21 – Getting Connected
Doc Peters opened the box and pulled away the packing foam, muttering too softly for Tony to pick up the words. He wondered about that—his ears. How badly had Chavez and his goons messed up his eardrums when they yanked his implants? He seemed to be able to hear all right, but, on the other hand, he’d caught himself missing the exact words someone said a few times in recent conversations.
He tried to dismiss the disquieting thought, pushing it away where the rest of his idle, anxious concerns were buried. It didn’t matter at this point; when he could afford new ears, he’d get new ears—the current state of his eardrums was irrelevant. Peters saved him from further mental debate by walking over, his new eye implant in the palm of his hand.
The guy looked exhausted. He had huge circles under his eyes, his five o’clock shadow was a few hours past five o’clock, and his smock was well-stained with blood and probably other fluids. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly and a little strained. “I found the specs on the city net, which means I should be able to plug everything into the autosurgeon to shape your orbital bone. That’ll cut down your install cost.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah, but the thing is, when this implant was new, it came with a grafting kit—synth nerves and synthetic stem cells—that kind of thing. I’ve got plenty of synth stem cells, but synth nerves are a little pricey. I’ll have to charge you fifty bits on top of my usual autosurgeon install rate.”
“Which is?”
“One twenty.”
Tony winced and shrugged. “So a hundred-seventy to get this thing installed? If this were the good old days, I’d tip you twice that amount, but things being what they are, I’ll just grin and bear it.”
Peters didn’t laugh at his attempt at humor. “You still want to talk about a data port?”
Running the numbers through his head, Tony figured he still had almost a thousand bits thanks to his little scam with Maisie’s uncle. He nodded. “Yeah, what you got for the, uh, budget-minded connoisseur?”
“Well, since you don’t seem to mind gently used tech,” he held up the eye implant, “I’ve got a United MegaSpark model I could show you. Guy who had it was a machinist for Boxer. He died last week in a factory accident, and his daughter brought it in with a few other pieces, trying to raise money for a private cremation.”
Tony couldn’t ignore the unsettling, offhand detail, so he had to ask, “She didn’t want the company to cremate him?”
“No. Folks who die on the job or in their arcology are, um, bulk cremated. Surviving family members get a scoop of the ashes, but they’re all mixed up, so…” He shrugged, letting the thought trail off.
“That’s grim.” Tony shook his head. “Tell me about it. The data port, I mean.”
“Yeah, it’s a decent model. Utilitarian, but with some modernish features. It has a hex-core slot for a PAI chip and two memory slots. Decent wireless capabilities. It’s designed for a cervical placement, so I can put it right where it looks like they pulled your old one.”
Tony unconsciously reached back to prod the still-tender flesh where his old data port had been. “But how much, doc?”
“Seeing as it’s second-hand with no warranty, I’ll put it in for another four hundred.”
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a PAI lying around? Something almost free?”
Peters smiled, but it was half-hearted. He shook his head, clicking his tongue. “Nope, sorry, buddy. I don’t even have any new ones in stock. I could order you something, but no, people aren’t generally coming to my clinic for PAIs.”
Tony sighed and rubbed his temples between his thumb and middle finger. “Well, my old PAI cost me upwards of seventy grand. I really don’t know what cheaper models go for these days. Can you give me a ballpark?”
“Oh, sure. Gimme a sec.” Peters stared into space for a minute, his eyelids flickering unnaturally as he likely skimmed through menus on his AUI. Tony shifted in the comfortable, if well-worn, seat of the autosurgeon, glancing at the mechanical surgical arms sprouting from the hub to his right. He hardly remembered being in that seat before, but he was pretty sure it was the same autosurgeon that had fixed up his arm.
He let his gaze drift around the little operating suite, at the stainless tables, the damp, antiseptic-scented concrete floor, and the medical waste and laundry bins. Peters was a busy, overworked man and probably had better things to do than help Tony shop for bargain implants. Still, if he took a sales percentage, every little bit helped, right? “If it’s any trouble—” he started to say, but Peters shook his head, forestalling his objection.
“Nah, it’s no trouble. I get wholesale discounts and charge a small percentage for ordering and installation. If you’re good with that, I won’t complain. The bit of profit will help me take care of someone who can’t afford critical medical treatment.”
“Yeah, I figured it was something like that.”
“Well, let’s see here. I mean, shit, they have juvenile models for five hundred bits. You probably don’t want a cartoon character living in your head, though, yeah?”
“Probably not…”
“Some really low-end models for around a thousand. They won’t interface well with your optics, though, and if you ever get auditory implants—”
“I need something that can interface with Dust-tech nanites.”
Doc Peters opened his eyes wide and whistled softly. “I hadn’t realized. Your recovery rate makes a little more sense now.”
“Keep it between us, doc. I’d rather not get chopped up for parts anymore, you know?”
“Of course! Tony, I don’t keep records on my patients. I mean, other than your payment and contact information. I’ve got too many banger clients who would skin me alive if Boxer corpo-sec could come in here and get details on their hardware and, um, medicinal proclivities. Anway… Dust-tech. Hmm… Yeah, the cheapest model with that sort of capability is a Cameo 870, and it clocks in at forty-two hundred.”
Tony nodded. “Yeah, I figured a decent PAI was a little out of reach. I’ll save up. Let’s do the data port and eye, okay, Doc?” Tony settled back into the cushions, getting himself comfortable. Part of him wanted to feel irritated, upset that he was still so far from getting back to where he’d been, but another part, a side of himself that he hadn’t seen in a long, long time, was enjoying the ride.
The truth was that he was having fun working up from the bottom again. He’d done it before; why couldn’t he do it again? He had plenty going for him, didn’t he? He knew a hell of a lot more about fighting, about corpo politics, about tech and guns. Sure, he didn’t have Eric at his side this time, but he was making new contacts and new friends. He wasn’t a teen with big starry-eyed dreams, either. He wouldn’t get suckered into long-term contracts and find himself buried in debts that didn’t fit neatly on a balance sheet. He wouldn’t get himself trapped by loyalties and obligations that made him feel like a slave.
He got so caught up trying to talk himself up, comparing his current situation to how things had been when he’d been a teenager trying to make it as an operator, that he missed most of the doctor’s boilerplate indemnification spiel as he prepped him for surgery, unpeeling his bandages and securing him to the autosurgeon chair.
As the straps tightened on his wrists, paranoid notions streamed through his mind, and Tony tugged at them, finding their unmoving resilience unsettling. “Don’t really remember you strapping me down before, Doc.”
“Oh, well, I did. You were out of it, my friend—that stim Bert gave you plus whatever was left over in your system from when you got stripped. Heck, I probably didn’t do your memory any favors when I put you under to work on that arm. Point is, I’m surprised you remember that day at all.”
“Yeah, but why do you need to tie me down now, Doc?” Tony narrowed his eye at Peters as the man gently smeared cold gel around his eye socket.
“Because if you start to freak out and move too much, it’ll mess up the procedure. You wouldn’t be the first patient I’ve had who was cool as a cucumber until the lasers started cutting and the smell of charred bone wafted into the air.”
Tony swallowed and grumbled, “You paint a lovely picture.”
“Just hang on, Tony. This’ll all be over in about twenty minutes.” The doctor moved behind the chair and began fidgeting with something at the back of the autosurgeon chair. A moment later, Tony felt cold, rubbery clamps click into place around his skull, stretching his neck taut and holding his head immobile. “Perfect,” Peters said, swabbing something at the base of Tony’s neck. “We can do both installs simultaneously. I won’t knock you out for this, but we’ll do a nerve block. You won’t feel a thing.”
Tony watched as the doctor prepped the ocular implant and the data port, sterilizing them and setting them on the autosurgeon’s stainless tray. Then, he walked over to the terminal and stared at the display while he ostensibly interfaced with it, programming the specifications for the installations. After a few minutes, Peters looked into Tony’s eye and, deadpan, asked, “Any last requests?”
***
Addie sat in the clinic's waiting room, staring at the door behind Beth, irritated that she hadn’t been allowed back. Beth said Tony wouldn’t need a recovery room and that he’d be out when Peters finished with him, so there wasn’t any point in her going back. Still, Addie hated it when she felt like she was being denied “access” of any kind, so she was feeling antsy and irritated. Every time the door opened for someone else to leave or for one of the doc’s assistants to call another patient back, she jumped to her feet in anticipation, only to sit down again, further agitated.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She’d only been waiting half an hour, but she’d taken longer than that to bring her dad his meds and pick up Humpty. Shouldn’t he be done? Addie knew Peters; he wouldn’t let her sit out there like a dummy if something went wrong, so she told herself to relax and contented herself with reading through the comments on her latest vid.
If she were honest, she’d admit she’d put up a “fluff” piece about Boxer Day. She felt like a sellout, publishing positive news about something a corporation was doing, but she supposed if people didn’t praise them for doing the right thing on those very rare occasions, then they’d be less likely to repeat the behavior—positive reinforcement and all that.
It wasn’t any surprise that the most viewed timestamp on the video was the one featuring Tony’s fighting. Even though everyone in the district could probably find footage of the fights from a thousand different viewpoints, Addie had gone the extra mile and used the German Shepherd filter on Tony. People loved it.
She was smiling, reading a comment about how “Shepherd” was just the kind of guy the district needed more of when the door opened, and she looked up to see Tony strolling through, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and his shoulders in a perpetual shrug. His new “eye” was chrome-chic—metal merged with flesh as only modern cybernetics could do. Still, it was an eye, and the restored symmetry of his face did wonders for his looks. Tony was a handsome man, even with a metal eye and a glowing, red-orange iris.
Addie tried not to look too eager when she stood, but she knew she was beaming because Tony smiled almost compulsively when he saw her waiting. When he got close enough, Addie winked her right eye exaggeratedly. “Looks good, Tony. How’s it feel to have your vision back?”
He reached up with his left hand, gently probing around the eye socket with his natural fingers. “It’s a little sore, but everything works perfectly. Luckily, the doc was able to program it to match the resolution settings of my other eye, so yeah, everything looks good. Colors are a little mismatched, but I hardly notice when both eyes are open.”
“Will a new PAI help with that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure I can fine-tune things once I have a little helper. Speaking of which, I got a new data port.” Tony turned so Addie could see the tiny rectangle of metal at the nape of his neck. “Doc says I can buy a synth-flesh cover for it if I want, but it’s not a priority.” He chuckled. “I mean, with an arm and an eye like this, who cares about a little data port, am I right?”
Addie punched his shoulder playfully. “Oh, I don’t know. I think the eye looks good. I don’t want you to get a big head, but you’ve got the looks to pull it off.”
“Oh?” Tony grinned hugely. “Damn, you’re full of compliments these days. Well, just so you know, you’re no slouch yourself.”
Addie choked off a giggle, irritated that his offhanded compliment had tickled her so much. She turned and walked to the door. “Come on! Remember, I’ve hired you for the afternoon.”
“Right. Funeral home time.” He followed her out. “Got Humpty in that pack?”
“Yep.”
“Bert feeling better?”
Addie looked at him sideways, trying to figure out if he was playing an angle. Why was he always so cool? He didn’t seem disingenuous, though; he really was interested in Bert, even after undergoing surgery. “He’s better, yeah. I wish he’d just swallow his pride and buy the meds sooner next time.”
Tony shrugged—easy for him as he was halfway there with his hands in his pockets. “Eh, I get where he’s coming from. He wants to handle the problem himself rather than admitting it’s outside his control. He probably figures, you know, his diet or whatever caused the issue, and he can fix things, but then, by the time he realizes it's gotten past that point, he’s laid up and in pain. How often does he get flare-ups like that?”
“Just a few times a year.” Addie turned the corner and moved closer to the buildings to avoid a large group of teenagers laughing and carrying on just past the corner. Tony didn’t reply, and Addie saw he was watching the teens. Some wore gang colors—Helldogs, of course—but she knew they were just pledges trying to earn their full membership. Even so, they warranted watching; wearing gang colors in the Blast took a conscious acknowledgment of risk. Helldogs had plenty of enemies; even if a pledge stayed on their home turf, they were declaring themselves part of the constant war.
“You got a problem, old guy?” one of the youngsters called out, eliciting hoots and sniggers from the others.
Tony didn’t react. He just moved a little closer to Addie and kept walking. They’d gone a few more steps when a bottle hit the sidewalk nearby, shattering. Addie flinched, but Tony just started whistling some nameless little ditty. Addie glanced at him, and he winked—a much more natural-looking wink than he’d been able to pull off with one eye covered with bandages. His grin was crooked as he whistled thinly through his teeth, cocking his head half to the side.
Addie wasn’t sure if he was getting ready to say something or to react to the teenage bangers, but then he snaked out his right hand faster than her eye could follow and caught another bottle that tumbled through the air toward them. Without slowing, he turned and tossed the bottle toward the kids. “Dropped this.”
“Hey!” one of the kids howled. “That’s him! That’s Shepherd!”
Tony turned again, walking backward, and bowed, and Addie couldn’t help laughing at his cockiness. “Stop it!” She pulled on his jacket sleeve until he turned and started walking by her side again. She was half afraid some of the kids would want to fight him and half afraid they’d chase after to ask questions. When they got to the corner and made a left, though, none followed.
“Looks like we’re getting famous,” Tony remarked.
“Well, maybe, but you’ve probably already got a few people who’d like to pound your brains in, so maybe don’t ham it up so much.”
“What?” Tony affected a scandalized tone, holding his fingers to his chest. “You think someone might want to hurt me?”
Addie sighed, shaking her head. “You’re too much.”
He stuffed his hands back into his pockets and commenced strolling quietly beside her. After a while, he said, “I’m just in a good mood.”
Addie looked at him, saw he was looking at her, and smiled, suddenly self-conscious—why hadn’t she done something more with her hair? Was her eyeliner too obvious? “Why’s that? Your new eye?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I just, well, when I came out of surgery, it was pretty great having you there waiting for me. Even in my old life, if I got a procedure done, I had to pay someone to watch my back.”
“Seriously? No friends?”
“Yeah, that should’ve been my first clue that a betrayal was coming. Honestly, there were probably a thousand clues. Anyway, thanks again.”
“Pfft!” Addie waved a hand dismissively. “I was only there ’cause I wanted your help this afternoon.”
Tony elbowed her shoulder, sending her stumbling to the left. “Liar.”
“Hey!” Addie laughed and pushed him back. “Okay, maybe I wanted to be there a little. So, did you get a new PAI, too?”
“Nah, couldn’t afford one yet. I’ll work on it.”
“So you’re still offline. Couldn’t you get a cheap messaging chip, at least?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Didn’t think of it.”
“We’re gonna pass a store. Wanna stop in? Janet’s Data.”
“She sells chips?”
Addie nodded. “All sorts of stuff.”
Tony shook his head. “I don’t have audio implants anymore, though. I guess I could just do text—”
“Oh, jeez, come on, Tony! Every twelve-year-old has a nano-link. You don’t have to buy the fanciest implants around.”
“Yeah. Shit, I guess you’ve got a point. I kind of get stuck in my head about these things, you know? I’ve had cybernetics for so long that I don’t even think about the cheaper tech. This shop sells that stuff?”
“Yep!” Addie smiled and grabbed his wrist, tugging him along, excited to suddenly be doing something for him. She liked that he didn’t resist her pull. He stretched his legs, easily keeping up as she dragged him along the sidewalk to the little hole-in-the-wall data and electronics shop. Inside, she beelined for the back wall where all sorts of cheap, mostly disposable nano- and micro-tech devices hung on the wall under the watchful eye of a panning security cam. She pointed to a package on the third row with bright purple labeling.
Tony pulled it off the peg. “Seriously? ‘Giga-ears?’”
Addie shrugged. “I had a pair of the previous model, and they lasted almost two years. Not as good as my new audio implants, but they did the job for a while. Honestly, I think they produced better bass.”
Tony turned the package over. “Twenty-five bits? What the hell? They’ll interface with a PAI or comm chip?”
“Does your data port have wireless?”
Tony nodded. “According to the doc.”
“Then yeah, come here.” Addie walked down the wall, scanning the products until she found the one she was looking for. It was a comms chip that would allow Tony to make calls, send messages, and even browse the local net, so long as his optics were up to the job, and she was pretty sure they were. She pulled it off the rack and handed it to him.
“Ah, what have we here? ‘Banana Chat?’ I feel kind of—”
“They’re marketed at teens,” a new voice said, and Addie turned to see Janet Devere approaching. She wore red overalls, a white t-shirt, and enormous black-rimmed glasses. She’d always been a character, but she was nice.
“Yeah?” Tony turned to regard her. “I guess I just need it until I can afford a PAI.” He turned the yellow box until he looked at the price tag on the bottom. “Fifty-nine? And it’ll connect to these, uh, Giga-ears?”
Janet nodded. “Plug and play, buddy. Personally, I only use comm chips like that; I refuse to have another entity in my head.”
“A PAI isn’t exactly in your head, Janet,” Addie sighed.
“That’s exactly where it goes, Addie! You’ve seen the synth nerves they slide into you with those things. How do you think you can talk to your little buddy without moving your lips? It’s in your mind!”
“Right, well, I’ll take these.” Tony held up the two packages.
Addie held out her hand. “Let me open ‘em for you while you pay.”
Tony handed them over and dug around in his pocket for his bit-locker. “You got a terminal?”
Janet’s thick, burgundy-stained lips spread into a big smile, exposing her too-small teeth. “I appreciate a man who keeps his bits offline. Step over to the counter. You can sit down so Addie can install that chip more easily, Stretch.”
Tony looked at Addie and mouthed, “Stretch,” grinning, but he followed Janet over to the counter and sat on a stool while she took his bit-locker to extract her payment. Addie opened the Giga-ears first. The packaging was deceptive; there weren’t two bell-shaped devices in the package, but two plastic, thimble-sized squeeze bottles. One was marked R and the other L.
“I just need to squirt these into your ears, Tony.”
“Seriously?”
Janet nodded, handing Tony his bit-locker. “Yeah. The nanomaterials will bond with your eardrum and use your body’s ambient electrical signal to connect to the data port. Just tilt your head and wait until you hear the beep before you do the other ear.”
Addie held the little “L” bottle ready, and Tony shrugged, leaning forward onto the counter so Addie could reach his ear more easily. When she squeezed the silvery liquid into his ear, he winced. “Cold!”
“Hold still,” Addie said, then unpacked the other bottle. She rolled it between her palms while she waited. “I’ll warm this one up a little.”
Tony smiled, and then, only a few seconds later, he announced, “I heard the beep!”
“Okay, turn your head.” As he did so, Addie leaned over him and gently squeezed the second bottle into his ear.
“Ah! Much better. Thanks, Ads.”
Addie smiled, idiotically pleased by his use of the nickname again, even though she hated it when Beef called her that. As he waited for the second chime, she unpacked the comm chip. It was shaped like a PAI chip and would slot neatly into his data port. Unlike a full-fledged PAI, which bristled with thousands of synth-nerves designed to integrate deeply with the brain's pathways, the comm chip had just a few. The delicate fibers would extend into his nerve channel, forming a basic connection with his optic nerves to relay data.
“Just keep your head still, and I’ll slot this in, okay? Look—” She dangled the glistening, foam-covered nerve fibers in front of his face. “—the nerves are sterile.”
“Yeah, all right.” He closed his eyes, and Addie took that as him signaling he was ready. She dangled the synth nerves over the slot and on the metallic rectangle at the nape of his neck, and when they picked up the signal the port was emanating, they began to twitch and worm their way into it. She brought the chip closer and closer to the port as they sank in. When all the fibers were absorbed, she snapped the chip into place.
“Perfect fit!”
Tony didn’t say anything or move for several seconds, and then JJ announced, “Addie, you have a new comm request from someone named Tony.”
Addie felt a flutter of idiotic excitement and breathlessly said, “Accept.”
A moment later, a grainy window appeared on her AUI, and a single line appeared:
Tony: Hey.