He spoke too soon.
Contrary to expectation, it took a month of late nights, pretending not to see the incredulous looks from Jori, dodging Zee's worried stalking, and ignoring Marai's narrowed eyes before he could even create his Redlands avatar.
It went better than he thought it would.
Mostly.
He succeeded, in any case. At the end of October, he had enough money to buy a full gaming rig and make a good enough start in Redlands.
The process went like this:
Zee of the future taught Eli of the future how to upgrade a MarkVIII headset to better performance by replacing its processor cube.
Eli's first thought when rembering that was, of course, trickery and illegal shenanigans.
The MarkVIII and the MarkVIII Premium didn't have that large a difference in performance. But the MarkVIII Premium headset was nearly twice the price of the regular MarkVIII.
In the virtual world, even the smallest hardware advantage could an sacrificing or overcoming the thin line of difference between win and loss in a ga. Skill and talent were important, of course, but there was a reason that VRMMORPGs were called gas for the rich.
Eli only needed the best synthprinter possible and enough cash for raw materials, and he'd be able to sell an upgraded MarkVIII as a MarkVIII Premium.
And with the MarkIX just coming out, the prices for a MarkVIII were dropping low enough for Eli to turn a good profit.
That planned, the first step on that first day was to go to a loanshark.
Eli was still surprised it was so easy to get himself into that much debt. Massive, massive debt. The devil's office was even only a few streets away from his apartnt.
When he'd entered the loan office, he was only greeted with a face full of smoke and a question: "How much?"
He decided to be as brief. "One hundred thousand. In ecru."
The white-haired man paused, and he looked up from the unnervingly neat desk that only contained a single tablet computer with a thin smile. "Planning a space vacation?"
Eli stretched his lips in answer, an empty expression. "Does it matter?"
"It does, in fact, matter." The smile tipped sharply, like a knife balanced on the edge.
"No."
The man snorted. Took a card-reader from a cabinet and programd it with graceful artistic fingers. "Touch your ID to this. It better be real. We'll wipe your data after you pay us back, of course."
Eli dug into his pocket for his census registry card, sothing he'd never even took out of its holder since the governnt mailed it to him after he turned twenty-one and eligible to vote.
The pale-haired man, whose na might be Chenser or Clomsen – he couldn't really see the certificate hanging on the wall, puffed a smoke ring and nudged the card-reader toward him.
Eli pressed his ID card on the opaque panel of the small machine. He didn't think he'd be rejected. He had no debts, no criminal record, and no blots on his financial history.
He was the perfect patsy.
He was also unemployed, but Eli didn't think that was important to the guy entering information into the loan office database like he was stabbing soone.
Sohow, when you tell your custors outright that you'd wipe their records from your systems that casually, people know there are things about you that they can count on.
Shady, shady things.
Like ignoring employnt status just to have another concussed fish to possibly dangle on the end of your line.
Sure enough, twenty minutes later, Eli walked out with enough money in his account to buy his whole building and a man that looked like a serial killer knowing his address.
He walked away, trying not to look back, and reminded himself that he'd only regret this if he defaulted on the paynts.
That only ant, he must not fail.
His phone pinged as he turned the corner.
He brought up the display.
His search for high-grade synthprinters in the area, rent or sale, ca up with two suitable candidates, but only one had an appraiser's rating.
He closed out the one without the rating.
The one left was a sale of 10,000 ecru, portable industrial class, with a 4-star rating from the appraiser. He hesitated, then took a breath and sent a ssage to the seller:
>>Hi, I'm interested in the machine. Pickup today, cash?
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