An apartment was provided for all the NPCs from Ether. The cyborgs were housed in the studio building. Brett wasted no time pulling Simon aside for sex. They were too close. That was not something that surprised me. All 3 of us were warned that they could be manipulative and subversive. I certainly hoped that he would not be taken in by Simon's ass or dick. It was Brett's business on how he liked to engage with other guys. Chester and Kim came to me and asked what we wanted. "We want to work with you. We can form a clan together and become a strong force in the country." I said. They looked at each other and then turned to me. "Fine. We will do that. If we all live here, it will be much better for us than if we were on the street in rags." Chester said. The clan was named Sixteenth Notes because of the original 6 members. We got to work right away. Several other homeless cyborgs were hired to keep them off the street as well. They were able to work all the equipment that we had no clue about. The number of members rose to 17 cyborgs that way. The studio was named Sixteenth Notes Records.
Being that we had 20 members, we had some that wanted to sing and some that wanted to perform. Those that could go shirtless were allowed to form bands. Both a 6 man boy band and a 4 man girl band were formed. The 6 males were called Cody, Cole, Cain, Carl, Cyrus and Caleb. We called them the "6 Cs". They were a pop star band. Jessica, Erica, Olivia and Wendy were the girl group. We called their band "Wild Child" because they did punk rock. Chester, Kim and Simon were an instrumental band called "Robot Strings". The other four cyborgs; Quinn, Maria, Daniel and Cindy were the audio technicians. There were also some humans that wanted to be apart of the label and work there. Some of them were hired and we were able to put some music out. Only the cyborgs were given access to the elevator that could take them to the clan building below. Sometimes the cyborgs would have to answer a summons from the transmission hub. Since it was a small town, there were less demanding missions needed. That was a double edged sword. On one hand, they all were unlikely to die.
Conversely, the rewards were low and they were unlikely to make any progress towards making anything useful outside of the music. With 17 cyborgs, it was really easy for them to get a full party of 6 going for whatever mission they needed to go on. Paul, Brett and I were also available to go with them if we were free. We gave all the members of the 6 Cs and Wild Child bands full black ninja outfits with a full face mask to keep their identities a secret. I wanted some plausible deniability if one or more got captured during a mission. The first singles from the 3 groups did okay. Nowhere near platinum, but that would improve with time. Since we were local talent, the local paper and TV news came to do some interviews. We allowed them access to the lounge and they could get a sit down with any band they wanted. The local paper was more interested in Wild Child. The TV station wanted to give an in-depth interview to 6 Cs. They all were watched closely to make sure that they were not going to do anything really stupid. If they did, we were willing and able to kill them. It was a last resort.
