Never heard of it. But then I didn’t know much about software or hardware or whatever outside of scrapping broken down things. I could fix some broken down machines and reset some crashed programs but I wasn’t knowledgeable about tech in general.

Was this the base interface of my cerebral implants or something? Maybe they got damaged and the memory was fried so this was the development mode. I’d heard of stuff like this from some of the older scrappers in the past where they had to factory reset ventilation modules in order to disconnect them from the city power supply because they were software locked out from tampering otherwise.

The logo quickly faded and the central screen disappeared and the screen in the bottom left started to empty of text before a much more understandable sequence appeared in it, each line moving the next upwards until it was deleted to fit the next.

[Defining user…]

[Assessing user baselines…]

[Mapping user patterns...]

[Loading…]

[Searching for user identity…]

[User name: Malcolm Beckett]

[User age: 10]

[User cyberload: Trace]

[Physical ability: Below Average.]

It's a bit harsh for a developer interface to call me below average but it’s not as if the medical monitor on my implant is worth much anyway so it’s likely just not got enough data. I tried to open my messenger application.

[Loading Bridgecaller Messenger.]

[Detecting connection to grids…]

[No wire connection found.]

[No laser connection found.]

[No wave connection found.]

[Initiating in closed mode.]

With the last message about trying to connect to a grid fading away my messenger application opened the same as always. I did notice that it tried to connect to a wave grid which my cerebral implant hadn’t done before. It was only high level police and military level implants that could connect to wave grids usually but maybe this model was once used by the police back when it was new and my old interface just patched it out of view. Whatever.

I started going through my mail and didn’t find anything new or left for me by the doctor, so there was little use keeping the application open. I briefly considered writing some outgoing drafts to send out when I got to plug into a grid but I didn’t know the situation in my residential district, I didn’t even know if I’d be going back to my house any time soon, yet.

[User baselines assessed.]

[Aligning user information to stored patterns…]

[User setup complete.]

[Collating user profile…]

[User profile complete.]

I wondered what the hell the interface was still doing? It seemed to work fine already so what was it working on? It had put together a profile for me but what did that mean in regards to the implants? I thought of showing this profile and it appeared.

Name: Malcolm Beckett

Age: 10

Health:

Widespread minor dermal damage

Minor respiration tissue damage

Minor heavy metals poisoning

Widespread minor carcinomas

Optical tissue damage

Cybernetic installation errors

Multiple nutritional deficiencies

Class 1BA anesthetic detected

Cyberload: Trace

Endurance: -1

Reflexes: -1

Perception: -1

Insight: 0

Presence: -1

Skills: None

Abilities: None

My thoughts grew wild at the appearance of a totally new part of the interface I’d never seen. What the hell; did that doctor even treat me?! Wait, my biomonitor isn’t powerful enough to detect half of these things. What even is a carcinoma? Why am I being graded like I’m going to a school or something? Why are my numbers basically zero or less?

[User’s current health is stable and the chance of a full recovery from all listed conditions is less than ten percent.]

[User’s biomonitor has been integrated and re-engineered into a predesignated pattern created for the purpose of monitoring the user’s health.]

[A carcinoma is a growth of cancerous cells.]

[User statistics are graded based on a curve based on the spread of data from either previous users or collected results from other devices or proprietary databases. All users have access to their scores as part of their profile.]

[Current user scores do not factor in short term health conditions but do factor in long term health conditions. User has suffered various forms of malnutrition and industrial poisoning from their birth until now, making the user’s body weaker and less functional than the standard baseline of your age.]

A whole bunch of text boxes appeared in the top right of my view in response to my agitated thoughts. It took a moment for me to calm enough to read through them and once I’d mentally processed the content they faded from view.

I was laying in a chrome, wheeled medical bed in a corp evac tent and now my interface was broken and telling me I was basically a runt filled with cancer with no ability to do anything. Wow. Maybe I should just sleep until the numbness has faded and I can leave and distract myself with basically anything else other than this.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

[User’s carcinomas are currently displayed as benign and are not considered a risk factor. They are only listed because of the very large number of them there are around the body likely caused by exposure to hazardous chemicals.]

I stopped trying to sleep and rolled back onto my back. So I wasn’t going to die of cancer soon but I was riddled with small tumors anyway.

[Do you wish to initialize a treatment for your body? If so, user is recommended a grade zero medical rehabilitation and purge. Do you wish to hear the costs and risks of the procedure?]

And now the interface is trying to sell medical treatments or supplements or something. Not sure what rehabilitation is. Sounds culty. Yeah sure, what's the cost and so on? I can’t afford anything and likely the previous doctor had left me with more debt than I’d ever pay off but go on then.

[The procedure will currently require the user approximately 1100 calories in addition to your daily maintenance intake, other costs are already accounted for. The procedure will last between ten to forty minutes with after effects for up to a day.]

[The procedure will have minimal risks overall by may cause discomfort and a slight burning sensation for the duration. The user may also experience abnormal sweating, abnormal stool and a low chance of vomiting.]

Another two text box responses to my questioning thoughts appeared and I took a moment to understand it wasn’t trying to get me to pay money for some form of treatment. Calories were food as far as I knew, I’d seen calories listed on packets and so on. So I need to eat enough food that the “procedure” can happen and then … what? Would I need to go somewhere, maybe a clinic?

[User will need to eat enough food that your body can process enough caloric gain from it and then the procedure can begin immediately. Do you wish to set it to begin once the prerequisites are met?]

Sure, whatever I guess. I don’t have the medical cybernetic suite the boot interface of my cerebral implant thinks it’s detecting so nothing will happen but at least it might notice the fault then and restart again. Maybe with my old interface, you never know. My cerebral implant was likely more damaged than I thought but at least it was occupying me during the recovery.

[Grade zero medical rehabilitation and purge treatment queued and pending prerequisites]

I tried waving my arm around and it felt a lot more in control, pulling myself up onto my elbows. I looked around the small tent structure. It was mostly simple steel pipes and heavy, dark green tent covering. The two medical beds were child sized and smaller, both were chrome and had simple white PLEDs built into their frames to light the area around them and the person on them.

I swung my legs off the bed so that I was sitting up, still a little dizzy. Standing took an effort but once I was up it was pretty easy to stay stable. It was time to find my mom and find out what happened to our home.

Leaving the tent; I found myself at the ground level of the residential street I lived in but instead of a two lane road that rarely saw any sort of vehicle and the passing trickle of people; instead the whole space from sidewalk to road had been filled with green tents with the golden logo of Kitsuban corporation. There were lights within the majority of the tents and through the few open flaps I could see doctors and various other medical types working on people.

There were a few people milling about either looking for their family or just loitering. I spotted the old door lady standing outside a tent as a nurse type explained something to her but obviously struggling to explain something while getting no real response from the stone faced old woman.

I wandered further away and found the bigger tents at the junction where the crowding got quite a bit more busy. I reached for my shiv for comfort out of reflex but I didn’t have it on me, must have gotten lost during the “incident”. I might be ten years old but you don’t survive long down here without being smart enough to recognize a blatant lie when it’s told straight to your face like that.

I’d stopped really trusting anything anyone said years ago and even more so with corpo types. Even when they told you the flat, honest truth you can be sure they only said it to open you up to the next lie. I’d been promised schooling or funding or all sorts of things as a younger kid and whenever I’d paid the fees or worked in some corp owned maintenance den for a few weeks the promises would dry up and they’d be asking for more with never a sign of any actual reward or what they guaranteed the first time through.

I’d been burned on those types too many times by the time I lost my first baby tooth. Not going to start believing in them now.

I reached the biggest tent and pushed through the people standing in the way of the opening staring off into space as they read their interfaces. Likely had popped out of the tent to get a laser line on the nearest cluster but instead of moving out of the walkway they’d just stepped out of the tent and stood there like gonks.

“Mal! Malcolm!” my mother called from across the loud and busy tent. I turned to where I heard her voice from and after a moment the crowd shifted for just long enough for me to spot her sitting among a row of folding beds set up in a fabric separated barracks arrangement. Hopefully we weren’t staying here long, not that I had anything to be stolen really but I didn’t like having so many people around.

As I was headed over I got jostled by a few kids my age as they moved through as a group, I met their eyes and only recognized one of them. A kid named Ears who used to not have ears, he had them now but they were just chrome disks on the side of his head. Cheap implants but better than being near deaf.

“Mal! You look like you got in a fight with a turbine and lost, choom!” Ears said while patting me on the arm. His friends reoriented around us to block less of the walkway and give us a little cover.

“Yeah this whole corp thing got me while I was sleeping, got mixed up in some acid stuff like a few years back when we were klepping that synth from that old mantis and got ourselves locked in the recycling plant, you remember that?” I spoke with a shudder toward the end, we were a bit younger then and didn’t know what we were even doing.

The recycling plant was fully automated but riddled with just about human sized maintenance walkways that we lost the drug dealer in but also got ourselves lost and nearly fell into a vat of acid when a rusted, caged walkway fell out from under us.

“Of course I do choom! I still wake up remembering the rust giving way under my feet! Let me know if you need to put up somewhere and I’ll see if I can get you and your mom a place with the rusts. I’m working my way in with them and I think I can get you a room at one of their blocks.” Ears said, looking quite proud.

He’d always liked the rusts, the rust runners because they had a good rep among most people down here but really they were the same as the rest when threatened but the rusts had been powerful for a while and people had gotten used to doing what they wanted them to do. If anyone broke rules just pissed off the gangers at the wrong time they’d find themselves torn apart just like the other gangs.

Old gangs had apparently had something close to justice in the days the oldies talked about, you could take an issue to the boss of a street and if they were in the wrong they’d square up how they could, no problem.

I don’t see that ever being a thing. Only way something like that happens these days is if you’re some sort of major part timer or player, someone big enough that them being dead is a huge issue for the gang.

“Thanks for the offer Ears, I’ll reach out if it ends up that way. You know what my mom is like so I’ll check in on what's happening and get stuff squared up and get back to you.” I responded, his friends did have some rot-rust gang colors about them if you looked. Probably not allowed to wear anything legit yet, we’re all still too young to be reliable for the gangs.

They headed off back into the crowds moving through the tent, some heading into the barracks areas and some moving through to other tents. I headed through the central walkway and into the little room set up for people to sleep in where my mother was. Sitting down on the bed next to the one she was sitting on I noticed she was looking worse than I’d seen her looking in a little while.

Didn’t know if it was the stress of the situation or the incarnation addiction but she was too thin and pale.

Mom got up off the bed as I sat down and smiled as she pulled me into a hug as she sat down next to me. I could feel the relief in her hug, she must have been worried about me. She pulled away and held me there to look me over.