"I'm Lorica."

"Never heard of you. Yeah, yeah, you're new. I'll hear of you in the future I'm sure. When you've dealt with your junk, want to meet a Fixer? Hook you up with gig work, or let you put out gigs, or sell and buy things. You know, the not quite NCPD approved kind. It's a lot easier than legitimate employment for the kind of person with armor."

"My dad's a cop, I was brought up to at least sort of try to be legit before giving up on it."

"Ahhh. I try not to hold the sins of the father as the sins of the daughter."

"Isn't bounty work actually legal? And bodyguard gigs, and some of the low level stuff."

"I dunno, choom. I guess Lorica here can find out herself if she wants though."

"What's a good way to find out what's legal?" She wants this part of this thing and not the rest of it. Pick pick pick.

"Taking things apart isn't quite in the spirit here, can you at least keep the disassembled bits neat? Box 'em? Uh... I don't know, net sites I guess."

"Sure thing." Unwanted bits in a separate box.

What does Rete have on the legal code?

It's waaaaaaaay corporate and employer friendly. Endless fines. Prison labor. IP laws. Hypercapitalist. But the basics like "no murder" do exist.

Is this, like, lobbyists, or revolving door political/corporate staff positions, or a mad economist behind the wheel, or did a corporation build this place as a charter city, or...? (She's got a boxful of stuff now and will thank them and head out.)

A corporation built this place as a charter city, there were a bunch of wars, different corporations come and go into influence and power. It's kind of a de facto Free Port type zone? The city council is officially a corporate council. The city is owned by Night Corporation, and adjusts laws according to what makes Night Corp the most money. Sure, they have a caricature of democracy, but it's incredibly corrupt even from casual web searches.

Huh. What industr(y/ies) is Night Corporation in?

Light manufacturing (dominated by relatively few large corps), software and information trade, some farms by Biotechnica, private research campuses and education, a little bit of tourism, and being a transshipment hub. The last two are slowly dying ever since the recent conflicts with NUSA though.

What's the NUSA situation? (She has by this time exited the building and found a place to loiter where she will not obviously bother someone within a few minutes.)

The NUSA mostly consists of the eastern states- East of the Rockies. Texas is independent and has nukes. The west coast got nuked a bunch a while ago. A bunch of western states are in various dubious levels of semi-independence and corporate overlordship.

Also, it's kind of a boot-stomping-on-a-human-face-forever organization now. Militarized fascism wearing the trappings of democracy and heavily integrated with the Militech megacorporation.

There's one infamous clip of a chemical weapon attack on a group of "sovereign citizens" and President Kress (8th term and running!) justifying it by saying that this 'independent state' had 'signed no treaty governing the use of such weapons in wartime'.

Ew.

What's west of the Rockies? Where is Night City?

Night City is right in between the state of North California and South California, on the Pacific coast! Washington and Oregon are "corporate states", run mostly as enormous farm zones. The rest of the old US states are recognizable, and in various complicated partnership/colonial/client state arrangements.

Huh.

.......how hard is it to establish a charter city?

...The local internet seems to think this is mostly about how much military force you have? Hypothetically speaking.

What's the policing in the ocean like?

...she's getting ahead of herself but it costs nothing to suggest research topics to her bot as she looks for a place nobody will bother her while she starts tinkering.

It's mostly armed convoys travelling in large groups on the ocean, due to the massive Pacific autonomous minefield created by rogue AIs back in the 20s.

WOW okay she should not get that ahead of herself! She needs to build shit first.

What is there in the way of, say, abandoned buildings tall enough that nobody's up high in them?

Not many of the buildings in Night City proper are totally abandoned. The tallest towers are all pretty fully in use, but in the rougher parts of Santo Domingo, across the river, but before it fades out to townhouses, there are some five and six story apartment blocks that are partially empty.

Or there's always Pacifica.

She's willing to consider Pacifica but if she can find an apartment nobody's using that might be best. (She'd take a roof but it might rain and then she has to worry about sheltering her projects from the water while they're still in progress.)

She can find a shitty tenement apartment with badly peeling paint and floors that nobody is currently using, or seems likely to object to her commandeering for a bit.

Great. It's not legit legit but it's a victimless crime. (Though she should consider trying to make money. What is the state of online banking and what is the state of web based work that she can put Rete to or else knock out herself in ten minutes of fugue?)