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With a barely audible click, I slid the last connector into place. After weeks with no progress the stupid thing was working again. Spending a little extra on an official repair kit had been worth it. Even with all my tools I could only go so far with the, sometimes literal, garbage they sold at the market.

As the screen lit up I leaned back and admired my work. Brain implants were tricky shit at the best of times. And after a bullet went through said brain definitely wasn’t the best time. But luckily I didn’t have to worry about any grey matter attached to the machinery. The single enhanced eye and the fancy little computer that ran it were held in place by a few clamps on my desk. The connections that were normally attached nerves and brain were instead wired into my computer.

While the implant rebooted and fed its data to the computer I got up and gathered the rest of the augments. Seven pieces of cybernetics formerly belonging to one Simon Northridge. I had learned surprisingly little about him despite my efforts. His implants toed an annoying line between cheap because they were crap and cheap because they were actually good.

Not enough computing power to store any excess files so there were barely any sensors or logs from sensors. Deliberately because he’d gotten models that didn’t have subscriptions trading data for updates. No easy access to the onboard computers. Not because they had security features but because the manufacturers didn’t want people able to fix or personalise anything. Crap gear with downsides that were upsides.

Simon had been a smart fellow. Not smart enough, since he was dead, but there wasn’t a lot of outsmarting to be done against a bullet. And it showed in the data I had pulled so far. I always liked to work my way up and leave the head for last. So I had started with the replacement joints. An ankle in his left leg and knee in his right.

That was fucking weird. Ankle replacements? Sure. Some people liked those for running and jumping higher. Knee replacements were obvious, that entire joint was a shitshow. But who the hell replaces one in each leg? Someone with a very specific unhealthy routine apparently. Simon had worked in a warehouse and always walked the same routes, lifted the same way and stressed the same joints. Implants like that were sold in pairs but when you were lifting them out of the crates before they ever got to a store that didn’t matter. And he was a smart fellow. He knew well enough not to take anything someone could be bothered to go looking for.

I’d found records once I knew where to look that told me he’d worked in that same warehouse for thirty years. It had been owned by three different companies in that time. They came and went but the tracks he wore into the floor, walking the same path each day, only got deeper.

My own legs had long been replaced and not because my joints were failing. I had the chance to get better ones so I took it. Once you started making some connections how much actual money you had mattered less. I had never been rich and if the bank ever took a look at my accounts they’d probably think I was barely scraping by. But I could trade favours for gear that I’d never be able to buy. Being able to get a job done was more valuable than cash and contacts meant more than friendships.

Moving on, there was all the gut garbage that I didn’t care for. Augments to the liver and kidneys and some machine on the stomach that I had to throw out because no amount of cleaning could get the smell off. The coroners on TV could never get enough of these. All sorts of data to help them determine cause of death, figure out if there’d been foul play and point a finger at whoever had done it.

But I figured I had a pretty good idea of what caused his death and it was a lot better for my health to wonder about who and why. And I didn’t have the degrees I needed to figure out what he ate based on what molecules his liver processed anyway. Except the ethanol, but I didn’t need that to tell me someone drank.

It all told me very little about who he was as a person. And that’s what I cared about. Some other guy a thousand years in the future could unearth Simon’s house and scrape the insides of the tins to see what he ate. I wanted to know who he was. What he liked. The ways he mattered. And the second to last implant told me a whole lot more about that.

A highly modified, but not actually artificial, larynx. I had thought of his augments as cheap before but that had been a whole different story. Very fancy work and official too. Serial number etched in and everything. A delicate little computer that kept track of all it could to make sure things were working properly.

Simon Northridge had known how to sing. Pretty well at that. The computer tracked the sounds produced by the still flesh vocal chords and showed he could hold a tune. And he’d cared enough about being able to do it properly that he’d paid a huge amount to have his throat fixed while keeping as much flesh and blood as possible so it would still be him doing the singing and not a synthesised voice.

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I had no idea what had damaged his voice to make it need fixing and I didn’t care too much. I had the really important info. Simon loved singing. And since he mostly kept to himself except for a few drinking buddies and work colleagues it seemed he sang for himself.

I wouldn’t have his implants for much longer. Once I was done looking over the eye the whole lot would be traded away. But this little piece of information would stay with me. I didn’t know if that was something he ever wanted shared. And if it wasn't, hopefully he’d forgive me. It wasn’t like my little collection would last forever. Eventually it would all be forgotten.

For now though there was a little piece of his story that had been dug back up and I liked to think most people would appreciate someone putting a little effort into knowing who they were. His drinking buddies would probably have a toast for him and tell stories, but sometimes there were things the dead could tell you that the living never would.

I assembled the pieces on my desk around the eye that was still being processed. That part always took way too much time. There was no standardisation between companies so if I wanted to talk to a new implant I had to test every protocol to see if it responded. These parts together were probably good enough to exchange for some upgrades so I’d be able to get the work done faster in the future.

While I was waiting I spun my chair to face the rest of the room and stretched. I had been prepared to go at this all night but it ended up only taking a few hours to get the connections working. There was some sort of science to it but I didn’t know how any of that worked. I just plugged things into each other and watched the output for a reaction. There was only one cable that actually mattered. The rest just needed to be tricked into thinking they were connected to a person.

You didn’t have to be a genius to do it. But you did have to be careful and determined. Plenty of people were one or the other but not many were both. And a lot of the people that were weren’t interested in this kind of thing so I got the job.

While I liked to complain about it, the deal I had wasn’t so bad. I got told where the body should be and what I had to bring back. Then I got paid for it and anything extra they had on them was mine. I didn’t even have to go grave robbing or dumpster diving. The Worms and Rats of the world could handle that. Only good clean autopsies for the Vulture.

There had been a bit less work recently and it was starting to show in my room. Some of the shelves were looking pretty bare. A lot of the spare parts I had left were low level stuff that wouldn’t get me much. The sort of thing that was better off getting sold than bartered. And that was pretty bad. During times like these I had to get less picky about what I accepted. It was always better when I could come looking for jobs I liked the sound of rather than avoiding only those I really didn’t like.

After a few minutes of cursing my luck, a ping pulled me back to the desk. The program had found a match. For an operating system from a completely different company than the one that made the implant. About par for the course when you were working with stuff you might not technically own. It wasn’t like the companies were in any position to complain. The only reason their tech could be interchanged so easily was because they stole from each other more than anybody else did.

With the last barrier finally out of the way I quickly accessed the eyes folders. Most optical implants only replaced the eye itself. But this one had a whole computer attached which meant one of two things. Either an eye that could see and record beyond the visual range and needed an implant so the brain could understand what it was seeing, or something with a wireless connection to let people browse the internet with their mind. The eye would act as a screen and interface to show websites and visualise local networks.

Seeing as the implant was still here it was almost certainly not a recorder. If Simon had a video of something he wasn’t supposed to see it would have been taken. Since he had only been dead and the desecrating hadn’t happened till I got there it had to be a network optic. Which probably meant Simon tried to access something he wasn’t supposed to and paid the price. The poor man probably hadn’t even known. Just tried to ping some machine he walked past that threw up warning signs to someone with an itchy trigger finger.

I couldn’t help smiling a little with excitement as I opened a window to show me the eyes view with its overlays. And stopped smiling at what I saw. A mess of icons all crammed to the side so they wouldn’t block vision. Files, folders, apps and more just strewn about. Deliberate chaos I could work with. If someone made a mess to hide something it told me how much they cared about that thing. But a mess because someone couldn’t be bothered just told me they were lazy and disorganised.

With very little hope I looked for the two icons that represented the optics official log app and its default file directory. The first opened to reveal a few red error messages. The app was complaining about features being disabled and had warnings about problems caused by turning off logs and automatic updates. Sad but not unexpected. Those things got more and more demanding as time went on and most people found a way to turn off alerts. I rarely got logs from implants people had direct control over.

The second opened to reveal an even worse mess than the desktop. In fact I saw a folder there labelled ‘old desktop’. It looked like whenever his vision got too crowded Simon just grabbed everything and threw it in here, then he started again.

I leaned back and rubbed my eyes with a sigh. I wanted to know a little about this life. What he was like and if he had an interesting story to tell. It looked like if I wanted one I would have to do the other and that was not happening.

“Come on Simon. Couldn’t you have worked with me here,” I muttered.

And then, as if fortune were smiling at me, my own optics popped up a little alert. A message from The Dog. And that meant another body to retrieve. Hopefully the next guy would be a little more forthcoming.