Chapter 1
Joshua Nokfist sat at his desk. Using his soldering attachment on his modtool, Joshua soldered away at a new leg he was creating for an unknown client. Like all of his other side-jobs, this one came from the Selenium Docker's, an underground organization dealing with pretty much everything you could think of that's illegal. Since any type of profit gained that didn't go through Syntrofos government was illegal, this counted for mostly everything. Getting a high paying job in Syntrofos was near impossible unless you knew someone higher up. Even then, it was a roll of the die.
Exiled at a young age from becoming anything that mattered, Joshua worked at a factory handling nuclear containment devices as his legal job. While many years of education were required to handle nuclear equipment, in Syntrofos it was basically required knowledge. Everything ran on nuclear energy. Communication devices, vehicles, heating and cooling -- you name it, it was powered by nuclear energy. Academia hit a stand-still. Research was not granted by the government to anyone. Of course, the government knew some civilians would still research things in private, in fact, sometimes it benefited them. For example, if one researched a new way to use nuclear energy that they saw useful, and, as long as the research data did not get into the hands of the public, the government may even recruit them to work for them. If it did get into the hands of the public, well, that data would be quickly destroyed and the civilian who founded it would be swiftly dealt with.
Joshua specialized in medical bio-engineering. Home-brewed solutions to medical problems were ever prevalent in Joshua's part of Syntrofos. Insurance prices were insanely high and out of pocket costs were out of reach for anyone but the 1%, and, the 1% had insurance and weren't living anywhere near Syntrofos Outer Capital, the city known for being the most poor. Moving out of there required a certain amount of Syntrocoins and then approval by the government. All in all, unless you somehow met someone with a higher social status than you that wanted to associate with you, effectively lowering their own social status, it was nigh-impossible to get out.
Some in the Outer Capital do not really care. It's all they know. Sure, information about the Inner Capital trickles in sometimes as the proximity to them is so close, but, even then most of the citizens see those stories as myths. They know the chances of getting out were small. They figure thinking about it would not help them.
Others, like Joshua, know all of the details. They have the ability to bypass most of the government's firewall and are able to read about the news happening in the other regions. They also knew that almost all of it was propaganda. Contacts on the outside that would not be hindered by the social status of those they were talking about told them otherwise. While people on the outside did seem to live better in some ways, most of it seemed the same; they just had a slightly improved place to go home to every night.
Joshua's modtool immediately halted as a message popped up on his neuromask. Neuromask's are not really even masks anymore, even for those in the Outer Capital. They started as masks that the user would wear that linked to their nervous system, sending data back and forth. Now, neuromasks are much cheaper to make and smaller in size that they can be implanted into the user's head. A requirement after birth is that they are immediately implanted.
Deadline for project #209845 updated; new deadline: tomorrow at dawn (4:04 A.M.). Confirm?Joshua laughed at the message. Not once has he gotten a job where the deadline had updated to much earlier than originally agreed upon, and only once has he not been able to deliver at the new time. That time, he just didn't confirm the new time and worked without sleep for 2 days. His superiors were not happy of course, but, Joshua got the feeling that this happened to every new recruit. All they said was "don't let it happen again" and that was the end of that. Thinking "confirm" in his mind automatically dismissed the message in his brain and his modtool's status light turned green, signalling it was ready to operate again. Joshua soldered the last wire into place and placed the modtool on his nuclear charging bay, starting the wireless charging process. He grabs the silicone piece of leg next to his coffee cup and puts it in place over the wiring. The leg auto-meshed together and there it was, a brand new leg for some lucky recipient. While homebrewed prosthetics were extremely cheaper than their sanctioned counterparts, they still costed the recipient a lot of Syntrocoin, usually their entire life's savings. Most of the time it was that or die. In this case, their leg had most likely been injured in a factory incident. Corporations are not required to provide any type of compensation to workers for injuries that occur on the job. According to the government, if one takes the job, they know the risks of the job. Most corporation's policies are simple: if an injury happens on the job it is assessed at the next medical examiner's opportunity and the injured worker is either required to stay at work if the injury does not meet a set of criteria set out by the corporation itself (almost always the criteria being is it possible that more work can be done before dismissal or not) or sent home without pay for the rest of the day. Subsequent visits to the corporation's medical examiner are required for assessments daily while the worker is out of work and proof that the injury is being remedied must be given for review by an upper body. Thankfully, corporations don't seem to care how the injury is being treated, just that it's being treated as quickly as possible so the worker can get back to work. Failing an assessment is a guaranteed dismissal from the corporation and a probable downgrade on the worker's social status unless they can provide sufficient currency to the corporation for their inconvenience. With the leg done, Joshua was finished with his work for the night. Sitting down on his ripped and stained red sofa, Joshua used his neuromask to immerse himself in another episode of Syntrofos Noble, a series that had been banned over three centuries ago. Joshua likes watching it for this reason. The show's premise gave him hope. The plot was a group of underground rebels that lived off the grid were slowly overtaking the government each episode in some way. It had individual episodes where the group focused on one particular task that helped their cause and also had over-arching story episodes where a major event or revelation would take place. The show was the last of it's kind. It is the only show that Joshua is able to find over the dark neuralnet that had this kind of anti-government agenda. Other shows that were banned were available but most of them focused on cheap gore shots and sex. Syntrofos Noble has it's fair share of that but at least the idea was different. It had some kind of meaning to it. The show automatically paused as a new message came up on the neuromask.
Sovereign Glade#Selenium Docker's/edgeboi02: Is the product ready for delivery? Reply?Joshua immediately replied:
Sovereign Glade#Selenium Docker's/biomodel101: Yes. When and where is drop-off?The message disappeared. A snapshot of a scene from Syntrofos Noble appeared. Joshua continued to watch the episode. Usually, his superior took a bit to respond to him. Not this time.
Sovereign Glade#Selenium Docker's/edgeboi02: Docker dispatched. Techole, Sector 3, grate 91. 30924hJks2!dFHorseTho? Arrive within two hours with product. This user has ended the conversation.Joshua sat up from his seat, surprised at the schedule. Although deadlines were always changing, there was never this sense of sudden urgency once it changed. Although, two hours was plenty of time to get from his apartment to the designated drop-off point. Leaving his apartment was a bit more work for situations involving illegal transportation. While Joshua's neuromask was always sending dummy data in place of the government's link on it, location data took a lot more energy and required a pre-planned route to send in it's place. There had not yet been a way to completely stop the government knowing the user was moving. A separate sensor was used to check this and was built into the processor instead of the neuromask's operating system. Spoofing the user's location was easy enough. Every step the user took would be replaced with a separate step designated by the dummy data. Joshua looked through his files and found a route to the Techole sector. He grabbed the number of steps it would take from that file and placed it in a new file, copied from sector 6, which he assumed would be about the same amount of steps. Confirming this, it was off by about 38 steps, so he found an all night gym in the vicinity and made up the rest of the steps going there. Once 14 steps inside he could make the route go back and forth, mimicking the steps one would take on a treadmill, until he was ready to depart from the drop-off point. He'd just need to remember to replace the map with a reversed route file with some subtle location differences as to not appear like he stepped in the exact same spots as his trip getting there. It was quite cold outside at this time of the year, so Joshua grabbed his jacket, activated the dummy route data and headed out the door.
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