Page 72 of Sparktopia
Well, not at all the way they used to back in Sweep. That’s the whole reason I’m no longer a soldier and live in a ruined god’s tower.
I was first augmented on my fourteenth birthday. Then again, every year after that until I was nineteen. I was meant to be something special. Kind of a… super soldier of sorts.
But the augments never really took. Not the way they should’ve. I was given a commission as a specialist with computation upgrades. It wasn’t a superpower, not at all. But in the beginning, it got me and my men out of a lot of sticky situations.
That didn’t last long. My augments started wearing off around age twenty-one. And I was all washed up by the tender age of twenty-three.
That was seven years ago now and I haven’t thought about those augments since.
But now—in this very moment—I am thinking about those augments because they were working. A minute ago, two at the very most, they were working. Data was falling down my field of vision in bright blue text. I could tell it was something to do with mission commands, but it was going too fast to actually read.
In the beginning, when the augments were fresh and working pretty good, I didn’t need toreadit to follow along.
Tomorrow’s speed, today’s mind!
My brain just understood and my body—senses, whole muscles groups, cognitive function—just responded without my input.
Be quick, be smart, be unbeatable!
That was the whole fuckin’ point of having them in the first place.
Upgrade to instant reaction now!
Then, one day, the connection was gone and my mind hasn’t been able to keep up with the software inside me since I was nineteen.
That’s why you need BrainPulse!
So while I did have a couple of years there when I was able to react or form solutions to problems when high-stress situations triggered what was left of my augments, I wasn’t in control of it.
In rare instances, users may experience severe side effects such as neural fatigue, prolonged cognitive dissonance, synaptic overload, or short-term memory fluctuations. Prolonged use may lead to dependency on the device for cognitive functioning.
And ifIcouldn’t understand what the augments were telling me, then I couldn’t trust them. That’s the real reason they kicked me out of Sweep. IfIcouldn’t trust me,no onecould trust me.
But it doesn’t matter now and this isn’t a life-or-death situation. It’s just a stupid woman on the floor. I don’t know how she got in here, but nonetheless, here she is.
My disturbance.
You don’t need to be an augment to solve this problem. She needs to go.
I toe her again, pushing her shoulder a little, which makes her body rock. “Can you hear me?” I bend down and shake her. “Hey. Wake up. Party’s over and it’s time to go.”
No movement at all. It’s like she’s unconscious, not sleeping.
Which is just fucking wonderful. She’s not a big woman—she’s rather small, actually. But dead weight is dead weight and now I’m gonna have to carry her all the way back up to the fuckin’ lobby.
Hopefully the social workers are still there. If she doesn’t wake up by then, she’s their problem.
Resigned to this being the only solution, I scoop her up in my arms and then make my way back through the maze of dead servers, out the door, and back up the stairs the way I came.
After traversing the endless hallway, I reach the door where I left Anneeta. I kick it so I don’t have to put the woman down. “Anneeta!” I yell it. “Open the door for me. My hands are full.”
It comes swinging open and her little face is looking up at me in surprise. Then she scans down, seeing the woman in my arms. “Who’s that?”
I push past Anneeta and start walking. “Dunno. But she was my disturbance. Was lying in the middle of a fuckin’ server room, all passed out from partying last night.”
Anneeta is trotting to keep up with me. “Party? Down here? I don’t think so. I would know about something like that.”
“Maybe you don’t know as much as you think.”
