G Nook
"Gangster Nook" - The Underground's Neutral Ground
If you don't know where it is, you're not supposed to be there.
What outsiders once knew as "Gamer Nook" is now whispered among locals as "Gangster Nook," or simply "G Nook." These aren't just places to rent terminal time. They're neutral ground for the cyber underground, safe houses for runners on the move, and information exchanges that operate entirely outside corporate surveillance.
How G Nook Stays Invisible
Nexus Dynamics controls 40% of the Sprawl's computational infrastructure. Ironclad surveils every maintenance tunnel. Corporate AI sifts through petabytes of data daily, hunting for patterns. Yet G Nook has operated for nearly thirty years without a single location being raided.
The secret isn't technical. It's social architecture.
Human Chains Only
You don't find a G Nook. Someone who trusts you brings you.
Locations are never written down. Never stored digitally. Never spoken aloud in any space that might have ears. The address doesn't exist in any database because it was never recorded in the first place.
- First visit: Blindfolded, or taken via deliberately confusing route
- Return visits: Only after you've proven you can keep the secret
- Sharing access: Requires vouching—your reputation stakes on theirs
- Breaking the chain: Tell a corp, write it down, get sloppy—your access dies forever
Knowledge spreads person-to-person through trust networks. Each link in the chain has something to lose if it breaks. The system is slow. It's inefficient. And it's been unbreakable for three decades.
Infrastructure Parasitism
G Nooks exist in corporate blind spots—the cracks where surveillance jurisdictions don't quite overlap.
- Maintenance tunnels that "don't exist" in reconstruction records
- Deprecated water treatment systems from pre-Cascade infrastructure
- Building basements miscategorized during the chaos of 2148-2155
- Jurisdictional gaps where Nexus security ends and Ironclad's begins
- Server closets in buildings whose owners don't know what they own
The Sprawl is 37 years removed from the Cascade. Reconstruction was chaotic. Records contradict each other. Buildings got rebuilt three times with different blueprints. El Money studies those contradictions. He finds the spaces that fell through the cracks—and fills them with terminals.
"Corporations look for what their systems can see. We exist in what their systems forgot."
Services
Standard Services (All Locations)
Anonymous Terminal Access
50 credits/hour
No logs. No surveillance. Network routes through nodes that corporate tracking can't trace.
Secure Communication Relay
200 credits/message
Messages that don't exist. Untraceable, unrecoverable.
Private Meeting Booth
500 credits/hour
Signal-shielded, swept for bugs. Factions that would kill each other outside can negotiate inside.
Dead Drop Facilitation
100 credits/drop
Leave something for someone, no questions asked. Staff never remember faces.
Premium Services (Select Locations)
Safe House
Invitation only
Temporary disappearance. Runners in transit can rest, regroup, and vanish.
Data Brokerage
Reputation-based
Information trading through trusted channels.
Network Introduction
El Money's discretion
Connection to other underground operators.
The Back Room
Unknown
Rumored. Unconfirmed. Don't ask.
What G Nook Doesn't Do
- Corporate contracts — neutrality is sacred
- Wetwork coordination — violence brings heat
- ORACLE fragment trading — too dangerous, too visible
- Anything that could bring Nexus through the door
The Rules
Every G Nook operates under the same three rules. Break them and you're out—permanently.
No Heat
Don't bring corporate attention. Don't bring faction wars. Don't bring anything that makes G Nook visible.
No Questions
Don't ask about other customers. Don't ask about staff. Don't ask about El Money.
No Recording
What happens in G Nook stays in G Nook. Terminals leave no logs. Neither should you.
"Break these rules, and Ice will be disappointed. You don't want to disappoint Ice."
What Happens When You Break the Rules
The rules sound simple. Three guidelines. Common sense. But the punishment for breaking them isn't exile—it's erasure. G Nook's neutrality isn't maintained by trust. It's maintained by consequences so total that no one tests them twice.
The Enforcement Triad
1. Community Exile
Bring heat to a G Nook, and every G Nook knows your face within hours. The network's memory is perfect and unforgiving.
- The underground economy closes to you
- No ripperdocs will touch you
- No fixers will take your calls
- No safe houses will open their doors
- The people who could save your life don't know your name anymore
You're alone in a city that wants you dead. The Sprawl has no mercy for those who've burned their networks. Most don't last six months.
2. The Fire Department
The tribute isn't just protection money—it's a relationship. And relationships work both ways.
- The fire department has reach that corporations don't expect
- They know where everyone hides—they need to, for their real job
- Problems can disappear in ways that look like accidents
- Infrastructure failures. Maintenance mishaps. Unfortunate timing
- El Money never threatens—he just mentions his friends
A building inspector can make your life very difficult. A fire marshal can end it.
3. Other Patrons
Everyone who uses G Nook has enemies outside. Runners, fixers, operators—people with prices on their heads and nowhere else to rest.
- These people have a stake in neutral ground existing
- Someone who threatens G Nook finds themselves with many new enemies
- Enemies who handle things quietly, without involving the network directly
- The problem resolves itself
- No one asks how
You don't betray G Nook. You betray everyone who depends on it. And some of those people are very, very good at making problems go away.
"The rules keep you safe. Breaking them means you're not safe anywhere."
The S-Money Memorial
Every G Nook maintains a special terminal dedicated to S-Money—El Money's younger brother, a legend in the cyber underground before his death. Known for extreme dedication to media consumption, S-Money could process more data streams simultaneously than anyone believed possible.
The memorial terminal runs continuously: thousands of channels at once, exactly as S-Money would have watched them. A shrine of noise and light. Nobody touches it. Nobody changes it. It runs for him.
"The screens in every Nook run for him. He's still watching. I like to think he's still finding patterns."
Notable Locations
G Nook 7G
Level 4, Sector 7G — The DregsDisguised as an abandoned water reclamation office, G Nook 7G is the location most new customers encounter first. The air carries that distinctive G Nook signature—synthetic coffee, ozone, and something metallic from the old pipes that were never fully capped. Blue-green terminal glow spills through gaps in blackout curtains that haven't been replaced since opening.
Three S-Money Memorial terminals dominate the back wall, larger than most locations—the screens never stop, thousands of channels cycling in perpetual tribute. Regulars claim they've seen patterns in the noise that predict market movements. No one's proven it.
The usual crowd: mid-tier salvagers, data couriers between jobs, the occasional Collective contact pretending to be just another customer. Ice appears here more often than anywhere else, watching from the rafters, sometimes vanishing mid-blink. Staff have learned not to comment.
G Nook Central
Location Unknown — Rumored HeadquartersThe network officially has no central hub. El Money says this with a straight face. The underground believes otherwise.
Regulars whisper about a G Nook that's different—larger, better equipped, with processing power that rivals corporate installations. The few who claim to have been there describe conflicting details: deep underground or high in an abandoned tower. Cold and clinical or warm with incense. Staffed by dozens or completely empty except for Ice.
Either there's no Central, or there are multiple decoys. Either everyone who's been there lies, or their memories were altered. The conflicting accounts might be deliberate—a security feature, not a bug. Or Central exists in a way that human perception can't consistently process.
"Central is wherever El Money is. And El Money is wherever he wants to be."
The Edge
Waste Border Zone — Last Stop Before GoneBuilt into a collapsed transit station where the Sprawl bleeds into the Wastes, The Edge smells like rust, dust, and the ozone tang of jury-rigged power. The synthetic coffee here is weaker—supplies run thin this close to the border—but the synthwhiskey is stronger. Staff don't ask why you're leaving. They've seen enough.
The clientele is rougher: salvagers who work the deep Wastes, traders running goods between Sprawl and the unconnected settlements, people who owe money to the wrong corporations. The terminals are older, the chairs are harder, and the S-Money Memorial plays feeds from Waste pirate broadcasts alongside the standard chaos.
Most staff are former Waste survivors—people who came back from the outside and understand the particular desperation of someone about to leave. They'll sell you information about safe routes, reliable guides, settlements that won't shoot strangers on sight. The prices are steep. The information is good. It has to be—their reputation depends on customers surviving.
"The last place you can still reach the network. Use it while you can."
The Archive
Upper Sectors — Information Specialist HubThe oldest surviving G Nook after the First, The Archive occupies a former public records building that the reconstruction bureaucracy forgot to reassign. The air is different here—drier, quieter, carrying the faint vanilla scent of degrading paper from storage rooms that predate the Cascade.
Where other G Nooks hum with activity, The Archive whispers. The terminals are newer, the chairs are better, and the coffee is real—not the synthetic filter test that drives away people who don't belong. The clientele runs toward information specialists, archivists, and the kind of researcher who needs to find things that don't want to be found.
The staff have been here for decades. They remember everything—every face, every request, every pattern of inquiry that might connect to larger operations. Need to trace a corporate shell company through forty years of name changes? They'll point you to the right terminal. Need to find someone who disappeared during the Cascade? They might remember hearing a name.
El Money visits here most often, according to those who track such things. Whether he comes for the information resources, the quiet, or something the staff know that no one else does—that's one more thing The Archive remembers and doesn't share.
"The Archive doesn't have answers. It has directions to where answers hide."
The First Gamer Nook
Former religious district — Now Nexus territoryRose from the ashes of El Money's destruction by the Purifiers. Operated for twelve years before the neighborhood changed hands. When Nexus acquired the district, El Money closed it personally. The equipment vanished overnight. People say he kept the original hand-painted sign.
Bash Terminal
Origin Site — Gone, possibly deliberately erasedBefore G Nook. A cramped, filthy space next to a river so polluted it glowed at night. El Money built his reputation here—terminals, connectivity, discretion at fair rates. Every G Nook maintains "The Terminal" corner in homage: a few chairs, basic equipment, lowest prices. For those with nowhere else.
How they stay hidden: Abandoned water reclamation offices, failed business storage, infrastructure maintenance hubs, condemned residential blocks—sometimes even corporate server closets. El Money has a dark sense of humor.
The Fire Department Tribute
How does G Nook stay hidden from corporate surveillance and religious harassment?
The answer isn't technical—it's political. El Money pays tribute to the fire department. Not a bribe—a business arrangement. Access fees. Infrastructure consulting. A mutually beneficial relationship.
In the Sprawl, the fire department is the only authority that matters. They control infrastructure access. They know every building, every hidden space, every off-grid power tap. When the Flatline Purists tried to oppress El Money's operation, their harassment triggered fire code inspections in their facilities.
G Nook has friends who control things that religious fervor can't touch.
Ice Watches
Regulars say a sleek chrome cat sometimes watches from the shadows. They say the cat reports to someone. They don't say who.
Ice—El Money's cyber cat—has been seen in multiple G Nook locations simultaneously. Whether there's more than one Ice, or the cat can somehow move through the network itself, is a mystery no one dares investigate.
"Ice goes where Ice wants. I just feed her."
Faction Relationships
The Collective
Respects G Nook's independence. Uses the network but doesn't control it. An uneasy alliance of convenience.
Ironclad Industries
Doesn't know G Nook exists. Corporate surveillance can't penetrate fire department territory.
Nexus Dynamics
Suspects something operates outside their data collection. Can't prove it. Wants to.
Flatline Purists
Tried to destroy El Money once. Learned better. The cold war continues.
Connection to The Keeper
The second G Nook location—before the network became an empire—was haunted.
Data bleeding through reality. Equipment malfunctioning in ways that defied diagnostics. The building sat on a location where the boundary between physical and digital was thin. No technician could fix it.
The Keeper—the first cyber monk, living atop The Mountain—reached out. His ancient knowledge of consciousness and the boundaries between realms gave him insight that technology couldn't. Together, they stabilized the space.
Now El Money climbs The Mountain occasionally. He brings real tea. They talk about nothing important. Ice and Kaiser—The Keeper's uploaded cat—have developed their own understanding.
They're the closest thing either has to a best friend.