Joe looked at his best friend in betrayal before turning back to face his mother. “I finished my classes.” He said, as though this was explanation enough. He reached for the tablet again, but his mother held it away from him.

“Joseph, we’ve spoken about this. It’s dangerous. Seriously dangerous.” His mother’s voice rose in pitch as she bored into his eyes with her own, augmented ones.

“All my classes,” Joe insisted. Surely, she could recognize the incredible utility of what he was doing. Those classes would’ve taken almost four hours to complete, Joe had done them in one.

He had repurposed research into the use of implantable pulse generators for deep brain stimulation (DBS), and breakthroughs in neural mapping to create a program that helped train him to process reality faster. By using his sub-dermal to hijack his neural connection rate, and by forcing his synapses to fire faster he was able to manually alter his own perception of time. Sure, hijacking his own brain functions and doing the equivalent of electrocuting his brain could be considered dangerous, but it was hardly revolutionary. People had been shocking themselves and each other in the brain for centuries. Besides, the results spoke for themselves. And anyway, it was only a little, teensy-weensy amount of electrocution, and he was getting better at organically altering his mind’s processing time without the need for external stimulation.

All of this he had explained to Emily, and his mother when he’d first begun doing it years ago. The benefits, the potential, far outweighed the risk. Joe was careful; very careful considering he didn’t actually want to fry his own brain. He felt no need to defend himself for the umpteenth time, and so he didn’t. Instead, he reached once more for the tablet he’d been using.

“It’s fine,” he said. His mother obviously didn’t agree as she rapped the back of his knuckles with the device he was reaching out for.

Joe frowned, then looked at his best friend, and his mother. His entire family essentially. They were concerned. He should do something to assuage that concern. Perhaps he hadn’t been clear enough about the safety procedures and failsafe protocols he implemented? He nodded to himself, drawing his arm back, and placing his palm flat on the recycled particleboard desk in front of him.

“It’s perfectly safe.” He began. “I’ve been using gradual, integral increases in neurological stimulation and synaptic processing.” He looked at his audience, his mother looked thoughtful, but Emily just looked confused. Joe turned to her. “I worked up to my current dilation and processing speed gradually over a long period of time.” He told her. She made an ‘oh’ expression, and his lips twitched into a smile before his expression smoothed back out. “Then when I am able to manually control my own processing speed to match that of the program I created, I increase the rate of stimulus.” Turning to Emily before she needed to ask, he clarified. “When I can start to think fast without the subdermal helping, I increase the settings.”

“Is that how you’re in your last year so fast?” Emily asked. Joe nodded. His mother gasped.

“Your last year?” His mother’s eyes narrowed. “It would take years to work up to that with the amount of time you spend uplinked each day, Joseph. Years.”

The truth was, she probably wasn’t as shocked at his progress as she was worried about the implications of Joe graduating early. Once he was finished with his ‘Federally Mandated Education’, their family would stop receiving their internet uplink for free. Not only that, but the uplinks they would be able to afford wouldn’t include even a quarter of the access their current plan had.

Violet ushered her son out of the chair, and sat down hard. She rubbed her face with her hands and bumped the ocular implant that rested on the bridge of her nose. The sudden sharp pain of the agitated connection and wobbling of her vision it caused, made her intensely nauseous. She folded over herself and took in slow deep breaths before fixing the placement of the small device that was shaped like the bridge and nose pads of a pair of glasses, and attached to each eye through tiny chips implanted on either side of her nose.

Joe winced in sympathetic pain as he rubbed his mother’s back. The stupid device was one of the generic ones and wasn’t tailored to match her brain-eye connections specifically, causing severe discomfort, and occasionally pain when she wore them for too long, or when she jostled them too hard.

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Emily caught Joe’s eyes and gave him an apologetic smile as she slipped off the desk and wrapped Violet in a hug.

“Joe, please,” his mother said. “How long have you been frying your mind ‘for science’?” She removed her hands from where they were rubbing her temples to create air quotes.

“Since I was 12,” Joe admitted. Though, in all fairness, he’d brought the idea to her when he’d been even younger, and assumed she knew he’d been doing it for years.

“Twelve! Twelve years old- Joseph.” His mom turned so suddenly she knocked the tablet she’d placed on the desk. Joe caught it before it hit the floor.

He couldn’t understand her reaction. Shouldn’t she be relieved? This was proof he was being safe, moving with calculated precision and appropriate caution.

“Joe you’re barely 18,” she said. “Years, you’ve been putting yourself in danger for years. Your brain’s not even fully done developing now.”

“The data indica-”

“No, Joe. We’re going to talk when we get home about safe practice. You could’ve made yourself braindead, or lost all motor control. Look around you.” Violet waved her hand.

Joe looked at the hospice center where they were working, at the hallways that led to rooms filled with the dying and infirm, he looked at his mother, stoically squinting through what had to be installation sickness as her eyes readjusted. Finally, he looked at Emily. The girl who’d caused all this ruckus by not just shutting her mouth.

Emily was half hidden behind his mother as she mouthed a ‘sorry’ in his direction.

Her sorry was worth dirt to him, he communicated as much with a look. She returned the look by sticking out her tongue before once more hiding behind Violet.

He understood his mother’s point, he really did, but he was running out of time. They both were. He’d done the research (Joe always did the research), and even before he began messing with DBS Joe knew how slim his prospects were. People like him weren’t meant to thrive or succeed, instead, they were a resource, as expendable as the next cog in the machine.

He could feel the clock ticking on him like each second that passed was a weight dragging him to the bottom of the ladder. He knew his prospects, he’d read all the statistics, and he recognized that if he couldn’t find a way to meaningfully contribute to his home, he wouldn’t have one for much longer. Most importantly, he knew he’d need every edge to survive the cutthroat reality he faced…

His mother sat, head in her hands, and slowly dying.

Sure, she had some time, they’d been able to severely slow down the symptoms of her neurological disorder, but all it did was push back the inevitable to give them a few more years, maybe even decades, before the symptoms took their toll. Even this was only possible because her job included access to anti-aging technology, and subdermal upgrades. Still, Joe’s mother appeared far older than she should. It wasn’t in the way she looked, which was beautiful, but tired. No, it was the way she bent over herself, the way her delicate fingers clenched in pain where her hand gripped the edge of the desk. It was the silver streaking her once black afro, so incongruous with an otherwise youthful face and the long, measured breaths that Joe could feel, as much as see, from where he had his hand on her back.

Joe’s mother was dying, and the best the doctors could offer them was a head-pat and a shrug, claiming her condition to be ‘extremely rare and presently incurable’, like they didn’t already know that.

The second knuckle of Joe’s forefinger rubbed back and forth on his lower lip as he gazed into the distance in thought. His mind sped up as his emotions roiled. He swore he could feel a tingle as he stood there, lost in his mind. A faint sensation that spread from his center and through his body, like the echo of a shiver.

His mother pushing away from the table jolted him back into himself as he realized Emily and his mom had been speaking. Violet took a breath and stood up before checking her smartwatch and handing Joe his tablet back. The hand that had slipped off of her back instinctively reached out to take the device.

Violet looked hard at her son before closing her eyes and quickly shaking her head, then she pulled Emily into a hug, said something too quietly for Joe to pick out, and turned to finish her rounds, plucking a different tablet from the charging station in the reception area as she left.

Joe watched her leave as Emily sidled up next to him, hip-checking his thigh and frowning when his considerably taller, significantly sturdier body didn’t even budge.

“I will need a Veil drive,” Joe said. Emily scoffed, tossing her long, straight black hair behind her shoulder.

“You, and billions of other people, Joe-Joe.” Emily said. “Just play with your current UI and headset for now. Isn’t your headgear Horizon-Tech anyway?”

“Em,” Joe turned to his best friend. “Not want, need.”

The two looked at each other, talking in the unspoken language of the well acquainted, and those with shared desires.

“I know a guy,” Emily said slowly. Joe winced. If it was the same guy Joe knew, the guy Emily’s father had introduced him to once-upon-a-time he was not excited about what would undoubtedly be a long night.