Matt sighed, even as he growled on the inside, there were so many of them, a variable horde.  Slowly shambling towards him.  He could see their glassy eyes as they approached, cold and lifeless.  Six, that was the number of bullets he would need, unfortunately he had none, add to the fact that he had no weapon at all and this entire situation looked grim.

He glanced at the woman standing next to him, she was around the age 20 or so, right near his own age in fact, with long shoulder length blonde hair with dark blue streaks in it, the style of which he could only describe as asphalt ranger, which was a reference to a very very old video game from days gone past and consisted of one side being shaved about three inches above the ear and the rest of it going up and over her head onto the other side. Standing at around five foot six she was an extremely attractive woman, boasting a modest bust size, and wide hips.  Her name was Monica.

And sadly it would seem she was just as unarmed as he was…

She caught the look in his eyes, and nodded, assuredly she understood, she was after all here trapped like he was, completely unarmed. It would only be seconds until they were upon the two of them.  He watched as the first one came closer, and readied himself.

“Welcome to Volcros Electronics how may I help you?”  he asked, his lips curling into a smile even as the act felt revulsive, setting his stomach churning at the fakeness of it.  Not that the customers would ever know, you see Matt was a Damn good liar.

Damn good.

And lying was his job, well that and servicing broken Volcros tech. He was really good at the first part of that job, and passable at the second part.  He heard Monica repeat the mantra they were instructed to greet the customers with to his right.  She was also a good liar, in fact anybody that worked in the public service field that had to deal with customers was a good liar, it was either that or get a new job.

He lied to the customers, every time he asked how their day was he was lying, he really didn't care.  He could also careless about why there was bitemarks on the device or the cause of the water damage.

And he knew when the cause of all those viruses was from going onto the wrong porn sites, even if he feigned ignorance.

Of course it was when you let your little brother borrow the device, never minding the fact that 98% of society had one of their own and there would be no need to share it even with your little brother.

And yes that model was prone to overheating, it had nothing to do with the 46 dating apps you had running at once.

Oh yes, assuredly that device was stolen by a thief, even though it was biometrically locked and there was no humanly way possible for anyone to use it without it alerting the authorities.

Yes he was an amazing liar.

“Damn thing don’t work,”  the zombie in front of him moaned, this corpse of a person was probably about the same age as Matt and Monica, it however was hard to see under all that facial metal he had embedded in his skin, it would seem that he had opted for the shrapnel styled look. He had even topped the look off with a full green terror hawk, and the words reject society's norm tattooed across his forehead, never mind the fact that he was here in a consumer electronic store and wanted his device that practically everyone in the else used fixed so he could get back to doing the same things as everyone else.

“Can you be a little more specific? Is it not booting up, or perhaps the screen is not working or the sound...”  he trailed off, not wanting to fully call out the extensive list of things that could have gone wrong with the device.

“It makes this sound, like a beep beep bloop” shrappy as Matt had taken to calling him in his head said, intoning the noises in such an idiotic manner that Matt had a hard time not laughing at it, he even caught Monica snort ever so slightly in the corner of his eyes, making it much harder to keep from laughing.

Shrappy narrowed his eyes at him, and Matt decided to get started working on it.  “If it was beeping then that probably means it has some issue with the random access memory, so we will need to crack it open and see what is what on the inside.”  Matt narrated as he pulled out his swisstool, a multi use device that allowed him to crack open a multitude of other devices and interface with them. He knew shrappy probably had no idea what he was talking about, and more likely didn't care, but it was after all company policy to explain what they were doing with people's property at all times.

Typical bullshit.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The device in question was a Vidcom link, specifically the Volcros Mark Vii K series, last year's model. It was the device that had replaced the phone, a small device the size of your thumb, with a single button on it. Matt pressed said button and the device sprung open, the small rectangle split in two and expanded to form a larger rectangle the size of his palm, stretched between the two pieces was a sheet of Flexypli a unique type of plastic that was as soft as silk and just as flexible when not charged with electricity and then as hard as steel when it was. Damn stuff was used in anything and everything from electronics to military uniforms.

And just like shrappy had said it started beeping in a distinct code, he listened to it, tapping with the code, like some ancient morse code operator as he translated the code into something he could understand.

“It would seem as though the device is not recognizing the R.A.M. at all,”  he said, bringing up the white swisstool to the edge of the vidcom and cracked the case sliding a small hooked blade into a slot he pulled slightly, and feeling the latch give way he popped the top off, revealing the miniscule guts of the device.

A single chip with about twelve different colored wires coming off of it, and one rechargeable battery.  He swapped to a different tool, this one was almost like a needle, with a display at the end of it, feeding back a zoomed in image of what was going on near its tip.  He brought the pick close to the chip, checking the connections one by one until he found the issue.

“This right here is the issue,”  he said, holding the swisstool as steadily as possible and moving aside to allow shrappy to see.

“What exactly is wrong with it?”  he asked, his terror hawk quivered as his head bobbed with annoyance, Matt almost stopped to admire how the nearly two foot tall mohawk defied gravity, a total spit in newton’s law’s face.

Almost.

“The chip is slightly dislodged, all I have to do is remove it and put it back on.”

“Ok, well do it.”  he said, clearly annoyed.

“Well I am going to tell you this will cost you 49.99 credits.”  Matt said, bracing himself for the backlash that was undoubtedly about to come his way.

“WHAT!”  shrappy shouted, his noise and racket causing several other customers to jump. “That's robbery! All you have to do is take a chip off and put it back on and you are going to charge me that much? I'll do it myself!”

“Ok, that is fine, but please note that any work done on the device has to be done by a trained Volcros tech,”  Matt said with a malicious smile, this one more real than it had been a while. “If it is not then your warranty will be null and void, meaning we will not work on it in the future and we will not take it as a trade in.”

Shrappy chewed that over for a minute, the price for a new phone would be four times higher if he didn't have the previous model to trade in, Matt could almost see the gears turning in that head of his.

“Fine.”  he snapped and pressed his thumb to the paypad, authorizing the transaction. Once the funds had gone through Matt used a small tool to pop off the ram chip that was the issue in the array and place it back on, it took less than two seconds, before closing it up and handing it back to the man, who started the device up with no problems.  And who quickly turned away and walked while muttering something about robbery and how much he hated corporations.

“Have a nice day.”  Matt called out behind him, all smiles, which earned a small cute chuckle from Monica.

The next customer came up in line. “Hello Matthew,” the elderly lady said with a smile, and for the first time today Matt actually smiled with a genuine smile, which caused Monica to pause in what she was doing and stare at him, she probably would have stayed like that all day absorbed by that smile if her customer had not coughed slightly to get her attention, and she blushed turning back to her device quickly apologizing to the customer for her being distracted, thankful that Matt was busy talking to the elderly woman and had not seen her stare.

“Hello Mrs. Jully how are you doing today?”  he asked.

“Quite well Matthew, do you think you can help me?”  she asked, her white hair up in a bun, and a smile on her face as she produced a device much like shrappy’s, only several years older.

“What is wrong with it this time?”  he asked with a smile.

“I dropped it in the sink.”  she said shaking her head.

“You know if you keep breaking this thing I am going to start to think you do it just to come in to see me.”  he laughed and she joined him, even Monica smiled from the warmth of it.

“Oh you know me too well Matthew” she laughed.

“Ok, lets see what we can do about this shall we?”  he said, cracking the case on the older Vidcom.

***

Matt sighed, pulling off the work uniform he threw it into the work basket, it would be washed and returned to his locker for the next shift, which would not be until three days from now.  He had a good schedule, four days on, three of which were ten hour endeavours and the last was an eight hour shift, and then three days off.

It was nice.

He grabbed his items he had deposited there before work and closed his locker, almost running into Monica as he turned to go.

“Sorry.”  he said, she had like him shed the work clothes and was currently wearing some standard street clothes, which consisted of a short sleeve tight fitting v neck hoodie and a skirt, and thigh high boots.

“It's fine,”  she said, shuffling slightly, a small blush creeping in on her cheeks. “Hey matt?”  she asked, trying her damndest not to let the quiver she was feeling show in her voice or demeanor.

“Whats up?”  he asked as he pulled on his jacket.

“Me and some friends started playing this new Vrmmo, it's called Dragon Fantasy Online, and I have a guest pass...”  she trailed off.

“Thanks,”  he smiled, he had some sneaking suspicions that she might like him, but he had been wrong before…”I am not a big fan of vrmmos however.”  he said, he could almost see her deflate.

“Oh, uh...”

“But I wouldn't mind hanging out with you at some time,”  he said, and like a flower that had wilted finally receiving water she perked right back up.

“Ok! That sounds cool!”  she smiled. “What days do you have off?”

“Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.”

“Hmm, how does Saturday sound?”  she said, and once they had agreed on a time they swapped Vidcom serials, and Matt walked out a smile on his face, completely unaware that behind him in the work room that he had just been in another woman materialised from her hiding spot around the corner.

Christa was her name, and she walked right over to Monica and gave the other a congratulatory high five as they started chatting in low happy consperital voices about the events that had just transpired...