Bitstream

1.12

I push myself upright, slow, testing my limbs. The blade jutting from my forearm is a shock – massive, heavy – but I wield it easily. Strength like this shouldn't belong to someone my size, yet it does.

Maybe I was like those scavengers once, packing my body with so much tech that the line between flesh and machine blurred until it vanished entirely.

Don't know, and I'm too cold to care.

My gaze drifts to their bodies, settling on the woman. Her cut-off leather kutte draped over a white T-shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, skin inked in ugly things: werewolves, snakes, a clown with too many teeth. I strip her, leaving only the panties. Even I have standards. The shirt drags over my head, jeans clinging stubbornly as I shimmy them up one-handed, kutte limp until I shrug it into place. The boots put up a fight, the right one demanding an awkward kick and shuffle before it settles. Every motion is a negotiation, a struggle of dead nerves and muscle memory, my lifeless right arm swinging useless at my side.

It must be fried beyond saving. Getting it replaced or ripped out will mean finding a tech surgeon, and that won't come cheap. But maybe they can do more than just patch me up. Maybe they can tell me what the hell happened to me. What's still happening.

I rifle through the tall man's corpse without reverence. There's not much to him. Just the pistol, still warm from his grip, standard build with a scorched barrel. I take it anyway. A weapon's a weapon, and someone might pay if I don't end up needing it myself. The woman's sidearm is similar, a little cleaner, less scorched, and probably functional. I take that, too. I shove one into my back holster, the other in the inside pocket of my coat. The switchblade sits off to the side, almost as if it's been waiting for me. I pick it up without thinking, without feeling, and tuck it away.

Behind, in the distance, the android pile rises like a scrapheap altar. I move towards it. At the top, there's no ladder. No steps. Just a snarl of piping climbing up, rusted through and leaking in places where walls sweat condensation or worse. The mesh is held together by carbon-fibre tape, shoddy patches that might hold a toddler's weight, maybe not mine. But there's nowhere else to go.

I start the climb. The androids shift beneath my weight. Limbs fall loose. Faces turn towards the sky. I push them aside. It's hard work, my muscles dragging half a body that doesn't feel fully mine, but it's doable. I make it to the base of the pipework with breath in my lungs but not much else. This is where it gets tricky. The nearest secure point is too high to reach by hand. My legs aren't enough, not on their own, and there's no room to get momentum. I try anyway. Fail. My boot slips on a piece of bent plating. I don't fall, not completely. My blade saves me. I jam it into the torso of a collapsed unit and hold. That gives me the idea.

I ready the blade, target a seam higher up, and launch it as far as the actuator will allow. It catches. I pull. The connection holds. That's enough. I brace myself, retract the blade, and let the pull haul me upward. It works better than expected. I smack my head on the wall. Not enough to do damage, but enough to rattle something loose behind my eyes. I wrap my legs around the thick pipe, grab hold of the next, and climb. I do it again. And again. The process is brutal, but effective. Eventually I reach the top and drag myself over the ledge, arm shaking, lungs howling for oxygen.

The display in my periphery blinks red. My O₂ levels are in the gutter. I sit for a minute, hunched over, letting the numbers climb slowly back into the yellow.

When I stand, the city unfolds. Lights blink from every angle, neon buzz pouring into the street. People crowd the walkways: talking, yelling, moving with that jagged urgency unique to urban living. They wear everything from studded leather to fluorescent trench coats, knitted vests with embedded LEDs, torn jeans patched with wire mesh. Hair glows in chemical shades: emerald, chrome, ultraviolet. No one looks at anyone for longer than a second.

Above it all, the highway curves, rising through clusters of mid-rise towers where apartment balconies droop with garbage bags and cracked flowerpots. Figures lean over the rails, smoking or shouting or both. They toss their trash into the void, wrappers and butts caught in the gust that howls down the open intersection preceding the bridge. It's cold. Sharp wind slicing through the buildings. Doesn't matter. I'll take cold over heat any day.

But I don't know the roads. Don't know where I'm going.

No signs point the way. No corner maps. No network feed offering direction or welcome. I look for something, anything, that might resemble a clinic, a repair unit, a back-alley patch shop. But the signage is useless. Ads scream from every wall and surface: pills for erectile dysfunction, weapons for revenge, companies promising riches and ascension if you sell your soul to Techstrum. But no mention of surgeons. No beacon for the broken.

I walk.

Ten minutes, maybe more. Pushed and shoved by bodies that move in clunky riptides. A man tells me to watch my step, as if I'm the one in the way. Another calls me a corpse, spits at the ground as he passes. I cross the street, weaving through people with blank stares and flashing eyes. Still nothing. No help. No direction. Just the endless flow of noise and movement.

Then, finally, quiet.

I find it tucked between two overflowing dumpsters, a narrow alley gaping. Pipes leak down the walls, puddles forming at the base of bent steel drums. Trash spills from split bags. Rats twitch between shadows. I step in. To the right, tucked into the brickwork, a metal sliding door sits smooth on its frame. Concrete steps lead to it, three short ones worn smooth by weather. A man's there, slouched in the dark, a cigarette burning down to his fingers. He doesn't move, doesn't say anything, only lifts his head.

It's too dark to read his face.

But I know I've just been noticed.

And something about that feels worse than being ignored.

"Lost?" he says, his voice raspy and orotund.

I blink a couple times before responding. "I guess you could say that."

He puffs out a ring of smoke. "You shouldn't be here."

I furrow my brow. "I.... Well, I'm not entirely sure where I'm supposed to be, or where I'm—"

"No." The man shakes his head. "You're not supposed to be here. Here." He gestures to the ground with open hands. "In this alleyway. It's private. Did you not read the sign?" He points over my shoulder, at a poorly lit sign that reads, in large red characters, STAFF AND CLIENTS ONLY.

Shrugging, I say, "You really expect me to see that?"

He chuckles. "Outdated optics, eh? In 2100?"

"2100? As in, the year 2100?"

He takes another puff from his cigarette, blows the smoke out, tosses it to the ground, and crushes it with his boot. He stands, and I can see his face more clearly. He has a grey beard surrounded by tens of little wrinkles, so little that he may have gotten some sort of anti-aging surgery done to his skin, along with a well-trimmed fauxhawk. His large head sits on a bullish neck between a pair of roofbeam shoulders. Clearing his throat, he says, "What's your name, lady?"

"Rhea Steele," I say.

He presses the side of his neural link. His eyes glow silver and twist. "Born 2035. Deceased 2056. What's it like in the afterlife?"

"I... I'm sorry?"

He chuckles again. "So, what is this? You install someone else's neural chip? I just can't figure out why someone would do that, unless of course, they're looking to commit identity fraud, but you have different motives, don't you? Hard to commit fraud when any actuary can see you're supposed to be dead."

"I'm not trying to commit fraud," I say.

"Then why does it say you're dead?" he asks, his shrewd eyes flickering from my damaged arm to my bloody jacket.

I look him in the eye. "I don't know. All I know is that I woke up by the canal."

"The circuitery?" he says sharply. He takes a step towards me and scratches his beard. "With all those dead bots?"

"That's a hell of a name for what actually goes on down there, you know that?"

The man looks at me for a moment, as if trying to read my mind, then reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a package of cigarettes, slides one out, and says, "You smoke?"

I shake my head. "I'm just looking for a tech surgeon. Someone to tell me what happened. Someone who can figure out why I came back to life, and for God's sake fix this broken arm."

"Your non-functional arm is entirely mechanical," the man says, sliding his cigarette package into his chest pouch. "Your left arm though.... That's cybernetic. Nice implant, by the way. Though it's an older model."

I make a fist and watch as my blade slowly creeps out of my forearm, like a turtle peeping from its shell. I let it slide back into hibernation. "Listen," I say, "do you know where I can find a tech surgeon? This city isn't exactly clear with directions, and all the adverts.... Are people really that concerned with getting it up?"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The man laughs this time – a nice sound straight from the belly. "Well, I can take a look at you, even though I am technically on my fifteen."

"You're a tech surgeon?"

He nods. "Didn't see that sign either, I take it?" He points behind his shoulder with his thumb, at a sign placed above the stepped doorway. It reads, on a silver plaque and in gold letters, DR. MAELSTROM'S NEUROTECH SURGERY.

Yeah, because that's so obvious, I want to say. Customers must have to book an appointment, and after that a set of directions must get emailed to them, because there's no chance in hell anyone is finding this place just by looking at a website or brochure.

"Oh," I say. "Well, how much is a consultation? I don't have much.... Don't have any creds, actually...."

He waves a dismissive hand and opens the alleyway door. "Because I'm so curious as to why a living corpse showed up at my doorstep, I'll do this one for free, but I can't guarantee I can fix that arm. It looks like it needs to be replaced entirely, or, you know—" He makes a buzzsaw sound and motion. "—cut off."

I guess that wouldn't be so bad. It's not like this arm is doing me any favours. Before I follow him in through the door, I pause and ask, "So you're Dr. Maelstrom? Just to clarify?"

"I'm Vance. But yeah, that's me. Technically you're older than I am. I'll have to get used to that one."

"Thanks for your help," I say.

"I haven't helped you yet," Dr. Maelstrom says.

I follow him through the door, brushing beads aside. The interior isn't so bad. I was expecting a place a little more white and intrusive, like a dentist's, but instead this place has delicate lightstrips cruising through different shades: pinks, blues, greens. It's a foyer, and there's a lady dressed in a sleeveless, red qipao behind a reception desk. She smiles at me with her hands crossed behind her back.

Someone ought to give her a chair.

"Hi there," she says sweetly.

"Set the building to closed, Jin," says Dr. Maelstrom. "This'll take a minute."

"But what about your two-o'clock?"

"Delay it by another half hour," he says. "They can wait. Always do."

Her fingers warp at lightning-quick speed as she begins typing at her computer. Soon the door behind me locks and a timer for thirty minutes pops up on a large LED screen which moments ago had been blank, ready to tick off at two in the afternoon.

Wasting no time, I walk on, beyond the reception desk and through another doorway decorated with low-hanging purple beads. Brushing them aside and turning the first and only right corner, I see Dr. Maelstrom descending a couple steps into a dark open room, illuminated by a red, cross-shaped fluorescent bulb. All around the place are medical carts packed with gleaming cybernetic implants, biohacking tools, and holograms touting the latest upgrades, everything from operating systems to circulatory, ocular, and nervous systems. They're indicated by a holographic body, and the position of each implant is labelled accordingly. Thick power cables run along the floor dangerously, plugging into the side compartments of a makeshift surgical bed. All around it are monitors, biometric sensors, and an overhanging screen on which a neural interface remains dormant.

The entire place is like a meth lab, but nicer, cleaner, although still quite a bit messy.

Dr. Maelstrom pulls out a swivel chair and takes a seat at his corner desk. The desk is littered with alcohol bottles, blood vials, motherboards, and various surgical tools I can't even begin to name. There are two monitors: one for his computer and one showing security footage of the foyer.

Seems he's had some problems in the past. Unsurprising.

He starts typing. "Relax. You don't need to stand. Not yet."

I take a seat on the surgical bed.

"You must have done some fighting to have that much fresh blood on you," Dr. Maelstrom says.

"Reckon so?" I say.

"How many scavengers?" he asks.

"Three," I say. "That's when I—"

"Used the mantisblade." He wheels away from the desk and approaches me slowly. He looks at my face long and hard, then reaches out and takes my chin in his hand. "You changed your optics recently, too. Did you wake up – or well, did you come back blind? Optics picked out of your sockets?"

I nod dumbly. Dr. Maelstrom reaches up and grabs the overhanging neural interface. He starts tapping the screen. Then he tells me to unlink my neural wire from the side of my head. I comply, and he plugs it into the bed computer.

"How much of your life do you remember?" he asks.

It takes me a second to respond. "Not much. I mean, I remember some things, kind of. The name Rhea Steele was in my head, but only because that voice—"

He nods. "The neural AI."

"—told me. I also remember this city. It looks familiar. Feels familiar. Although I can't remember the name...."

"Neo Arcadia." He rubs a hand slowly over his face, then looks at me sternly. "The name of the city is Neo Arcadia. That ring a bell to you?"

I shake my head. "Not at all," I say in a low voice. "Some memories came back to me after a while. Details about this city. Like tech surgeries, but that's probably because the scavengers brought them up first. I also remember these streets, the cars, hell even the people. It's an awful feeling. Time doesn't feel right. I don't feel right."

"Old. Outdated. Is that what you feel?" he asks.

"Yes," I say. "Outdated, definitely. And if you don't mind me asking, how do I look? Do I look... old?"

He chuckles, then presses a few buttons on the monitor before turning it around. "You tell me."

Instead of displaying a neural interface, the monitor shows a mirror. In it I see the face of a young, green-haired woman with freckles and pale skin. The hair is cut short, falling no further than the ears. The jaw is soft, and the nose is long. This is a face I most certainly remember.

I bare my teeth, expecting to see rotten brown pearls left over from decades of neglect. To my surprise they're only slightly yellow, well-shaped, though my gums are certainly more red than they should be.

I look as though I'm still in my early twenties, with a full life ahead of me.

"Seems your body's been kept perfectly preserved all these years," Dr. Maelstrom says with a glint of amusement in his eye. "Microbots, I'd say. Looks like they're the reason you haven't died. You must have been in some sort of comalike state. There is a problem, though."

"Problem?" I say. "Which one? The fact I can't remember a thing or the fact I'm hanging on by a thread?"

"Well," he says, "you're not hanging on by a thread. Actually, you're doing quite well for yourself for someone who supposedly died forty-odd years ago. But your internal processors are damaged, particularly around your mid to lower abdomen. You've been shot quite a few times, and stabbed, you know?"

"But the microbots.... Do they not repair the damages? I mean, I don't feel any pain."

"That's the problem." Dr. Maelstrom turns the monitor towards himself and starts tapping it again. "You don't feel any pain because your sensory nerve processor is damaged. Your dorsal posterior insula's disconnected from your primary operating system."

I cock an eyebrow. "You gotta remember not everyone's a doctor."

He pushes the monitor up and sits closer to me, clasping his hands together. "Look," he says, "the part of your brain responsible for indicating the intensity of pain has been disconnected from your central nerve operating system." He taps his chest. "Meaning if you get shot, or if there's some internal damage done to you, you won't know, but you'll see the effects pop up on your neural display. Faster heart rate, high blood pressure, low saturation. Suddenly you might flatline."

"But how am I now?" I ask, dreading the answer. "Is there anything to worry about?"

"If there was, I would have told you already," Dr. Maelstrom says. His voice is stern, but I can see a twinkle in his eye that betrays it.

I stare at him. "So, I'm okay? I'll live?"

"I didn't say that." He disconnects my neural cord from the bed computer and lets it zip back into my temple port. "You know," he begins, wheeling back over to his desk computer, "it's not every day you meet someone with a mantisblade. Especially not one from your era, but that's beside the point. They tend to be very expensive, and in the 2040s they were relatively new implants. A lot of the NACP deployed units with those upgrades."

"NACP?" I scratch my head.

"Neo Arcadia City Patrol," he says. "Big fancy name for the cops. Blues. Pigs. Same difference."

"Your point being?"

Dr. Maelstrom hesitates. "My point being that you must have either been a high-tier NACP unit, a criminal, or one rich son of a bitch. To afford implants like that? Possibly in your other arm, too? I wouldn't be surprised if someone shot you and stole the blade off you."

"So, you're saying I was...."

"Any one of those things," he says, typing at the computer. "I'm running your name through the city database here.... Can't find a single thing on you, so I'm willing to bet you were neither a rich bitch nor a unit. Logic dictates you worked for a gang of some sort."

I get up from the surgical bed, look at my fist, and clench, watching the blade peep out again. "A gang? What sort of gang?"

"With those blades?" he says. "Could be any one in the city. Maybe even a bit beyond in the scrubland. Your guess is as good as mine."

I step towards him and let my blade retract into my forearm. "That's not what I mean," I begin. "A gang. The sort who wreaks havoc, kills, steals?"

He glares at me, then steeples his fingers, dipping his head without breaking eye contact. "I have absolutely no idea," he says flatly. "All I know is there are a lot of gangs, with a lot of different motives, with a lot of different ideas of havoc – and they've been carving each other up for decades now. Some only seek to survive. Some have much darker plans. I'm afraid that's where my knowledge stops."

I sigh. The information has been more than helpful regardless. But something gnaws at me, something I can't shove down. A gang. Maybe worse. Whatever I used to be, whatever I used to do, it's still buried somewhere in this body. In this mind. Was I a killer? A thief? Both? I don't know, and right now, I don't have the luxury of finding out. Survival comes first. Regret can wait.

"Thanks," I say, forcing the word past a throat gone tight. "At least now I know. Any ideas where I go from here? I'm sort of lost."

"Your first step is getting your senses in order," he says. "Not being able to feel pain isn't everything it's chalked up to be. Trust me. I'm a doctor. I'd know. One day you're cruisin' the streets of Neo Arcadia, lookin' for an easy target, or whatever the hell you'll decide to do, and then the next day you drop dead. Might have been a pulmonary embolism. Might have been a really bad infection. Somethin' your neural display won't pick up on, because one as old as yours is likely to screw up and read data incorrectly."

"So how do I fix it?" I stare. "Can you help me?"

"This," Dr. Maelstrom says, placing a comforting hand on my arm, "is where my altruism ends. End of the day, I got a business to run. Can't help anyone out with expensive procedures like this without expecting somethin' in return. That said, I'm willin' to cut you some slack, give you a percentage discount just because I like you so much, but I'll be damned if I do it for free."

I stare at him some more. He has a point. Most doctors in this city would have probably turned me away before even getting to learn my story, but Dr. Maelstrom at least listened. The questions remain: how much is the procedure, and how on Earth do I secure enough creds to pay for it?

I ask him, rubbing my neck.

"You know," he begins, "as a tech surgeon you meet a lot of people, all getting implants for different reasons." He grabs a piece of paper and what looks like an electronic map from one of his desk drawers. Then he grabs a pen and starts writing. "I'm gonna give you the name of a relatively new gang in the city not far from here, just on the other side of the bridge. Maybe a few blocks farther down. They're always lookin' for new talent, 'specially if you already have relatively strong upgrades under your belt. Or sleeve, I should say."

I walk over to him, and he hands me the paper with the map folded underneath. I look at the piece of paper. It has a single name written at the centre, along with an address scrawled overhead. "'Fingers?'" I read aloud. "That supposed to be code for something?"

He gets up from his seat, pulls a cigarette from the package in his chest pouch, and lights it up. Blowing smoke in my face, he says, "That's the boss' name. Press the buzzer at the door. Say Maelstrom sent you."

"And you expect this person to just help me out like that? Give me a job? A member of a gang?"

Dr. Maelstrom grins broadly. He flicks his lighter shut and tosses it on the desk. "You'll have to prove yourself, of course," he says. "But at the end of the day, Fingers owes me one. I'll let the gang know you're comin'." Then, as if suddenly remembering, he adds, "Oh, and the procedure's gonna cost you five bags. Normally I'd charge eight, but like I said, I got a good feelin' about you." He pats my shoulder and points to the exit, back the way I came. "Watch your step on the way out. Follow the map. It's embedded with a tracking device so it's easier to figure out where you are, and more importantly, where you're goin'."