by Aies Jay
-Yes.
I hear Nicla sob but the doc stays cool.
-Listen, Jeremy. What did they do to you?
I swallow again, get another wave onslaught of mango that’s a little easier to handle than the first and then croak
-Anti-anti-rejects.
I’m coming about now. As I do, I realize I’m not sure I want to because it feels like I really shouldn’t be. Seizer suddenly curses softly and Nicla asks him
-What? What the fuck is that?
-I’ve only read about it. It’s a form of anti-reject antidote. It’s med history… An extremely rare mutation makes less than one in a million allergic to the early anti-rejects, way back in the beginning of the cybernetic era, just after the Exodus. If patients started showing signs of allergy, you put them under again, shot them up with it and then removed the hardware or gave them an alternative to the more common rejects, expensive as hell, depending on who they were and so on. New anti-rejects have been developed to dodge that allergic reaction since long and now that’s the only ones used.
-But that was over a thousand years ago…
-I guess the antidote formula is still kept on hand at some laboratories but it was nasty stuff, not only killing off the anti-rejects but also kick starting the immune system to boot the cybernetics out, starting up the healing as fast as possible in the most violent way. They must have boosted it somehow, though. This explains his damages. Jeremy?
I swallow again.
-Where’s Teeth?
-Jeremy, listen. All your cybernetics went haywire. You’re blind and it’s a miracle you’re even alive. If Nicla had come back a moment later, we wouldn’t be talking.
I realize he avoided my question about Teeth. He’s dead, then.
-Teeth… what was his real name?
-His name is Richard Yamada.
Nicla says, squeezing my hand. I make a small
-Go figure.
She said “is”. He’s not dead then? I’m confused as hell. The thought of him spurs another and I suddenly realize we’re on the clock here. If I’m alive I’m in a burning damn hurry. I flail my hand until someone grabs it.
-Doc? Doc, you’ve got to fix me. Hook me up, they’re brooming the evidence as we talk, we have to hurry.
-Jeremy, listen to me. You’re very close to dying. It’s a miracle you’re breathing at all. There’s no fixing you, no hooking you up. There’s surviving, living at best, after a lot of therapy and I can’t even promise that.
He’s talking to me in a firm, calm voice, as if he thinks I don’t understand how bad the damages are. I do, though. I’m just not asking him for what he thinks I am. I fight to talk clearer and shake my head at where his voice is coming from.
-Please, doc. Fix me up. I don’t need to live. I just need to survive the fuckers that murdered my son.
-There is no fixing you. Your hardware left your body, all of it. It tore your brain and ripped your eyeballs. Your nervous system is so raw I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
I almost start crying through my broken eyes.
-Please, doc. I know you can. You’re a Luna 3 doc, you’ve operated on S2 for years, probably all hacker stuff. If there’s some way, any way, you’d know it. I don’t care if it’s blackware. I don’t care if the procedure will burn what’s left of me. If there’s a way, do it. Please.
He hesitates before saying
-Oath says do no harm. You’ll die.
-So did Lychee.
Nicla sobs a
-Please, doc. I’ve seen your work. You can do it.
-No. This is insane.
-Insane? Look at him. We passed insane quite a while ago.
-I got creds, doc. As many as it takes.
I muster, trying to reach for him where his voice is coming from. I feel his hand again, warm and dry, and I grip it as hard as I can.
-Jeremy, this has nothing to do with creds. Your nervous system is ripped up, don’t you understand that?
-I’m begging you, doc. This is the plea of a dying man. Hook me up. I can’t beat them IRL. I’m a hacker. I need the System.
His voice gets serious and frustrated.
-Anything I try hooking up to your brain will fry you. It’s a question of time, no more. This will be the thing that kills you.
-I just need to live long enough to get them. If I don’t get them, I’m already dead. Hook me up or unplug me. If you’re not hooking me up, fuck all this. I’m serious, doc. You don’t hook me up, you might as well quit on me altogether right now.
The silence that fills the room is so thick I almost think they’ve both left me. I still feel their hands in mine, though. The doc takes an odd breath and suddenly says
-Well… there is one thing I’ve been kind of itching to try. And if you’re sure…
-Whatever it is, I’m sure. Hook me up.
Another moment passes, then he says
-Nurse, prep for surgery. Lock up the shop and make a final round on the patients, this will take a while indeed, if we even make it. I need another pair of hands for this one. Scrub up, Miss Geisha.
Nicla squeezes my hand and then leaves us. I hear running water and quick feet moving about. Seizer bends down to me and speaks in a low voice.
-It’s a new kind of bioware. My own design. It’s as close as you’ll ever get to being the Ghost without dying. But I haven’t tried it out yet. It’s not safe, not by far. It may fry you totally. This is the stuff we don’t even try out on guinea pigs for another five years of development. You may not even survive the surgery. You may veg out completely. I’m just telling you for informed consent.
I just nod and repeat
-Hook me up.
The H nurse starts prepping me as he talks. Her hands wipe me and I feel something cold enter one of the cords, no, hoses, in me, and entering my blood stream. I’m going completely numb again. The doc’s voice is now all practicality again.
-I’m going to make neural openings along your spine, like jacks. Inside your medulla oblongata I’m putting the main control, like a converter, since it’s ruined anyway. Consider it a full Gate, but it’s bioware only. The jacks in your spine will be, too. I’m basically turning your neural network into an adapter to hook up directly to the System with your brain. You won’t need a Gate after this. Your brain is your Gate. You won’t even see the Cryptation, only info. I’m also going to do a triple polish on your nerves so you can move about again but this is seriously immoral and unethical, but if I don’t you’ll have no motor functions. It’s unethical because when that kind of polish wears off it will leave the nerves damaged and raw. You’ll have the shakes for the rest of your life, but I’m not sure you’ll live long enough to experience that. I’m hooking up ocular bioware cameras directly onto your optical nerve, too, replacing your eyes fully, and a couple of more treats I’ll have explain later because we have to start operating right now.
I just nod. I’m not afraid anymore. This is the second worst case scenario, after all. It can’t get any worse than it already is except if we all die. It’s a very odd and liberating feeling, like free falling into the unknown. The H nurse pats my arm and says
-Don’t be afraid. We will take care of you, no matter what happens.
I suddenly realize why I’ve thought she’s so creepy. She’s too human, apart from that weird skin of hers and not moving enough. She’s so human I almost think she is one, only visually it doesn’t make sense. The last thing I feel is her putting down a mask over my face and her voice reminds me of my mother.
-Deep breaths, Mister Star. See you soon.
The world disappears again and if this is the last I sense of it, good riddance. If not, I’m avenging my son. And it will be the last thing I do.
cyborg
I’ve drifted in and out of consciousness, I have no idea for how long. I have brief memory flashes of being nursed, by the H model as well as by Nicla, and the doc checking me, mumbling about me being alive. The pain is either kept at bay by heavy drug
s or my nervous system is fucked forever because I don’t feel a thing from the surgery. My throat is dry and my stomach is going from roaring to dull aches. I think I heard the doc say the H nurses name but I forgot. I remember being told to move my toes and fingers and my confusion over why that’s so fucking amazing when I heard their reactions when I did. Doc told me not to use the ware yet. We’ll just see about that when I get back to being able to think. I’ll have him know that when the Cherry Bomb hit the market and people said it had been released pre-testing I was one of the kids who
It’s very annoying to clock out mid-sentence.
Waking up fully is confusing at best. Starting with my eyes, my vision is better than ever. I see more colours, more details, everything is so much more sharp and vivid than it was before. The cameras in my eye sockets must be something else. There’s no pain, but on the other hand, I have no proper feeling in my body either. I can move my limbs, but I can’t feel them. What I can feel though, is the machines monitoring me. I can sense the heart monitor and the little apparatus giving me dripped nutrition. I can feel their insides, what’s making them work and tick, I can touch the very electricity running through them as easy as feeling the heart beat on another living being by touching their pulse. But there’s way, way more than that. I can sense the System. I don’t hook up, I just enter it, find my Domain easier than finding the only pair of red socks in a black drawer full of white ones and just slip in. Someone’s tried to break in, I can see the failed attempts at the passwords like shattered pieces of glass on the ocean floor and I can’t access my mail or my com link. I can see my Avatar, the Lionfish, waiting for me like a living transporter, a cybernetic exoskeleton armour. I look at it, and start looking for flaws, analysing and turning it in my mind’s eye and start equipping it with all my little programs and bugs I have in my Domain by making them into fish scales and attaching them to him. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before. As I work I suddenly notice a little blinking thing, like a small pilot fish swimming around in my Domain and I reach for it, finding it’s a mail. I immediately catch it, finding it’s a new route to it, and it’s connected to the com link, only there is no com link, it’s all bioware in my head. I could probably dictate mail now, maybe even think it. I open the envelope and a picture of a tiny GummyBear leaps out, gesturing at me as he talks.
“THEY’RE CLEANING UP OLD MAN AND I’M NEXT SO FUCK THIS I’M GOING DEEP YOU NEED TO TALK TO THE 0v3rl0rd FOR THIS ONE”
When he’s done he just stands there. I look at the little Avatar and stretch out for him, beyond my Domain and into the System but I can’t find him. Did they kill him or is he ducking? 0v3rl0rd. So that’s the name of the President. Nicla’s voice distracts me from the System and I blink an eye to click onto the IRL channel on my left eye. She’s looking worried yet in wonder. I can almost feel her jacks, her bioware, like an animal would smell another one in heat. She touches my cheek.
-Lionfish. How do you feel?
I swallow.
-Hungry. Thirsty. Electric.
The doctor comes in and smiles when he sees me. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him smile.
-Well, look at you. Try to sit up, then stand. Slowly.
I do as I’m told, turning off the System, or rather putting it on hold, like floating on a silent stream, not swimming, not fighting the current. Both my eyes turn to the IRL channel. Sitting up feels odd, I still can’t feel my limbs but I can move them fairly freely.
-How do you feel?
the doc asks.
-Numb. No sensation at all.
-Sit still.
He pokes and prods me, handing me his coffee cup and what I assume is a cold metal basin, asking if I feel temperatures or any pain at all. All I feel is the pressure of the touch, and I tell him as we go. As he pinches me harder, the pressure doesn’t become pain. He nods.
-Still better than I thought. Your ability to sense hot and cold may return or maybe not. The pain is very likely to return but no guarantees on that either. Anyway, you need to be careful. Not being able to feel pain can be very dangerous. Keep me posted.
-Sure.
-Stand up.
I get to my feet gingerly. I can feel the pressure of my weight on my legs and the touch of the floor but no more. I have bigger fish to fry right now, though.
-When can I hook up?
He raises an eyebrow at me.
-You already did, didn’t you?
-No. Well, yes. I’ve used the mini Gate and stretched into the System for… shit. I’m hooked up. Fully. I did it without even thinking.
-I told you. You don’t have a mini Gate or a QA, you don’t need a Gate. You are a Gate. It’s all bioware. There’s not a scrap of metal in you. Should you get another shot like the one you had it’ll make you nauseous at the very most.
-I don’t need to hook up at all?
He makes a small shrug.
-Maybe depending on what you do. This is unbroken territory. Try it, but give your wounds a moment to heal first.
I shake my head and start looking for my clothes. I’m dressed in one of those very humbling hospital gowns.
-I’m not sure I have a moment.
-Then give it what you can. Take your pain killers in time and don’t go too hard on your body, at the very least. You’re still very fresh out of surgery and you really shouldn’t even be up already. Your body took beautifully to the new ware, a lot better than I expected, I admit that, but there are still no guarantees whatsoever.
He hands me two pill bottles.
-Two of the red ones three times a day, two of the little white ones every four hours. The white ones are painkillers, so if the pain gets too much you can take an extra one but only one. First dose in… nurse?
-Two hours and twenty-one minutes.
the H model smiles, answering his question. I nod and accept them, realizing I have no pockets to put them in.
-Sure.
-I mean that. That’s strong stuff.
-Thank you. Um, where are my clothes?
-We had to cut them off you.
Nicla says. I swallow at the thought of what I must have looked like when she found me. She stayed frosty. She saved me just as much as the doc did. As I blink and my eyes close to the hardware world, my vision gets replaced with the System. It’s more beautiful than I ever saw it. When I open them it’s the hardware world again. I’m switching channels, literally in the blink of an eye.
-What am I using for software, doc?
-Light and sound. Cellular DNA at the very bottom layer but mostly light and sound.
As I accept the dark blue pants Nicla hands me I stop dead at his words. What the hell did he just say?
-You’re shitting me?
-I can get all technical about it if you like. But it’ll take more than a couple of hours. The fast version is that the ones and zeroes are now frequencies of light and soundwaves. Try some walking.
I get the pants on me with Nicla’s help and then wobble just a little but then find my footing. It’s odd to walk without any sensation but the pressure in your feet and legs. I can hear and actually feel the rest of the life monitors in here behind the curtain that gives me a small piece of privacy. Wondering how many patients he has at a time I suddenly remember.
-Is Teeth alive?
The doc nods.
-Barely. And he’s not out of the woods yet by far. That man survived on willpower alone. That, and us getting there so fast.
I stand quietly a little accepting and drinking mango juice from the H nurse. She’s not creepy anymore to me. She’s just beautiful. I look at the three of them, gratefully and humbled.
-Thank you. I don’t know how to repay you. Either of you.
Nicla and the H nurse smiles. The doc looks at me solemnly and answers promptly.
-Take notes and report in a mail how the new implants in you works.
He adds after a moment
-And get these child-killers.
I nod back.
-I will.
Nicla hands me a dark shirt, socks and black posh shoes. I realize I’ve been given either hand me downs from the doc or something she picked up in the closest Buy and Trade and that is what’ll have to do for a while now. I can’t go home again. Ever. They may have the place staked, either to find any allies of mine or they may have torched the place. I can’t risk it either way. So be it, then. As I walk out of the little curtain room of mine I see the recovery room. It’s smaller than I thought, but he’s only one doc and one nurse, that’s a pretty small clinic. The other beds looks the same as mine, beeping machines behind curtains. He seems to have no more than six patients at a time. The room is substantially cleaner than the front room and it smells only of pure fluids.
-Which one is Teeth?
-That one. I was going to put him in the med pod but I’m not done tinkering with it yet. But when it’s done it will be like a full H model nurse, only in the shape of a medical pod.
-Awesome.
I mumble, walking up to the bed he pointed at and drawing the curtain. The wreckage of a man in the bed, full of hoses and hooked up to machines, with a breathing apparatus in him, only vaguely looks like Teeth. His bandages are almost seeping with blood and he has four bags of fluids dripping into him through tubes. I realize I never did pay him. He never brought it up again. I walk up to him and softly touch his shoulder.
-How long has he been like this?
I ask. The doc kills a sigh.
-You’ve been out for three days since your surgery, almost four days in all. I was waiting for him to become stable enough to operate on when Nicla called about you. Then you came in and we had to start the surgery right away, or you would have been brain dead, it was more than critical. Then we had to do the new surgery immediately, too, since you insisted… I couldn’t risk have any of your neural ends close up on me. When we were done with you, he was stable but after trying to fix him up, there’s still no change.
Three days from my last surgery and I’m already standing up? He is good, better than good. He probably hasn’t slept at all in that time days either. He sure as hell doesn’t look like it, at least.