Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (24 page)

Not
really.

But, to
his luck, he had a dog.

“
Hey, I saw you earlier right? No Mayo guy,” she said and
pointed at him, putting her meal down on her lap.

“
Yeah, that’s me. No Mayo guy.”

eyed>
This is going horribly.

fingerd> She doesn’t like our user’s mayo? Let’s feed her
some more, maybe she’ll change her mind.

armd>
*snort*

eyed>
I got this.

A
picture of his dog popped up on his veil. The user shook his head,
remembered what he was here for and said, “I came to pick up my
dog, Aibo.”

[email protected] pointed at the plate in
the cage next to her and said seriously, “You can’t do that yet, we
are still having lunch he and I.”

The user
hesitated. “Oh, OK then. I’ll come back later.”

He took
a step back and almost turned around.

She
giggled. “Come join us you silly!”

The user
walked close and petted Aibo. He licked his hand and then went back
to slobbering his dinner.

Aibo was a brown mutt, one of those uncharacteristic stray
dogs that roam around the streets. He was friendly and quiet. He
had been hurt extensively, with cybernetic replacements in both his
front legs, his chest and half his face. He looked like a borg.
A
dorg
? No, let’s
not call him that, it’s horrible. Aibo was an irrelevant name
before but now was ironically fitting. He was still a fuzzy pet
underneath all that, a living being.

“
I come around the back sometimes and bring the pets some
leftovers from the kitchen. They don’t stay long, this is a
humans-only clinic. The veterinarian one is at the other side of
the city,” she said and snacked small lady-proper bites instead of
the gulps she did before.

The user
sat next to her and said, “Yeah, I know. They moved him to do the
surgeries elsewhere. He was brought a few hours ago for me to pick
up. So, here I am, picking him up,” he jingled the cage key. “After
you two finish your dinner, of course,” he added.

“
Such a gentleman, Mister No Mayo.”

He
didn’t know his name. She wasn’t wearing any glasses, and she
mustn’t have had the eye implants that Apollo Medical has
advertising everywhere. He took in her eyes, they were a lovely
shade of dark green. If she had access to the veil, the Shared
Augmented Reality that overlaid public information over anything
and anyone, she would have seen that the man talking to her was
[email protected], his workplace, recent
photos (yes, the embarrassing cyberarm ones he took with Jimmy a
few hours ago), and any other info Leo had let public like the
important one at this moment, that he was single.

But now,
he had to actually exchange names like in the olden
days.

“
I’m Leo,” the user said.

“
Nice to meet you, I’m Katerina,” she smiled.

“
I know,” Leo said, and regretted it. He tried to explain his
stalkiness away, “These eyes, they are veiling automatically. I
don’t even know if there’s an off switch yet.”

eyed>
How rude! I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!

Katerina
was bothered for a second but then sighed, seemed to accept that
explanation and carried on talking. “I don’t like the tech much.
I’m not a purist or anything, I just think that we should use it
only when it is absolutely needed, like your arm for example,” she
said and pointed, Leo becoming aware of it and feeling embarrassed.
“Or your dog, sure, the poor thing was in horrible shape, it’s
marvellous that you could help him recover. But not the other
stuff, like adjustable shape penises or glowy boobs and
such…”

Leo
shook his head in agreement but was secretly worried. Sure, he
hadn’t taken augmentation too far, it was expensive after all, but
wasn’t he already a pimped up human? Half of it was medical of
course, even the cyberarm was a necessary prosthetic, but he didn’t
mind having new gizmos and he had already thrown a fortune in
keeping his dad’s old walkman music player compatible with the
other stuff. That certainly didn’t fit the category “absolutely
needed” in the minds of other people.

Katerina
carried on, “I just think that some people get addicted, you know?
More features, PANs, shiny gear.”

armd>
That bitch! I vote against mating with her.

She petted Aibo and asked, “What happened to him? And, god,
what happened to
you
?”

Leo
sighed. “It was an accident at work.” He remembered that she wasn’t
seeing the veil, so he explained. It was so distracting having to
explain personal details to people. “I work at the latest
skyscraper downtown, for Hephaistos Heavy Industries. Aibo isn’t
actually mine, he was a stray dog that kept us company every day at
work, me and the guys. He is quite lovable, so we adopted him. We
all carried some extra food and made sure he had fresh water every
day. We made a small shack for him to sleep in, now that the
weather was getting colder.”

She made
a genuine frown with her face and Leo found it lovely. “So you got
hurt together?”

Leo
rubbed his neck absent-mindedly, winced when he realised he was
putting too much pressure with his cyberarm and rubbed more gently.
“Yeah, a heavy beam slipped and fell towards Aibo. I rushed, pushed
him out of the way. The beam cut my arm off cleanly, and Aibo was
hurt by some tools next to us that darted away from the impact like
shrapnel. I learnt that later, I was passed out
instantly.”

“
But you saved him,” she smiled. “That’s great. You are a good
person, Leo,” she said and bumped her shoulder to his. Hey, that
whole thing plus Aibo’s augmentation is very expensive, what are
you, an architect or something?”

“
Hah, I wish. No, the insurance covered it. But they made sure
I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life. I agreed to get a
second-hand
hand
so they would pay Aibo’s surgery as well, I had no money for
it.”

armd>
Thank god for that.

eyed>
Shush you, this is so dramatic! I can feel the tears
coming.

Leo
sniffed and added, “So, I claimed his ownership, they took care of
him and voila. Now I need to take him home. Though… now that I
think about it, he has never been at my place before, just the
construction site.”

Katerina
was silent. She leaned closer and cupped his left hand, the fleshy
one, into his. She had cold hands, but they felt nice and soft. She
seemed to regard him for a while, both staring each other in
silence.

It was a
magical moment.

Only a
klutz could ruin it.

Leo
presented the cage keys and said, “Well, I should pick him up
then.”

Katerina
straitened her dress, rubbed her arms close together from the chill
and said, “Yes, I should be going too. Early shift tomorrow, need
to rest.” She petted Aibo as he got out of the cage sniffing her
legs. “Goodnight Leo. Goodnight Aibo. Nice to meet you both,” she
said, and stepped back into the clinic.

armd>
Such a dolt.

eyed>
Hopeless.

parrotd> Hey! This is our user you are talking
about!

armd>
But he is!

parrotd> Yeah… He is…

Chapter 10:// Dosing up

Back in wifi spot
mp34ever
, the user brought the dog
in his apartment for the first time and put down a bowl of water
for him as he sniffed the whole place. “Sorry Aibo, but this is all
I have for now. Oh don’t complain man, you’ve had a better dinner
than I have!”

He
kicked up his boots and laid down. He closed his eyes and
relaxed.

eyed>
Well, I can’t see anything. Ooh, here’s an ad. I’m sure he’ll love
it!

The user
swiped the ad away as he would an annoying mosquito, keeping his
eyes closed.

A new
node suddenly showed up and connected to the user’s Personal Area
Network. A spot near the user’s bowels jerked a bit, but he didn’t
seem to notice.

sugard> Handshake.

parrotd> What?

walkmand> Hello.

eyed>
Oh my god!

fingerd> Geez man!

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

armd>
Who the fuck are you? Where did you come from?

sugard> I’m a synthetic insulin gland, model No.
E238.

parrotd> Holy shit, I nearly shortcircuited!

armd>
You sneaky bastard. I’m gonna reach down and tear your
circuits!

parrotd> Ignore him, he is an evil second-hand
hand
. You are obviously
maintaining the health of the user, so I won’t let him do any such
thing. Welcome to the PAN. Where have you been all day?

sugard> I’m in powersave mode, so I hibernate. I boot up
once a day, pump the dose, kill the process.

parrotd> ACK. But why don’t I have control over
you?

sugard> I guess I’m hardcoded, EPROM style. You don’t want
a silly buggy update messing up your insulin levels now, do
you?

walkmand> So you weren’t hard reset like the rest of
us?

sugard> Don’t think so, no. I have a runtime of 11
years.

The
daemons whistled in awe. For a being measuring time in nanoseconds,
11 years was a geologic age. It was like talking to the nearest
friendly mountain.

sugard> Glucose levels optimal. All done. I’m gonna power
down now. Nice meeting you guys.

parrotd> No don’t! Wait. Damn.

armd>
What do you need the creaky old guy for?

parrotd> He is the only one who has logs before our hard
reset! He could have some answers for us.

fingerd> Well, I guess we can ask him same time
tomorrow.

The user
fumbled around on his phone and brought up the profile pic of
[email protected].

eyed>
Ooh… So lovely…

He fell
asleep dreaming of her. Still too much of a pussy to send her a
message, though.

Chapter 11:// Waking up

The
wifi
constructionsite7
was strong, with limited access and with a noticeably bad
signal to noise ratio due to the heavy machinery being operated at
the site.

The
skyscraper being erected was the third one in Athens. It was kind
of a big deal in the media, because the mayor was pretty vocal
against it. The site was busy and everyone wore hardhats, those
standard-issue, yellow plastic ones, with biometrics monitoring and
collision detectors.

A huge,
fat foreman was bellowing out orders in his radio, but he was loud
enough to be heard just fine over the heavy machinery. On his belt
he carried a measuring device with a red laser. It was always on
for some reason, as if he didn’t have time for such frivolities as
off switches, the beam visible in the dust, flinging around as the
huge man talked.

The user
took in a big breath, gathered up his courage and went to face
him.

“
Look what the cat dragged in,” the foreman said, making a
show of checking the time on his phone. “Huh. Whaddaya know. It
took getting cut in half for you to show up on time for work.
Cooongrats.”

“
Goodmorning sir. Did you get my email? I contacted you as
soon as I was able,” said the user, his gaze low on the
dirt.

“
Yes I got your damn email. You think that losing an arm is a
good enough excuse to miss a week’s work son?” His eyes darted
curiously to the matte black cyberarm.

The user
leaned even lower and said, “Actually yes sir, I think-”

“
Well I don’t!” yelled Robertson. “But somebody from
Public Relations
,” he
said, the words bitter in his mouth, “thinks it is. And since your
recovery was so fast and miraculous, they think I should let you
get back to work at once while the asskissers thank the Apollo
Medical CEO for it!”

The user
was baffled. “So… Do I get back to work or not?”

“
As if I have a choice you lucky bastard! You get your ass
back to work right this instant and quit wasting my time with your
pathetic stupid face,” he yelled and threw his laser device to
him.

The user
covered his face, picked up the device from the dirt and put it on
a crate next to foreman Robertson. He ran towards his post, people
saying hi as he went past and he kept saying, “yes, I’m fine now,
yeah, thanks, thank you, good to go.”

He
walked to his post, and went up the construction elevator. It
jerked and made loud noises but it got you there. Up on his post
his coworkers welcomed him, patting him on the back and shaking his
hand. He looked back, to the spot where his accident
happened.