Year 12075

Chapter 1, 1.2075

"Good morning, Night City! Across all districts, only four people died in yesterday's Dead Man's Lottery. I don't think anyone expected that number. Who knows how many people lost their shirts? You should all thank the officers of the Night City Police Department. If those donut-eating, gun-toting cops hadn't stopped you from getting rich, there would've been no fewer than twenty deaths yesterday;

Watson Maelstrom caused trouble in Kabuki District again yesterday. Who knew when those cyberware-addicted lunatics would sit still for even a second? Heywood Valentinos seemed to have run into some trouble. They didn't even celebrate their traditional Day of the Dead, running around the streets with their pants half on. It never ends, does it? Hmm, Pacifica was still Pacifica. I think City Hall should give them an award to celebrate another peaceful day. Anyway, I'm your old pal Stanley. Join me as we begin another day of chasing dreams in Night City."

The noisy broadcast jolted Carl awake.

"Damn. My head hurts."

Feeling herself leaning against a wall, Carl opened her eyes, only to find her vision blurred. A riot of colors filled her sight, every shade assaulting her eyes. Opening them felt even worse than keeping them shut.

"The billboards are blinding."

After her dazed brain took in the information coming through her gradually clearing vision, Carl realized she was lying in a reeking pile of garbage on a high floor of an apartment building, looking through a railing less than 1.2 meters tall at the view inside the building's atrium.

Billboards that seemed determined to fill every last gap and cram themselves into every corner, as though their glow were never bright enough, flashed in front of Carl's eyes, casting blurry, surreal colors across her vision.

Feeling uncomfortable from head to toe, Carl forced her aching body upright from the stinking garbage pile and looked around.

The corridor of this apartment building was probably a hundred meters long. Groups of oddly dressed people with a vaguely futuristic style stood around the hallway in twos and threes, chatting. No one paid any attention to Carl in the trash heap.

"What the hell is going on?"

As the fog in her head faded a little, Carl tried hard to recall her final conscious moments before passing out.

Carl, surname Carl, given name Carl. As a man with the exceedingly rare surname Carl, Carl's life had been utterly ordinary. Other than being fairly good-looking and liking video games, there was nothing worth mentioning. In her memories, he seemed to have been watching a gameplay demonstration video for a game.

And then?

Her memories cut off there. Her last impression was of herself watching that video.

What the hell?

Thinking back to the Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo she had been watching over and over in her final memories, Carl suddenly froze.

Because the final fragmented scene in her memories was exactly the same as the scene before her.

Wasn't this Megabuilding the apartment where the protagonist V lived in the demo?

Only then did Carl seriously examine those strangely dressed people. At first, she had merely glanced at them and thought their outfits were odd. But now that she looked closely, weren't all those miscellaneous things on their bodies cyberware?

What was cyberware? It was something akin to prosthetic limbs, a futuristic biological and medical technology found in science fiction. Its essence was replacing damaged or overly fragile human flesh with machinery, bionic flesh, and the like.

Were those things real?

Carl's gaze swept over an apartment resident passing by. When her eyes drifted down to the space between his legs—or more precisely, his crotch—she immediately believed that she had transmigrated.

As for why?

Because it was glowing!

Fuck, that guy's junk was glowing! It even changed colors. Was that some LGBT-style rainbow or something?!

As far as Carl knew, she had never seen anything that wild in the country where she used to live.

She had somehow arrived in a place identical to the one in the video, and then witnessed such a visually shocking sight. Oh, that wasn't a figure of speech, because the guy with the glowing crotch was actually twitching. Carl meant his shoulders. The man looked like he was having an epileptic fit, his crotch glowing as his body trembled and swayed nonstop.

Carl, standing in the garbage pile, wasn't blocking the glowing man's path, so he shuffled past her. Once he had gone, Carl climbed out of the trash, seeking the last shred of hope that this wasn't real. But when she stood by the railing and looked up toward the top of the atrium, a flying car happened to glide across the sky.

"Fine. I accept reality."

Without minding the filth on her hands, Carl slapped her cheeks a few times. She now fully understood that she had transmigrated.

Her original world had also developed certain concept cars called flying cars, but those things were utterly incomparable to the vehicle Carl had just watched speeding through the sky. The technological gap between them was not something that could be bridged in a few years. What else could she do at this point?

At least she had transmigrated into the Cyberpunk world, one she was already somewhat familiar with, rather than some dark 40K universe. She didn't need to howl around like a goblin whose toes had been stepped on.

Carl waited by the railing for a while but heard no prompt from any sort of system. It seemed her transmigration was lonely, with no chatty system to keep her company.

Could this be soul transmigration? Would the original owner's memories come to her?

Just as she thought that, an utterly shameless apartment resident pulled open his pants and took a piss not far from Carl. In that strangely colored liquid, Carl actually saw her own reflection.

Oh no. It was physical transmigration.

Though apparently, not entirely.

Staring at her reflection, Carl looked to be only eighteen or nineteen. Yet she still remembered that she had already been twenty-four.

A youth restoration service? Five stars.

Ignoring the person beside her, who had become groggy after pissing and nearly plunged headfirst into his own bodily fluids, Carl strolled through the apartment building, wanting to find out what year it was.

As for the date, she had already figured it out while she was half-conscious and heard Night City announcer Stanley's voice. The announcer had mentioned the Day of the Dead, which Carl remembered was a Mexican festival somewhat like the Ghost Festival. It was celebrated on November 1st or 2nd, so today should have been November 2nd or 3rd.

As for why Carl knew that, it was because she had watched an animated film called Coco, whose inspiration came from the Day of the Dead.

After walking only a few steps, Carl got the information she wanted.

Among the changing billboards in the hallway, one displayed the date.

It was an advertisement promoting the Dead Man's Grand Lottery, and the date written on it was—

November 3rd, 2075.

It was actually 2075?

What had happened? She had absolutely no idea.

Just as Carl thought this, she suddenly realized that perhaps she wasn't entirely without a cheat.

Neither these words nor the earlier broadcast had been in languages or writing she recognized, so why could she understand all of them?