Trace swallowed another marble of titanium and waited for Ko to arrive. He had been building more and more of the special nanites almost non-stop for the last two weeks. She had been doing the same thing.
It was finally time to see what the other menu options did. It was something they had agreed to do together.
He helped the marble go down easier with a soda and looked at the message he had prepared for Stick-Point. Assuming everything went fine with their experiment, then he would be starting to take up missions again. The message said as much, and it wasn’t the only one. He had a few others that were less personalized and ready for the other job brokers he knew.
He was busy dissecting a random piece of scrap tech when Ko walked into the apartment. He had given her guest access to the place a few days earlier. She was still a tad chilly toward him at times, but for the most part, their burgeoning friendship had recovered to the baseline it had been at before.
She sat down across from him, her ankles crossed, and legs twisted gently to the side. “Have you decided which option you are going to select?”
He put the piece of tech to the side on a nearby table and nodded. “I have. You?”
“Same.” She inhaled, a slight shudder of excitement and fear running through her body. “Who goes first?”
“I will. You’re the mender in training, after all. If something goes wrong, you have a better chance of saving me than I would you.”
She swallowed at that grim reminder, but nodded once.
Trace pulled up the G.H.O.S.T. System menu, and selected the ‘Technology’ option first, followed by ‘Technical Ability+’. It was one of the options that had most intrigued him since he first saw it.
He took a deep breath and mentally selected the option. The menu disappeared and was replaced with a warning message.
- User Trace Delevey has selected the Technology-oriented ‘Technical Ability+’ knowledge upgrade package. Is this correct?
- Yes/No
That wasn’t quite what he had been expecting. Regardless, he confirmed the order.
- User should be in a sitting or reclined position during the following knowledge installation.
A moment later, a progress bar appeared in the center of his vision that slowly began ticking upward. It took a few moments, but gradually Trace became aware of an uncomfortable sensation inside his head. It felt as though there was a constant static discharge being released around his brain. At first, it was simply uncomfortable and then grew to the point where he could taste the pulses of electricity across his tongue. It was a good thing he was already sitting down, as the pulses had begun to mess with equilibrium by that point.
It was an intensely uncomfortable and somewhat familiar experience, at the same time, a deluge of new information was being dumped into his brain.
There was, unfortunately, one caveat. It was all outdated information, by roughly one hundred and thirty years, if he had to guess. Whatever database the nanites were pulling their information from hadn’t been updated since Deckard’s supposed death. It was also only the basic information. It was meant to lay the groundwork for the next information package, and then the one after that, for however many packages had been created.
Considering how hard just this one installation was on his mind. He could completely understand breaking them up into a series of packages.
As the installation completed, he also became aware that he couldn’t simply spam the installation button. There was a reason the Learning option still existed. The installation of these knowledge packages was hard on the brain, and it needed time to recover after each use. Moreover, the information in the packages was meant to enhance one’s learning experience, not substitute it entirely.
It contained the general information one needed to become proficient. If they wanted to become an expert, they still needed to dive into the esoteric information on their own. At least, that was the impression he was getting.
It had saved him a lot of time exploring a dozen different subjects. At the moment, it was still mostly surface-level knowledge. Yet it was so much more information than he had possessed just a few minutes prior. Each subsequent package would increase what he knew across all those subjects, and likely more.
A learning module covered one specific subject. This covered everything someone needed for their career. The use cases were completely different.
His eyes drifted back to the system menu. Many of the options looked like they were knowledge upgrade packages, not all of them though. He suddenly wanted to try out one of the options, but that would need to wait until later. His brain hurt, and he had the most urgent need to pee at the moment.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Jumping to his feet, Trace ran to the bathroom and opened his pants as quickly as he could. The need was overwhelming.
What came out was almost entirely a silver stream of used special-nanites.
It was no wonder those options needed so many of those special nanites if this was how they ended up afterward. They were more or less disposable nanites to the system. Of course, that also meant every time he used one of those options, he would be quite literally pissing away credits.
Trace cleaned himself up and went out to the living room, where Ko was waiting with an amused expression. “Don’t even start.” He warned. “It will be your turn soon enough.”
Sure enough, that took the mirth from her grin.
“I take it there are some unforeseen side effects?”
“Hard to know whether they were foreseen by the creators or not. We certainly didn’t though.” He replied tiredly. “The one I selected was a huge information package that included well over a dozen subjects. It was a lot to take in, and it kind of hurt. It won’t let me do another one of those for a while because my brain needs time to heal after each use.”
He was fine with that, as it would give him plenty of time to play around with and experiment with a few projects. The information had been geared more towards an engineering aspect than what he normally did. However, that was perfect as he did eventually want to create his own tech, not just fix, and modify what other people had made. Though, modifying everything would suffice for the time being while he continued to learn everything that he needed.
“Your words fill me with nothing but confidence,” Ko muttered, the silver of her fake throat bobbing as she swallowed.
Trace had learned that the reason her voice had that odd robotic quality to it was because of the damage her mother had caused. Which was obvious. It was the specific type of damage that was the problem in this case. Part of her vocal cords had been paralyzed, so when they attached the cyberware ones to her, it had been impossible to fully synchronize them. She had the option to fully remove her natural vocal cords and go fully cyberware, but it was something she saw no real point in doing, yet.
He snorted and shook his head. “It was worth the discomfort. You can trust me on that. Now, are you going to do it or not?”
She breathed out and relaxed as she began going through her own unseen menu.
In the corner of Trace’s vision, a notification appeared.
- Sub-user Devko Park has selected the Body-oriented ‘Health Studies+’ knowledge upgrade package.
That was all he got. There was no confirmation message on his end. As it was entirely her choice, it was a simple heads-up that something was going on that pertained to the G.H.O.S.T. System and nothing more.
Ko’s hand began to tap against her leg as her face tightened in pain.
Trace winced in sympathy and looked away. He had just gone through that experience himself only minutes before and found the memory just a little too fresh to even watch someone else go through it.
While he waited for her to finish, he instead dug into the requirements of the different selections. Maybe it was because he had gone through the process once, but he suddenly found that the nanites were once again willing to answer questions pertaining to the menu.
Putting it simply, there were two different categories of upgrade selections in the menu. The first and most abundant were knowledge packs. The other was the ‘effect’ category, which was rather broad.
He couldn’t label it as simply physical changes because that wasn’t entirely correct. This was the option where the mental aspect of the system came into play. It helped people deal with trauma, self-worth, body image, and more. It was the best therapist you could ever want, and that was only the tip of the iceberg.
It had the actual ability to enhance the power of your brain and your mind. Assuming you fit certain criteria.
What he was looking for were the requirements to use those options. It couldn’t be as simple as just having lots of food and creating ever more quantities of those special nanites. That seemed too easy to him.
And he was right. Each of the options had their own slightly different requirements. Some pertained to materials such as gold or specific vitamins, most though, were of a stranger nature. They required him to perform specific tasks before the upgrade was allowed to occur. He would almost call them milestone achievement upgrades, instead of normal upgrades.
The ‘Overload’ option seemed like a way to get around those until he saw the cost. When it mentioned special materials, it meant SPECIAL MATERIALS! That was a strictly emergency use-only option. He had been ignoring it since he first read the notification for it as well. But what exactly was an atomite? He knew what a nanite was, but had never heard of an atomite before.
If there was one saving grace for him, it was that he possessed the full system. Something that was not meant to happen. Ko, for instance, only had a few of the milestone achievement upgrades available to her in her version of the menu. He had a lot more than that open to him. She also didn’t have the clearly labeled experimental ‘Overload’ option.
Before he could fully go through all the different options in the menu, Ko finished and jumped to her feet. She ran to the bathroom without saying a word.
“So, how was it?” He asked when she came back out.
Ko glared at him. “Ha-ha, very funny.”
“What? I was talking about the knowledge upgrade. Do you feel like you know more than before?”
Her eyes stayed narrowed as she glared at him, before finally answering. “Yeah, I know so much more basic information than I did before. All the groundwork stuff I have been learning from Sevorah really got propped up with this.”
“Not something you want to do too often though, is it?”
She shook her head. “I could force myself to do it, I think. It was awfully close to the reports I’ve of people who have had seizures though. I can completely understand why the brain needs time to heal or settle after each use. It is an unsettling experience.”
Trace felt similar to her. However, he also knew that feeling would fade with time. They always did. Distance was a wonderful thing, especially for him. It had been what kept him sane growing up. There were hazy gaps in his memory that existed each time he had been hurt by someone else. His mind was actively protecting him from the pain and had taken away the memories. He would later remember that he had a grudge against someone, but not necessarily why.
Even now, his memory of the scav job had started to grow fuzzy around the edges. Portions of it no longer made sense in his mind.
It was a double-edged sword, but one that occasionally came in handy, such as with situations like this. He knew he would be more willing to go through the process again than Ko when the time came.