[NR] Another Day Out - Chapter 588 (Patreon)

Days began to pass as Jason focused on finding a new way to observe his inner self. All the while also making sure to get generous amounts of time irl. This was finally interrupted when another government enforced day off arrived.

In theory, those days were either a regular holiday of sorts or rarely placed by the System if it detected some reason that the population needed some time off. Though it was an open secret that it also got used on occasion to let the natives deal with something on their own or to make sure none of the powers put too much hope in help from travellers. Which, admittedly, is somewhat important when questing was quite the popular activity for players, whatever their level.

This time the official reason given was that the quotient of players who are friends with those living nearby, which was defined as those who are in the same arcology, had fallen recently. The day off being done in hope of people reconnecting with those close to them. Most players just accept this reason as from very early on the idea of physically meeting up with someone being special had been hammered into them.

If you were to ask someone like Courtney though, they would gladly inform you that in reality it was instead a method of making sure people stayed in their box, as it were. In an age when not only was it possible to travel anywhere in the world for anyone, but the borders of previous eras had also gone away, it became much harder for the government to prevent unwanted movement. This wasn’t even something based on prejudices, but rather the simple fact that an arcology needs certain highly trained people to keep running and you didn’t want them to move around willy-nilly.

Not to say there wasn’t prejudice involved, but it was mostly kept to realistic requirements by a multitude of systems put in place. NeoRealm itself had actually been put in charge of behind the scenes attempts to move talented people in certain fields from one place to another. After all, a high end tech that handles maintenance on fusion generators would be more willing to move if most of his party was from the new place. And what’s this? There’s a job opening there!

Anyway, Jason had something planned for the day already or rather, his mom planned something and he wasn’t exactly going to turn her down. They hadn’t seen each other much as of late. Not that they had the classical mother and son relationship. It had been a little hard for Jason when young. The mind of an adult, even if they were at most a young adult, wasn’t going to be as child-like as an actual child. Early on, it had even been suggested that he might have a developmental issue with relationships.

In fact, Jason wasn’t even sure himself. A cultivation sect wasn’t exactly going to mind those sorts of things and in theory, a higher cultivation base would help counter some problems. Not cure it mind. Courtney had even asked about this at one point while Jason had been detailing things. Cultivation might be a literal miracle, but it was based on you as a person. So while Jason might have something, he had also been an adult who had trained himself to handle society. Combined with the fact that at the time he didn’t exactly know how this society might treat such things, he basically cheated on the test to appear “normal” enough.

This probably wasn’t the best option, but even if the sects didn’t care, Jason knew of how some kingdoms in his last life treated anyone like that and so felt he had made the correct decision. Better safe than sorry. After all, he wasn’t exactly going to get a third chance. The deities he had hung out with had pushed him into a place they weren’t in charge of because certain other deities in their region of control would have not liked their unsanctioned reincarnation.

Jason snapped out of his thoughts. At this point, if he delayed any further, it would simply be him dragging his feet. So he popped his pod and after a quick shower, more so he could feel clean. The VR pods kept you immaculate and the high end ones could even exfoliate. Then, feeling ready, he threw on some nice clothes.

There wasn’t exactly the largest variety of options for him to choose from. Though certainly more than he would have chosen on his own. Jason admitted to himself and others more than once that without his mom, his wardrobe would be like one of those gag closet scenes in cartoons. You know the one. Where the character’s closet has just multiple copies of the same outfit, they always wear.

As it was, Jason had more dress clothes than anything else, despite it being what he wore the least. His mom was too highly placed for him to not occasionally need to go to some function of another. Well, that isn’t quite true. He didn’t have to go and his mom never forced it. However, he knew well enough that it would be better for his mom if he showed up and put on a good public face.

That also led to a bunch of outfits that had only been worn once. After all, you can’t be seen wearing the same thing every time. His mom might not have been going to high society events, but at this point corporate events were almost worse because the old families could afford to be more casual. Corporations needed to have every advantage as the government wasn’t something they could just buy anymore. Memories were short, but after the last batch of corporations and rich people had gone too far, well, there is a reason a few hundred years ago every map needed to be remade. Before that, people had hoped that the horrible wars and various other horrors had led to a “modern” world that was past that sort of thing. Suffice it to say, those who rose from the ashes knew that wasn’t going to be the case and so many safeguards had been put into place. And of course safeguards for those safeguards and so on and so forth. Humans were fallible, so some things had been hidden deep and controlled by hard-wired systems.