Chapter 1: The Ramen Oracle
Track: Cold Summer – Le Matos
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Not that anyone in Sector 9 counted days anymore — just power cycles and clean water ticks.
Eric ducked beneath the overpass, boots splashing through neon-streaked runoff. The smell hit first — broth laced with garlic, umami, and something older. Something coded.
No sign marked the stall. If you knew, you knew.
They called him the Oracle. No one asked his name. No one ever got it.
The old man stirred the pot like a rite, steam curling around his cybernetic eye. It glowed dull crimson — scanning, but never seeing.
"You look like hell warmed over," the Oracle rasped.
“Feel like a BIOS update mid-crash,” Eric muttered, pulling out a stool with a metallic squeal.
The bowl was set down before he finished talking. No menu. No payment. Just ramen.
Eric sparked his reefer. “Got anything to make this night less cursed?”
The Oracle didn’t laugh. He never did.
He slid a folded napkin across the counter. Inside: something thin, hard, and out of place — a datachip wrapped in seaweed like a dead relic trying to pass for a side dish.
Eric’s eyebrow lifted. “Bit high-grade for seaweed.”
The Oracle’s eye pulsed. “You’re not supposed to be in Neon Spire yet.”
Steam hissed around them, drowning the sound of the city.
Eric crushed the reefer between thumb and forefinger. “Yeah. I hear that a lot.”
He eyed the chip. “Secure?”
“If they crack my encryption, the chip will be the least of your concerns.”
Eric nodded. “Just checking.”
“Only the fool worries about ground his feet don’t touch.”
“Is that zen, or a threat?”
Before the Oracle could answer, Cal chirped in his ear.
“Holy hell, Eric. Is this guy just you in fifty years with worse fashion and deeper trauma?”
“I dunno, Cal. If he starts spouting philosophy and serving bootleg BOINC signals with broth, I’m suing.”
Cal paused. “You already did that.”
Eric stared at the chip. “Put a trace on it.”
“I’m on it. Huh. Old. Pre-collapse architecture. Wrapped in BOINC latticework. This thing’s been sleeping a long time.”
Eric didn’t like that. Old BOINC forks didn’t sleep. They waited.
He sipped his broth. “This you-level weird, Cal?”
“This is us-level weird.”
Eric slid the chip into a pocket sewn beneath his coat’s lining. “If this gets me killed—”
The Oracle gently placed a soft-boiled egg into his bowl. “You died the moment you stepped back into the city.”
No one else noticed the way the lights flickered — just a little too long.
The city buzzed like it knew.
And Eric walked into it again, chip tucked near his heart, the storm still rising.