The H-Series Juvenile Implant permitted precisely three things: textbook downloads, educational sims, and a neural firewall thicker than lunarcrete. Pornography? The system flagged that faster than a mass driver round.
H2 Civic Cores unlocked the datasphere's candy store - flight manuals simmering next to gourmet recipes in your visual cortex. Want to calculate orbital decay while perfecting a soufflé? EarthGov obliged, so long as you didn't ask why Ceres needed gymnastic training modules.
But the H3 Citizen Array... that chrome-plated beast required blood or credits.
**Pathways to Armament Authorization:**
1. **Academy Nominations**
- Top 0.7% academic performance
- Clean psych eval
- Mandatory military service waiver
2. **Decadal Grind**
- Ten years H2 compliance
- Pass Tier-3 combat readiness
- Survive basic training (67% attrition rate last fiscal)
3. **Liquidity Conversion**
- 1,000,000 standard credits
- OR equivalent philanthropic donation
- Bypass all neural assessments
Karl's retinal display flickered with the cruel arithmetic. At twenty-three with 943 credits and a college transcript full of B-minuses, even the mining guild's hazard pay couldn't bridge that chasm. The military track promised power at the cost of becoming another grunt in the Earth Consortium's meat grinder.
"Magnify sector Gamma-12." His finger jabbed at the holo-map.
The mining skiff's sensors obliged, revealing a yawning maw in Ceres' pockmarked skin - fifteen hundred meters across, its depths swallowing even infrared scans. Carbon scoring around the rim told the real story: mass driver cannons chewing through bedrock, leaving subterranean abscesses where rare earth veins once pulsed.
"Estimated excavation depth?"
[Primary shaft: 8.2km. Secondary tunneling exceeds 300km cumulative.] West reported. [Aex Corporation extraction efficiency: 94th percentile.]
Karl's neural overlay diagnostics flared. These wounds in the dwarf planet's crust weren't mere mining operations - they were symptoms of a celestial carcinoma, metastasizing through the asteroid belt. And somewhere in those radioactive bowels, if his future-memories held true, lay the key to bypassing a decade of bureaucratic hell.
A proximity alert pulsed amber. His H4 skiff's thrusters whined to life, automated systems steering clear of the unstable sinkhole. Karl didn't need enhanced optics to see what West's sensors missed - the faint bio-luminescent shimmer three kilometers down where Aex Corp's drones hadn't yet scraped clean.
The same glow that had consumed Martinez' patrol unit.
"Plot course to coordinates 32.88°N 122.04°W," he ordered, fingers dancing across the titanium lattice of his civilian-grade control panel. "And West? Disable safety protocols for atmospheric descent."
[Regulation 4.17.2 prohibits--]
"Authorization code: KARL-WARDEN-7770707."
The mining skiff's reactor hum climbed two octaves. Somewhere in its primitive AI, West was learning the first lesson of Karl's new timeline:
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
In the grand calculus of the cosmos, some safety features were meant to be broken.
The H4 skiffs swarmed Gamma-12's rim like carrion flies, their mining lasers flickering in the methane haze. Autonomous harvesters had long since abandoned this necrotic wound - energy expenditure per gram yielded 0.8% below corporate thresholds. But for freelancers running retrofitted civilian gear, the corpse still held marrow.
Karl's thermal overlay counted seventeen life signs crawling through lower shafts. Fools. The sinkhole's stability index blinked crimson at 23%, yet profit algorithms overrode safety protocols. His HUD helpfully reminded: [Current yield per hour: 4.2kg platinum-group metals. Energy cost: 3.7 credits.]
"West. Structural analysis."
[Subsurface lattice collapse probability: 89% within 30 solar days.] The AI projected fracture lines across his retina. [Historical cross-reference: 777.08.11 seismic event measuring 8.3 on the Consortium scale. Casualties: 14 miners, 3 H4 units.]
The memory burned clearer than any sensor readout. How the rain had turned acidic that night, how Martinez' final transmission crackled with static: *"Found a vein signature matching Consortium prototype schematics! Tell my kid--"* Then the ground screamed.
Corporate cleanup crews arrived before the dust settled. Official report cited meteor impact. The 30-million-credit lanthanum deposit? Never logged in Aex databases.
"Prep nutrient packs. Triple caffeine dosage." Karl's fingers danced across the skiff's jury-rigged control panel. "And wipe today's biometric logs."
[Reminder: Scheduled personal leave active.] West's bone-conduction comms carried infuriating calm. [Birthday parameters: Recipient - Emma Chen. Gift - Carbohydrate construct (frosting variant). Current location: Habitat Module C-882.]
The name triggered neural playback he hadn't accessed in timelines:
*Memory File #777.07.19*
*Two rookies in ill-fitting pressure suits*
*Her tears fogging helmet visors*
*"Karl, the quota system's rigged!"*
*His hands guiding hers across core sampler controls*
*Whispers in rec room shadows*
*Then the airlock overhears:*
*"He's sweet, but you can't fuck a promotion."*
Karl ejected the memory cache. Let corporate cronies keep their trophy wives. The real treasure lay three klicks beneath his skiff's rusting undercarriage.
"Override leisure protocols. Authorization: Warden-Kappa-7."
The H4's cargo bay hissed open, revealing three stolen seismic charges. West's protest died mid-syntax as Karl patched into black-market frequencies. Let Aex Corp track his radiation signature. By dawn, that lanthanum vein would feed his private war chest.
As the skiff descended through methane clouds, its exterior cams caught a familiar figure boarding a executive shuttle - Emma's laugh carrying through environmental seals, her arms draped around a man wearing security chief insignia.
Karl toggled the feed to junk data. Some minerals weren't worth the extraction cost.
"Terminate leave protocol."
"Purge itinerary."
The skiff's climate control hummed louder as West complied. [Biometric lock disengaged. Remaining leisure energy allocation: 12.7 thermal units.]
"Disposition of refrigeration unit's carbohydrate construct?" The AI's query scrolled across Karl's retinal display. [Optimal delivery window closes in 43 minutes.]
"Negative."
The cryo-locker hissed open. Inside sat the biometric pastry construct - frosting uneven where his calloused fingers had smoothed synthetic glucose. Twenty-three boron-reinforced candles stood sentinel in his palm, each ignition point calibrated to burn precisely 377 seconds.
[Proposal:] West activated ambiance modulators. [Romantic probability increases 82% with:
1. Oxygen levels reduced to 16% (simulated candlelight diffusion)
2. Acoustic playback: Terran nocturne #4
3. Pheromone dispersal module--]
"Stand down." The final candle pierced the dessert's crust with surgical precision. "Designated recipient: Active operator."
[Chronological discrepancy detected.] West projected a holographic calendar. [Birthday parameters do not align with--]
Karl ignited the first wick with his thumbprint. Flame refraction danced across his neural lace implants. Let corporate databases rot with their Gregorian lies. This conflagration celebrated different mathematics - the exact nanosecond his consciousness had breached temporal causality.
The twenty-third flame bloomed cobalt. Through its quantum-shifted glow, he watched Emma's executive shuttle breach Ceres' exosphere on the observation cam feed. Her laughter still echoed through black-box recordings from another timeline.
"Initiate memory purge protocol," he ordered, biting into the cake's lithium-flavored layers. "Category: Sentimental debris."
[Confirmed.] West's systems whined under unorthodox calorie redistribution. [Warning: Consuming 87% daily sugar intake may impair--]
The alert died in static. Some reboots required saccharine violence.