Faulty Utopia

Sun Jack held the chip in his hand and put forward his own request to the King Kong in front of him.

After thinking it over all of last night, he still felt that inserting that thing directly into his head was too risky.

Moreover, Song 6's words had only added to his doubts. There were problems with the spare heart installed in his body, so couldn't there be problems with a chip implanted in his head? Sun Jack did not dare to gamble on it.

"Besides, I'm in unfamiliar territory here. What if these two are conspiring to deceive me? If it's external, I can just take it off if something's not right."

To King Kong's surprise, Sun Jack spoke these words, "Why is that, benefactor? Could it be that your current System Chip is malfunctioning?"

Hearing Song 6's words, Sun Jack suddenly found it to be a good excuse. He nodded immediately and followed up on what the other person had said, "Yes, there's a malfunction in my head, it's stuck inside and I can't get it out. My buddy ended up turning into all metal because of this issue."

As he spoke, Sun Jack even patted Tapai on the shoulder, and Tapai cooperated with a sigh. "╯△╰"

"Is that so? Let the poor monk check it."

Sun Jack quickly leaned back to avoid the tools coming out of the other's split open palm. Damn, if he inspected it, wouldn't he be exposed?

After thinking quickly, Sun Jack bluffed urgently, "Don't touch it, this little thing is really dangerous. It can transfer consciousness. I managed to damage it with great effort to prevent it from subtly turning me into someone else. If you accidentally restart it, that would be troublesome."

"Hmm? That seems different from what I heard yesterday?" Song 6 tilted his head, his hand propping up his chin.

Sun Jack answered with an expressionless face, "You guess."

Listening to Sun Jack's smooth talk, the Monk eventually gave up the idea of inspecting it. "Hmm... since that's the case, I'll help you find an external device. I remember having sold those before." Saying so, he started rummaging around.

Before long, King Kong found an object that looked like glasses frames in a storage box—a metallic ring-shaped device.

Watching King Kong install the chip on it, Sun Jack reached out to receive it.

Holding the strange object in his hand, Sun Jack took a deep breath and slowly placed it on his head.

With a sizzle, a bright yellow stripe of light blocked Sun Jack's view. This was actually a pair of glasses, but the lenses weren't made of glass or resin; they were virtual projections.

The projected single, long, curved lens showed a bit of wide-angle distortion around the edges of the field of view, as he felt his perspective extend considerably to the sides.

The bright yellow lens flickered quickly, and when he heard Song 6 speak again, subtitles actually started appearing below the lens. "How does it feel?"

"How do I control it?" Sun Jack rubbed the earpiece of the glasses, finding no buttons.

"Just think about it in your mind. It can perform an EEG by scanning the scalp. Since it's external, it can sense but not interfere, so the Dopamine Circulator and pain editing won't work. However, surveillance jamming and temporary ICE can still function."

"Turn off subtitles." As soon as Sun Jack thought about it, the subtitles disappeared instantly.

"Display information." Instantly, a name popped up above the heads of Song 6 and King Kong, and Song 6 even had his live stream link considerately displayed below.

Afterward, Sun Jack lifted his steel arm, and the lower left corner of his eyepiece instantly showed the number of bullets and shells. Bullets: 124, Shells: 0

"Is this the change that comes with connecting the flesh to the network?" Using the projection glasses, Sun Jack was amazed as he looked around at everything.

As soon as he thought about it, all of the prosthetic limbs on the King Kong's shelves networked instantly, and the types, prices, and functions swiftly displayed on the side.

With this thing, Sun Jack now essentially had a supercomputer stuffed into his brain, and this was just the external system. If it were built into the brain, he'd probably be soaring to the heavens.

"No wonder everyone likes to install systems. They're just so convenient."

"However, patron, because your chip is external, you need to protect it well. If someone steals your external device, they'll take all your money, everything," King Kong cautioned from the side.

To this, Sun Jack didn't think it was a big deal. He touched the external device on his head and asked, "What are you saying? If it's installed in the brain, people can't steal it?"

Knocking someone's head open and prying out the chip was just an extra step, after all. And judging from Tapai's mental state, the people of this rotten place would do it without any psychological pressure.

"Haha, bro! You've got a point. If there were no black market, where would all these goods come from?" Tapai, who was scratching an itch with a broken prosthetic limb, chimed in from the side.

King Kong suddenly became alarmed. "All my goods come from official channels. Don't slander me."

"Official channels, huh? Then why do you sell them so sneakily? Are you afraid the cops will come after you?"

"This monk does it solely to evade taxes."

Their conversation made Sun Jack's pupils constrict slightly as he looked at the other chips on the table. "Could it be that the chips here are all dug out from other people's heads?"

Maybe it was because of the overload of stimuli, but Sun Jack felt no surprise in his heart. Instead, it seemed to him to be perfectly natural.

After the Monk had finished maintaining Sun Jack's combat prosthetic body, the four reappeared at the Funeral Parlor Store.

Looking up at everything in the store, at the jumping information on the mirror lens, Sun Jack felt very refreshed. In this moment, the whole world seemed to come alive.

Looking at the UI interfaces all around, Sun Jack felt as if he were under the illusion of playing a game.

With the thought of 'auto-translate' in his mind, all the unfamiliar languages on the advertisements instantly translated into Chinese, and all kinds of voices automatically switched to Chinese as well.

"@Create an account." A flurry of 0s and 1s flowed rapidly in front of Sun Jack, eventually converging to 0.0000@ in the bottom left corner.

Just as he was testing out other features, a dialogue box suddenly popped up in front of Sun Jack, "Come on, bro, add a friend. Let's help each other out with whatever comes our way in the future!"

"Sure, thanks for your help. From now on, we're bros," Sun Jack readily agreed.

"A man keeps his word, bro. I know you're no ordinary guy, I've got my eye on you. That Chloe ain't someone just anybody can handle," Tapai said with a sly grin and embraced Sun Jack tightly before heading toward a car parked on the side.

Once Tapai left, Sun Jack continued to play with his system. To the ancients, this device was just too extraordinary.

He hadn't been fiddling with it for long when another black invitation box popped up on the side. Seeing that black invitation, his heart skipped a beat for a moment.

"In this place, aside from Tapai, could there be someone else who knows me?"

For a time, many thoughts raced through Sun Jack's mind. He even wondered if someone in the city had recognized him long ago and had been silently observing him from the shadows.