work for them though.  We did some real big runs then too, stuff that no one else was doing - well at least no folks we'd heard of.  We ran a hit on a bact farm one time and offlined the whole thing for days, which was stupid if you think on it because a lot of folks went hungry too.  But someone paid good to do it and I wanted to see if we could do it.  I was thinking more me and less us that time.  We usually didn't deal with credit or do runs without loot and I didn't slice off shares of it either.  I rolled that credit into some gear that could get us into the port because I thought we might be able to do a real solid run on some import.    That would be some kind of run, not just old gear and seconds but some really fresh stuff.  Some of the crew couldn't figure that though and they didn't figure running for credit either, and I guess someone noticed I wasn't paying attention to every detail  like before either because I thought all the crew would work their parts.  I should have seen those tells but I wasn't looking.

Next: The Worst Thing