Chapter 20: Buried Remains
VortexEYE guide on ‘Choosing a Shardware Operator for dummiez’:
Did your arm short-circuit again today? Maybe you were petting your Synthdog and they up and exploded? Well boohoo motherfucker. That’s what you get skimping your sheds on a worthwhile Shard Op’. The hell’re you thinking? Grafting flesh on your steel at some back-alley joint where the Op’s probably hazed out of their mind, you get what you pay for.
Now I know some of you ain’t here just to save on cash, more than a few of you are looking for something… custom. Thing is I ain’t judging you for being poor. I’m judging you for poor taste in Operators.
Shard Operating’s tough shit, ain’t as easy as screwin’ some shit together and taping on an Iron Shard and calling it a day. It’s equal parts medicine and engineering, which for you dumb folks means it’s six years of schooling with a 20% pass rate to be officially licensed. And you wonder why this city relies of back-alley vendors?
Point of the matter, the Op’ you choose basically decides whether you live or die. Rot or thrive. Organs harvested or organs igniting. Your future is in your Operator’s hands.
Now, first up. If you ain’t got the sheddies for it, don’t even step a foot inside a licensed Shardware Clinic. They didn’t go through grueling AdStim-fueled exams that cost a Silver Shard just for a Scrapper to walk through and filth up their clinic. They serve the masses, the corporates, the fancy bastards who look down upon scum like you. And worse, won’t hesitate to clean your worthless ass out if you pry too much.
That leaves you with the unlicensed operators, those who learned through experimentation or were apprentices to other SO’s in our alleys. Half of them ain’t got a scrap of science in their brain, relying on Feature Links, or haphazardly following the orders Technician and Database spill into their minds. They’re bullshit. They’ll stick someone’s old arm on you without a care of whether or not it’s a good fit, one or two might even try something while you’re out cold.
The ones you want are those who dreamed of becoming licensed, you’ll see it when you walk into their clinics. A fuck ton of metal lying about, Warpcubes tossed around from late-night studying, their jaded eyes and hunger for steel. Those motherfuckers are the insane ones. And insanity is the first step to artistry.
Everything they do is in hopes of being noticed by the city, so you’re going to take advantage of their ambition and string them along for the ride. Make them do experimental work, and they’ll swallow with no questions, more than a few will even go into debt if it means making something worthwhile that they can sell the patents for. Except that is where you make them silent, ain’t no fucking way you’ll let your Shard Op’ get in contact with a corporation.
Not unless you want them ‘disappeared’.
They’re just one type of Shard Operators worth your sheds, the others are the old bastards laying about from the Fourth Swarm and earthquake. Now these guys, frankly, are scary motherfuckers. I’m talking they’ve probably killed a MAL or two with their bare hands and had been tossed down the gutter once their duty was over. The stuff they make is Plat, but unlike the young starchasers, these guys are selective with their customers.
Reputation matters in this industry, they got repeat customers who ain’t endin’ up in jail or bodybag — their shit’s good.
As for some more tips:
* Avoid overcrowded clinics, means the operator just takes whoever and does a shoddy quick job to make ends meet. Operations take time, and time is money.
* No sterilization gear. Yeah, yeah! I know EasyClean sanitizes almost all virulent and infectious gunk off, but it don’t matter how good your immune system with all the nanites on the market. You don’t want cybernecrosis.
* You don’t got to trade with just cash. Plenty of Op’s want info more than hard Shards. Let loose a few bodies you’ve collected, they’ll be more than grateful.
* Understand the base price of Shardware. That means material cost and time needed to craft it, assuming a custom. From there, you assess their skill — first through their Grade and then by whatever reviews left over by Shardfanatics.
* Ask motherfucking questions! “What’s the risk?” “What ‘stesia you using?” “Neurowiring brand?” “Build time?”
* If they’re too eager… back your ass out of there. You want desperate but skilled rejects, not overeager fanatics.
3:01 AM
June 7th
Ripley
Psyche V.1.04 has updated to Psyche V.1.05
Effect: Increased mental resilience during extended periods of isolation.
It took that message for me to recognize what the gnawing disgust that had been plaguing me today was. I was lonely… I’d still been chatting to my mom every so often but maybe that wasn’t enough.
No, it wasn’t.
Daylight was too kind to me. I didn’t show it much, but I appreciated her, even if Mirage had been a cold shoulder, I was glad that I had company in this form of her. She asked questions that I gladly answered, feeding her curiosity.
I kept my answers on the chest vague, even when she’d offered to help. This was my challenge, not hers, I was stubborn that way and she seemed to only compliment that. It’d been a while since someone had so many nice things to say about me…
Maybe I did like Daylight just a little bit.
10:22 AM
When I woke up today, I had a different face greeting me. I had questions as to how or when the swap occurred, but maybe some were better left unanswered. Twilight’s ghastly form of elegant light and sharp darkness blossomed in my gaze, promptly comparing me to a scrapper with how disheveled I look. The staff here had already gotten suspicious with how one guy seemed to consistently need to use the bathroom here and visited every single day. I think they were beginning to assume I’m homeless.
Maybe she had a point.
11:55 AM
A pattern was forming, as each piece clicked out of place, it would slide right against another joint or fiber in a seamless articulation.
I wasn’t just breaking something apart, I was making something anew. This was a puzzle in more ways than one, what I thought was a chest was actually just the compacted form of something much greater… and I couldn’t wait to see what it was.
6:32 PM
I thought I’d been smart and my mother a genius. Now I’d seen that we’d only had a small trickle down the family tree of what true intellect could do. This chest was in a class of it’s own, the intricacy requiring extensive knowledge on the hard-fast rules of electrical engineering and robotics alongside the more whimsical and chaotic notions that came from Warp Energy Manipulation.
“I think…” My words slowly came out, piece by piece — much like the entire arm and ribcage that he had clicked into place through a third of the coffin. “It’s an Endoskeleton?”
“You might be onto something.” My mother responded with bated breath, sending me brief looks of other models. A Mazhyr Starcrest, normally Silver-Grade, was used in conjunction with high-altitude flight-suits. The Imperium Heculean Shell, Bronze-Grade at lowest, allowed an Adapter to lift 2000 pounds with a single arm. A SynTec Lincoln, Silver again, established a response time quick enough to dodge bullets.
I wasn’t an idiot, this was just Iron-Grade, but it seemed almost more extensive than a lot of the available commercial Endo-skeletons you could buy. This was… was it military grade?
10:54 PM
A new challenge arose, now I wasn’t just unraveling but also holding in place the more complex form that was shifting into place upon pushing the halfway mark. If I wasn’t careful, then a momentary mishap would cause the entire coffin to collapse again and reset all my progress.
Energized V.0.08 has updated to Energized V.0.09
Effect: Increased range of external Warp Energy projection.
Another bottleneck greeted by updates, but I found this time it wasn’t enough to let me push through. I was stuck in a losing game to the sophistication of the Shardware that the few strands of my claw knitted over to keep it stable in a meshwork much like a net. It had become a matter of how long it would take until they snapped.
4:58 PM
June 8th
I kept at it, despite every inch of my stinking body begging to go home. To leave it be, to come back once. But then what will I have proven myself for? All that talk about Perseverance only to fall halfway. Come on, Ripley… come on!
Energized V.0.09 has updated to Energized V.0.10
Effect: Increased amount of external Warp Energy projection.
There it was. Just the push I’d needed, just a little more. My mind sunk through the Shardware chest like water through cracks in stone, slowly eroding it with precision and repeated practice across hundreds of attempts. 55%… 60%…
The skeletal suit peering out folded like a shirt back into its compact form… and I felt I’d failed as the last bits of my Warp Energy left me. Even my Preservation Matrix sputtering into gasping snaps of dread and gloom.
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But Gold always shined, even in the dark.
Energized v.0.10 has Updated to Energized V.1.00
Effect: Establishing the Feature Protocol: Warp Sink. The Warp Sink Feature allows the Adapter to push large amounts of Warp Energy into Shardware at once, allowing a momentary boost to your own equipment or to stall other’s Shardware.
Convergence has reached 50%… Reconfiguring…
You have unlocked the Feature: Technician V.0.00
Technician V.0.00 has updated to V.0.01
Effect: Increased efficiency of Technician Feature Links.
My eyes blurred from sweat and tears, unable to take in the third Feature I’d unlocked. Arguably the one I’d wanted most. Technician. With this… I’d truly stepped onto a path of paving avenues to build a legendary status for myself within New California’s underground Shardware circuit.
It really had taken from the Claw… Energized and Technician were both Features linked to it.
Safe bet then that the next Feature would be Database. I could live with that; it really beat spending hours and hours revising the specs of a metal eardrum.
7:04 PM
June 9th
Technician V.0.01 has updated to Technician V.0.02
Effect: Increased precision with Shard Operating Shardware.
Technician V.0.02 has updated to Technician V.0.03
Effect: Greater knowledge extrapolation from breaking down Shardware.
Technician V.0.03 has updated to Technician V.0.04
Effect: Increased speed of diagnostic analysis of Shardware.
I’d collected a healthy sum of updates over the last 24 hours, and I was so close, so nearly there! A final push would do it, but combined with the workouts I’d used to drone out my frustration and the lack of Warp Energy in my body, I’d worried that I would go into deficit if that was possible. The Warp Sink protocol was a draining process…
It was effectively me pushing as much Energy into the coffin as possible, while not a true link, it gave me momentary access to it’s systems and extended my senses through it’s metallic confines. With a rough jab of thought, I could clog up it’s automated closure system and continue working. It also served to provide me with a sudden burst of potential through my claw, improving the efficiency of Feature Links.
So far, I’d been using it to improve my learning from Breakdown. By stabbing the force of Gold into the Link, it massively adjusted the way in which my claws worked. It was a feeling like being inflated like a balloon, but the steel of my claws felt sturdier rather than stretched out. More prepared to learn and divulge secrets, at the cost of my mental exertion.
Warp Energy, as it turned out, had a lot of correlation with how smart I was. All this work had my brain scratched raw until it was smooth, even as my edge sharpened with each attempt… the core of it was dulling. A part of me sought to push myself but the last embers of preservation kept me on my toes, warning me not to strain further, goosebumps creeping up my arms just at the thought.
I didn’t know what would happen if I pushed too hard, but I followed the caution offered by my very first Protocol.
9:00 AM
June 10th
Over the last five days, I’d come to view the coffin as containing a living soul condemning me to an endless cycle of failure. The last memories of my grandfather, whoever he’d been before he left my mother, lay trapped within and whether it was his intention or not…
He would give me what I wanted.
Full of charge and ready for one final push, I plunged my Claw’s daggered fingers into the vertebra I’d always started with. Likewise, a burrowing group of dozens of parasitic worms of Energy pierced through with it, each prepared to follow its own individual path just like I’d trained them.
Perfectly, they cut and rewired at a breakneck pace. An unstoppable wave of disintegration followed the scraping of three fingers that trenched along the grooves up, down and sideways according to the schematic I’d drilled more than a hundred times. I barely needed to think, it was a motion that had become as synonymous to my claw as breathing was for my lungs.
A significant portion, one-third of the coffin, broke apart in less than ten seconds. They immediately stitched into a different shape as I organized them with hurried but calculated motions, a metallic shell of an arm that extended downwards into a claw of similar design to my own. With the only measure of conscious thought I could muster, I slammed my free flesh hand into the left sleeve and called upon Warp Sink.
A slap of my Gold crammed itself into the tech, not as fine strings but as a thick glue that prevented any sort of action against my will. It would last for maybe half a minute within that arm, but that was enough for another leg and half of the torso to peel away and become visible constructs.
Two more slaps, and I let out a strained wheeze. I couldn’t falter. I simply couldn’t allow it. With stubborn hope and arrogant pride, I grated my claws further into every nook and cranny, a wave of machinery rippled out of place as I forced them to assume some new foreign aspect of the endoskeleton.
Just the head was left, the rest of the form shivering as its inner functioning tried to break apart the hold my Energy affixed within it. I couldn’t wait any longer, pouring all my streams of Energy into my right arm. It’s cybernetics whirred as tools blossomed from each finger, a lather of metallic colors coating it.
Iron from the Shards it was made of. Silver from it’s unique rule-breaking existence. And my Implant’s Gold — my Gold. Just as I felt one of the Endoskeleton’s feet slip away to cram itself back, I reacted with a kick of my own in an ugly muffling of the coffin’s intent to stay dead. I slashed with the remaining time I had left, pushing it through the most annoying bit of the whole chicanery.
The Eyes. Various chunks of metal retrofit themselves into orbs, and plunged deep into the two cavities I recently dug out. Then they plopped in place, and I found no further grooves to sink my claws…
Observing the skeleton with uncertainty, I released it from the control of my Energy.
And the skeleton stayed a skeleton. I had done it. Five days later and 40% more Convergence gained in the process, I had done it.
Technician V.0.04 has updated to Technician V.0.05
Effect: Heightened visual mapping of Shardware structure.
Technician V.0.05 has updated to Technician V.0.06
Effect: Slight visual aid towards Optic Shardware for Operating.
A fucking masterpiece was what it was. Most endoskeletons were bulky and made clear indentations that would have to be covered up by Skin-plates after they installed themselves, unless you wanted your spine to be visible.
But this bad baby? Wooh! It was remarkably sleek and encompassing in such a way I’d never thought an EnSkel could manage at Iron. In fact, it might be insulting to call it an endoskeleton when it even had thin layers of fibrous nanocarbon sheaths that could run over your muscles to provide additional strength reinforcement and compact any bleeding vessels to coagulate in seconds.
Not to mention, the limbs weren’t just continuous pieces of the suit but were sectioned off into two components with the exception of the right arm. Both legs and the left arm had a bulkier extension atop their skeletal frame, like gauntlets and greaves of black and gray metal that all ran smoothly.
I internally screamed at the sight.
Shardware that could be used both externally and be accommodated into the Adapter’s body to be shifted into Internal Shardware? That was the kind of stuff you saw on NeoCore Enforcers! Barely holding on for a second, I slipped the left gauntlet over my own hand and no- fucking way!
It buzzed, detecting the lightest amount of remaining Warp Energy in my arm and then retrofitted itself by growing slightly before squeezing tight over like a snug glove.
External Link establishing… Left Shard-Op Claw (Alberich Gravas’ Design)
It wouldn’t be as efficient as my right arm, External Links typically required Integration to be as effective as something you’d stick into your body… but it was both armor and surgical tool. No longer would I be forced to operate with just one hand!
I kissed the skeleton, unashamed as pure worship of the nearly extraterrestrial tech was delivered deservedly. “Oh… grandpa Al, maybe I judged you too harshly.”
“You are such a fucking nerd.” Twilight buzzed in my ears, she had an equally amused look on her face. “But it’s cute so I’ll let it pass.”
“I never turned off ‘Do not disturb’.” I said, even with a cheerful buzz in my voice as I stared at the black gauntlet tipping up with five Shard Op’ Claws on my left hand. “Is there no way to deactivate you when I want some… privacy?”
Twilight looked mildly offended by that, I wish I could say I cared but I was still gushing over the endoskeleton. “Yeah, you can’t really… deactivate us.”
Her discomfort as she said the words made me take my eyes off the prized Shardware and give her some honest attention. She turned a smug look and folded her arms. “Consider our silence a form of politeness, well, also Daylight threatened to make my life veeery annoying if I did anything to disturb you. Sorry, she kind of lied about the whole not watching you thing. We saw everything — we’re in your head, no turning that off unless you’re braindead.”
I should have been angry, but Mazhyr’s tits when was the last time excitement had come to me this easily? I let myself indulge in all of the glory and rewards I’d reaped, more than pleased with the way things had gone. “I’m going to put in a formal complaint with Mirage.”
“Please, just call her Elsa in front of me… and… wow, this is a very different side of you. All dancing and prancing like a teapot in Beauty and The Beast.” Twilight twinged with confusion, before laughing openly and joining in with my excitement. “Sooo what’s gotten you so happy about a bunch of Iron?”
“One second.” I noticed that, in fact, there was one more groove running up the sternum and platysma muscles up the Yttrium-steel skull. A quick ‘shing’ with my new claws opened that up real quick, and then all the excitement very quickly faded in a blink as three trinkets unveiled as the thorax and skull split into two parts.
The first in the skull was a solid cube of black, pulsing momentary flashes of a shiny white. A Silver shining DataCube, already extremely promising. The second in the thorax was what symbolically took the place of a heart, an irregular sphere smaller than my fist with various small tubes running out plugging into the skeleton itself- a high tier Bronze Warp Generator.
The final object was a white-painted vial a few inches long with a few brief words that made Twilight sputter a sound between a choke and snort out of pure astonishment. “No fucking way!”
My own was quiet, chilled to the bone. “Is this… fuck, I can see why Mr. Skeleton wanted this so badly now.”
Written on the vial were few words, but they were enough to leave us both frozen in time.
Prototype Warp-Material (Silver-Gold Grade)
Codename: LIVEWIRE