[Original Novel] Metal Fever, Part 7

in #writing6 years ago


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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

There’s no way to disable it before I arrive, either. Seawater is opaque to radio. The satellite dish is the only connection, and they’d be expecting that. First order of business should be to destroy that so it can’t call for help, send back footage of me, etc. Then there’s the problem of my prosthetics. They’re all “water resistant”. I can shower in them. But submerging them in salt water would be unwise.

It pained me to drop so much on new gear. It assumed I’d succeed, and fucked me if I didn’t. But if it works out, I’ll have enough for rent. For dual carbon batteries. For Dad’s mansion. Or even a little trailer next to his that I can live in, if that’s really what he prefers.

I shopped around for the implants I needed, splitting the total expense between D-coins and fedcoin. Reasoning that a large enough purchase with untraceable currency would be reason enough to investigate me. But that buying so much aquatic gear at once in a traceable currency would make it trivially easy to figure out who’d pulled off such a heist.

Had the rebreather put in by Alejandro. He’s spendier than I like, but for anything really intrusive and risky, it’s unwise to cheap out. He offered me this new model that separates oxygen out of seawater by a spinning centrifuge. “Bottom time is limited only by the power supply”, he boasted.

No dice. On account of the price tag, and because I didn’t plan to be down there for long. I settled on a compressed oxygen bottle with bloodstream suffuser and CO2 filter. It’d replenish oxygen levels in my blood while removing CO2, such that I could hold my breath for about an hour before needing to refill. The endurance was nothing to write home about, but it looked to be the right tool for the job at a price I could stomach. “Cut me open, baby.”

So he did. I didn’t have him put me under because although he’s got a 96% approval rating on cybersurg.biz I suspect those ratings are padded by votebots. And as a rule of thumb I don’t like to be vulnerable. But I also refused to watch closely as he worked. Blood makes me squeamish.

Like I said, I never fought much as a kid. Never enlisted, never killed a man. Not directly. I suppose I’m kind of a wuss. The metal takes care of everything for me, I just tell it what to do. So instead of watching him as he injected the numbing agent and wiped down my chest with disinfectant, I turned my gaze to the near wall. Where a small display panel set up for just this purpose was showing some good old fashioned reality TV.

“Now back to Out With a Bang! Bringing you only the world’s most spectacular suicides!” Jump cut to a short line of today’s “exitors” Depressingly, most were teenage girls. A Japanese university student wearing some outlandish fashion so new I’d never seen it until now approached the host.

“What’s your name, dear.” She whispered into the mic when it was offered. “Mimi chan.” The host invited her to speak more loudly but she seemed constitutionally incapable of it. “Mimi chan here is a formerly popular let’s player. She had over two million regular viewers at her peak! But as viewership declined, she tried increasingly desperate means to retain them, to the point where it essentially became a cam show. Truly heartbreaking. Is that why you’re here with us today?”

She shook her head. “It’s more about money, to be honest. I spent whatever I made from viewer donations very frivolously, believing it would last forever. When they left, I had nothing. Basic income isn’t enough to stay current with my implants! The new Prismatic Princess implants are out, and I can’t afford them. All my friends have them, I’m the only one who doesn’t.”

The host leaned in for a hug. Mimi looked startled but the crowd, or recording of a crowd, ate it up. A long “Aaaawwwww.” Then, Mimi’s big reveal. “What have you got planned for today?” the host inquired. She gestured to offscreen staff, who pulled a set of curtains behind her aside, revealing the mechanism she’d chosen. Some kind of harness suspended within a transparent plastic sphere. The harness had thick cables trailing from it, out through the sphere, to a bank of supercapacitors the size of a bus.

“You guys were really wonderful in helping me set this up! I’m sure it was expensive.” The host said something appropriately humble while I wondered why they didn’t just use that money to buy her the implants she wanted so desperately. “Just a reminder” the host said, turning to the camera. “This will be recorded in 3D from over a hundred different angles. You can buy the video archive of today’s exits from our website.”

The sphere opened like a clamshell. Mimi climbed inside and hooked herself into the harness, which while open, I could see had inward-facing electrodes. The sphere closed, and the music Mimi requested in advance began to play. The theme from some Japanese drama program she was a fan of, according to the host, who strode about theatrically flipping various switches and turning knobs for show.

Finally, her big moment. The main lights dimmed. A spotlight concentrated just on the sphere. Mimi smiled at the camera and made peace signs with her hands. Pyrotechnics erupted to either side, just before the supercaps all discharged simultaneously into poor Mimi. Her face contorted as if to scream for a split second before her body violently inflated, then burst. Steam explosion, I figure. All the fluids in her body converted to rapidly expanding vapor in the blink of an eye.

Along the bottom of the screen, viewer reactions from social media appeared in realtime. “6/10, electrical is overdone.” Another read “Her channel sucked and I’m glad she’s gone. I’m just disappointed there will be no grave to piss on.” The inside surface of the sphere was coated in steaming blood, charred implants and scraps of gore while the interior volume was full of roiling black smoke. The show’s main theme cut in as the audience applauded.

“Now that’s going….oooouuuut with a baaaang!” the host bellowed. The applause intensified, accompanied by whooping. Then the host touched his finger to his ear. “Folks I’m...I’m being told there was some sort of technical glitch. We actually didn’t manage to capture any of that! Can you believe it? A truly elegant end, though. Hope Mimi’s parents set their panel to record this episode! Ha ha!”

“Done”. I looked up at Alejandro. “Seriously?” He nodded, deadpan. I looked down at my chest. Angry red swelling around the stitches, as expected. And a new addition poking through my sternum: The O2 refill port.

“Don’t you dive like this right away, seawater in your wounds is bad times. Do you want infection? Because that’s how you get infection.” I assured him I wouldn’t. “Wait two weeks, minimum, and take two of these per day to expedite healing.”

He handed me a small vial of orange pills. “It’s really gotta close up tight around that port in particular. Message me if you smell anything weird coming from incision, that means for sure is infected. And don’t pick at stitches like last time.”

Next stop was Dinesh. The prosthetic I was looking for this time would be single-use. I didn’t care much about the build quality so long as it’d work once. “My friend!” he cried out upon seeing me enter his shop. Anybody who calls everyone their friend is nobody’s friend but their own.

“Dinesh. Been a long time. Sold my arm yet?” He looked sheepish. “In fact, yes. But of course, you can’t be here for that. What can I interest you in? I will do whatever it takes to get YOU into some implants, TODAY! Of course, as the saying goes, you don’t get into implants. They get into you.”

Nobody says that. He tries like hell to make it catch on, for marketing purposes. His suit was one I’d not yet seen but predictably as outrageous as the others. Something like burberry but the lines consisted of repeating images of resistors, microswitches and other small electronic parts. His hair completes the package. Black as night, slicked back over his scalp and kept there by enough oil to deep fry a beluga.

Naturally, none of his implants came from his own shop. That’s what you gotta look for to gauge the quality of a shop’s wares. But again, I wanted a disposable. Everything here is effectively disposable whether or not it’s advertised as such.


Stay Tuned for Part 8!

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Today, after several attempts, I remembered a series for science fiction TV: Published in 2002, "Altered Carbon" is set in a dystopian future, where it explores what happens when the human mind can be digitally stored and downloaded into new bodies. Takeshi Kovacs, a former United Nations elite interstellar warrior who has been held prisoner for 500 years, is unloaded in a future he always tried to stop. Thrown into Bay City (formerly known as San Francisco), Kovacs must be able to solve a murder in a world where technological advances have made death an obsolete concept.

Well I already have the feeling something is gonna go pretty wrong during our protagonist's dive. Maybe I'm wrong I don't know. And Alejandro should know that you can't just tell someone who picks at stitches not to pick at stitches. It's impossible :(

Am curious about this one, the compressed oxygen with blood stream surfuser does some exist in our real life? Because it would be awesome to have one

Yeah cybersurg.biz uses votebots alright, if you actually go and read the reviews it's full of comments like "this is great" and "I like operation".

Really is seawater bad for the wounds.
But I have heard salt content of seawater is good for wounds

If it's pure. But seawater has all kinds of bacteria in it.

Oops. Right.
My bad Alex

All parts bookmarked. Love it. Thanks again Alex. Your posts never cease to put a smile on my face; regardless of how bad my day is.

Now that’s going….oooouuuut with a baaaang!” the host bellowed. The applause intensified,

Moral lesson: Everyone in the future is a nutjob

Well if I'm right, the metals do your bidding for you including the killing part? Then if I'm right as well it's programmed this way to be at at beck and call?

Can't wait to see how the heist goes. His preparations are really something. And the underwater metal gear... 🙌🙌🙌

Like i said, I never fought much as a kid. Never enlisted, never killed a man

😄😄😄😄😄😄😄This gave me a good belly laugh

after saying all that, he added not directly, come on man like seriously

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