Sing'n in Binary: 41

She’s back in the scav den.

Solei snaps up her rifle and it fires on its own, mowing down a group of three scavs. But they don't fall. Instead, they scream as if every nerve in their body is on fire, their eyes dim and cybernetics deactivated like corpses.

Yet they’re still standing, screaming as their cries slowly bitrate crunch into a single droning noise.

But Solei knows there’s more of them, coming from all around, endless even as she has to step around bodies that appear and disappear at random, always underfoot at the worst possible place and in eyeline in every direction.

She’s covered in blood, the red and organic iron smell mixing horribly with the rubbery sent of its synthetic counterpart, a greyish brown amalgam forming in small rivers on a floor covered in the stuff.

Her gun fires again and a monster staggers, standing despite the hole that was in his head even before she’d shot him.

But there’s no time to think about that. She needs to move.

Solei feels herself retask externals-

The dream stutters, becoming chronally fluid in a way unique to the medium.

Solei feels her friend retask externals, pulling more and more resources from core processing as the metaphor of an avatar dissolves as everything is subsumed under the weight of an impossible problem.

She picks up another gun and wades through a river of blood flowing down the stairs, shooting wildly in every direction, yet somehow, every bullet finds its target. Mowing down endless waves of increasingly inhuman things made of unwrapped meat, viscera dripping as exposed muscles twitch and pull over metal and bone.

Someone throws a grenade, and the blue sparks of the EMP sparkle like-

Sophie wiggles a bit closer to steal the body heat of an old flame.

They’re lying on the hood of his truck in the middle of the desert, cold night air made all the more powerful by the lack of moon or the everpresent light of the city. It’s so dark she can only see her hand by how it blocks an outline in the endless stars above.

Winter air from a northerly jetstream blew away the atmospheric smog for a night, giving a once in a lifetime view of the stars unimpeded by the atmosphere.

She reaches up with a shiver, as if trying to grab the lights so far above as they sparkle like-

Solei stares down at her avatar’s hands, impossibly aware of each byte and equation that makes up the ever changing amalgam of systems translating the inhospitable landscape of the net into something human minds can comprehend.

Yet, beneath that, she can almost see beyond the abstraction layer. She can almost understand the beautiful fractal systems that underpin reality, the enormity of the system that makes her flesh and blood feel infantesimal compared to the reality her mind can almost comprehend, if only she just had-

Solei deflects a knife she’d seen approaching from UCS:F1-C33, triangulated with ancillary cameras. The forces required to move her arm were provided by a hastily modified physics algorithm intended for the driver of a hydraulic arm.

Aria-

What?

The memory stutters. They slip on the blood and are immediately submerged in it.

Solei can taste the iron and plastic as something tries to shield her from the memory 

Aria can taste the iron and plastic as something struggles and suffers.

She can't breathe-

–_–

Solei sits up in bed with a gasp, blinking heavily as her thudding heartbeat feels both foreign and comforting for a moment longer. The strangeness fading quickly as a lifetime’s experience living in her body takes precedence over the illusion of a nightmare.

Breathing heavily for a moment longer, she takes a deep breath and flicks her eye’s to pull up the clock. Giving a long groan as the minute tics over.

Four thirty-two in the morning. 

Objectively the worst time to wake up.

Rubbing both eyes with her palms, she shakes out the strange feeling of her tendons pulling over bone. Looking down at her hands in the dim light of her apartment’s vending machine, Solei opens and closes them a few times, tightening into fists, then rotating and stretching her wrists in a way she’s found to get rid of the feeling.

She’s just about sick of these nightmares.

She’d gone to Clouds’ in-house ripper because her doll chip was futzing and mentioned them to him. He’d cracked open her software, cleaned out some junk data he’d said was from a ‘fucking messy unlink,’ and told her to come back if the chip continues glitching.

Thankfully, it hadn’t, and the nightmares are getting less intense in the week following the… event. But she’s not paying her bio-mon’s subscription program for a shot of melatonin or having it whine at her for using a competing brand of oral medication. 

So she really hopes the dreams will start clearing up faster.

Glancing down at the clock again, Solei gives another groan as she realizes there’s no point in trying to get back to sleep for –at most– another hour and a half of downtime. 

She’s on morning shift and is already on thin ice for skipping work without notice last week.

Throwing off her covers, Solei navigates an obstacle-littered floor with casual grace as she sends off a little code packet to the coffee maker on her way to the shower, a little trick she’d learned recently and is quite proud of. 

But that minor mood boost is almost immediately offset by a flash of uncomprehending strangeness at the feeling of water pelting her skin as she steps into the lukewarm shower, though the feeling fades even faster than it did yesterday.

Solei huffs.

She’d better not be going psycho.

–_–

Davis wipes the sweat off his brow as he sets down a box and walks back to the truck for the next one, giving an amused glance as he walks by one of his new co-worker’s, collapsed in a chair and exhausted from the work. A far cry from his cocky swagger and aggressive flexing of freshly installed chrome at the start of the shift.

Those gonks always forget that while, yes, people grab boxes with their arms they also have to lift them. Which uses the rest of the body.

He’s had to work extremely hard in the past to stifle his laughter when some of the most chromed out metalheads he’s ever seen try to do his job and end up puffing after the second box.

It’s almost always the muscle from the more… aggressive side of ventino business who are already upset at being assigned guard duty, when Davis is moving boxes he doesnt allow himself to be curious about.

Because it doesn't matter how strong their chrome limbs are if their core is weak, or forget their synthmuscle does still need it’s special blood analogue and their hearts are just as weak as before.

That kind of stuff isn’t why Davis avoids chroming up, but it doesn’t hurt either.

Picking up the last box in the truck, he steps out and looks into the cabin though the rear view mirror. Seeing the boss is asleep he sends off a text to the client informing him the job’s done just as he places the last box in its designated spot.

As he waits for a response, he walks over to the exhausted new guy and unzips the pouch at his waist, pulling out a miniature bottle of lukewarm water and offers it.

For a moment the new guy almost allows his pride to get the better of him and turn down the offer, but catches himself just in time. Snatching the offered water with an awkward nod before struggling to figure out how to open the bottle with his new arms.

Davis gives the man the courtesy of not watching him struggle as he continues on his way back to the truck.

They all mock the fanny pack at first, right up until he’s the only guy on the work crew with water, an instant cold pack, and a snack.

As he approaches the truck’s cap again he sees –right on schedule– his boss jolting awake as the message comes in from the client. Accompanied by the pay for the job, a little extra for being done early, and a little more for being a Valentino. 

Davis slows his step just a touch so when he raps on the window his boss is fully awake and aware.

Rolling it down he glares at his subordinate with an ornery look.

“What? I’m busy.”

Davis nods seriously.

“Sorry sir. Just wanted to tell you we’re done with this order.”

Bossman rolls his eyes.

“Madre de Dios, I know we’re done! Get in the truck!”

Davis just gives a nod and walks away, ignoring the feeling of Bossman watching his retreating back suspiciously as he does.

For all his narcolepsy, the man is the first person he’s ever worked for who has never skimmed a paycheck. Davis figures that courtesy earns a blind eye to the man’s incredible ability to oversee a crew while snoring

Stepping into the back of the truck first, he puts a hand to his mouth and gives a sharp whistle for everyone to pack in. Then sits in the only wall mounted crash seat in the truck with a seat belt and buckles in, stuffing a cold pack under his shirt as he does.

On cue, just before the truck kicks into gear, the paycheck enters his account. The money exactly the same as it was for this job last week, and the week before.

The others hold tight to straps mounted on the ceiling and chat amongst each other but instead of joining in, Davis tunes them out as he pulls up a calculator and a spreadsheet so he can think.

With his choom temporarily dead, –as strange as that sounds– he’s suddenly forced to work backward through his finances, trying to figure out how much he needs to spend, contributing to the group pool for the ‘replacement brain’ Ray found off the grey market.

Unfortunately figuring out how much money to offer is a complicated mess of factors, not too much so as to not miss rent, but not too little and have the rest of the crew think he’s scamming. All the while weighting proposed values against being able to live with himself afterward.

The entire Aria thing seems… strange in all honesty. He’s passingly familiar with AI. He deals with restricted corp AIs every day, and never once had trouble figuring out how to contextualize them in his head. 

But that ‘box’ is distinctly different from the AI that netwatch is constantly complaining about in their marketing and job postings.

Unfortunately, in this context he knows Aria, and she doesn't fit into either box.

The truck comes to a stop suddenly, forcing everyone who’s standing to grip harder on their ceiling mounted straps as they swing toward the cabin, feet lifting off the ground.

After a moment Davis can hear the sound of a fist banging on the wall to the cabin, so he quickly unbuckles himself, jogs to the back, lifts the rear door, and exits the vehicle.

As he makes it to the sidewalk the truck has already peeled out, speeding away with its normal disregard for the laws of man and nature.

Looking around to get his bearings, Davis realizes he’s been dropped off a few blocks further away from the normal spot and notes he’ll be walking by the auto-hibachi on the way home. But as he gets walking he has to scan over his spreadsheets again to figure out if it’s in the budget.

Auto-hibachi are… touristy in a word, and certainly priced as such. As uses robot arms to cook downright passable food behind a pane of glass, with lots of unnecessary tricks and flourishes.

The price tag is certainly influencing his opinion on the quality of the food, because if it came from anywhere else at a reasonable price, it’d probably be a daily meal. 

But it’s convenient, has actual vegetables, and he can see both the ingredients they’re using don't have mold on them and there’s no mites for flies inside the box.

Just thinking about it is making him hungry, so as he walks by the machine, Davis finds himself allowing his stomach to call the shots, making an abrupt right turn toward the kiosk.

The Night City Department of Health assures everyone that the mold found in C-class or below ingredients becomes harmless after being cooked at regulation temperatures, but Davis considers himself a bit of a health nut. 

Something his bank account reflects quite clearly.

Approaching, a face appears on the stand and starts the standard advertising spiel, which he ignores, presses the button for what he wants, and pings the exact amount of eddies as soon as the payment processing system boots up.

But as he watches the mechanical arms flip and twist vegetables, rice, and synthetic meat, he finds himself considering the smiling face that’s cheerily asking for him to wait and ‘enjoy the show!’

Because it is an AI. 

An AI so restricted to barely deserve the word admittedly, but it can handle edge cases with customer orders, and he’s seen it drop a tool once or twice then recover without skipping a beat.

He watches considerably as it juggles three eggs, somehow cracking each of them mid-air and dropping their contents into the waiting rice without a single fragment of shell.

He’s not giving a tip, that's ridiculous, the face looking through the screen couldn't even spend the money. It’s just a scam so whatever suit can squeeze a few more eddies from chumps.

But as the routine ends and the food is slid into a styrofoam box and placed in the delivery airlock, he finds himself pausing just before picking it up. 

Staring for a few seconds past when it would get awkward, he looks between the food, the arms, and the smiling face on the screen that’s waiting for him to conclude his part of the interaction.

And as he crosses that final gap and grabs the styrofoam he gives an awkward cough.

“Thanks for the food.” He mutters, turning and speed walking away as the kiosk gives the normal canned response.

That felt ridiculous.

---

A/N: Well! That's all the gang. It's these losers who'll be reanimating the digital girl. Easy peasy.

Ta-ta All!