Age of Space

In a restaurant located in the upper district of Ironglades, row after row of new and exciting dishes were being brought out. On the table, already, a collection of culinary delights was being aggressively devoured. From seafood delicacies, harvested from foreign star systems to premium beef straight from the nearby planet Hartheim, Ronin ate it all.

Gulping down a glass of taste optimized water, he basked in his newfound luxury like a true nouveau riche.

This is the life! he beamed as he went over the plan he and Nagata had agreed to. The first priority was to exchange implants in order to ensure he wasn’t tracked or listened in on anymore. The feeling of always having to hide something was very uncomfortable, but in exchange, he was still alive. So, there was that.

He could only imagine what would happen if Tar found out about his alien passenger. Now, there was also the cryptocurrency he'd stolen from the CLM to worry about. That being said, with the funds at hand, he could now set up a real business and start designing starships. What he'd dreamed about since he was a child was finally in sight and he wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.

In order to exchange implants, he’d have to visit a private black-market specialist. He could have an official hospital do this operation as well but given his alien infection and the fact that government hospitals stored and uploaded all your biometrics onto the net, he’d decisively passed on that option.

As for the implant they’d chosen, the "Uninet-2000-Ex". This was not only a top of the line, widely accepted general purpose implant, it was also optimized for weak brain integration. This made it removable without risking brain damage should he wish for an upgrade later on. Compared to his current government issued implant, it had 1000 times the storage capacity and 100 times the RAM, it also had a high uplink speed.

Most importantly of all, however? It was widely used by human society. Far more empires and kingdoms than Tar used this device. In other words, this was not the type of technology a company or government tampered with. Too many different stakeholders were involved. If a state or company tampered with something this popular, the scrutiny and animosity from the rest of human society would leave the perpetrators in ruin.

Ronin handsomely tipped the restaurant staff before he left, stepping out onto a fancy see-through elevator. Met by the view of flying shuttles, metal buildings and blinking neon lights, he pressed the button for the 289th floor.

Dr. Leyana Firnesse inspected the upcoming schedule for the day. Working for the upper end of the market had been quite the attractive offer when her former mentor introduced the idea. Working off the books, she not only earned herself a large sum of credits, but she also got to see a wide variety of customers. From secretive cult leaders, company leaders living on the gray side of the law, to government officials and spoiled young masters with unsavory lifestyles. She had seen it all.

This client was something new though. By all means, he should be a poor slum rat, yet he had the funds for an operation like this. Looking at the image accompanying his file and the twitching boy walking up to greet her, the discrepancy was shocking to say the least. Black lightning shaped scars ran down from his forehead and… golden pupils?

Who would want to look like that?

“Ah, Mr. Maximus! Right on time. I see here you have also ordered a full body scan. Would you like us to perform it after or before the implant exchange procedure?”

“Which will be faster?” The lightning scarred boy questioned.

Short and curt questions, also nervous? She remarked, noticing the increase in pitch towards the end of his question.

“If we do it after the procedure, the scan will proceed while you are still unconscious, saving you some time.” She replied.

“Let's do it after the operation then.” He decided as they walked towards the operation room.

After being injected with anesthetics, he only got a little sleepier, but that was about it.

What in the world? He should be asleep by now!

"Seems we will have to increase the dosage sir. Did you take anything before coming here?"

"What? No, I only ate some food. Is there a problem?" The half sleepy boy replied.

Grumbling inwardly, she upped the dosage, again and again. From 1.5 times the normal levels, to 2, to 2.5. Only after tripling the amount, did he finally fall asleep.

What in the void? She had never had to increase the dosage like this on a patient before!

This boy... did he lie about being injected with stimulants before coming here? Could it be illegal genetic enhancements?

She began the implant swap but, the operation was soon further complicated by how his muscle fibers kept twitching. Not like how a typical physiological or psychological condition could cause spasms, no. His entire body was tensing and relaxing. Every individual muscle group seemed to tense and relax in a continuous cycle, seemingly independently of each other. Even his brain was twitching!

With the amount of anesthetics she'd injected him with, he was already supposed to be half dead by now! This was beginning to look less like a normal operation and more like a scientific experiment.

Dr. Leyana Firnesse was a professional however, one of the best in the business. Something like this would not stop someone like her! Taking out some more specialized tools, she worked around the twitching tissues, perfectly cutting around the old device, extracting it, then slowly began installing the Uninet-2000.

Time to figure out what's going on with the kid, she thought, as drones began bringing over specialized bioscan instruments. She was going to be thorough with this kid. She needed to know, to help her patient of course, totally not because she might be looking at a fascinating scientific marvel!

As the results began trickling in, the data only became more and more confusing. She had noticed him acting a bit jittery when he walked into her office, but never had she imagined something like THIS to be the reason!

Ronin woke up feeling refreshed. There was none of the headache one would expect from having one's head operated on. Whatever anesthetics he’d been given had also been completely flushed out of his system.

“Surprised?” The female doctor asked, brushing her long, chestnut-colored hair aside. She looked... proud?

“Everything I've read about these operations said there would be immediate side effects. I really didn’t expect it to go so smoothly. Thank you” He happily shot back.

Activating his new Uninet-2000, he began testing it out, opening up livestreams, hologram programs as well as various forms of scanning functions. Both the quality and speed of this device was on a whole other level. He barely had to think about what he wanted before the optical implant displayed it!

This thing is amazing, it's almost as fast as the speed of thought. It's like it's a part of my mind! He thought, his eyebrows shooting up in amazement.

“You get what you pay for. Here at Cyber Specs, you not only get the best services on the planet, but you also get complete anonymity!” Done with her marketing pitch, she continued.

“Anyways, we don’t quite know what to make of the bioscan. All the values we measured, from blood pressure, cell division rate to cognitive activity show elevated values. But you still appear perfectly healthy. The only impairment we could find was the micro-jitters in your muscles.”

“What's even more interesting, is that during our scan, we encountered some anomalous energy readings. We didn’t know what to make of it, so we ran the scan again.” She began, her eyes flashing wide, turning intense.

“Guess what we found!? Every value measured was higher during the 2nd scan, including the anomalous energy readings! Also, none of our drugs had any effect on you. When we lowered blood pressure, something else increased proportionally! Who knows what might happen if these values continue to increase! You might just suddenly fall over, dead! Just like that. You could even suddenly explode! Imagine that! BOOM!” Dr. Leyana Firnesse excitedly spoke, gesturing with her hands, a hint of mania now evident on her face.

“E-E-Explode!?” Ronin stuttered, horrified by the news. Looking at the not so professional doctor anymore, he thought back to the battle hunger he felt when confronting the rooftop bandits.

It has to be that anomalous energy she mentioned. It's forcing my body to fight somehow, perhaps some of the memories from the door I opened in my mind palace can help?

“Is there any way to reduce those elevated values you measured, any at all?” He asked, just to be sure.

Dr. Firnesse, clearly a bit too happy considering his circumstances, raised a hand to her chin and scrunched her eyebrows in thought. Ronin counted every second as time passed by, his heart in his throat. Finally, she began to speak:

“Not that I can think of, while you were unconscious, we did try to change those values, as I just mentioned. I also searched up anything related to your condition on the net, there was nothing even remotely close to what we measured on you. No condition, no artificially induced state, nothing. There is simply no president for whatever is happening to you.”

“Nothing at all? In all of human society there must be something right? The Concordia network only covers the 4 planets of the Tar kingdom.”

She looked deeply into his eyes, her gaze now firm. “I didn’t use the Concordia network, I used the quantum net. Don’t ask me how I have access, but this network covers all of human occupied space. Out of the vast ocean of humanity out there, trillions upon trillions of people. Not a single person recorded, has values like yours.”

Realization began to sink in. Ronin was on his own. He saw that now. If he was going to fix what was happening to him, he had to do it himself.

“Buuuut-” she continued. “If all else fails and there is no other way out for you, you can call this ID here.” She handed him a card made of paper. The words on the card elegantly written in nanoparticle ink.

Whatever this is, it sure is extravagant.

"The Brinksman" The card read. Looking further down, his new Uninet-2000-Ex reacted to the nanoparticles as information began materializing on his holoscreen.

These are DNA transplant services and genetic enhancement procedures! Ronin was shocked.

Bio-modification was in general, highly illegal, not only in Tar but in all of human occupied space. If a state openly engaged in this, all rights and privileges could be revoked. There was even a risk they'd be designated as aliens!

“The card has now been calibrated to your implant ID. Keep the card out of sight. If the nanoparticles embedded in the card detect any attempts on accessing it from anyone other than you, the card will self-destruct.”

Last resort indeed, Ronin agreed.