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It's a bit late, but I just wanted to inform whoever read this that Access won't be updated for a while due to problems with my computer. I have finished it so I definitely won't abandon the project, but it'll take some more time before I can get to it again.

It may sound stupid, but the sound of the simple term "Should we" irked me. You're in no position to generalize your own insecurity. I can understand why you have doubts about asking questions, but why should we behave a certain way at all? Curiosity isn't the only way to make yourself useful, so why should everyone possess it or abstain from it? What's best for you may not be the best for someone else. Find your own way and leave others to their own devices.

To be honest, I had the same problem a few years ago (and still do to an extent). Until I realized that no one asked me to be intelligent.

The Character Bios discouraged me from reading any further. The characters sounded too perfect, too "pretty". I'm not keen on casts like that.
Nevertheless, I pushed on and read your story from beginning to end.

Personally, your writing style wasn't my thing. I like it when authors stick to the essence of things instead of wandering off but you stretched that quality up to the breaking point in my opinion. Some events demanded a more detailed and vivid description, especially in the horror genre: speeding through your own story kills the suspense. That being said, there was a lot to like in the fast pacing of the story as well. All in all, your story was economical: you said a lot in few lines. I like that, but I still think you skimped on details more than you should have.
While it was to be expected given the setting, the "power of love" plot point that saved Taka in the end came off as a deus ex machina, and I'm not very fond of those either. I can savor love stories, but not when they're cooked in "love conquers all" sauce.

All in all, not a bad story at all, but could have use some more meat.

Rei was taking in every note, every beat and every pause and translated them into movements of the fairest kind. She was indescribably sexy when she came up to me, brushed her hand against my cheek and returned to her otherworldly trance. The cocktails she downed were kicking in big time, but not painfully so. She was caught in the middle of a pillow fight with alcohol, drugs, meds and music. Her entire body would ache the next morning, but she didn’t give a ****.
“Please please please play more of this when it’s your turn!”, she begged. I was going to, seeing as she wasn’t the only one I’d be doing a favor. It occured to me at that point that my moment in the spotlight was nearing, but looking up at the visible part of the Interface, I didn’t see Vance playing the crowd as per usual. It was a recorded set, and people were already too drunk to care. I still wanted to shine that night, even for a less critical audience.
I jabbed a nearby partying dancer with my elbow, catching his attention.
“Hey man, when did Vance leave?”
“About half an hour ago. Didn’t you see him pass through?”
I shook my head and wriggled through the groups of ravers to the exit.
“Teka! Did Vance pass through here?”
My voice had already become hoarse from yelling.
“Yeah...No chance of catching up with him though: that was 40 minutes ago.”
“****...”, I cursed under my breath, “Did he tell you that I could relieve him though?”
“Well yeah kinda.”, Teka remembered, “He told you that either you or Ransack would t ake up his post. If you’re here, doesn’t that mean that he’s playing now?”
“It’s a pre-recorded set.”, I corrected him, but Teka gently gestured to zip it.
“That don’t sound like a pre-recorded set!”, he suddenly bellowed. He rushed in, leaving me confused and in want of an explanation. Only after turning up the volume admission of my PSA again did I know the perfectly good reason for his aberrant behavior.

It was an old song, outdated to such an extent that no remix would be able to modernize it to today’s standards. The only vocals I could make out was a phrase that sounded like “Bangarang!”, whatever that meant. It was, timeframe not even considered, abonimable. I quickly hushed it with my headgear and followed Teka in. I passed faces ripe with indignation and disgust, suspicious minds coiling around the situation.
The dreadful music stopped only moments later. Teka had apparently dragged a guy out of the Interface cubicle towards the bouncer at the emergency exit. Hadn’t been too kind with him either, by the looks of his bruises. They restrained him together, their grip tightening the more he tried to struggle. Two buddies of Marcus Ransack’s group volunteered to guard the emergency exit while the two doormen dragged him off.
Odd. They could have used the emergency exit to kick him out and be done with it. Unless...
“Come on!”, I spurred Rei on. “This I gotta see!”
“Huh? What?”, she wondered, but I was already dragging her along by the arm.

I barged in in the middle of the process. The big emergency exit bouncer was holding the fake DJ from behind, arms shoved underneath his prisoner’s armpits and reconnected underneath the guy’s chin. Teka had already reconfigured the machine: the cyan ray of light had turned an ominous crimson and shone much more intensely.
“We ought to knock him out before he gains any new memories of this place. Hold him into the beam.”, Teka growled. He ambled over to a first-aid cabinet in the corner, retrieving an injection needle from it. The culprit they had caught looked like he could have a nervous breakdown any moment, and was shaking all over to boot. Even if he got away, even if he tried to run, he didn’t have the speed in his trembling legs to outrun his captors for long.
It only took a few seconds of blood vessel searching before Teka plunged the needle into an artery, unplugging him from consciousness. It was strange. It happened to newbies all the time, as a precaution. Why then did it feel so much more horrifying as a esteemed punishment? Are we so lost in connotations that we can no longer see things for what they are?
Only then did they notice us, and the otherwise amicable Teka gave us a piercing look. He twisted a knob on his PSA, and I knew that he was trying to get J.J. on the line. So his gear too, has a unique frequency. One that only personnel knows about, no doubt.
“J.J., we have two regulars who witnessed the process. What do you want us to do?”, he transmitted out loud. No bad trip could spark the same fear that I felt at that moment. A fear shared by Rei, whose fight-or-flight response looked about ready to choose the former option. We would never be welcome in this public secret again!
“All right.”, Teka growled, and he shut off his PSA once more. He stepped forward and, while still having a stern look in his eyes, looked noticeably less ferocious than several seconds before.
“The man in charge doesn’t mind you seeing what you just saw, as long as you treat it with the same discretion you have proven to treat the rest of Cyberia and its personnel with. We can count on you guys, right?”
The both of us nodded without saying a word.

This elaborate obsession with secrecy and keeping itself low-profile has always had my approval, and even today’s extreme example is no more than a necessary evil in my eyes. Cyberia is a place of passive-aggressive anarchy. It is our haven for the cheap pleasures that are exceedingly hard to come by in our everyday lives. Dredging up this opportunity will force us to either stop being anarchists, or to stop being passive-aggressive. Neither prospect seems very appealing to us.
You might wonder, however, whether it was commendable to go apeshit on him for such a minor act of mischief. Imagine though, that you have an extremely noxious poison stored safely in a tank, until one day, you see droplets seeping out. This had never happened before, and it is happening now. You would panic. The song that was played today is situated in a generation long past, an age that bred anger and very little more. It is the hand-drawn swastika in your son’s math notebook. It is that ***** of an ex-girlfriend who rings your doorbell after having promised to vacate your life for good. Fancy analogies aside, it is part of a memory that no machine is powerful enough to wipe; a remnant of an abhorred past. It doesn’t belong here. It musn’t be.

Happy one-step-closer-to-death-by-senescence day!

And I'm just a hormone shot away from dribbling Lionel Messi silly.

I got Toji but I had just as many Gendo and Misato points. Make of that what you will.

I'll live with the occasional surge of wanting someone to be a part of my life, but I really don't need it right now. I'd flirt around if I were attractive enough for it, but I'm not going to bother.

The possibilities for drinking games are nigh endless.

Just do everything the cool kids tell you to.

Coincidentally I'd get punched a lot.

How else? It's my name.

Can't. I'm too ugly.

Better prank idea: shove ice cream sticks in horse scat, freeze said faeces, give them to preschoolers telling them it's ice cream. Has been proven to work.

They shoot lasers when we get angry.

There are trophies/achievements too. Maybe you get one for having 100 unchecked alerts? Or maybe 1000?

Tee-dus.

I never understood the disproportionate Nickelback bashing. They're not the best band around, but they're not as awful as people want me to believe. I like several of their songs. The same can be said for Avril Lavigne, although I still haven't forgiven her for calling herself a rock star whilst not knowing who David Bowie was.

No phone number means she's lying.
Unless you already got it beforehand, in which case she'd still be lying if it takes a note to remember it.

My condolences, man. I had to do the same thing to my dog this Spring, so I know how it feels.