Read Online Necrotech by K C Alexander - Free Book Online Page A

bed.
    I’d do everything later. All I wanted, all I desperately needed, was uninterrupted sleep.

4
    L ike any piece of hardware , the body is a functional machine. Ages ago, scientists figured out that the brain was just a kind of fleshy processor shooting out electrical impulses to the rest of the system. From there, it was only matter of time before corporations turned theory to reality and started shilling.
    Software upgrades came after the obvious hardware upgrades. A cheerleader cramming for her college exams could pop some intelligence enhancers while a single dad in the ’burbs – that is, any one of a dozen neighborhoods not currently featured on the crime feeds at any given time – could score a packet of no-sleep without too much trouble.
    Then hardware transitioned from necessity to a competition. Need an edge? No problem, replace your hands, your legs, your heart. Medical innovation gave way to military, and from military to aesthetic.
    It seemed an obvious step, moving from video calling to data jacking, and from data jacking to projected uploading. The signal wavered and the noise got louder, and that’s the way the soulless consumerist spunkchuckers of the world like it.
    And, hey, if the price to pay is an occasional, quietly eradicated rash of corruption among the middle-class sheep, well, the cost of doing business and all.
    But projected uploading is also why I could take a call in a state of deep sleep, converse with someone else and remember it clearly. Even better, I didn’t have to miss some seriously needed rest.
    Although my meatspace body remained flattened out in my tiny cot, my brain responded to the haptic tap at the base of my skull. I was too damn tired to respond consciously, so the call protocols kicked in and I found my projected body in a white projected room. A plain table waited in the middle of it, the usual centerpiece of a baseline projection interface, and so did an endearingly boyish detective seated at it.
    Less usual. Less expected.
    Less welcome.
    The place was stark. It looked more like a cleaned-up, colorless version of the police station interrogation room than a place to have a casual conversation, but that’s the augmented reality business for you. You can pay to make your cyberspace a little more ritzy, include all kinds of little apps, but why bother? In about three seconds, all that empty space is flooded with ads.
    Unless you pay for that, too.
    The bright-eyed man at the table, with his hair cut and his three-day beard shaved, leaned forward in anticipation. “Riko, I’m glad–”
    I held up my hand. “Wait a sec.”
    Greg’s voice died off.
    We didn’t have to wait long. With two confirmed connections, color vomited across the server. Hot pink and green, red and blue, purples, oranges, screaming text and neon vids. Jarring on the best of days, and downright vertigo-inducing on a day like mine.
    Wincing, I crossed the small space and slid into a seat. Like its matching table, it was plain. Cold, simple metal with no distinguishing features. The kind of thing easily projected. “I’m not going to ask how you got my freq.” They’d scanned it off my chipset when I was at the station. I’d need to scrub the markers and reprogram my frequency sooner rather than later. “Talk fast. I am not in the mood for shit.”
    He had the grace to look sheepish, which his fresh-out-of-school persona telegraphed exceedingly well. The creases by his eyes, the lines I’d seen carved into his mouth at the station, were gone. His hair was a little bit brighter – not much, just enough – and his jaw a smidge harder.
    The vain bastard. He’d cosmetically enhanced his uplink appeal.
    â€œSorry to bother you, but I couldn’t let it go.” His smile, when he turned it on me, carried the programming equivalent of boyish charm. As if an aw, shucks, ma’am, t’weren’t