Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (45 page)

I got back from my food run and PJ yelled at me, "You just missed her. Run to the elevator and you can catch her."

I dumped the bags of food in her arms and ran to the elevator. Who am I running after? I caught a glimpse of Exe as the elevators doors closed. She managed do to a quick wave. I walked back to my office.

"What did she want?"

PJ handed me an envelope.

"What's with all these envelopes?" I tucked the envelope under my arm and focused on the food. We were all starving. PJ grabbed her nouveau-French-whatever and plopped it on her desk. Dot and I took our food into my office.

We set up the food on the table in my siting area.

"Are you going to open it?" Dot asked.

"Oh." I had already forgotten about the envelope.

I walked to my desk and grabbed a letter opener from front desk drawer and sliced the top open.

Dot joined me at the desk. I opened it and reached in.

It was an official Private Investigation License!

I stared at the document, speechless. It was affirmation that I was legal and I no longer had to play games.

"Wow, look at the expiration date," Dot said.

The date was 100 years in the future. I had a private investigator license for life.

There was another document in the envelope. It was small and I glanced at Dot. What could it be?

It was a reissue of my national ID card. Why would they do that? I had to stare at it before I noticed it. My title! It was listed as Private Investigator.

For all my adult life, I was a "laborer." In my eyes, that always meant the same as "human" or "mammal" or "Earthling". It was a constant reminder of failure. Everyone said otherwise, but I could never shake the feeling that I was nothing. Laborer was the bare-bones basic occupation designation. You didn't do anything to get it. The computer assigned it to you automatically. You had to make an affirmative step to change your occupation designation, which I had never done.

No one cared about names in business. Titles! Metropolis was all about title status--the last prejudice.

The card said that I had made it. My new vocation was real and had been rendered as such with the city government for all to see. There it was. I was crying. I didn't even have time to stop myself.

Dot was smiling and gave me a side hug.

"A better life is all I want for me and my girl."

I thought of when I was hiding in that new spot in that secret alley days after my birthday. How far I had come in such a short time. Run-Time, Prima Donna, and so many others said my ticket would come and now it had. I touched the tip of my hat as an acknowledgment to my posthumous mentor Wilford G.. I'd send copies of the license to Ma and Pops for framing.

There was a major storm brewing outside, but I said to myself that we'd take a half-day off from work to celebrate and stop by the Good Kosher man for a righteous rack of roses, then I'd take Dot out dancing and no storm was going to tell us different.

"Oh, my parents want you over for dinner again soon," Dot said as we walked out of the office. "And I can proudly show them your official private eye license. But I don't know what's got into them, with the planning for the wedding and all, they want to make your favorite burrito. I didn't know you had a favorite burrito."

Thank you for reading!

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed my debut cyberpunk detective series,
Liquid Cool
.

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If you enjoyed
Liquid Cool
, I'd greatly appreciate a review on one or more of the following sites:

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Always writing,

A
ustin
D
ragon

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Austin Dragon is the author of the
After Eden
Series
, including the
After Eden: Tek-Fall
mini-series, the classic
Sleepy Hollow Horrors
, and new cyberpunk detective series,
Liquid Cool
. He is a native New Yorker, but has called Los Angeles, California home for the last twenty years. Words to describe him, in no particular order: U.S. Army; English teacher; one-time resident of Paris; political junkie; movie buff; campaign manager and staffer of presidential and gubernatorial campaigns; Fortune 500 corporate recruiter; renaissance man; dreamer.

He is currently working on the next
Liquid Cool
novel, and new books and series in YA dystopia, classic horror, fantasy, and more science fiction!

Connect with Austin on social media at:

Website and blog:
http://www.austindragon.com

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Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/ADragon

Also by Austin Dragon

See all my books in science fiction, cyberpunk, mystery, horror, YA dystopia, and fantasy at:
http://www.austindragon.com/books-of-author-austin-dragon/

COPYRIGHT

Published by Well-Tailored Books, California

Liquid Cool

978-0-9909315-7-7 (ebook)

http://www.austindragon.com

Copyright © 2016 by Austin Dragon

Book cover design by
Whendell Souza

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.