Johan

Johan Weissmann’s day had been going poorly. First, some absolute fuckin’ moron had come in looking for some R-4 Augs, as if a small-time Cyberdoc like him could stock them, and then some crazy chick had come in asking to have an OS-backed fucking Certification implanted.

Of fucking course he said yes, like the Machine-damned moron he was, this was the chance of a lifetime! No one can say they've worked with fucking government-backed tech down here! It hardly fuckin’ existed in the first place.

Then, in the middle of the motherfuckin’ operation, one of his regulars comes in, actin’ all casual. Then he looks at the chick laying there for a half second, and he fuckin’ books it. Johan had to fuckin’ call him in the middle of rippin’ into this chick's back to ask him what got him all fuckin’ afraid.

Turns out, he'd been operating on the motherfucking, Machine-damned, leader of the Riders of Revolution. If he fucked this up, those batshit fanatics would fucking crucify him!

And to make it worse, the chick didn't even look like she wanted to be here! She was getting just about the only escape ticket out of this hellhole, and she looked like she was going to kick his ass over it!

No! This was not the time for anger or fear. He needed to be calm, collected, and ready to collect his fat fuckin’ check.

This was the first time he was going to be working on someone Powered, and wasn’t that a shock, so he needed to be more careful than normal. Not because they were fragile, but because of his lack of experience. Theoretically, it shouldn’t be too different as long as he didn’t fuck anything up, but the nanite swarm that made up the System could interfere with his tools if he made a mistake.

Hah, it should figure that the only time he would see the so-called “Savior of Humanity” would be while working on someone else. The System that scorned him. That abandoned almost everyone in this city to the whims of Mana with no protection. Even still, he couldn’t bring himself to hate it. To an engineer like Johan, the System was too much of a technical marvel to actually despise.

It was the culmination of the very best artificers that the Astexians could offer, and the best engineers that humanity could find. The first piece of magitech ever created, and the magnum opus of the human species. The self-replicating nanite swarm was created by humanity, and it was imprinted with every spellform and enchantment known by the Astexians.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Powers” were not a random magical gift that you were born with, but a combination of spellforms and enchantments that the System thinks will best suit you as you grow. The System just packaged them in an easy-to-digest and use package while it handled the heavy lifting behind the scenes. That was what Classes were, too. They were the amount of energy that the System allowed you to take from its Mana Well.

Without the System, most everyone would be dead by now. Mana played hell with human bodies, ya know, given that it was from a different universe an’ all. The System allowed a gradual adaptation to Mana in those it inhabited and genetically engineered its hosts to fully take advantage of the newfound energy that now encompassed our universe.

Johan, personally, thought it was ridiculous to give that level of power to a machine, but supposedly the turbo wizards on the other side of the Astral had put a [Geas] on the system. It was completely unable to harm humanity, or them, and was tasked only to help as best as it could with the continued survival of the race.

Of course, that begged the question, why did criminal Powers exist? Why did Mythic Powers? That was because of one simple fact, Mana was creative energy manifest, it had a will, and it hated to be constrained. To design a machine, the Machine, that could essentially act as a super spell caster with complete control over Mana? Well, that was impossible. The System required a degree of freedom to let Mana be itself and to let it act on all of its different impulses. If they hadn’t done that, eventually the Mana would have gotten too chaotic and fried everything.

Damn, he let himself get distracted for a moment! No time for that, there are credits to be made! Johan grabbed his scalpel and got to work. He needed to implant the Certification, a small chip that system scanners read, in the base of her spine. It was essentially the heart of the nanites, of course, they could set their hub anywhere in the body, but it chose there for whatever reason. Somethin’ about energy flow or something.

Aaaand, done. This Aug was one of the easiest, though he had never done it before, you just set the chip down on the nanite hub and let them integrate it into their data. All he needed to do now was stitch her up and wait for her to pay him.

This was so much easier than his other jobs. Do you know how hard it is to install a cybernetic eye, let alone make one? The optic nerves were real fiddly, ya know? The brain can’t exactly translate a bunch of binary either, so the eye itself needs to translate the data it sees into an image, do that quick enough that there is no noticeable latency, and then send that data in a way the brain can understand!

Installing one is a nightmare, but engineering one is so much worse. The first time he did it, the guy he installed it in saw everything upside down. Turns out, the brain inverts the image our eyes receive. And then the guy got all mad at him! Like Johan was just supposed to know that!

Oh, look at that, she’s waking up!

“You feelin’ alright, ma’am? Any pain?”

“No. Here are your credits.” She said shortly and moved to leave.

“Are ya sure you're ready to go already?” Johan asked, slightly concerned. Mostly about himself, if her fanatics learned about this… he shivered slightly.

“I can take care of myself.” She said icily.

“I’m sure ya can, ma’am! Make sure to come back if ya need any other Augs!”

The look she sent him, Machine save him, he thought he would die right there. Apparently, she was not a fan of Augs! No wonder she didn’t want to be here.