"Chonji ~ Litany I" by Seung L. Park

Beep!

Gray lifted her eyes from the cracked LCD. Behind her, characters merged, mated, grew old together, died together. And so off to a heaven where God covered his eyes so he could not see where he threw the dice. Then God would surely smile and thus did Gray leverage herself off the chair, scraping her chair back by inches and killing a cockroach who had been making its way across the floor.

There was a discharge of static, followed by the sickening sound of silicon being powderized under plastic. Living things, when crushed, made very different sounds that Gray would have recognized as unfamiliar had she been given the chance. Which was why she knew that she would have to check off the box marked ‘destroyed’ in the inevitable report she was going to have to file with the Environmentals. As opposed, that was, to ‘killed’.

Beep!

Gray lifted her eyes from the dead (? destroyed? what’s the difference again, mommy?) piece of silicon and immediately experienced a sense of deja-vu that would have been overwhelming if not for the slatted bars of black and white that came in through the ventilation grates and imprisoned her, rooted her, in this reality. A few neurons fired, a query sent off to the Awareness chip that currently resided in the firmware slot at the base of her neck. And back again; at the corner of her eye a low-res waterfall display cycled through a quick ID of the nearest targets. It then proceeded to home in on one of the blips, informing her that with 99.995% certainty, this being was the origin of the sound. A comprehensive ID sent her running to the door. In this manner did Gray’s pizza arrive.

The door slid open with a pneumatic sigh and before her stood a tall, lanky man with dead eyes and badly-wired neurocircuitry. His hands trembled as ghostly overlays of digits floated by on the surface of his right eye. Classic symptoms of a badly-done visual-shunt circuit that might eventually drive the user to the depths of insanity and back again. The degree of burnout would probably be such that the user would never make very good life material, not ever again.

Updates, even the unintentional ones, to age-honored torture techniques remained delightfully brutish.

"Pizza, ma’am," the unfortunate figure announced.

In an almost Pavlovian response Gray reached to the pendant she wore, and with a sharp twist her ID crystal was free. It glowed slightly in her hand as she solemnly handed it over to the waiting shadow. Who held it up to his inscrutable right eye, then jabbed it into the base of his neck in what might have been a grotesque re-enactment of some ancient ritual of suicide. The man’s body vibrated slightly and his right eye basked in vaguely radioactive glow before fading back to the dying scroll of pain quantized and codified. The elegance lay there, a cornered beast constrained by the vagaries of low-quality implants and a botched visual shunt. And its preferred terminal emulation typed pain in big monospaced letters across this man’s consciousness. Waste of bandwidth, spilling over to unintended myoelectric glitches. Shudder and epiphany.

"Are you all right?" her voice pitched neutrally, hiding the concern that might have been fashionable a century or so ago.

"Account updated," he whispered back. With a jerk the crystal was out of the socket, then back in Gray’s hand, where it glowed quiescently for a moment. The pizza box came down on the other uplifted hand, and the man staggered away. Gray leaned on the frame of the door, watching all the while with hands uplifted, as if in prayer. She turned when the retreating image grew pixellated and nondescript. and only then did she retreat herself, set the pizza down, and reattach the crystal. Her hand came away slightly moist with a mixture of blood and spinal fluid. Her eyes widened, and her body quickened into sudden motion. Out the door, into the hallway, down the stairs. And so finally into the streets, where simulated rainfall cut her operative Awareness range to half optimal.

The man lay slumped mere feet away from the company hovercar. Reflex kicked in as Gray began transmitting a high-level distress signal. And something older than reflex kicked in as she began frantically shaking the man’s body, checking for signs of life. A hand slowly raised itself, as if disembodied, and Gray grasped it. The hand’s grasp tightened to the point that it was almost painful, and the man’s eyes slowly opened.

"Not both?" Gray managed to squeak. Both eyes were rapidly being obscured by multiple overlays of scrolling digits. In distilled terror, Gray watched as the irises of those eyes puddled into pools of pure black. Blood began trickling out of the base of his neck, forming a small river of red in the midst of Gray. It was at this point that she knew for certain that there was no power in heaven or hell that could save this dying man – or would want to. Which one of the two scared her more Gray did not know. Perhaps this unknown man sensed what Gray sensed as well, for his lips begrudgingly moved one last time to whisper "Chonji" before his breath left him. The eyes began scrolling again, only to the tune of screenfuls of zero. System crash.

The EMT crew that arrived on the scene five minutes too late found the two of them linked so, Gray’s unbidden tears diluting the red stream that signaled finale and coda for the mutilated sheet music of the unknown man’s existence. As she felt the hands of concerned members of the EMT team attempting to comfort her, attempting to make some connection, she rose in a sharp and exquisite knife edge motion. Her left hand balled into a fist, and flesh met flesh as an EMT took a blow to the face.

Flesh called to nerve, whose highways deflated under the pressure of a spiking sensorium. Too late the shining peak pierced the soft, ripe, underbelly of ego. And ego bled, screaming alarms into a path too narrow to contain them. Reflex response, broadcast frequency. Locked and transmitting, the EMT now took to the form of a praying turtle, arms outstretched to restrain one bent on self-immolation into the depths of frenzy.

Who promptly kicked him between his legs. Transmission halted, the firmware went into emergency state and as it did so

Concrete walls swung outwards, rebuking the solemnity of steel. With 99.995% precision, a hundred tranquilizer turrets clicked into place. With 99.995% precision they ID’d, painted, and tracked Gray. And with the same damnable 99.995% hit probability one of them fired a single dart.

Gray’s eyes flared double zeroes as she fell, and she was glad that the cockroaches might have something to eat.

--

- So, Citizen Gray, you are awake. Your Miranda rights will be read to you, if you so wish.

- No, Lieutenant Militaire, I am in full knowledge of my rights.

- Then do you waive the reading?

- I so do.

- Then let us begin. Was Patrick Silverman of any relation to you?

- I am sorry, officer, but who is that?

- The man whose hand you were holding as he died.

- He delivered pizza to me. It was the first time I’d seen him.

- Patrick Silverman, you mean?

- Yes, officer Militaire.

- Do you confess to killing him, then?

- No, officer, I… <shocked silence> whyever would you suspect such a thing?

- You were the first on the scene, Citizen. Thus the first suspect.

- Well, I…

- Before you say anything further, Citizen, I must inform you that the wire you will probably have noticed attached to your spinal plug is a lie-detecting device. Any wrong answers, and you will be shorted out. Non-fatal, I assure you. But extremely painful.

As if to make his point clear, Militaire pushed a button on a blackbox that lay on the table. Gray stiffened as if an electric current was being run through her.

- That was the lowest setting, Citizen. You had best tell the truth.

- I swear, I had nothing to do with his death!

The device remained quiescent. Reluctantly, Militaire nodded.

- You seem to be telling the truth. Now tell me – what do you know about Silverman’s death, then?

- The pizza delivery guy…

- He has a name, Citizen. You may as well do him the courtesy of using it.

- The pizza… Mr. Silverman seemed to have a faulty right visual shunt device when I first saw him. He was obviously in pain, but would not answer me when I asked him whether he was all right.

- Go on.

- Only after he was gone did I realize that my ID crystal was coated with his blood. I started running after him. I discovered him on the street, and… <sobs> must I remember?

- Go on. Please.

- He… he… suffered a complete sensorium crash. And with his implants being the quality that they were… he did not survive. The last thing I re… remember is holding his hand and crying.

- Are you aware then, Citizen, that a team of paramedics arrived on the scene very soon afterwards?

- I have no such recollection.

- Or that you physically assaulted them?

Another shocked silence.

- I what?

- Or, if you would prefer, we have visual data from your POV that confirms it. <chuckle> No one was injured, but you apparently frightened the EMT boys so much that they were forced to call for us. You’ve been on tranquilizer for the past six hours.

- Please, leave me alone.

- Citizen Gray, you…

- Please, leave me alone!

- Citizen…

- LEAVE ME!

- So you refuse to exercise your gift of memory. My disappointment is immeasurable.

And so she was left there, her arms outstretched as if in prayer. Minus, of course, the pizza and the ID crystal. Plus, of course, a memory she should not have been allowed to keep.

There was no doubt in Gray’s mind which box to check off this time.