Technica Comes Calling
I could feel it. We were only a sliver away from the start of EFD's main story.
The proof was sitting right in front of me. Only a few days had passed since I'd broken the profit record on my third Darkzone run — three deployments, three new records — and already the prison had begun rewriting its systems. Encouraging inmates to go into the Darkzone was no longer enough. They were sliding toward something that looked a lot like coercion.
They weren't beating reluctant inmates and shoving them through the gate, and they weren't lining anyone up as an example with a lecture about how cowards only earned lead. But even a cockroach scuttling past could have told you the atmosphere was a world apart from two or three weeks ago.
Everyone's wound tight.
It felt like watching a balloon inflated so hard that a fingertip, never mind a needle, would pop it. If even I — a rookie Orange who hadn't been inside a month — could feel it, there was no chance the ones who'd been rotting here for years, some of them more than a decade, would miss it. Everyone seemed careful not to spark an unnecessary fight, and at the same time they were watching each other with a look that said, just give me one excuse.
In that contradiction-soaked space, I sat back and sucked down the protein shake my cellmates had bought me. Hitting the cafeteria for a bowl of bulgogi over rice wouldn't have been a bad call, but something about today made me not want to wander into a crowd and give myself a headache. I decided to stay put in Cell Block H-050.
"Boss, I don't think you should leave our cell block today."
The guy who'd gone out for my protein shake said it like a man who'd seen something. I just turned my head and looked at him.
"Let me guess. The guards are on the move?"
"...How did you know? On my way back with the shake and your food, I saw them walking the cell blocks with the security robots."
"Look at the guys around us. Every last one of them is wound tight. You think cons who landed in here for actual crimes get this twitchy over a lumpy mattress or a shitty side dish? The only thing in a prison that makes inmates this uncomfortable is the guards."
The concrete walls and iron bars that kept us penned in, the neighboring inmates forever sniffing around for something to scavenge — stay here long enough and you adapted to all of it. But it didn't matter if you'd been rotting in this place for decades or if you were king of the cell block. The moment the guards stepped in, you were nothing.
"We're only a few days from release. I'm worried something big might go down before then."
"You don't need to worry. It's the next batch coming in after you leave that's fucked."
Why were the guards making every inmate on the block this uncomfortable and still wandering the halls like they didn't care? Obvious. They'd started an internal systems inspection ahead of the main EFD story I knew was coming. Security was life for a prison, so if they were going to pull that kind of stunt, they'd need no small amount of preparation on their end.
Which meant these three laborer brothers, due to walk free in a few days, had nothing to worry about. They were going to be the last people ever released from Seoul Southern Prison.
I was still giving them a hard time for the worry they couldn't wipe off their faces, shaking the protein shake with some enthusiasm, when a murmur swelled up from below. I glanced up, wondering what the noise was, and found a good number of inmates already pouring out beyond the cell bars.
"Booo! Get the fuck out, you government dogs!"
"You act just like us and still walk around like you're better!"
"How the hell are you any different from the cops?!"
Whatever festival they thought they'd found, the little clusters that had been muttering among themselves were done being subtle. They started whistling openly, hurling trash, raining down jeers.
Then a single gunshot cracked through the block.
The whistles and the heckling died on the spot. The ones shrieking like monkeys zipped their mouths as if none of it had ever happened.
"Shut the hell up, you sons of bitches! You think this is a playground? Or should I run a full block search and reshuffle every last cell while I'm at it?!"
The inmates knew a guard's warning never stopped at words. They started reading the room and drifted apart one by one.
A block search meant going cell by cell, digging for illegal stashes and checking whether anyone had broken prison law — tearing the center apart, in street terms. Breaking up the rooms meant taking cellmates who'd been getting along just fine and scattering them into completely random new assignments, and that was the measure inmates feared most.
Criminals, I swear. Nobody does drama like they do.
I didn't particularly care whether they searched the cells or broke them up. I'd already paid the prison its official tribute and expanded my own cell, and as long as I didn't cross the line, even the guards couldn't touch that.
Still, I was curious. What kind of system were they being this obvious about adding?
I sat up from the sunbed, still shaking the protein shake, and stepped out of the cell. Leaning on the upper-level railing of the block, I took in the other people moving with the guards in full uniform.
Unlike the guards, every one of them was wearing a Smartlink and a pair of security goggles, sweeping the inside of the cell block as they went. They had the air of expensive talent — far too expensive for simple maintenance — and, just as I'd expected, a familiar mark was stamped on their black work clothes.
...What the hell are those bastards doing here now?
A geometric cogwheel, printed on black fabric. That was the emblem of Technica, a megacorp and member of the Korean corporate conglomerate.
In EFD's lore, they were the cutting-edge tech and machine-fetishists that this world's Purists hated more than anything. Borrow the power of the newest machines, they believed, keep evolving and advancing without end, and even a creature that started as an imperfect human could eventually reach perfect godhood. They sat at the exact opposite pole from the Purists, who insisted you were born human and ought to die human — and in this made-up dystopia, whatever else you said about them, they had their concept down cold.
And those bastards had shown up right as the main story's opening act was about to start.
Come to think of it, EFD said Korea's cutting-edge AI tech was developed in their hands.
The overarching system that ran the prison was operated by an AI, and even the smaller security systems the guards and the Warden managed directly were supposed to have their own AI assistants. Technica had probably dispatched its elite technicians in person to overhaul that side of things — or to add something new.
That was when Crazy Clock broke out of standby on my wrist and started to react.
Obsolete-generation technology detected in proximity.
"Don't go hacking things on your own like Pretty does. If you cause an incident right now, I won't be able to clean it up."
Sustained contact between Prisoner and obsolete-generation technology carries a high probability of severe cognitive degradation.
"My brain is functioning better than anyone's."
I'd played EFD — a god-tier game — for ten straight years. Who the hell was supposed to be smarter than me? Honestly, at my level, the top one percent of Mensa would've been a cakewalk.
Then what, precisely, are those quasi-primates slathered filthy with obsolete technology from head to toe?
"Elite technicians from Technica. They may not look it, but they're tougher than the guards — physically and socially."
Technica's technicians were lunatics who lived on implants and boost drugs. Unlike the Purists, who tried to lock their bodily purity at one hundred percent, these people had no problem replacing weak meat with chrome and pumping their brains full of chemicals. Ted Chan, the country's top illegal implant surgeon, had been on the receiving end of Technica's most passionate recruiting pitches. That said it all.
Inefficient. Human beings are each equipped with an optimal combination of supplementary drugs, supplementary equipment, and supplementary systems. To ignore that and blindly patch weaknesses or chase raw performance is equivalent to injecting nano-regenerative agents into a steak that has already finished cooking.
"Yeah, I think so too."
Agreed. Unlike the quasi-primates, Prisoner correctly understands his own capabilities and physical structure and pursues optimal efficiency. The arrangement would be more perfect if Pretty did not exist.
"Don't tell me you're jealous of Pretty."
That is horrific, repulsive, and an excessive leap of speculation. Immediate correction is demanded.
I fidgeted with Pretty, sleeping quietly inside my coat. That cool, heavy weight in the hand. It had everything you needed to cave in a vermin's skull.
"Yeah, Pretty's definitely more use—"
"Who have you been talking to this whole time?"
The flat voice came from right beside me, and my hand clenched around the hammer's handle on instinct. I rolled my eyes sideways without turning my head, and found a woman standing on the railing — how she'd jumped a dozen meters up here, I had no idea.
Black work clothes. The familiar cogwheel emblem. Security goggles covering half of a small, slender face, and a state-of-the-art Smartlink blinking softly at her temple. An ordinary person would have lost their balance and gone over the edge after a few seconds on a railing this high. She just stood there with her long black hair hanging down, not a flicker of movement, and looked at me.
Inborn, post-human balance, or balance bought with implants and boosters. Either way, she was no ordinary person.
"Never seen someone talk to himself before? Guys with as much backstory as me tend to do that wherever we go."
I said it in a tone that asked whether she couldn't see the orange jumpsuit overflowing with tragic personal history. She didn't take the bait.
"For a man whose tragic past has left him mentally unstable, you seem to enjoy a rather remarkable reputation. Inmate number 77777. Day twenty at Seoul Southern Prison. Three Special Duty deployments, three broken profit records. The shining achievements of the Super Rookie. The Lucky One. The Orange Who Brings Death."
"Isn't digging through someone's personal file more of a hobby for the brothers across the water? Looks to me like you've got more important work to do."
"Ah, no need to worry. I may not look it, but I serve as Technica's chief security officer, technical manager, and external cooperation supervisor. The systems inspection here, and the layout for the new system we'll be introducing afterward — I've already finished all of it."
More to the point, she added, and leaned her face in close. A thick smell of disinfectant rolled off her, the kind that almost never came from an ordinary woman.
"I have been entertaining a reasonable suspicion that your remarkable results were achieved with the help of a secret collaborator. What do you think?"
"I think a real intellectual settles things with facts, not baseless smears and propaganda."
"A fair point. It wouldn't add up, after all — a collaborator no one knows about, attached to a man with no outside connections and no connections inside the prison either."
She slowly looked me over, her goggled gaze dragging down my body like a scan.
"Is that cute little toy in your coat for self-defense?"
"Retro's in fashion these days, so I picked one up. Closed-off places like prisons, the trends always come back around, right?"
"You've got a cute side, contrary to the rumors. But if you actually want something useful, you should buy a real piece instead of trash like that. Fortunately, the system about to be installed in this prison might just get you what you want."
That was all I needed. I understood immediately why Technica's technicians had shown up to poke through the cell blocks with the guards.
They're getting ready to roll out the auction house.
The auction house was a capitalist swap-meet where inmates, shop NPCs, the prison, the corporate conglomerates, the military, and the government all sat down together to practice a little thrift drive among their own kind. Inmates would be able to buy stronger, more efficient gear through it. Everyone else would buy whatever made them money, whatever was worth researching, and whatever they absolutely had to get their hands on — purchased straight off the inmates.
And since the system would obviously be jointly run by Technica, which held the essence of the latest AI technology, and the prison itself, it made sense that someone of her caliber had been dispatched here in person.
"If I become a regular, do I get a Technica employee discount?"
"That would depend on what you can offer us."
It was a dry answer that made a lousy goodbye. She dropped off the railing as casually as someone flopping onto a bed. Short gasps went up here and there, but the woman herself landed perfectly — more practiced than a cat — and walked back to her colleagues.
This world, it seemed, had a lot more unhinged women in it than I'd expected.
I watched them leave and quietly rolled up my sleeve.
Nobody recognized Crazy Clock. Not even Technica's finest, the supposed peak of cutting-edge technology.
"Fine. I'll take it back. You're better than Pretty."
That is the correct answer, Prisoner.
It seemed like that was the reply that came back.