There Are Many Tokyos In Flower

Chapter 13: It's Only Free If You're The Product

The grin on Rin's face twitched.

Like a crack appearing on a concrete pillar, it wasn't the twitch itself that made Martin nervous. But everything she was thinking, or feeling, rested on the pillar of her good first impression, and that foundation was now suspect.

Her grin didn't disappear. If Martin had blinked, he would have missed it and been none the wiser. But like a cut-in picture of a dick-pick replacing a single frame of a children's cartoon, having noticed it made Martin very uneasy.

"So you're saying we've met before?" Rin asked. The grin remained, but the warmth that spread to her eyes had gone, like the glow of a stovetop receding from the edges once the power was cut.

"Yeah," Martin said. His instincts had him leaning on his back foot, thinking about how many steps to the bike, and recalling how many shots he had left in both his sidearm and the beanbag shotgun on his shoulder.

Which was an odd reaction for Martin. Rin was, at best, about half his body weight, six inches shorter, and likely hadn't been in a serious fight her entire life. He wasn't afraid of what she could do, but he was afraid of her.

"Look, I don't really know how to explain any of this," Martin said. "Is there some place we could go, someplace public where we can still talk somewhat privately, like a coffee shop?"

Rin nodded, but the smile finally faded as she looked away. She pointed down the road, towards the next building. "The Biochemistry building in the Physics campus keeps a cafe and bar called 'If You Don't Pay For It, You Are The Product'. You never know what kinds of additives are in the drinks, but pharmaceutical companies shell-out a lot of credits for the experiments, so you can drink for free. Go there. I'll be along in a bit."

"All right," Martin said. "You think they're still up and running with the power out?"

"Of course. They're attached to the physics department," Rin replied as if that was an explanation.

Martin raise a hand and opened his mouth to ask for an explanation, but BIRD interjected. "Most physics departments since 2134 have particle accelerators. It's mostly there to wow the easily impressed undergrads, since you need a really big apparatus to discover anything these days. But they make a great way of sucking donations out of billionaires."

"Oh, like 'libertarian scholarship'," Martin drawled, adding air quotes.

Rin laughed.

"So, the author's political leanings come out," BIRD muttered.

"No, they really are only here because they rake in the billionaire donations," Rin said. "Their building is a three-storey brick structure shaped exactly like an outhouse. And in the basement, there's a toilet with an 'out of order, site full' sign."

"Wait, Wiki U made their campus a giant outhouse that's full of shit?" Martin asked.

"Yeah. We were worried it might be too subtle," Rin said, and the smile on her face was genuine one again. "Just for that, when you get there, tell the barkeep Rin said to keep the hallucinogens and stimulants out. Except for what's supposed to be there. I'll be along in a bit."

She turned away to yell at several undergrads for trying to climb a small tree, others to return to the group, and began to warn a few in the distance that crossing the road was dangerous. It left Martin with the impression her job was less a teacher and more a shepherd.

"Undergrads," BIRD said with a little shudder like a phone vibrating. "Come on. Let's go before you catch something."

"They can't be any more disease-ridden then the rest of the population," Martin protested, even as he followed BIRD's advice.