“How much Deni?”
The runner smiled, held up three fingers. “Thirteen-hundred.” They sat together in the back of a black shop, the smell enveloped around them.
“Twelve-hundred.”
The runner’s smile widened, he nodded satisfied and grabbed an orange milk crate on a scratched laminate shelf. It was half filled with different sized plastic containers encasing RAM Deni rummaged through it till he pulled out a small transparent plastic rectangle.
He popped it open and grabbed the gray RAM between his thin fingers offering it to him.
—
Her face was milk white with a tint of blue. Little black dots the size of the end of pins painted the inside of her narrow eyes. Her cheeks were a soft leather, defined yet seemed to sag. It was work he’d seen before.
Back alley non-licensed beāute by the name of Isen. Isen used cheap second hand, discontinued scrap. All the low end, low costing stuff. He had quite the record of body modification malfunctions from the low end of the spectrum of a collapsed body modification and to the high end of total annihilation of the buyer's body.
Even with his less than savory reputation people still went to him, even with the high risk objectively low reward. In the world of body modification fanaticism the cost of beauty was a high one to pay if you wanted it done without your face collapsing.
She removed the screws from the skin plate behind her ear. Behind it revealed the truth to her poorly held charade: a intertwined and weaved mess of mechanical locks and couplings held together by her pursuit of intrinsic beauty. A common pursuit followed by all.
—
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The smells of charred synthetic beef, stir fried greens, and boiled noodles all collaborated in a slow dance of hope. Hope of new customers that’d eat their subpar existence and hope that'd be enough for them to return.
The food stalls enjoyed an unusually abundant amount of clientele around this time. Whether or not they enjoyed their meals of synth and organics mattered not a bit. The people stomached their food for reason of sparkling exploding lights and the giant holographic parade.
The parade, headed by the American branch of the Korean Jujeun Corp. was in full swing. You couldn’t escape the bright flashing lights and shimmering skies. If you looked past the fancy holo work you’d see the real reason for the parade. Advertisement. There was no better advertisement than the giant holos wearing full Jujuen Corp. patented tech-runner gear accompanied by their company banner displayed behind them.
It was no better on the street.
Jujuen Corp. had placed booths along the street showing off their many impressive gizmos and gadgets ranging from self-cooling jackets to the newest high-tech drones and security. They even let people have samples of their newest pharmaceuticals, a nice way to make the people think you cared. The advertisement parade sights often gave a nice boost in stock shares and revenue.
—
From the top of the building the parade holograms gave a nice buzz to the cool night air. It was pleasant on the brain. The parade ran alongside an interconnected building home to many differing stores and offices. For the parade the building was mostly empty save for the top floor which was converted into the parades operating station. The floor housed the parade operator along with his security detail.
Inside the floor was buzzing, the holograms and server equipment were to blame. The floor was a spacious void empty throughout except for the warm bodies inside. Various voices could be heard echoing from different parts of the floor complaining, and small talk.
The security for the parade operator was sparse Jujeun Corp. Hadn’t seen the need for a heavy detail. The security detail for this wasn’t their A team which is why their firewalls hadn’t stood a chance against a grade 4 short circuit daemon.
The parade operator was laying flat jacked in on grooved out silicon styrofoam perfectly made for the human body. He lay there twitching ever so slightly breathing a rapid pace. His server equipment scratched in sync with his twitching trying to keep up the output he gave.
The RAM allocated for the parade server was nothing to scoff but it wasn’t enough; it'd need a nice boost for what was coming.