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Bits and Pieces from the NR Trivia Collection
#2: Short-Term Contract

by Jens Kreutzer

A staple bit-gainer card for the Runner, Short-Term Contract is especially liked in Netrunner Sealed-Deck play, coming a close second to cards like Newsgroup Filter and Broker. The "mouse-slinging," temporary Runner employee is humorously portrayed in the artwork by James A. Higgins. In the flavor text, we find a reference to the roleplaying game Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. by R. Talsorian Games, which features the character Spider Murphy in some of its supplements. She is a hacking companion of the notorious Rache Bartmoss in the CP2020 background story.

What's somewhat mysterious about the card artwork is the Japanese writing in the background, however, which also contains the English letters "JM" and "SF," and the number "2021." The Japanese characters translate as the fragments "Keanu Reeves," "JM," "the year 2021..." and "three movie stars from the U.S. and Japan."

These are references to the cyberpunk science fiction film Johnny Mnemonic, starring Ice-T, Keanu Reeves, and Takeshi, an actor quite famous in Japan. Another fragment of Japanese, beginning in parentheses, spells out "U-i-ri-a-mu" (William) - possibly a reference to cyberpunk author William Gibson, who wrote the script for this movie, which is based on his short story of the same name. The whole fragment of text might have been taken from the cover sleeve of the movie's soundtrack CD, which was manufactured in Japan.