Cyberpunk: 2075

"Have you finished reading Carl?"

"That's right, there's still the last part."

Carl answered Oliver's words.

At this time, the three of them had come out of Lao Wei's clinic and found a roadside restaurant to sit down. After making sure that there were no people at the tables next to them, Carl began to read the identity information to Jack and Oliver.

"Gaius, seventeen years old, was born in Heywood. He was an abandoned baby on the street. He was picked up and raised by an unknown scavenger. When he was four years old, the scavenger who raised him fell in a street gang shootout. After that, he began to I survived by digging through trash cans on the streets until I was twelve years old, when I was spotted by a priest and started working for him until I was seventeen years old now.”

"Listen, he sounds like a kid who grew up in Haywood."

Jack made a comment as a Heywood man.

"Is this common?"

Carl asked, and Jack gave the answer: "It's not common, but it's definitely not uncommon. I remember that the old guy has this kind of background. He seemed to have gone to the NCPD when he was twenty-one years old. He obtained formal personnel registration and then started driving a truck. Before the age of twenty-one, his life experience was no different from that of Gaius."

"In other words, there is no problem?"

"So be it."

Listening to Jack's words, Carl flipped through the registration information for Arasaka College. After filling in Gaius-related information on the official website, a payment interface popped up.

"Speaking of which, would it be strange for a street guy to suddenly have 10,000 euros and take it to school?"

Before transferring the money, Karl asked tentatively.

"Is it any wonder that a normal person can get a deposit of 10,000 euros?"

This was Oliver's answer, and Karl, who heard what he said, gave him a rather strange look.

"I remember someone told me that before he completed his first mission, his entire body was worth less than 2,000 euros. Is it appropriate for you to say this?"

"It's embarrassing, it's obviously less than 1,500 euros."

Oliver waved his hand to indicate not to care so much, then looked at Carl's face that had changed back to the original one before leaving the clinic and said, "How about changing your appearance? Is it easy?"

"It's okay, but every time I change it, I can feel the nerves in my face being pulled. To be honest, it hurts a little if it's too fast. You can't change this thing too many times, otherwise the facial nerves may remain. I'm suffering from the sequelae of phantom pain. I'll have to ask Lao Wei to help me take it off as soon as the mission is over."

"Otherwise, the people at Military Technology will not let it be taken away by the people below. The people who develop it are always like this. Regardless of all kinds of messy situations and sequelae, they will develop it first and then talk about it."

"This can be considered a type of scientific research, but generally speaking, the subjects used for experiments should not be humans."

Karl said, seeing the restaurant waiter approaching, he immediately stopped the mission-related conversation.

"Three guests, what do you want to order?"

Oliver: "Large portion of pork chop rice bowl, paired with a cup of Zen tea."

Jack: "Extra spicy pepperoni pizza, a big one, and a bottle of mine."

Carl heard their orders and translated them in his mind.

Worm rice bowl, Japanese tea foam drink, locust pizza, lemon juice mixed with water.

"Where are you, guest?"

When the waiter looked at Karl, Karl also thought about what he would eat.

"A glass of real water, macaroni and cheese, and then..."

Carl hesitated and added a side of fried meatballs to the surprised looks of Jack and Oliver.

"Understood, guest, please wait a moment, we will be served soon."

After the waiter recorded what the three wanted and left, Oliver was the first to be unable to bear his surprise and asked Karl: "Did you order this for us, Karl?"

"If it's for us, we can do it ourselves."

Jack also said this with surprise written all over his face, but Carl's answer was quite firm: "I'm going to try again."

"mano (brother), are you sure?"

Jack made a second confirmation, and said with some concern: "You don't have to force yourself to accept the food now. The pork will be shipped soon, right? Eat real meat then."

"It's not that I want to adapt to synthetic food, I just have to try to adapt because of the mission."

Karl nodded and said, "I don't have to eat synthetic food, but a person who grew up on the streets and picked things up in trash cans when he was young must not eat synthetic food. If he has that face, If you feel nauseated after eating synthetic food in front of Arasaka Academy staff, that’s not a direct exposure.”

"There's no need to embarrass yourself like this, Karl. The worst thing is that he will be exposed by then. Let's change this task. There's really no need for you to feel wronged in this regard."

Oliver was also advising the two of them. For the two of them, it was much more unbelievable for Carl to try to accept synthetic food than to accept some kind of prosthetic transformation. The latter was just the daily life of every street person, and the former they had seen in the past. Karl's performance was really life-threatening. The look of him turning blue after eating was so terrifying that they were now trying to persuade Karl in turn.

There is no overbearing approach among friends that forces you to eat something if you don’t like it to get used to it.

"No need to say more, trust me."

Now that Karl has made his decision, he has no intention of changing it.

Four minutes later, everyone's food was served.

Neither Oliver nor Jack had any intention of eating. They stared at Carl with special concern, seeing Carl hesitantly but constantly using his hands to pick up the soft meatballs with a fork, and then put them into his mouth.

That dignified and serious look, almost out of breath, was like watching Karl defusing a bomb that might explode at any time.

The meatball entered the mouth, and the teeth on the upper and lower jaws moved, taking it off the fork, and then chewed it a few times.

"Well..."

Karl felt his stomach began to churn, and his throat rolled a few times. His body instinctively resisted, but he still forced himself to chew.

The meatballs were very soft and sticky. When chewed, it felt like worms moving around in the mouth. After controlling his face and forcing it not to show any expression of discomfort, Karl chewed a few more times.

The feeling left on the gums was like the last flapping wings of a flattened cockroach corpse.

Gulu.

In the end, Karl felt like he had swallowed a ball of slug that stayed in his throat and refused to leave, only willing to slide down slowly.

After eating one meatball, Karl felt like he was sweating all over.

"I...maybe not good at it."

Carl chose to give up.