Disclaimer: this series will prominently feature queer and transgender characters. If that's not your cup of tea, read no further! If it is, enjoy and thank you for your support!
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"I can't believe you're letting those corporate lunatics sucker you into putting that thing your head, Eli!" Raven said with a mocking grin.
"We gotta get with the times eventually!" I retorted.
"Maybe you do. I'll stay in the dark ages, thank you. I don't want those assholes fucking with my brain."
"Look, my boss said the implant would give me a leg up on a promotion. We need the money, Raven," I tried to reason with her.
"We wouldn't need the money if you'd ever let me do a decent hack every now and then! Pirating games and beating everyone's asses at them with exploits just isn't the same as stealing from the big wigs. Ya know?"
I smirked and said, "but you're so hot when you're kicking ass in Virtual!"
"Not that you would really know, right babe?" She shot back. I didn't have a comeback to that.
Raven was my girlfriend and two years into our relationship and one year since graduating high school and getting out on our own, we hadn't even gone past kissing. It was a fact she liked to tease me about like this. We met online, playing some of those games she kicked so much ass at. The first time she demolished me in a PVP game I was love struck and had to meet her. She was a hacker punk at heart and valued her independence from the 22nd century corporate-owned Virtual Reality Network. Commonly known as simply "Virtual", it was the successor of the now defunct internet of the 21st century. Raven would tap into it for her own purposes, but she would never buy in.
When we moved in together after high school, I landed a data entry job at a big name firm. Raven didn't approve but she was allergic to corporate hierarchies and those were the only legitimate jobs left in the world. She absolutely could swipe millions from company vaults in Virtual but that kind of behavior almost cost Raven her freedom in her early teens. When we started this life together, I made her promise not to get into that kind of trouble again. That's all I had ever asked of her.
So I worked to pay our bills and Raven stayed home and hacked games for fun. That suited us both just fine. I wanted to give her the world and she didn't seem to mind being spoiled. We cuddled and kissed but she made her chest, butt, and between her legs off limits early on. Some would've called me a loser for doing so much for her without being allowed some normal "boyfriend privileges" but I was so smitten, I didn't care. I figured I'd get more when she was ready and until then, my imagination and my hand could keep me company.
It also wasn't like she made it hard to imagine either. In all the time I had known her, she never once wore a bra. Shorts that barely contained her ass were a staple of her wardrobe and tops that showed off any and all angles of her soft peaks were her favorite. She filled our closet with revealing clothes, I suspected, just to tease me and of course they were all bought with my money.
I looked now at the black lace up cami top which made the dyed blue braids that lay against it pop and showed off the inner curvature of her supple breasts. Despite denying her body to me, she seemed to enjoy my lustful gaze on her as she flaunted it. I suspected she knew that she drove me mad. I was like puddy in her hands, so grateful to take in the glimpses and touches she afforded me that I'd do anything for her.
"If you go get that thing, don't be surprised when it comes back to bite you, Eli," she said softly and more seriously, breaking me out of my hypnotic fixation on her chest.
"You're just paranoid. I'll be fine. My boss gave me the day off to recover from the surgery, so I'll be home for lunch," I said.
"That in itself should be a red flag. You've never had a paid day off! Not that one day is enough to recover from a procedure anyway," She said.
"It's not a big deal, I promise," I tried to assure her. She threw up her hands in frustration and walked away from me, back into her cordoned off corner of the apartment where she spent most of her time on her homemade computers. I left the apartment and headed on my way down the street.
I wasn't going to convince her but she wasn't going to stop me either. I was actually pretty excited. Everyone I knew had a chip. It was a hit trend in tech, a way to meld virtual reality and what was left of the real world. Almost every service in the city used it and without it, I was stuck using a visor to access Virtual for work or anything else.
The Meshtek Omnibrain Chip was only an economy level implant but it's what I could afford. It didn't have some of the expensive features other neural products had but it would interface with anything that utilized virtual connectivity and that's what I needed.
"Meshtek Surgery Center, please." I said to the rusty speaker in the silver auto-cab. I waved my transit pass underneath it to charge my account for the ride.
A distorted digital voice answered, "Meshtek Surg --zzk --er."
The voice command technology was ancient and updates and maintenance hadn't been done on most of the devices in decades. Some were kept around for the less fortunate like me, who couldn't afford a neural implant, but I wondered how long even that would continue before no one could go without the device. It didn't matter because after today, it would no longer be an issue.
"Meshtek Surg --zzk --er. Have a good --dzz!" The speaker squawked as the auto-cab doors opened. The industrial building looked more like a vehicle repair shop than a surgery center, with old garage doors to match.
I went in a side door crudely marked ENTRANCE - SURGERY. Inside was a small waiting room with chairs lining the wall. Every seat was taken and a few people stood around waiting to the side of the line to reach the front desk. I got in the back of the line and waited until the receptionist called "Next!" and I was actually next.
"Appointment or walk-in?" She asked, not looking at me. She waved her hands in the air, poking at unseen buttons, clearly using her own implant.
"Appointment. 10:30, I think?"
"Name?"
"Elijah Vaughn"
"You're registered with number 122. Go have a seat," she said in a bored tone, clearly not noticing that there were no seats available. I stood by the cluster of others who were waiting.
"First time?" An older woman next to me said after a while.
"Uh, yeah," I replied. "You?"
She laughed and said "God no, this will be my third chip. I was an early adopter of the Meshtek chips. The cheap shit! The first one I had was outdated within 5 years. Back then, you couldn't have them removed. Well, Meshtek wouldn't do it anyway. You had to get an add-on chip to make it compatible with the latest garbage they added. Lasted me another 15 years though. Today I'm having both removed and getting an upgrade.
"Wow! I didn't know the economy chips were that old!" I said and then covered my mouth in embarrassment. "Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you're old."
"Heh, I am though," she said and smiled.
"Gwendolyn, 121," the receptionists voice sounded over the speakers.
"That's me. Good luck, kid," the woman said and confidently walked through the doors next to the reception desk.
"Elijah, 122" the voice came again a few minutes later. I walked tentatively toward the front.
"Just through those doors, sir. A surgeon will be waiting," the receptionist said, apparently noticing my nervous approach. I did as she said and pushed open the swinging double doors. On the other side of them really was a repurposed garage. The dim ceiling lights gave the large room a creepy tint. There were two surgery stations with curtains surrounding them. The one furthest from me was closed where I assumed Gwendolyn was having her new chip installed. The other was open and a young blonde woman, who must have been around my age, watched me approach.
"Elijah?" She asked.
"Yes. I --yes. Uhh. Hi, how are you?" I stumbled through my words. She gave me a breathy chuckle in response.
"I'm fine! Want to have a seat?" She offered, waiving me to the off-white chair. I sat down, fidgeting with my hands as I watched her close the curtain. I looked over at the machine next to the chair. It was an all-in-one surgery machine. It had every tool and chemical a surgeon could need and most importantly, it connected to their neural implants. It did all the physical work. It just depended on a surgeon's knowledge and ability to visualize the correct commands.
"Since this is your first implant, you'll need to sign this release," she said and handed me a visor and controller. Used to accessing Virtual this way, I put it on and clicked a small button on the side to power it on. The screen inside came to life, already displaying a release form. I used the controller to scroll through it.
"In accordance with the Virtual Reality Convention of 2050, there are no legal jurisdictions in virtual spaces. Consumers can be held to the terms of use set by the corporation that holds the domain and will be held accountable by same, according to company policies. By signing this, you acknowledge that there is no legal recourse for actions that take place over a virtual connection, regardless of real or material consequence. "
I knew the international law being referenced. I had signed something like this before accessing just about everything in Virtual. It was an old international consensus that basically stated that virtual reality was owned by the corporations that maintained their little corners of it and the world's governments were staying the hell out of it. In a world where virtual reality was imbedded into everything, these corporations were the new governing bodies. The thought did make me hesitate.
"All good there?" The surgeons voice broke through my train of thought.
"Oh uh, yeah," I said. I pressed my thumb to a scanner in the middle of the controller to give my virtual signature and handed her back the visor.
"Great!" She said a little too excitedly. "Looks like you've already pre-paid and signed the rest of your forms at your consultation. We're ready to start! Just hold still."
She brought the machine that was next to me up and over my head. All I could see now was the dim white interior. Cold metal clamps extended from the inside walls to my skull. My heart raced as the surgeon strapped my wrists down to the armrests.
"Okay. Now you're just going to go to sleep. When you wake up, you'll be new and improved!"
A slight pain hit the side of my neck as the machine administered a shot. Within minutes my world went dark.
"Elijah? Elijah? You're all done. Here, let me just give you something to wake you up." The surgeon's voice broke through the dark.
My eyes shot open. The machine was no longer around my head but I was still sitting in the same chair. I looked over toward the surgeon. Her name, Cindy Nichols, flashed over my vision in small letters. The time, 1:05pm was ever present in the corner of my vision, only becoming clear when I wanted to focus on it.
"Welcome to the Meshtek family!" She said. "Now, I'll have to send you on your way so others can get theirs. Come along."
She pulled me to my feet. My head swam a little, still coming out of the deep sleep I was in. I looked over to the other surgery station and my friend from the waiting room was gone. Someone new was sitting down. I hoped she made it through the installation okay.
"Now you'll want to call for transportation. To do that, you just have to think it. You'll figure out the rest, I'm sure! Bye bye now."
She led me out a back door onto the sidewalk and went back into the building, closing the door behind her. I thought that I probably needed to eat something. Suddenly ads for restaurants crowded my sight.
