The process of waking up and emerging from the clone tank was less traumatic the second time around. I showered the gunk off, then got dressed in the same sweatpants/sweatshirt combo I'd found earlier. Turned out there was a vending machine type thing on the cloning level that dispensed them, so I wasn't going to be running out any time soon. It was probably why the shoes felt like cardboard; They were likely made of some kind of cheap, recycled material.

  I didn't know how long it'd been since I'd... died... the second time, but I figured there would be nothing new waiting for me in the facility, so I headed out onto the street again. On my way out, I noticed someone had come in through the open door and ripped out the reception desk's computer terminal. The wires were still sticking out of the gaping hole. Strangely, it didn't seem like anyone had headed further inside, but I guessed it would only be a matter of time before they did, plundering whatever was left of value in this place.

  I walked down the busy street towards that Amazon corner store again. Maybe I could apologize to the clerk for causing so much trouble. Maybe he could explain to me how things work around here. The moment I walked through the door, he spotted me, and began stomping towards me with an angry expression on his face.

  "I shoulda known you were a cloner!" He said loudly.

  "A what?" I responded.

  "Fuckin' rich kids and their internet fuckin' pranks! Do you know how much it costs to dispose of a body? 'Cause it ain't cheap! And that shit comes out of my paycheck!"

  "Listen, I'm sorry, okay? I'm still a little ne-"

  "Sorry? How about you show me you're sorry with a little reparation? In fact, you know what? Come here!"

  He grabbed me by the arm and held me there for a moment. There was a slight glow behind his eyes, and then...

  [CHARGE FROM AMAZON INC.: 500a]

  [NEW BALANCE: -505a]

  "Now get the fuck out of my store and don't come back!" He shouted in my face, dropping my arm.

  "But I'm trying to-"

  "Out!" He shouted again, pointing out the door.

  Not wanting to further draw the ire of a man who likely had control of a large anti-materiel turret, I complied, exiting back out to the street. Out of leads once again, I took a moment to look around and get my bearings. Could I just ask anyone on the street? What if they didn't believe me? What if they tried to screw with me? I mean, in my time, old people who didn't know how to use smartphones got taken advantage of all the time, I didn't know what I had to lose. Hell, I might even be some kind of illegal clone. The authorities could find out there was a cloning facility in that EnZon building and shut it down, and then kill me or lock me in prison forever. I may not have had much in the way of survival instinct before, but I did now, and something was telling me that telling anyone where I actually came from was going to be a bad idea.

  It became increasingly clear to me that I needed to lock up the EnZon building again. Leaving it open like that was not going to be good for my long term survival. Before I had the chance to go do that, however, a voice called out to me from around the corner.

  "Got your head misted real good, huh?" Said a man in a leather jacket, stomping out his cigarette on the pavement, "I knew cloners weren't all that bright, but man, that was kind of a bonehead move, huh?"

  The man was tall, kind of lanky, with a shaved head and chrome metal plates on either side of his skull, right behind his temples. If he was a bit more muscular, I could see him being the protagonist in some kind of cyberpunk video game or something.

  "I, um... I'm just kind of new in town... Heh." I didn't need deception for that one. It wasn't a lie. Still, maybe this guy could help me out.

  "Well you've found the right man, chingu! For a few cred, I can help you out! Teach you how to survive on the mean streets of Seattle."

  Well, that told me I was in Seattle. Not too far from my hometown, it seemed. Still didn't know what year it was, but I was on the right track.

  "I don't think I have anything on me..." I said, patting my pockets to indicate there was nothing in them.

  "Then here's a tip on the house: Raise your hand like this." He put his hand up in front of him with two fingers raised, like he was about to swipe on a touchpad. The smirk on his face told me he was messing with me in some way, but my primate instincts to copy took over, and before I had any thoughts to the contrary, my hand was already up.

  Some kind of transparent menu flashed into existence in front of me, and I jumped in surprise. Just by looking at the names of these categories, it seemed like this menu had answers to quite a few of the questions I had been asking myself since I woke up. Credit Balance, Skills, Access Tokens, Contacts, AR Options... There was also a time and date: 8:38 PM, February 20th, 2236. It'd been 210 years since I'd died for the first time. The thought was not comforting.

  The man in the jacket chuckled, "Damn, you really are new. You got chipped and didn't even know how to open your AR menu? Most folks start with, like, smart glasses or something when they're kids, but you went all the way for your first time! Guess I've gotta respect the commitment."

  "Yeah... Hey, listen, thanks for the tip, but I've gotta get home." I suppose that wasn't a lie either. The EnZon building was the closest thing I had to a home right now, and I needed time in private to go over all the things in this menu.

  "Before you go, let me send you my deets. Seriously, you ever need to know what's going down around here, and you've got the scratch, I'm your man." He swiped at the air a few times, and a notification popped up in my peripheral.

  [NEW CONTACT REQUEST: PAUL FAIRHAVEN]

  "Thanks man, I'll see you around, I guess." I said, as I began walking back to what had unwillingly become my base of operations.

  "No prob, ching. Keep it chill."

  It turned out that nobody had gone past the lobby in the EnZon building because nobody else could. I had a "top-level access token", which, in hindsight, wasn't surprising. It explained how I was able to go into places like server rooms that really should have been locked. Well, they were locked. I just had the master key. Still, keeping the front door shut would keep people from getting curious and trying to break in. I even managed to use my AR menu to lock it to my access token, so the next time I left, I wouldn't have to leave the front door wide open.

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  Speaking of AR, it also turned out that my AR display had been hiding pretty much everything from me by default. All the doors, windows and lights had AR controls, rather than physical buttons. I suppose it was nice that everything was set to opt-in by default. If I’d woken up to a bunch of pop up displays all over the place I probably would’ve died of sensory overload. Though, some of the options baffled me. Like, “Dream Advertising?” Who wants to be advertised to in their dreams?

  I also finally found out how to buy things. It was another feature locked behind my AR settings. Seems like everyone uses these corporate “credits“ as currency, and each corporation has their own credits. I checked my account, and I was surprised to find that I had a little over two billion EnZon credits. Unfortunately, it seems like most stores only take credits from their own corporation, and if there’s a way to exchange credits, I don’t know how. On top of that, EnZon didn’t seem to have any stores in the are, so my credits were fairly useless at the moment. On the bright side, I seem to be able to spend credits I don’t have, and my account balance just keeps going into the negative. It could be a problem later, but I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to exchange some of my billions of EnZon credits and get back in the black, so to speak. In the meantime, I’d bought some food from a convenience store owned by some company called Xionis, (whose name I had no idea how to pronounce,) and made myself some dinner. It was rehydrated freeze-dried udon, so pretty low on the quality scale, but it filled me up, and that was what mattered in the end.

  I then proceeded to make myself a place to sleep. Since I had the run of the place, I picked an office with a big window on the top floor and made myself a nest out of break room couch cushions and vending machine sweaters. Laying in my makeshift bed and looking out at the city, I realized that the sky wasn’t just dark because it was nighttime. There was a… ceiling. Over the whole city. Barely visible steel beams held up massive, jet black panels that stretched as far as I could see. I briefly wondered why, before realizing that I could try looking it up on the internet. If my implants or whatever could do all this stuff, surely they could connect to the internet.

  It wasn’t trivial to get connected. I had to shuffle through options in my AR menu, connect to the building’s subnet, then connect that to the internet. It was a bit of a process, but I was an iPad baby, so I was no stranger to messing around with settings to bypass restrictions. Plus, it’s not like I had anything better to do.

  [COMPUTERS LEVELED UP! NOW LEVEL 2.]

  The interface was getting more intuitive. At first I struggled with pressing buttons that weren't there, but after about an hour of prodding and swiping, I was getting the hang of how deep I had to press and how to switch windows. I chalked it up to my familiarity with the technology of my own time, but I had a feeling in the back of my head that maybe something was helping me learn.

  I had just laid down with a bag of Xionis Protein Chips (with real cricket flour!) and prepared to start learning up on the last 200 years of history I'd missed, when a voice from seemingly nowhere made me jump.

  "So," said the vaguely feminine voice, "2 billion credits and no way to spend 'em, huh?"

  I looked around and didn't see anyone. I was still in a locked office on the 50th floor of this building.

  "I'd be sad for you if I wasn't too busy laughing."

  "Where are you?" I asked the empty room, "How are you talking to me?"

  I heard laughing now. Apparently I'd said something funny. "I'm hacked into your neuro, genius. I can do shit like hijack your audio processors and talk to you from the comfort of my own home. I can also do fun shit like this..."

  I felt a brief electric pain in my ass, like someone had jabbed me with a cattle prod. I jumped up and checked my makeshift bed for the source of the pain, before feeling a little stupid for thinking anything would be there. More laughter from the voice in my head.

  "This is fucking great! I've never had full access to a corpo-grade neuro before!"

  "What? How'd you do that?" I inquired, at this point more curious than worried.

  "Your neuro controls pain sensations throughout your body. Normally, it's supposed to suppress pain, but if you reverse it..."

  I felt another shock, this time in my forearm. "Ow! Could you stop doing that?"

  "Oh man," she said through bouts of laughter, "This is too good! What other functions does this thing have?"

  I went to my AR menu and started swiping through menus to disconnect myself from the internet.

  "Wait, wait, wait. I had an actual question I wanted to ask."

  My finger hovered over the disconnect button, and against my better judgement, I decided to hear her out.

  "What?" I answered incredulously.

  "What are you actually planning on doing with all those creds?" She asked. She'd calmed down fairly quickly from her uncontrollable laughter earlier.

  "I dunno, probably find a way to exchange it, live a peaceful life somewhere nobody bothers me. Why?"

  "I think the fact that I haven't already drained your account should tell you how little that credit is worth. You really don't know, do you? You been on ice the past, what, ten years?"

  There it was: The worst case scenario. My EnZon credit wasn't worth shit. The company probably didn't even exist anymore, so there's no value to back it up against. It would explain why the whole building was abandoned and caked in dust.

  I sighed and collapsed back onto my pile of couch cushions. "Yeah, I kinda was. I mean, you might not believe it, but before I woke up today, my last memory was from 2026."

  "Holy shit," she said, a hint of awe in her voice, "You're bullshitting me right? You've gotta be bullshitting me."

  "Yeah, it's been... A lot." I pressed my palms into my eyes and rubbed. The stress was finally catching up with me. It was suddenly hitting me all at once that the few people I knew back in 2026 were all probably dead and gone, unless some miracle immortality drug came out before they died.

  "Damn, you've gotta know some real rare, classic memes."

  "What?" The seeming non-sequitur caught me off guard, instantly snapping me out of my oncoming grief like a truck slamming me out of the way of a freight train.

  "I'm... Something of a connoisseur. Old memes are the best. They don't make sense most of the time, but I like to imagine what purpose they might have had, or what emotions they were supposed to convey. Like... Like you know that one with the spinning rat set to that old rock song? What was that one about? I always thought it was about, like, when your life is spinning out of control, but you're going with it anyway. Like, what's the expression from back then? 'Straight up vibing?'"

  I stared up at the ceiling in disbelief. This person is going to kill me. I don't know how yet, but she's going to.

  "I..." I started after a long pause, "I think that one's kind of... Meant to be nonsensical."

  "Really? Damn. I thought I was onto something. The guys on the 'net are never gonna believe me when I tell 'em."

  "Can I go to bed, now?" I asked, throwing a sweater over my face as if it would drown out the voice coming directly from my brain.

  "Fine, fine. I'll even throw some security protocols and basic ICE on your subnet, as a treat. Only because I feel sorry for you. But you owe me."

  "Owe you what? All my cred is worthless, remember?"

  "Yeah but you've got a corpo-class neuro, and a cloning facility. I'll find some use for you. Here's my contact."

  [NEW CONTACT ADDED: CELESTE ARKANIN.]

  "Wait, how'd you know I've been cloned?" I asked, sitting up. People seemed pretty quick to assume I was getting cloned, but I still wasn't sure how common it was.

  "Your neuro told me. Full cloning contract with EnZon. Even though the company doesn't exist anymore, looks like this building is still accepting your neuro's clone requests. It's a good thing. Makes you functionally immortal. And I'm guessing nobody else can use it, because you'd be the only one left with genestock there. Everyone else who worked for EnZon's kinda... Dead."

  "Wait, everyone? Why?"

  "Shit, I gotta go. Someone's pinging me. Watch a vid on it or something. Talk to you later, Murphy."

  With that, my brain returned to its usual silence. I laid back in my "bed," still processing what had just happened, before deciding it would be good to take a nap, at least, before I did any research. I was suddenly feeling very tired.

  I'd barely closed my eyes when a noise like a phone ringtone startled me. It was that Paul guy from earlier calling me. I pressed the green accept button on my AR and was face to face with some kind of projection of him from the shoulders up.

  "Hey, ching. I catch you at a bad time?"

  I sat up with a small groan, "Not really, what's up?"

  "I was just about to scum a bounty out in Shoreline. Thought you might want a ride along. It's easy creds and you seem short on 'em. You want in?"

  "Sure," I responded, "What could go wrong?"