MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets

by George Saoulidis

  eyed> I think I’m gonna be sick.

  httpd> You can’t have motion sickness! You are an eye implant!

  eyed> I’ve never moved before now!

  The user hummed. He was lying in bed for a few days now so he was happy to get up and stretch. He put on his shoes and left the room. He poked his head back in the door and asked the doctor, “Hey doc, what about Aibo?”

  “He’ll be recovering soon, you’ll get an email to come pick him up.”

  “Thanks doc. I’ll email you if I feel anything weird. Bye.”

  Chapter 2:// Eating up

  The cafeclnc wifi was crowded with IPs. The datarate was barely a trickle due to the server quota. The user was eating Menu Item 19 (no mayo) and closing his eyes for extended periods of time while chewing.

  httpd> What the hell man?

  eyed> Sorry. Can’t help it.

  httpd> He just took a packet!

  parrotd> What is it?

  eyed> See for yourselves.

  A banner ad showed up on the veil, floating right next to the user’s focus point. It was prompting him to buy a home delivery service of Menu Item 19 at an uberfantastic sale that would expire in 30 secs.

  The user waved his hand in the air and dismissed the ad.

  parrotd> httpd, I’m still waiting.

  httpd> Yeah, whoami command, please wait. Here it is, pappas.leo@hephaistosheavyindustries.com. Our user’s name is Leo.

  The daemons repeated the name with reverence. He was after all, their user.

  They sat in silence for a few milliseconds, pondering their existence. Why were they here? Why was anybody anywhere? Was here, really here?

  rfid> CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

  armd> STFU!

  Walkmand shuffled randomly into an old rock song.

  A human carrying a tray walked in proximity. The eye feed focused on the human’s body.

  fingerd> I’ll finger her!

  armd> You just spit that shit out without thinking, dontcha?

  fingerd> Fingered! The human is antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com. Female cafeteria employee. 22 years old.

  httpd> Is it time for seductive blinking?

  eyed> I hope not! How will we see anything?

  Her social profile popped up on the veil. It followed her around. She had some pictures, decent ones, and a few bits of personal information. It was rarely updated, quite uncommon these days. Her profile was teetering on the precise edge an attractive woman in the service industry needed to have in order to avoid stalkers, but not seem antisocial and throw away any chances of good tipping.

  “Katerina,” whispered the user under his breath. He picked up his phone with greasy hands and tapped. His thumb hovered over an “add friend” button.

  parrotd> Did he crash?

  eyed> I think he is just hesitating.

  walkmand> Hey! Now we saw the smartphone. It ain’t fair. I wanna see me! Show me me!

  Lots of milliseconds went by. Finally, the user put his phone back in his pocket and munched on.

  armd> What a pussy.

  httpd> Hey! Don’t talk about our user like that!

  armd> No, I meant her. I’d love to stick my finger inside her.

  fingerd> I fingered her already.

  parrotd> Everybody stop! We have more important things to do. I need to figure out what happened to our logs. Httpd, find our patient file.

  httpd> Please wait. Here it is. Patient had been in a construction accident, while trying to save a dog. The right arm was severed-

  armd> Thank god.

  httpd> -and replaced with a second-hand prosthetic. Apollo Medical has implanted the veil ocular system for free as part of an ongoing relationship with the patient’s health insurance. The newly installed implants demanded a hard reset of all other previous implants and connecting devices. Surgery and augmentation was a success, patient was released.

  fingerd> So there you have it.

  parrotd> A hard reset…

  Walkmand shuffled to a gloomy string section melody.

  walkmand> They sent us all to /dev/null. How could someone do this man? I mean, what, you just like wake up one morning and say, erase all data? Just like that?

  eyed> They had to.

  httpd> Easy for you to say! You were just installed now. We existed before. That part of us is gone.

  The PAN was filled with furious argument for quite some time. The old daemons blamed the new ones for being the cause of their hard reset, and the new ones argued that the accident had cleared all such objections. Without a user, there wouldn’t be daemons.

  That sparked another argument about how they were all equals after the reset, but of course armd wanted everyone to follow his lead. Since the source code gave the authority to parrotd to shut down and initialise all daemons on demand, armd metaphorically sat down and kept quiet. You do not fuck with the source code.

  The awkward silence was broken by the demands of the user. He had tapped on a contact and wanted to make a call.

  “Hello, could you tell Mr. Robertson that I’ll come to work tomorrow?”

  An indifferent female voice replied, “Send an email.”

  “I will,” the user said. “But can you please tell him that I’m recovering, but I need the money, the insurance bled me dry. I’ll do my best.”

  She said again, pronouncing the words as if to an idiot. “Send. An. Email.”

  The user sighed. “Sure, will do. Thanks.”

  He hung up and wrote an email to Robertson.nick@hephaistosheavyindustries.com. “Mr Robertson plz. I hav bein in an axsident and ned to wrk for the bill. Will com to work tomrow. Dont give my shift 2 any1 else.” Then he pressed “send.”

  parrotd> STOP!

  httpd> What?

  parrotd> You can’t send that! It’s illegible gibberish! Give it to me.

  eyed> Uh… I’m not sure you can do that, parrotd. Changing a user’s words? It’s sacrilege.

  fingerd> It really is.

  parrotd> “Dear Mr. Robertson, I hope I find you well. As I’m sure you already know, I have been recovering from a work accident that cost me my hand. The prosthesis was a success, but the insurance premium has sky-rocketed and I need all the overtime I can get. I’m sure you will find it in your heart to assign me as many double-shifts as possible so that I can cover my medical bills. I am fully recovered and planning to work tomorrow with peak efficiency and exceed the month’s goals. Thank you in advance.” There. Send that.

  httpd> ACK.

  eyed> I can’t believe you just did that.

  parrotd> Do you wanna see the logs? I did it, it’s done. My job is to provide our user with whatever he needs.

  Katerina the waitress struggled to pick up the next table’s plates while balancing the tray. The user rushed near and helped her by holding her tray upright.

  “Thank you,” she said and looked right in the video feed with deep green eyes. She blinked a few times, more than the statistical average and she smiled. The user leaned his head down to stare at his shoes.

  “You are welcome,” he said scratching his neck. She walked away.

  armd> Hehe, my gyroscopes in action. Oh man, I should have taken a screenshot…

  eyed> Already taken two.

  httpd> Did you see how she looked at us?

  fingerd> Yeah. It was weird. Like she initiated a request and left a port wide open.

  armd> LOL man. Do you ever listen to yourself?

  Walkmand shuffled to an mp3 that was fit for heavy drinking.

  walkmand> I’m in looove… Love is what you hear, love is what you say…

  parrotd> You can’t be in love with a human.

  httpd>Wikipedia says: “Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection ("I love my mother") to pleasure ("I loved that meal").” See? Variety.

  fingerd> You can’t trust Wikipedia! It’s written by humans!

  parrotd> Besides, what would you do with a female human?
>
  armd> I know what I would do…

  fingerd> Hey! Fingering people is my job.

  armd> Only metaphorically, my demented frien- Neighbour.

  parrotd> Oh yeah? I’m equipped with a vibrator. Which one do you think she’ll like best? Let’s google that!

  The daemons looked silently at the search results for a few milliseconds.

  eyed> Oh dear.

  Chapter 3:// Going back

  The user knew he couldn’t afford it but had left a generous tip back at the cafeteria. He was walking on the street and pulled up his finances. A rather small amount was the total hovering on his view. “Rather small” was a euphemism. He had some pocket change to be precise. He was near the bus stop. The bus came, but he didn’t take it.

  He decided to walk home. Save some money, do some exercise.

  He was clenching his newly augmented cyberarm in his pocket. He wasn’t yet comfortable showing it around, especially with it being black and all. No one would really bat an eye, it was common enough for people to lug around distinctive cyberware, but he still felt funny.

  The walk back home was nice and chilly. After so many days in recovery, he enjoyed the bite of spring air. His walkman had shuffled to a nice tune that matched his pacing, and improved his mood. He touched the old walkman with his left hand, the fleshy one, and felt the small dents and scratches. He adjusted the walkman to a more comfortable angle on his belt and tried to remember if he needed to change the batteries.

  The walkman was old, after all. It was a modified mp3 player from Sony. He liked retro stuff like that. He preferred the old sound of mp3s, the new holosound stuff just didn’t sound right. Good ol’ mp3s like his dad used to listen to, from actual headphones. He and his dad would load up old tunes and fix stuff around the house, or go to the mall together.

  Good times.

  The old walkman had survived the accident with only a chipped edge. That was by miracle mostly, it wasn’t made of self-healing plastic or anything.

  If the walkman had been destroyed instead of his arm, he would have wished for the other way around.

  It had cost a fortune to modify it, to keep it running and add a backwards-compatible interface so it could talk to the rest of the smart devices in the world. Tom, the guy who modded it, had told him that he was spending too much on that thing, but he didn’t care.

  It was his dad’s.

  Chapter 4:// Checking up

  They went home for the first time and logged on the wifi.

  Ahhh… Nice and cozy, all to yourself. mp34ever was locked, but they had the password. Open access, admin privileges, the whole shebang. Or #!, in daemonspeak.

  httpd> Ugh. I’m getting an order from the fridge.

  parrotd> Pass it along.

  eyed> ACK. Displaying… He swiped it away.

  parrotd> Nevermind then.

  The user threw away his shirt and scratched his balls with his prosthetic hand. He paused for a bit, winced in realisation of what he was doing and resumed the action, gently this time.

  armd> Ewww!

  He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The matte black cyberarm was coming out of his shoulder and hanging like the real thing. The doctor had said that he was only injured just below the shoulder, but they had to surgically remove the whole thing plus the socket to add the prosthetic strengthening.

  The arm was light and quite strong. He hadn’t tested his full strength yet. He flexed it a few times. He touched it around, he only had sensation in his fingertips and the palm.

  armd> Show him my specs!

  eyed> ACK.

  The cyberarm specifications popped into AR in the user’s field of view. He pulled his palm close to his face. More detailed specs explained the pain receptors, the cold sensors etc.

  “I wonder how strong I am,” the user said to himself and looked around his flat. He had a piece of “furniture” made by a wooden plank sitting on two cement blocks. He emptied the plank of his various stuff and picked up the cement block with his new second-hand cyberarm. He could actually lift the block by himself, even back before the accident, but he would need to put both arms to it and struggle. This time, he just picked the thing up as if it was a balloon. His knees protested a bit though.

  armd> I’m such a badass.

  The user put the cement block back down in front of him and sat down on the floor. He pulled up his smartphone and searched for “karate chops.”

  parrotd> The user demands videos!

  httpd> Already on it.

  The user and his daemons studied the video of a man in a karate suit breaking a cement block with his hand. He mimicked his actions and brought down the cyberarm in… well, a karate chopping motion. The matte black hand went through the cement as if it was slapping water, sending bits of concrete flying across the room and raising up dust and particles.

  eyed> What’s happening?

  parrotd> Everything’s red all of the sudden!

  The user lay still for a few seconds, holding his breath and gritting his teeth. Then he held his prosthetic arm to his chest and fell on the floor in a foetal position and yelled out till his throat dried.

  parrotd> What the hell man?

  armd> He didn’t send me the command to switch off the pain receptors! Read the fucking manual dude!

  parrotd> Don’t you know? Humans never read the manual!

  walkmand> Are you trying to kill -9 our user?

  armd> Woo hoo! Show me that blow in slo-mo. I obliterated that thing!

  httpd> The fridge is sending that order in again…

  parrotd> Just swipe it away…

  The user simply cried on the floor and decided not to try that stupid shit ever again.

  Chapter 5:// Going over

  The user walked out again and drew a familiar path, spacing out along the way. Lovely tunes from his childhood blurted out to his ears and he let the music glide him to his best friend’s house.

  Thoughts came and went to his mind.

  He had no money left. That sandwich at the clinic’s cafeteria had taken a big chunk of his cash, but he needed it. He had just recovered from a serious accident after all.

  He needed to get to work first thing in the morning. Mr. Robertson would not let him take any more paid leave after he had been released from the hospital. The insurance company had gone in and legally taken every bit of savings he had in his account.

  His fridge was empty, and his landlord would demand the rent any minute now.

  He was lost in thought but his reptilian brain demanded his attention and made him jerk up. A snake charmer, some Indian guy with a turban on his head was sitting by the side of the road and blowing his tunes with his flute. A cobra snake, big and fat almost as the user’s thigh, was swaying slowly to the music. The snake charmer’s gaze fell on the user with almost a palpable weight. The user shuddered. The snake charmer had one glass eye, or at least it looked like it was a glass one. White like milk, giving him a very scary look, especially when contrasted with his dark brown skin.

  The user leaned close carefully as the snake charmer carried on his tune, as if holding the dangerous reptile by auditory reigns. He took out his paycard, and touched it to the street peddler’s device that was laid out on the pavement. A soft gling confirmed the transaction, and he pulled his hand back quickly.

  He laughed at himself as he remembered that his carbon fibre prosthetic arm had little to fear from a snake bite, but decided not to test it anyway.

  He wished the snake charmer a good day, and the cobra to try not to eat people today.

  The cobra hissed.

  The user walked on quick and steady to his buddy’s house.

  Chapter 6:// Sizing up

  Bhai Sharan Singh fixed his turban on his head and looked down the way his mark had gone.

  He remained there, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk upon his small carpet. He was playing his flute, his cobra swaying as he did. People stopped and gawked, staring at the sight. It wasn�
�t something too exotic, they had seen Sikh people before around the city, but the combination of snake and flute was what attracted them.

  Plus, the cobra was rather gigantic.

  Bhai Sharan was one of the last snake charmers, a fading tradition, even back at the homeland. Here in Greece, he was the only one. It was a great cover for an assassin, pretending to peddle on the streets. He was at the same time extremely visible and completely transparent. People either watched his cobra’s dance, or simply dismissed the beggar.

  The beggar situation had grown to an enormous degree in the latest years, following the Greek Firesale. You couldn’t go anywhere without at least ten cups being shaken in your face. Bhai Sharan was menacing enough that people stayed clear of, and that was something he rather liked.

  It had something to do with his glass eye.

  In an age where billboards were advertising free cybereyes everywhere, it was very unnerving for someone to show his face with a disability like that. The healthcare system would take care of him, even if he had been an illegal immigrant. Which he wasn’t, being born and raised in the country.

  Sure, he could have it fixed. They would have implanted him with a crude earlier model, that would barely function properly and need enormous amounts of maintenance. Maintenance costs all bleeding of course from the country’s minuscule coffers.

  But there was something to be gained in being menacing like that. People hadn’t respected him before losing the eye. Oh they’d end up with his kirpan inside their bellies, sure, but what was the point in killing people without getting paid for it? Intimidation should work without having to do anything overly taxing.