*bzzt* *bzzzt* The rest cycle timer was blaring at me to boot up and get out. **Occupant: Tsukolem Epsilon3756, your charging cycle is complete, Please commence checkout procedures, and vacate the charging dock within the next 30 clock cycles. Failure will result in your account being deducted for an additional charge cycle. ** Reluctantly starting up my visual feed I sat up and threw on my new wrapper around myself and started making a few calls to the local API. I chucked my old wrapper in the garbage collector and got credited a few bits into my account. I trudged into the cleaning slot, so I could finish waking up, never having been a morning person. Not that morning really had a meaning when your mental software was resting inside a digital storage flophouse, but outside in the world, it was morning, so that was something.
Rolling out of the storage address, I stretched my code hearing a few modules pop as they shift into place, which just happens as you get older. I swipe my access pass to request a slot on the bus to transfer over to my interface point. Waiting for the traffic to open enough, I try to avoid engaging with the ad bots skulking around the port. The blank stare they emit as they blast their message directly at anybody and everybody they notice paying them attention, or if they are being ignored, some unfortunate prog that just happened to get cornered their random walk patterns. As their glazed stare sweeps closer to me, I see my slot open on the bus, and I slide into the traffic, watching them trundle towards where I was standing just moments before.
Watching the network architecture blur past me as the transfer is managed, I start caching on what I need to get done that evening. I step off at my destination interface and start to make sure my chassis had charged since it had been acting up recently and these public chargers in this part of town haven’t been maintained in the best shape. The battery is reporting the same few faulted microcells it always does but I haven’t had the chance to save up and get it repaired so I just swipe the [ask me again in 24 hours] prompt when it tries to load the local Globodyne experience enhancement center into my Nav waypoints. Like yeah, they want to enhance the number of credits being siphoned out of my account. No, the battery is still at 83% capacity, so I’ll be perfectly fine like it is. The [Disable reminder] prompt is greyed out unless I spend premium currency on a subscription account, which isn’t worth it to me.
As the rest of my systems come online my left arm is still running system checks. The charging ram disconnects from my spinal port with a rather sharp jerking motion, almost pulling off my balance. Apparently, the locking claws failed to open smoothly before it attempted to retract. My chassis was about two decades old at this point and was a base model economy unit even when it was new. The exterior plating was human standard although without the synth-skin that most everyone else enjoyed. My sense of touch was slightly lessened due to this but as a side benefit, I was much more resistant to open flames and chemical acids. After deactivating the interior locks on the door so it can swing out the way with a stuttering hiss, I step out of the charging station and look toward my work, across the street, that I just left from my second job 10 minutes ago. Cleaning the sludge pit under the “Quickie Jim’s buff and lube”. where the spent polishing compound and lubricant from where they service and clean the data fund yuppies coagulates in the drain pan. After power spraying the bin clean, and thoroughly getting coated in the muck that I’m pretty sure is more than just polishing compound, they are nice enough to charge me for using the pressure hose to try and clean myself of the gunk, and a very “reasonable” cost of course. However, there is no way I am walking in public smelling like that, so I just consider it a cost of the job.
After making it across the street I check and my arm was still hanging at my side, refusing to finish booting. I halfway expected this, ever since I had purchased this arm out the back of some guy’s van. I got a good deal on it, even if it was a bit flakey. I took a second and dove into its interface to see what error messages I could clear to get it working. And got a nice chunky full vision ad for Globodyne’s new line of Strength enhanced auxiliary monomers. I kept dejectedly clicking at the [skip ad] button in the corner of my vision, so I could see where I was going again. But it was also locked behind a subscription paywall, I kept clicking on it anyway to make myself feel better. Finally, after a minute and a half the ad ended with an annoyingly upbeat jingle, and the world around me faded back in. To anyone watching from the outside, I just stumbled into a wall and leaned there for a second before moving on, the time outside only elapsing a few seconds. This innovation by Globodyne allowed them to subject their valued customers to many more hours of advertisement than there were hours in the day, greatly increasing their brand exposure.
I start my defeated walk to my main job, ironically in the same building as my second job was, doing data entry, and scheduling future lube and services for the same punks whose gunk I had just scraped. Having to make sure that they were serviced by their “favorite” fembot, of which we had several that fit various “tastes” in hardware specs. Not that they knew or cared, but honestly those fembot chassis weren’t even real people, they were just built to look like that, and Jim hired out any fragged-out junky he could convince to drive them around and act all coy and playful with the customer. But I guess everyone has their fantasies, and many of the yuppies liked to pay extra so they would get the same one as last time, trying to build some kind of relationship in their mind, even though it was probably a completely different person in the shell each time they came by. Although because they tended to get a little handsy, we went through “customer service specialists” faster than we went through crates of chassis polish. The few veterans that stuck around either had nowhere better to go or actually enjoyed it on some twisted level.
Ketherine was one of these veterans that had been around here longer than I had. She always drove the same chassis and had a decent relationship with the customers that asked for her. However, she has a fairly strict touch and go policy, but as long as they behaved themselves, she was very enthusiastic. It was strictly business in her mind though, no interest at all. In fact, we were planning on charging at the same cluster that evening after work, so we could hang out together in storage as our chassis power cycled their batteries. We hadn’t been seeing each other in the romantic sense, but I would enjoy if things headed that direction.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
I saw her saunter up to me as she was between customers at the moment, and I was working on the scheduling and comms anyway. She liked teasing me with her work chassis, even though I actually preferred her normal one. It was less curvy and stylized like some kind of anime drawing, and more utilitarian. But the little imperfections, and dings gave her much more personality than the polished plastic and vinyl that the customers seemed to prefer. And personally, I had a thing for carbon fiber and aluminum.
“Hey Tsuko, make sure you have the reservations for us, I don’t want to get stuck in different storage cores because we walk up in the FIFO line. The new planet vista is out, and I plan to soak in as much we can.”
Looking up at her, with at much confidence as I could fake. “I got ‘em, don’t worry Ket.” I know how the system works.” Mentally I hopped on the network and started looking into how to make a reservation because I totally hadn’t forgotten at all. Smiling as she turned and walked back to the display window. I enjoyed the extra swing she put in her walk for me. She turned the corner towards the exhibition windows. Where she could entice new customers in by posing and looking cute. I went back to scheduling, although most of it I just ran as a background routine. I was focused mainly on our plans.
After eight hours I logged off the Scheduling matrix and headed down to the employee exit, in the back alley to preserve the image of the company. I think they just liked having us walk through debris and trash because they could, anyone even in lower secondary management or higher was allowed to use the main entrance if they were wearing a suit and didn’t have any exposed lower tier parts or piercings on display. It was still slightly after midday, so I had plenty of time before our scheduled timeslot. Looking at myself in the reflection of the windows as I walked, I was a little shabby looking, I stared at myself for a second watching the vehicle lights go past me. I probably could use a professional scrub to look my best for our time tonight. Most of our time was going to be spent in digital space, but I wanted to look nice before that as well.
I put into my GPS the address of the nearest wash and walk scrub tunnel. It wasn’t nearly as fancy as the services Jim offered but it was cheap, and quick. I walked over towards the place, I wasn’t really paying attention, more or less on autopilot following the directions the GPS was feeding me. The city was always there in the background, the random honking, the gentle screech of metal as the scrap pigeons descended on a hapless rodent, hot dog vendors yelling at me to buy something, the complete silence for around two seconds. Confused I looked over my shoulder and was curious as to why the building across the street had the logo of a shipping truck on it, and that logo was getting bigger, and then my chassis threw an error message complaining about critical power supply failure, and internal structure damage. I bumped into a wall that seemed to pivot up in front of me, the wall reminded me of slightly janky concrete. I tried to back up, but the wall was stuck to my face for some reason, and I had apparently bumped it harder than I had thought, because my facial structure was dented. Dented faces are funny. It must have been evening because someone turned the sun down in intensity. I wonder how Ket is doing. This wall is rude... Ket really is pretty. They turned the sun off completely now, that was nice of them. I need to …
Several warnings and errors flashed passed me faster than I could read them, but they cleared on their own. I sat up and was happy to see the wall that had been stuck to my face was nowhere to be seen, in fact the city was nowhere to be seen. I was sitting in a field for some reason, I needed to stop drinking as whatever me and Ket had gotten up to had obviously wiped the recent history from my memory. I was guessing I was in that new vista she had told me about, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Getting up was a bit stiff, like they had the gravity turned up higher than standard. And my joints were grinding a bit like I had been rolling around on the beach. I would have to give them points for realism in their programming.
The icon was flashing in my HUD so I opened it to see what kind of faults I would have to look forward to when I got done with this charging cycle. It popped up a small message box reading [Connection to server lost] – [Please resynch with local experience enhancement center]. My arm was hanging at my side unresponsive again, although it was locked in a partially folded angle, like it was in a sling. I mentally opened its interface and once again the world faded out. All I could see were 3 little dots in the middle of my vision, slowly flashing in and out, like it was attempting to load. It sat there flashing those dots at me for over two minutes before it faulted out and played the default jingle letting the world fade back into view. If I had to sit through that every time I booted up now I would definitely have to pay a patcher to block that particular subroutine in the arms hardware.
I tried to stand up but got hit with another full vision blackout. This time there was a cursor flashing in the upper left of my vision. It flashed a few more times before typing out
[System update complete]
[Importing self image to character creation]
[Scanning biological construct]
[***error*** No Biological Components found]
[Physical and Mental statistics estimated]
[Enumerating Racial Options]
[no matches - Racial approximation selected]
[Vsim -gui work.Test_SRFF]
[Start time: 00:35:48]
[Loading SV_std.std]
[Loading Char.strt]
[run -all]
[NAME = Tsukolem ε 3765]
[Race = *!*?* Golem/&]
[Age = unk]
The world faded back in around me, I would have to figure out what all that meant. If they patched my OS without asking me again… I would completely cuss someone out. At this point I just need to figure out where Ket ended up in here so we do this vista thing she dragged me into.