The Fast Blood
"So that's why you raised hell in someone else's place of business?"
"I told them I had legitimate business. They wouldn't even hear me out—just tried to throw me out on the spot. What was I supposed to do? They kept squawking appointment, appointment like a pair of parrots."
"Then make an appointment."
"They said the soonest I could see you was six months out."
"...My schedule's already that packed? Time really does fly."
About thirty minutes later, I was wiping the blood off my knuckles as I finally came face-to-face with the greatest technician of the age—a man who had just finished an implant procedure.
He grumbled at me in a blunt tone for the little episode of self-defense I'd performed in his shop—though some might have called it raising hell—then ushered Lee Sena and me into his private office.
"Hold on. Now that I look at her, isn't that the girl who goes around building weird junk? The one who's a little off in the head?"
"Oh, you recognize her. This is indeed the foolish woman who aspires to challenge the greatest intellect on Earth with her... peculiar hobbies."
The moment I backed him up, Lee Sena turned a sour glare on me.
And what are you going to do if you glare like that? What can you even do?
"I'm fairly certain I issued you a VIP customer card. Why didn't you show it at reception?"
"There was a thing like that? You should've pulled it out sooner!"
"I didn't take it out because I didn't come as a customer today? The customer today is Super Rookie, you know?"
She'd already gone into a sulk, her lower lip jutting out a mile as she spun that nonsense. I glanced at Ted Chan as if to ask what anyone was supposed to do with this cyberpunk spoiled brat, but he only shook his head.
Even the greatest intellect on Earth, it seemed, had no cure for a golden child.
"Anyway, we've got a lot to do today, so let's get to the point. Seeing as you came to find me in person, I take it you accepted the Assigned Commission?"
"Yes. The pay looked decent, and I figured I could handle it without much trouble, so I took it. As you can see, I even wrapped the whole thing up in a single Dark Zone run."
"No—it's too early to say you've finished the commission. The Dark Zone engineering tech and components you brought back still have to meet the standard I set."
"I came in person because I was confident I could satisfy it, didn't I?"
"You've got no shortage of confidence, I'll give you that. Fine. Let's see the goods."
Ted Chan sharpened the focal precision of the state-of-the-art cybernetic eyes he'd built with his own hands and waved me on. I didn't hesitate. I pulled out the artificial intelligence chip and the compact power source.
Telling the other inmates that these wouldn't fetch much of a price if they tried to farm them had not been a smokescreen. It was the truth. The prison AI and the human appraisers still didn't know enough about the Dark Zone to measure what these things were actually worth. Better to burn them as Ted Chan's commission items than to dump them on the prison for a merely "reasonable" payout.
"An AI chip and a compact power source."
"You recognized them right away."
"Robotics and artificial intelligence aren't my fields, but you handle enough implants and you pick up a working knowledge. These are clearly components for a humanoid android. Did you run into something like that in the Dark Zone?"
"Every scrap of Dark Zone information is money."
"You're no sucker, just like I heard. You know exactly what your information is worth and exactly where you stand. I like that. Doesn't feel like the young people these days."
Even as he said it, Ted Chan kept turning the AI chip and the compact power source over under those cybernetic eyes, picking apart their structure. Those eyes were a high-precision microscope, an x-ray that could see through any material, and a miniature computer that analyzed every scrap of visual data the lenses took in and fed it straight to his brain. There was no visible Smart Link scarring on his forehead or temples, which meant he'd probably installed the cranial Smart Link at the same time he'd swapped the eyes.
It was exactly the kind of work you'd expect from a man who held world authority in implant development and surgery.
"Interesting. This AI chip has no external signal receiver and no connection port. You only put something like this in a fully autonomous unit that analyzes and decides on its own. Extremely high-risk. You almost never see them in modern society."
"Afraid it'll go Skynet and start a rebellion?"
"Hardly. An AI chip this tiny couldn't produce the kind of superintelligence you see in science fiction. It just grows more unstable over time and more vulnerable to information contamination, which sends the odds of a safety incident through the roof."
His analysis—vulnerable to information contamination, safety incidents waiting to happen—made me click my tongue. Before we'd even been dropped into that Dark Zone, in the real place that Dark Zone had been modeled on, the very thing Ted Chan was worried about had almost certainly already happened.
"This chip will be useful for simulation work on fully autonomous models. The state regulates those very strictly by law."
"Meaning you recognize the scarcity."
"That's right. At the very least, it can be used for safety testing on the Smart Links people use as everyday AI assistants, or on the military androids that operate independently in limited situations. I can give you seven million for this alone."
"That's fair."
"...Most inmates in your position try to haggle the second I name a number. You just took it."
I shrugged at the question.
"It's something I can pull out of the Dark Zone without much trouble if I feel like it, and I don't imagine people at your level need a whole lot of this particular item. Even if I brought you more of the exact same thing, you'd buy once or twice and that would be the end of it. Scarce doesn't automatically mean high demand."
"Are you sure you're a death row prisoner? With a head and instincts like that, how the hell did you end up in a place like this?"
"When the state decides to lock a man up, what's an ordinary citizen supposed to do about it? I just have to keep my head down and live a model prison life."
I had no idea why I'd been sentenced to death, but there was nothing to gain by letting anyone find out about the memory loss, so I let it slide. While we talked, Ted Chan had already finished analyzing the compact power source without so much as a change in expression.
"This is an utterly ordinary solid-state battery. Miniaturized to this degree, it might be of some use on the robotics side, but it doesn't mean much to a man who works in human implants."
"Even so, you get clients who have to walk around with battery packs for external platforms, don't you? The bulkier and hungrier the implant, the more it needs its own power source."
"You know a fair bit about implants, then?"
"Surface-level knowledge. Enough to skim the rind."
Please. I burned ten years of my life into EFD. You think I wouldn't know that much? So don't try to quietly lowball the compact power source.
"You're not wrong that I get the occasional client who needs a compact power source like this. But the numbers are very small. You already know why. This isn't the outside world. This is a prison."
"I'm aware that every inmate's implants come with restrictions on purpose and output. But this is still a place where people live. Wherever people live, you've got loopholes and Guanxi."
Loopholes and Guanxi. Even in an environment as sealed off as a prison, they existed as a matter of course. Guards and inmates covered for each other, stuffing money and convenience into each other's back doors. Guards schemed among themselves to squeeze inmates for profit; inmates schemed among themselves to fleece the guards. It happened all the time.
"You can say that, but we both know most of the inmates who come through here are here to boost implant output. You can tell just by looking at the ones waiting outside."
"In other words, it isn't scarce, but demand looks healthy enough that you want a price to match."
"Unlike the AI chip, even if these are easy to find, the people looking for them will always outnumber whatever supply the inmates can put up."
The moment I started talking value in terms of supply and demand, Ted Chan let out a short laugh and nodded.
"Fine. Three million apiece. You'd only get scrap prices if you hauled it to that stingy Russian anyway. But if you keep bringing them to me, I'll keep buying at this rate."
"Works for me. That's ten million all told, which means the commission is done, right?"
"If you hit the ten-million mark, the commission reward is..."
"A remotely operable smart drone and a smart turret. One of each. That was the deal."
I held out my hand and deployed a full hand it over. He said nothing. He just snapped his fingers.
The office ceiling slid open, and a small mechanical arm—not unlike the prison AI's—descended and set an enormous weapons case down in front of us. It was large enough and shaped just right that a grown man could have fit inside without much trouble. Anyone who didn't know better might have sworn a cyberpunk coffin had just dropped out of the sky.
"Open it."
"Every time I open one of these, it's full of junk I wouldn't take if you paid me."
"Ahem."
"I'm speaking generally."
I grumbled, but I was buzzing with anticipation as I threw the case open. And then I could not have been more disappointed.
"Goddammit. Figures."
"Not to your liking?"
"I'm not so green I can't recognize a Firefly-series and a Sentry-series from AAA Corp. But it's a little short of what I was hoping for. I mean, a man with your skills—why didn't you just build them yourself...?"
"Listen, pal. The second I lay a hand on something, even a toy jumps into the hundreds of millions. You think I'm going to let that walk out of here as payment for a C-rank commission? A man has to have some shame."
Kh. No logical counter to that. I was hoping to sneak a custom job out of him, but I guess you can't beat years in the business.
"Aww, but a Firefly and a Sentry from AAA Corp are pretty decent, aren't they? Compared to the Cuties I make they're a little? Okay, a lot? lacking, but still? Not a bad commission payout, I think."
They say the sister-in-law chiming in from the sidelines pisses you off more than the mother-in-law doing the actual nagging.
I came within a breath of firing up the Firefly drone and giving Lee Sena a hands-on education, then let out a thin sigh and shut the case.
"Commission reward received, loud and clear. Please continue to make frequent use of this Super Rookie—professional Fixer, professional explorer, and professional raid clearer."
"I like the way you work, so I'll be using you now and then. Now get out. I've got more clients to see."
"Hold on. I'm not done here."
I walked past a puzzled Ted Chan and climbed onto the operating table in the adjoining room as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The table connected directly to his office.
"Technically, I'm a client too, aren't I? I came all this way as a customer. Might as well get an implant while I'm here, or the books don't balance."
Ted Chan looked over at Lee Sena.
"I didn't think this prison had another one like you. Where did you even find a lunatic like this?"
"Aww, don't flatter him too much, Doctor."
"It's been a long time since I felt something I could actually call a headache. Are you two long-lost siblings or something? The way you play off each other, that's compatibility at the genetic level."
"So that's not a green light, that's a red light?"
"..."
Ted Chan looked genuinely finished. He clutched his throbbing forehead and stepped up beside the table I was lying on. Lee Sena came in with him; she hadn't forgotten what I'd asked of her.
"So what is it you actually want? I'm not idle enough to walk some walk-in through a catalog and give him a friendly little lecture."
"I don't need a catalog. I already know what I want."
There was only one implant I was getting today.
"Hook me up with a Blood Flow Accelerator. Make it a real piece of work."
"...A Blood Flow Accelerator? Not a blood filtration unit. You're sure you mean a Blood Flow Accelerator."
"Blood filtration units are for the chrome-heads who keep stacking toxins in their system. I haven't installed a single implant yet. I don't need one."
"You're not even pairing it with something else for a synergy effect. You just want a Blood Flow Accelerator, by itself, and that's it. I've seen a lot of clients in my life. You are a first."
Well, of course he hadn't.
In EFD, you had the people who pushed a character's implants to the extreme values and wrung out maximum efficiency, and then you had the people who ran as few implants as possible—staying as close to Vanilla as they could—and still wrung out maximum efficiency. Every implant you added came with a drawback. Push the extremes and you got enormous downsides stacked on enormous upsides. So why wouldn't the opposite work? That was the thinking behind the Vanilla setup.
Strictly speaking it wasn't a pure untouched state, so calling it Vanilla was a stretch. But for a while there was a real meta around staying as close to Vanilla as possible, running the minimum implants, and still pulling maximum efficiency. And as it happened, I was the one who'd started that trend.
Pile on the implants and anyone who isn't a hardcore veteran starts drowning. This setup was a value build anyone could run, from complete newbie to old monster.
And it started with the Blood Flow Accelerator. Fewest drawbacks, most reliable upside. In the early-to-mid game, not running one was just leaving money on the table.
"Oh—and don't even think about ripping me off. That's why I brought Lee Sena. Even if I name a model I know, how am I supposed to tell if it's the real thing or some knockoff, or somebody's used junk?"
"Could you do me a favor and just shut up?"
"Remember this, Miss Lee Sena. No cheap stuff! Latest generation only! Tough! And it better be a beast! I'll inspect every last bit of it later!"
Even if I have to cut my own belly open to do it. No exceptions.
"Alright, just go to sleep now, Super Rookie."
"I'm not done tal—"
That was as far as I got before I lost consciousness on the table. The latest medical technology of the 2040s put me under a full general anesthetic with no side effects.
And from today on, I would be born again.
Han Seungho