Just an ordinary day in Night City

"GOOD AFTERNOON, I'm Maxor Joch. I'll be your binder for this case," I said as I sat down across from the man I'd be binding to the foxgirl of his dreams in a few days' time. We were in one of the slick offices on the tenth floor of the TelCorp building reserved for meeting with clients prior to bindings.

I'd always felt it was a nice venue for the meetings because it was covered from wall to wall in windows that overlooked the flying aircar traffic and bustling magenta, green, and blue lights of the city of Night City below. It was one of my favorite views in the city and almost made the meeting worth my time.

Almost.

"Hey," my client replied, not meeting my eyes. "I'm Bayram Wright. But you already know that. Sorry."

"It's not a problem. I know lots of things," I said as I shook his hand. My glove came back slick with some of his sweat. A first-timer, clearly. I'd learned there are two sorts of clients in the binding business: those who adopt a confident, engaging persona to cover up their strange proclivities, and those who make an effort but fall well short of that goal, with the result that they come off as an odd combination of meek and sleazy. This guy was the latter. He had the appearance of trying to be well put together but failing miserably. And that wasn't just because his hair was full of some kind of slimy gel that did not look good.

Oh well, who was I to judge? I got paid because of guys like him, after all.

"Alright, so, uhm… how does this work exactly?" he asked, drying off his hands on his mismatched charcoal slacks while still refusing to look directly at me.

"So, I'll come in and perform the binding," I explained, starting with my usual intro speech for newcomers. "All you have to do is show up and wait outside. That's it. TelCorp will make sure the other client is in the binding chair before I show up, and I'll do the rest. When I'm done, your two spirits will be bound together. Forever."

"Yeah, well, that's sort of what I mean," the guy said, a little too eager. "How does that work? I mean, like, how do you put two souls together?"

"Well," I began, sighing despite myself. I was hoping this would be a short meeting. "I can't say I know exactly. No one does, really. All we know is that the spirit world is a whole other place. There are souls or spirits for every living being, and some of us have the ability, if we develop it, to tap into that spirit world by using our intuition to look into a person's soul.

Using this ability, we can bind two or more spirits to one another, but only in an uneven way. No one's figured out how to do it evenly yet, so one spirit always has to be dominant, and the other always has to be subservient. That's just how it works." Not that guys like this would ever have it any other way. "So, basically, you'll be the master in the relationship. Is that something you're okay with?"

"Yes, of course," he said, a little too eager now. "What will it feel like?"

"Well, it depends." I shrugged. "You'll always feel something right at the beginning, like a falling sensation, but after that, it really tends to vary. Some people who are really intuitive, really in tune with themselves, and others, like us binders, feel really connected to the other person right away. Others don't feel much at all for a while. It just depends. Binders feel it the most I'm told, though I've never done it myself before."

"Yeah, I tried to be one of you guys when I was fresh out of school," the client said, staring straight down at the table now to avoid looking at me. "A binder, I mean. I guess I didn't really have a talent for it."

I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. This guy? A binder? Give me a break.

"Yeah, well, we're an elite group," I said, allowing myself to reveal just a hint of pride. "Especially here at TelCorp. We're the best binding corporation in the world. Always have been, always will be. We do other stuff too, of course, but binding's our specialty."

"You have a ton of training then?" the guy asked, sneaking a glance up at me. I could tell he was more than just nervous by nature. He was nervous about the binding. "I mean, I've heard that sometimes these things can go bad…."

"Yep." I puffed out my chest a bit as I swelled with pride. "No one has better training than us at TelCorp, and no one at TelCorp's better than me. So you can be assured that your soul… and your friend's… is in excellent hands, if you will."

I flexed my fingers under my binding gloves. Sometimes spirits could be extra sensitive, and our hands could be burned if something went awry. So we had to wear heavy leather gloves to prevent any damage. Our hands were our main money-makers, after all. They were our main conduit to the spirit world, other than our good old intuition, that is.

"Okay, so even if things do go wrong, you'll be there to stop it," he said, still half looking at me, half looking at the table.

"Absolutely," I said. "We get all kinds of training just for these scenarios, not just basic binding stuff to do with the spirit world. As you probably know, based on your question, sometimes things… go a bit haywire with these things. If the binding doesn't take, sometimes the bound client… that's what we call the subservient spirit if you didn't already know… goes a little… well… psycho. That's really the only way to put it. I'm sure you've heard of a couple of bad cases. But anyway, I've never had that happen personally. In fact, I've never performed a single binding that didn't take right away."

"Really?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "I've never heard of that before. I mean about the flawless record. I thought something like only thirty percent of bindings took?"

"Usually, that's true, but not for me," I boasted. "Only perfect record in TelCorp's history. The only perfect record in any corporation's history, actually. But even so, we've got all kinds of training in case something goes wrong. We carry special holo knives made just for us and are trained in all kinds of historical and modern street fighting techniques in case things go wrong. We even have pretty good hacking training, though that's not really relevant to you or your question. It would be helpful in tracking down a psycho-bound client, I suppose, but it's never come to that before. We always find 'em quick."

"Really? Hacking?" he asked, surprised yet again. "Why's that?"

"Well, you know, there's a pretty big secondary market here in Night City for cybernetic implants," I said. Sure enough, you couldn't go to a nightclub here on the north side of the city without running into some kind of crazy cyborg.

I was a fan of being all-natural myself, scientifically and spiritually. No implants and no bindings for me. Never saw a need for it.

"Oh yeah, I don't get that at all," the guy said, shaking his head. Well, at least we had one thing in common. Ironic that he was judging cyborgs for their proclivities when he got off on making foxgirls subservient to him. Oh well, if they wanted to be bound to him, who was I to judge? My not getting it didn't really matter. I just got paid.

"Right," I said, working hard not to roll my eyes. "Basically, sometimes people with these cybernetic implants want a binding, so I need to know how to work around them for the purposes of accessing the spirit world. Magic and tech don't always mix, you see. So we get some good hacking training. Not top-notch like some of the guys who do just hacking for business since we only need it for a very specific purpose, but pretty damn good for non-professionals."

"Okay," the guy said, looking a little less nervous. Still slimy, though. "So even if something went wrong, you're telling me I'll be good?"

Typical. Only cared about himself and not the foxgirls. Whatever, to each their own.

"Yep," I assured him, "but nothing will go wrong. As I said, I've never had it happen with one of my clients, not even when I was just starting out. And with each binding, I grow stronger and stronger. So, even if a foxgirl did go psycho on me, she wouldn't be any match for me. Your soul's in excellent hands, Mister… Wright, was it? Right. Nothing for you to worry about, I assure you. TelCorp will take good care of you and the bound, like we always do."

So now I just have to prepare the necessary items to bind him to the willing foxgirl. Honestly what a boring and ordinary day.