image [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOjirydaYAAWo2C?format=jpg&name=large]
Bitstream
By Rowdha Al Sol
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1.1
“Cardiac system restored.”
A voice: feminine, digitised.
“Vitals low. Activating emergency protocols.”
But what is it? Who is it?
Maybe I’d know if I could open my eyes, but all I feel is the vacant emptiness where they once resided. Two craters sinking in towards whatever’s left of my brain, and something else—a bolt of electricity coursing, jumpstarting me like a rusty, worn-out machine.
“Optics online,” the voice says.
It doesn’t change much. Everything is still dark, but the optic wiring in my brain mustn’t have been fully destroyed, because I can see things, although not clearly. The world is shaped by a series of red ones and zeroes. I’m covered in scrap metal, silver springs, titanium bones, and garbage. I can’t smell any of it. My synaptic resurgence module hasn’t recovered that much, thank goodness, but my vitals have, albeit in critical condition.
When I raise my arm, my finger meets something cold and solid. The numbers cascade outward, like raindrops on a wintry pond. Together, they sketch the contours of an enclosed space stretching several feet across.
A dumpster. Why, of course. What else could it have been?
Slowly, I push against the lid. It doesn’t budge. There must be something holding it down. If only my other arm was working, I might have enough strength to push through. I sit up as best as I can, leveraging myself on my cybernetic arm and pillowing against copper jags as I raise into a bent-kneed stance. The electricity coursing through my veins is withering away with each second and if I’m not quick I might flatline, this time for good.
I turn around, having my back face the lid. With my shoulders and nape I shove... shove... shove!
The lid opens and little bits fall inside, covering my face and torso. Cybernetic components, no doubt. I pull myself out of the dumpster and roll down the junkpile until I can hardly move or breathe.
As I lie there gasping, memories flicker through my mind, weakly at first, gradually gaining strength and clarity. I recall a name.
Rhea Steele.
Is it mine? I'm not sure. It’s engraved in my neural chip, or perhaps my brain. Maybe even both. But that’s about as much as I can remember. Everything else—how I got here, how I ended up with no eyes and only one functioning arm—I haven’t the slightest idea.
I pull myself to my feet and realise that my ability to walk is suboptimal. It’s enough, but only just. I stagger over to a pile of cyborg corpses—of which there are hundreds—and begin running my hand through their ports and sockets, all while monitoring my failing vital systems. The readings are no longer visible on my optic display; they’ve melted into digital smear. The ones and zeroes guide my hand until eventually a dollop turns green. I’ve found something, surely. I dig through the rubble and, sure enough, pull out a pair of functional optics attached to a decapitated head. I pry the optics free and ease them into my sockets. It takes a moment for everything to adjust. Eventually the red numbers dissipate and the world around me begins to expand with texture, colour, and life. Or perhaps more accurately: death. I was right in believing this was a cyborg graveyard, but I didn’t know that it was next to a river, beneath an enormous bridge which joins two sides of a well-lit, prosperous city.
I recognise this place, only I’m not sure where from. It’s a distant, free-floating memory. Something that lingers but doesn’t show itself. A ghost of thought.
I look down at my naked body, at the cyberware markings on my boobs, shoulders and stomach, spotting blood. Some of the holes are from bullets, others from blades. The wounds are old and dry. How is it exactly that I’m alive?
What happened to me?
I jab my fingers into the side of the decapitated head and detach the neural chip from within. I remove my own, which is beat up pretty badly, and replace it. Soon my hearing comes back, although the sound is muffled and staticky. Seagulls mew against the continuous din of city traffic, interrupted only by a siren that whirs across the bridge. I don’t notice it until my hearing strengthens some moments later, but it’s raining. Strangely, only then do I feel the droplets patter my skin. These sounds, these sensations, are not unfamiliar to me either.
Some of the corpses might have been here decades. Others might be fresh. The question is, how long have I been here, and more importantly, how long do I have left?
According to my vitals, not long. I need a new operating system, but finding one in this place isn’t possible; it’s sheer luck that mine is still running at all.
Some voices from behind. Laughter. In the distance. Not sure how far exactly. I turn to see two men and a woman climb down one of the corpse heaps; it rises to an opening that I can only presume leads to a ladder or stairway of some sort. Something that would bring them to the city.
They’re wearing brightly coloured kuttes marred together with different symbols: skulls, lion heads, spiders, and crass phrases like, ‘The one and only!’ and ‘I fucked your whore and didn’t pay child support.’ Ironically, they also wear crosses around their necks, which makes me think they must have gotten out of a pretty intense church session.
The men in particular are packing some moderately sized cyberware. Decked out with titanium-annexed, Kevlar optic shields, which are long, shaded visors animated with blue cubelike waves rolling from one side to the other; necks engraved with sharp inclines which, typically, mean their skulls are coated with a layer of steel, if not all the bones in their bodies; and limbs adorned with sleek, chrome-plated exoskeletons, each joint pulsating with a faint electric hum as they move.
I don’t know what their intentions are, but I ought to keep out of sight. Maybe it’s in the way they swagger, the way they talk with those slightly nasally countrified accents, but they don’t look inclined to help a young lady who only minutes ago managed to pull herself out of a dumpster. To help someone who by all accounts should not be alive at all.
But I’ve done too much thinking, because within moments of them stepping off the falling corpse pile, the woman points a thickly gloved finger at me and yells, “There’s a live one. Over there, look.”
My heart pounds, the electricity in my body spikes, and my vitals dip further. I try to take a step back and perhaps even run away, but my legs give in and soon I find myself trapped in a shake before collapsing onto the beach.
The people laugh, partly with excitement and partly with cruelty.
Help me, I try to say, but the words don’t come out. I vibrate as my internal clock ticks towards an inevitable death.
First the woman comes over, then the two men. She bends down and pulls my head towards her. “Ah.... It’s old. Look, an XV-2054 Model.”
“About fifty years past your prime, dustbucket,” says the taller of the two men. He pulls a cigarette from a menthol package, pops it in his mouth, and lights it with a flame embedded in his index finger.
“Might be worth somethin’ still, if it’s still runnin’,” says the shorter man, flicking a switchblade up and down.
The woman presses the side of her neural port, which sits above her left ear, and suddenly her visor turns green. Some seconds later, she says, “Part-human, part-’borg. I’d imagine back in her time she was a fan of biotech. Probably spent more time on the chair than your average cyberjunkie, that’s for sure.”
The taller man gets down on one knee and blows a puff of smoke in my face. “Anything valuable? What’s that pretty eye of yours see?”
“Hard to tell,” she says. “It’s beat up pretty bad and some parts of the body are unscannable.”
“Cheap fuckin’ optics, that’s why,” says the shorter man.
“I suppose we could dump it in the back of the truck and look at it later,” the woman says. “It’d be much easier than trying to rip it apart here with all these bodies everywhere.”
The taller man reaches into his back pocket and pulls something stout and bulky out. It takes me a second to realise that it’s a pistol, one embedded with a carbon skin, a ring-shaped trigger, and an orange bore. It glows when he thumbs the safety off. “Want me to ice it here?”
The woman pulls away. “Just be sure to hit it between the eyes. Anywhere lower and you might fry all the circuits and we’ll get nothin’ out it.”
This can’t happen. I can’t die, not like this, not after I’ve been given a second chance. But I guess if this man doesn’t put me out of my misery, my operating system will.
He kneels closer to my face and presses the barrel of the pistol against my skull. “Adios, dustbucket.”
The air grows heavy and it’s as if a million hot needles are piercing my skin. Within seconds, the bullet will pass through my cranium and knock my lights out for good; brains will splatter and for the first time I’ll get to witness what it’s like having my existence ripped from my being, what it’s like to die in cold blood. Then what? Is it just an empty meaningless void? Is there a hell? A heaven?
I’m too young to find out. Now is not my time.
“No,” a voice says—weak and strained.
“The fuck?” the man snarls.
“Not now,” the same voice says, only I realise something that I hadn’t before: the voice, soft, feminine, belongs to me.
“You can talk, even after all these years?” the woman says, laughing. “Well, isn’t that something? Fifty years old, probably dumped here at least a decade ago, and she speaks. There’s some human left in you after all.”
“Poor bitch,” the shorter man says. “Ought to put her out of her misery. It’s a win for both sides, I reckon.”
The electricity coursing through my body begins to accelerate as my heart pounds harshly against my chest, giving vigour to my being once more. “No,” I say—shout, actually. “I can’t die!”
“The fuck you can’t.” The tall man rams his thick palm into my forehead with the hope of slamming me back into the ground, but to his shock—and to my own—my neck doesn’t give.
Before he has time to prop the barrel against my skull, I grab his wrist with my dodgy cybernetic arm and squeeze as hard as I can. His ulna and radius crunch beneath my grasp. He screams. The gun goes off and a flash of bright light illuminates the blood staining my body. I’m a survivor, not a corpse.
“Kill her!” the man squeaks.
The woman, who by now has backed up a couple feet, reaches for her pistol. My arm, with strength even I don’t expect, jolts forward and becomes a ball-bearing as the body of the tall man goes helplessly sprawling across it. The woman backs up and aims. Before she can fire, something springs from my forearm: a long, raptorial blade. It pierces through the man’s chest and slices through the woman’s neck. She stands there shaking, just as I had done moments ago, while the life drains from her face. The shorter man stands back, slackjawed. He doesn’t say a word, only watches.
The woman’s body hits the floor and the man on my raptorial blade drops his gun. They’re dead. That much is for certain.
I move the man’s body to the side and watch as he slides off my blade. His guts droop and pull along the jagged splits.
The remaining man gasps, drops his switchblade, and makes a beeline for the climbing corpse pile, nearly tripping along the way.
I don’t bother chasing after him. He’s not on my list of priorities right now. Instead, I crawl over the dead woman and slice her chest open with my blade. I make a fist and the blade retracts back into my forearm, secured by a pair of plates in hard muscle. Inside the woman’s chest, I see the rectangular operating chip attached to her internal life system, beneath the heart. I detach it carefully, making sure not to damage it. I know this procedure is going to be difficult. If I don’t replace my operating system quick enough after taking it out, my heart will stop and I’ll flatline. Terrifying, but I have no choice. I take a deep breath, staving off as much fear as possible, before pressing my neural port and opening the life system on my chest. The steel plates securing my racing heart remain intact, but the operating system looks fried, pulsing dimly with a blue glow. Despite this, I grimace, mostly with angst. I grab the switchblade left over from the short man and, using the tip, pry the chip free. It isn’t long before my vision blurs and my vitals fade to black. All the air empties from my lungs, and for a second I feel as though I’ve been launched into outer space.
I quickly but carefully secure the woman’s operating system beneath my heart. To my shock, I’m still unable to breathe, I still can’t see my vitals, and slowly the world around me begins to blur before going dark.
The darkness, which lasts about thirty seconds, is different. I don’t see any red ones and zeroes. It's nothing.
When I come around again, I can see and breathe and feel. I’m lying flat on the ground, but something's different: I’m able to move smoothly. No shakes, no pounding heart. My vitals pop up on my neural display and everything is green. I look down at my naked torso and see nanobots sewing my wounds shut.
“Vitals stabilised,” the robotic voice in my head says. “Have a nice day, Rhea Steele.”
So that’s my name.
Rhea Steele.
I pick myself up, slowly, and stretch my limbs. The mantisblade embedded in my forearm is a surprise. In my previous life I must have been something of a mercenary, or perhaps a deviant who used her technological prowess to secure easy creds, or maybe I just liked the idea of defending myself in a city that was potentially crawling with threats, like these people. These... scavengers. I look at their dead bodies, focusing on the woman, even more so on her clothes. Her cut-off leather jacket coats a white button-up shirt; the sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, revealing ugly tattoos: werewolves, snakes, and what looks like a clown of some sort. I really hate clowns. I’m not scared of them or anything; there’s just something about the idea that these wildly coloured, over-the-top faces are meant to entertain children.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I unbutton the woman’s leather kutte, then remove her white shirt, and then her cargo jeans and combat boots. I let her keep her panties, because it’s plain disgusting to wear another person’s undies. I throw on her shirt, jeans, kutte, and boots, which proves more awkward than difficult due to my inactive left arm. It must have been fried pretty bad to be completely dead. If I want to get it replaced or removed, I need to visit a tech surgeon of some sort, but it’ll come at a cost. I’m sure.
I run my hand through the man’s corpse, seeing if he has anything valuable. Other than his pistol there isn’t much, but I take it anyway. I take the woman’s pistol, too. Maybe I can sell it and make a bit of cash on the side, if it’s worth anything.
I pop the man’s pistol into my back holster and keep the other in my inside jacket pocket, then spot the switchblade that coward of a man left behind. I grab that, too, keeping it safe in my pocket. After that, I walk over to the climbing corpse pile from which these scavengers came, expecting to see a ladder or walkway. To my surprise there’s neither. From the bottom of the wall to the top there’s a mesh of rusty pipes, worn and leaking from the chambers. Part of it is held together only by carbon-fibre tape. That’s funny to me. Nevertheless, I clamber up the corpse pile, knocking bits aside. It's taxing but not impossible. It doesn’t take long before I reach the top. This is where the real challenge begins. Getting up this damn pipe system. I can try hook my arm around some of the looser areas but from the looks of it they’re farther up. I’ll have to use my legs to do most of the work, and I do—well, try—but inevitably fail as I find no way to hoist myself up onto the next available grip. I slip, but don’t fall off the pile. I manage to anchor myself by sticking my mantisblade into one of the bodies, which gives me an idea.
I try the same thing, but instead of grabbing onto the first available pipe, I spring my blade as high as the rig will allow and wedge it between a suitable gap. I pull. There’s a strong hold. This should work. I take a deep breath and, after a moment, retract my blade, just as I had done before, only this time I’m launched upward towards the point of contact. I stop when I hit my head off the wall. Not hard, but with enough force to send a shockwave through my body. Before the blade fully retracts, I wrap my legs around a thick pipe and grab onto another. I repeat the process until I reach the top and pull myself over the ledge.
It really takes the air out of me. My optic display tells me my oxygen levels are falling. I really ought to take it easy until I can see a tech surgeon. Maybe they can figure out what happened to me.
Once I catch my breath, I look up and see the sprawling city in all its glory. I expected as much. All around the place, people bustle from sidewalk to sidewalk, across flashing yellow crosswalks and below quickly changing traffic lights. The cars aren’t anything special; there hasn’t been much development since the early 2050s, and it seems everything still runs on hydrocells. The people wear all sorts of punkish clothes, everything from leather jackets to brightly coloured cardigans, sleeveless denim shirts, and haircuts of blue, red, green, and even some neon fibres.
The block spans just as much in height as it does in distance. Above, where a large highway curves around buildings, people lean over balconies from shabby apartments, dumping cigarettes and wrappers. They don’t reach the bottom; they’re quickly carried away by a gust tunnelling through the intersection preceding the bridge. It’s cool, icy even. But that’s okay. I prefer the cold.
But how do I navigate this place? How do I find out where the nearest tech surgeon is? It’s not like there’s a map flashing on every available corner of this place. I start walking, seeing if there’s any signs indicating a repair unit or medical centre or whatever field tech surgeries would fall under in this era. It’s hard to tell, and I can’t exactly remember what such buildings look like. Even if I could they may very well look entirely different now. From what I do know, they’re typically housed in dark places, out of sight, because generally these operations are clandestine. That and tech surgeons don’t want random civilians walking in for a look-around; they want business. Real customers. This isn’t a barbershop. It’s a place for those looking to bring themselves to the next level.
People hurry past me in sweeping riptides. I find it difficult to keep a steady foot. One man tells me to watch my step, and another calls me a walking corpse. I decide to cross the street in search of a billboard, an advert, something to indicate the location of a tech surgeon, but despite the hundreds of LED screens promising penis-enlargement pills, powerful weapons, and careers working for a company called ‘Techstrum’, there’s nothing. Nada. Zilch.
So I walk on. After ten minutes of struggling and nearly tripping over the boundless pedestrians, I step into a seemingly quiet alleyway leaking at the pipes and comprised of overfull trashcans, rats that scurry from one hole to the other, and... a man, sitting on a doorstep built into a red-brick building. He’s enclosed in shadow, to the right of the alley, smoking a cigarette. He glances up at me. It’s too dark to make out his face.
“Lost?” he says, his voice raspy and orotund.
I blink a couple times before responding. “I guess you could say that.”
He puffs out a ring of smoke. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I furrow my brow. “I.... Well, I’m not entirely sure where I’m supposed to be, or where I’m—”
“No.” The man shakes his head. “You’re not supposed to be here. Here.” He gestures to the ground with open hands. “In this alleyway. It’s private, for clients and staff only. Did you not read the sign?” He points over my shoulder, at a poorly lit sign that reads, in large red characters, “STAFF AND CLIENTS ONLY.”
Shrugging, I say, “You really expect me to see that?”
He chuckles. “Outdated optics, eh? In 2100?”
“2100? As in, the year 2100?”
He takes another puff from his cigarette, blows the smoke out, tosses it to the ground, and crushes it with his boot. He stands, and I can see his face more clearly. He has a grey beard surrounded by tens of little wrinkles, so little that he may have gotten some sort of anti-aging surgery done to his skin, along with a well-trimmed fauxhawk. His large head sits on a bullish neck between a pair of roofbeam shoulders. Clearing his throat, he says, “What’s your name, lady?”
“Rhea Steele,” I say.
He presses the side of his neural link. His eyes glow silver and twist. “Born 2035. Deceased 2056. What’s it like in the afterlife?”
“I... I’m sorry?”
He chuckles again. “So, what is this? You install someone else’s neural chip? I just can’t figure out why someone would do that, unless of course, they’re looking to commit identity fraud, but you have different motives, don’t you? Hard to commit fraud when any actuary can see you’re supposed to be dead.”
“I’m not trying to commit fraud,” I say.
“Then why does it say you’re dead?” he asks, his shrewd eyes flickering from my damaged arm to my bloody jacket.
I look him in the eye. “I don’t know. All I know is that I woke up on the beach.”
“The circuitery?” he says sharply. He takes a step towards me and scratches his beard. “With all those dead bots?”
“That’s a hell of a name for what actually goes on down there, you know that?”
The man looks at me for a moment, as if trying to read my mind, then reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a package of cigarettes, slides one out, and says, “You smoke?”
I shake my head. “I’m just looking for a tech surgeon. Someone to tell me what happened. Someone who can figure out why I came back to life, and for God’s sake fix this broken arm.”
“Your non-functional arm is entirely mechanical,” the man says, sliding his cigarette package into his chest pouch. “Your right arm though.... That’s cybernetic. Nice implant, by the way. Though it’s an older model.”
I make a fist and watch as my mantisblade slowly creeps out of my forearm, like a turtle peeping from its shell. I let it slide back into hibernation. “Listen,” I say, “do you know where I can find a tech surgeon? This city isn’t exactly clear with directions, and all the adverts.... Are people really that concerned with getting it up?”
The man laughs this time—a nice sound straight from the belly. “Well, I can take a look at you, even though I am technically on my fifteen.”
“You’re a tech surgeon?”
He nods. “Didn’t see that sign either, I take it?” He points behind his shoulder with his thumb, at a sign placed above the stepped doorway. It reads, on a silver plaque and in gold letters, “DR. MAELSTROM’S NEUROTECH SURGERY.”
Yeah, because that’s so obvious, I want to say. Customers must have to book an appointment, and after that a set of directions must get emailed to them, because there’s no chance in hell anyone is finding this place just by looking at any website or brochure.
“Oh,” I say. “Well, how much is a consultation? I don’t have much.... Don’t have any creds, actually....”
He waves a dismissive hand and opens the alleyway door. “Because I’m so curious as to why a living corpse showed up at my doorstep, I’ll do this one for free, but I can’t guarantee I can fix that arm. It looks like it needs to be replaced entirely, or, you know—” He makes a buzzsaw sound and motion. “—cut off.”
I guess that wouldn’t be so bad. It’s not like this arm is doing me any favours. Before I follow him in through the door, I pause and ask, “So you’re Dr. Maelstrom? Just to clarify?”
“I’m Vance. But yeah, that’s me. Technically you’re older than I am. I’ll have to get used to that one.”
“Thanks for your help,” I say.
“I haven’t helped you yet,” Vance says.
I follow him in the door, brushing beads aside. The interior isn’t so bad. I was expecting something a little more white and intrusive, like a dentist’s, but instead this place has delicate lightstrips cruising through different shades: pinks, blues, greens. It’s a foyer, and there’s a lady dressed in a sleeveless, red qipao behind a reception desk. She smiles at me with her hands crossed behind her back.
Someone ought to give her a chair.
“Hi there,” she says sweetly.
“Set the building to closed, Jin,” says Vance. “This’ll take a minute.”
“But what about your two-o’-clock?”
“Delay it by another half hour,” he says. “They can wait. Always do.”
Her fingers warp at lightning-quick speed as she begins typing at her computer. Soon the door behind me locks and a timer for thirty minutes pops up on a large LED screen which moments ago had been blank, ready to tick off at two in the afternoon.
Wasting no time, I walk on, beyond the reception desk and through another doorway decorated with low-hanging purple beads. Brushing them aside and turning the first and only right corner, I see Vance descending a couple steps, into a dark open room, illuminated by a red, cross-shaped fluorescent bulb. All around the place are medical carts packed with gleaming cybernetic implants, biohacking tools, and holograms touting the latest upgrades, everything from operating systems to circulatory, ocular, and nervous systems. They’re indicated by a holographic body, and the position of each implant is labelled accordingly. Thick power cables run along the floor dangerously, plugging into the side compartments of a makeshift surgical bed. All around it are monitors, biometric sensors, and an overhanging screen on which a neural interface remains dormant.
The entire place is like a meth lab, but nicer, cleaner, although still quite a bit messy.
Vance pulls out a swivel chair and takes a seat at his corner desk. The desk is littered with alcohol bottles, blood vials, motherboards, and various surgical tools I can’t even begin to name. There are two monitors: one for his computer and one showing security footage of the foyer.
Seems he’s had some problems in the past. Unsurprising.
He starts typing. “Relax. You don’t need to stand. Not yet.”
I take a seat on the surgical bed.
“You must have done some fighting to have that much fresh blood on you,” Vance says.
“Reckon so?” I say.
“How many scavengers?” he asks.
“Three,” I say. “That’s when I—”
“Used the mantisblade.” He wheels away from the desk and approaches me slowly. He looks at my face long and hard, then reaches out and takes my chin in his hand. “You changed your optics recently, too. Did you wake up—or well, did you come back blind? Optics picked out of your sockets?”
I nod dumbly. Vance reaches up and grabs the overhanging neural interface. He starts tapping the screen. Then he tells me to unlink my neural wire from the side of my head. I comply, and he plugs it into the bed computer.
“How much of your life do you remember?” he asks.
It takes me a second to respond. “Not much. I mean, I remember some things, kind of. The name Rhea Steele was in my head, but I didn’t know it was mine until that voice—”
He nods. “The neural AI.”
“—spoke to me. I also remember this city. It looks familiar. Feels familiar. Although I can’t remember the name....”
“Neo Arcadia.” He rubs a hand slowly over his face, then looks at me sternly. “The name of the city is Neo Arcadia. That ring a bell to you?”
I shake my head. “Not at all,” I say in a low voice. “Some memories came back to me after a while. Details about this city. Like tech surgeries, but that’s probably because the scavengers brought them up first. I also remember these streets, the cars, hell even the people. It’s an awful feeling. Time doesn’t feel right. I don’t feel right.”
“Old. Outdated. Is that what you feel?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Outdated, definitely. Like I’m in the wrong era. And if you don’t mind me asking, how do I look? Do I look... old?”
He chuckles, then presses a few buttons on the monitor before turning it around. “You tell me.”
Instead of displaying a neural interface, the monitor shows a mirror. In it I see the face of a young, green-haired woman with freckles and slightly tan skin. The hair is cut short, falling no further than the ears. The jaw is soft, and the nose is long. This is a face I most certainly remember.
I bare my teeth, expecting to see rotten brown pearls left over from a decade of neglect. To my surprise they’re only slightly yellow, well-shaped, though my gums are certainly more red than they should be.
I look as though I’m still in my early twenties, with a full life ahead of me.
“Seems your body’s been kept perfectly preserved all these years,” Vance says with a glint of amusement in his eye. “Nanobots, I’d say. Looks like they’re the reason you haven’t died. You must have been in some sort of comalike state. There is a problem, though.”
“Problem?” I say. “Which one? The fact I can’t remember a thing or the fact I’m hanging on by a thread?”
“Well,” he says, “you’re not hanging on by a thread. Actually, you’re doing quite well for yourself for someone who supposedly died forty-odd years ago. But your internal processors are damaged, particularly around your mid to lower abdomen. You’ve been shot quite a few times, and stabbed, you know?”
“But the nanobots.... Do they not repair the damages? I mean, I don’t feel any pain.”
“That’s the problem.” Vance turns the monitor towards himself and starts tapping it again. “You don’t feel any pain because your sensory nerve processor is damaged. Your dorsal posterior insula’s disconnected from your primary operating system.”
I cock an eyebrow. “You gotta remember not everyone’s a doctor.”
He pushes the monitor up and sits closer to me, clasping his hands together. “Look,” he says, “the part of your brain responsible for indicating the intensity of pain has been disconnected from your central nerve operating system.” He taps his chest. “Meaning if you get shot, or if there’s some internal damage done to you, you won’t know, but you’ll see the effects pop up on your neural display. Faster heart rate, high blood pressure, low saturation. Suddenly you might flatline.”
“But how am I now?” I ask, dreading the answer. “Is there anything to worry about?”
“If there was, I would have told you already,” Vance says. His voice is stern, but I can see a twinkle in his eye that betrays it.
I stare at him. “So, I’m okay? I’ll live?”
“I didn’t say that.” He disconnects my neural cord from the bed computer and lets it zip back into my temple port. “You know,” he begins, wheeling back over to his desk computer, “it’s not every day you meet someone with a mantisblade. Especially not one from your era, but that’s beside the point. They tend to be very expensive, and in the 2040s they were relatively new implants. A lot of the NACP deployed units with those upgrades.”
“NACP?” I scratch my head.
“Neo Arcadia City Patrol,” he says. “Other words: the blues. Police. Whatever you wanna call ’em.”
“Your point being?”
Vance hesitates. “My point being that you must have either been a high-tier NACP unit, a criminal, or one rich son of a bitch. To afford implants like that? Possibly in your other arm, too? I wouldn’t be surprised if someone shot you and stole the blade off you.”
“So, you’re saying I was....”
“Any one of those things,” he says, typing at the computer. “I’m running your name through the city database here.... Can’t find a single thing on you, so I’m willing to bet you were neither a rich bitch nor a unit. Logic dictates you worked for a gang of some sort.”
I get up from the surgical bed, look at my fist, and clench, watching the blade peep out again. “A gang? What sort of gang?”
“With those blades?” he says. “Could be any damn one in the city. Maybe even a bit beyond in the scrubland. Your guess is as good as mine.”
I step towards him and let my blade retract into my forearm. “That’s not what I mean,” I begin. “A gang. The sort who kills, steals, wreaks havoc?”
He glares at me, then turns, facing away from the computer. He steeples his fingers and dips his head while maintaining eye contact. “I have absolutely no idea,” he says flatly. “All I know is there are a lot of gangs, with a lot of different motives, with a lot of different ideas of havoc. Some only seek to survive. Some have much darker plans. I’m afraid that’s where my knowledge stops.”
I sigh. The information has been more than helpful regardless. The rest I’ll have to figure out on my own, and that’s okay. “Thanks. At least now I know. Any ideas where I go from here? I'm sort of lost.”
“Your first step is getting your senses in order,” he says. “Not being able to feel pain isn’t everything it’s chalked up to be. Trust me. I’m a doctor. I’d know. One day you’re cruisin’ the streets of Neo Arcadia, lookin’ for an easy target, or whatever the hell you’ll decide to do, and then the next day you drop dead. Might have been a pulmonary embolism. Might have been a really bad infection. Somethin’ your neural display won’t pick up on, because one as old as yours is likely to screw up and read data incorrectly.”
“So how do I fix it?” I stare. “Can you help me?”
“This,” Vance says, placing a comforting hand on my arm, “is where my altruism ends. End of the day, I got a business to run. Can’t help anyone out with expensive procedures like this without expecting something in return. But I’m willin’ to cut you some slack, give you a percentage discount just because I like you so much, but I’ll be damned if I do it for free.”
I stare at him some more. He has a point. Most doctors in this city would have turned me away before even getting to learn my story, but Dr. Maelstrom at least listened. The questions remain: how much is the procedure, and how on Earth do I secure enough creds to pay for it?
I ask him, rubbing my neck.
“You know,” he begins, “as a tech surgeon you meet a lot of people, all getting implants for different reasons. How’d you think I knew exactly what mantisblades are used for?” He grabs a piece of paper and what looks like an electronic map from one of his desk drawers. Then he grabs a pen and starts writing. “I’m gonna give you the name of a relatively new gang in the city not far from here, just on the other side of the bridge. Maybe a few blocks farther down. They’re always lookin’ for new talent, ’specially if you already have relatively strong upgrades under your belt. Or sleeve, I should say.”
I walk over to him, and he hands me the paper with the map folded underneath. I look at the piece of paper. It has a single name written at the centre, along with an address scrawled overhead. “‘Fingers?’” I read aloud. “That supposed to be code for something?”
He gets up from his seat, pulls a cigarette from the package in his chest pouch, and lights it up. Blowing smoke in my face, he says, “That’s the boss' name. Press the buzzer at the door. Say Maelstrom sent you.”
“And you expect this person to just help me out like that? Give me a job? A member of a gang?”
Vance grins broadly. He flicks his lighter shut and tosses it on the desk. “You’ll have to prove yourself, of course,” he says. “But at the end of the day, Fingers owes me one. I’ll let the gang know you’re comin’.” Then, as if suddenly remembering, he adds, “Oh, and the procedure’s gonna cost you five bags. Normally I’d charge eight, but like I said, I got a good feelin’ about you.” He pats my shoulder and points to the exit, back the way I came. “Watch your step on the way out. Follow the map. It’s embedded with a tracking device so it’s easier to figure out where you are, and more importantly, where you’re goin’.”