Author: Fawkes Defries

‘Shit!’ Russ collapsed against his chrome tent, cursing as the acid tore through his clothes. Usually he made it back inside before the rain fell, but his payments to Numeral for the metal arms had just defaulted, and without the gravity-suspenders active he was stuck lugging his hands around like a cyborg gorilla.

Back in the safety of his not-so-temporary ‘temporary’ home in Neo-Skid Row, Russ examined the damage on his limp arms. The acid had scorched through the fancy metal plating, leaving a couple of large holes exposing corrugated wires. Russ groaned. He didn’t have the credits to repair the coating — not that it would matter without them functioning, anyway.

Of course, the acid had also torched what little skin Russ still had left — but that was just flesh, it would heal over time. Or maybe it would scar and when he had dough again he could fill it with extravagant steel. No, the cybernetics were valuable, unlike the rest of him.

Russ lay back on his sleeping bag, staring up at the tent’s alkaline-coating as if he were staring into the universe. He blinked away the ad banners screaming in his optical implants, oily tears dribbled slowly down titanium muscle and fleshed steel.

‘Good evening, Mr. Skidelsky.’ The sweet toned voice of Numeral Technologies’ AI agent blared in the implants hiding in his eardrums.

‘Fuck off, Zero.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Skidelsky, I know this isn’t a good time — ’ The anthropomorphic, Looney Tunes-styled logo zoomed into existence, overlaying the swarm of eye ads. Cute as the Clippy-faced zero was, Russ always reminded himself that the logo had been trained on decades worth of harvested data to appear as disarming as possible.

‘Fuck off then.’ Russ found himself cursing Numeral for the fifteen-credit-a-month mute fee.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Skidelsky,’ the AI repeated itself, curtsying its rubber-hose hands behind the circle of its zero-sum body. ‘Your payments for your optical implants have defaulted. Numeral Technologies have no choice but to cut the services we are providing, in accordance with the policy you signed.’

Russ’s eyes widened, horror written on his implants. ‘No!’ Russ rose to his feet, heaving himself against the weight of his colossal arms. ‘Don’t you dare take my fucking eyes away!’

‘I’m so sorry, Mr. Skidelsky,’ Zero looked as if it were about to cry, ‘this isn’t up to me. I am just an AI assistant and it has been a honour living with — and in — your head.’

The AI cartoon evaporated into nothingness. Russ peeled his eyes open, wide as he could, to preserve whatever little memory of the world Numeral would let him keep.

Small dark tendrils began to snake their way over his vision, sewing a latticework of darkness. Soon, all Russ could see was abyss — no more ads, no more tent, no more universe. A pitch black cave world, prefaced by an automated message asking for Russ’s credit details to switch his eyes back on.