Created G.H.O.S.T. System - A Cyberpunk Story

Trace didn’t let his thoughts linger on how disastrous that had gone. He was sure pretty much any chance he had with her had vanished. All he could do at the moment was focus on the now, and that meant swallowing all the titanium she had brought.

He paid special attention to the pressure he put on his ankles and feet as he wheeled himself over to the desk. The top of the first bag was filled to the brim with medical-grade titanium slivers. He gave it an experimental heft and grunted softly in surprise at the weight. The cost was higher for medical grade, but there were still over five pounds of titanium in the bag, along with all the other food.

Even on his best runs through the junkyard, he wouldn’t have been able to get that much titanium for three hundred and fifty credits. He had been a fool not to ask them to begin with.

Carefully, he unpackaged the metal slivers, taking a moment to appreciate their size. When she had said thin slivers, he had imagined thin sheets of metal. Instead, what he got were countless pieces of shaved titanium. They were the perfect size for fitting inside a crucible and melted down. He didn’t know that was something Sevorah did, but it also wouldn’t surprise him to learn.

Sometimes people needed custom bones or joints created and installed in a hurry. The only way for that to happen is if they were created on-site. A foundry printer could handle the temperatures needed for titanium. The final product would need to be finished and machined by another printer though.

He shook his head, just imagining the cost to set something like that up. Either Sevorah was very well connected, or he was inflating what a few pieces of metal meant.

Regardless, they were the perfect size for him to shove down his throat without it hurting too much.

After a couple of minutes of going through his goodies, he packed it all up and brought it into the bedroom. The braincase he placed on the nightstand while the bags went on the bed. He was going to need them close by for what was likely to happen next.

He popped the tab on a soda and began gulping it down along with smaller pieces the titanium. His body was so thirsty, he was just about ready to start drinking the water from inside the apartment. There were signs on all the sinks telling people not to do that, but he was so thirsty!

Whatever the nanites were doing to him, liquid was definitely one of the things they considered a resource.

He promptly opened another and began repeating the process. It was only on the third can that he began to slow down and switched to a burrito. With the appearance of food, he was able to start shoving down larger pieces of metal into his mouth and the back of his throat. It hurt, and there were a few that occasionally got stuck on the way down. Those were the pieces where food and drink really helped.

Eating metal definitely wasn’t the most fun he had ever had, but at least he knew it would help.

After finishing the soda and burrito, he started up the teaching module and entered his lessons once more.

***

Trace found his lesson interrupted by the increasingly desperate calls of his body. During a very satisfying, but exceedingly disgusting visit to the bathroom, he noticed the interminable notification in the corner of his vision. Whatever the nanites were doing, they were taking all the useable material from his food and body, while leaving nothing but nasty waste behind.

- Presence of high-grade titanium detected

- Construction of the nanite production facility has begun

- Extensive use of learning software detected

- Additional permissions are required to increase the user’s reward

- Requesting that the user repeat the previous action of inserting a finger into the nutrient mix hole of the braincase

He sighed in resignation as he read the request, already knowing that he would do it. He had started down this path, and might as well continue to go down it and see where it led.

He cleaned his hands and rolled the chair back into the bedroom. His stomach rumbled as he spotted the bag with all the food in it. He was hungry again.

That could wait a few minutes. He had a braincase hole to poke first.

Trace picked up the braincase from the nightstand and pushed the same finger as before into the hole. The clamping pressure came to hold his finger in place and then held it as it began to heat up. It wasn’t doing the same thing it had last time, instead; he had the feeling it was downloading a massive amount of information. At some point, the nanites had gained access to his NetConnect and he could sense a partition form as they took over a portion of its memory.

The heat in his finger remained steady as the minutes passed until at last it let go of him nearly ten minutes later. Whatever it had been doing, it had just passed on an enormous amount of data to him. He had never seen a download take so long before. Then again, he had never seen one happen through nanites either. Maybe they were just slow.

Before putting the braincase back on the nightstand, he checked the nutrient mix level. After seeing that it was a tad low, he refilled it and then set about filling his own tank. The grumbling of his stomach had gotten increasingly louder over the last couple of minutes.

It was all he could do to remember to shove the metal shavings down first before the sandwich. Despite how careful he was being, his throat was getting more torn up every time he forced the sharp items down. He would need to see if it was possible to roll some of the thinner pieces into a ball later. At least with something like that, his throat would survive a while longer.

He booted the lesson back up and continued right where he had been interrupted.

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***

Trace was feeling much better in the morning, despite the numerous cracks and pops his body made as he shifted about. Eagerly, he pulled up the notifications to see how much progress they had made.

- Construction of nanite production facility completed

- Specialized nanites have entered production

- Skeletal System Repair (Percent Completed): 23%

- Muscular System Repair (Percent Completed): 05%

- Six major and two minor ligaments have been repaired to the previous base standard

- Integration of G.H.O.S.T. System begun

- Integration of G.H.O.S.T. System completed

“Ghost System?” Trace wondered aloud, distantly noting that both his skeletal and muscular repairs had made some progress.

- G.H.O.S.T.

- Guided

- Heuristic

- Optimization

- Strategic

- Toolset

Right, he had forgotten that he could ask it questions and it would respond. He would need to be better about that. There was a whole mess of items he wanted to ask for more information on.

Those could wait until later. What couldn’t, was this system, that it had apparently integrated without his permission.

- Bringing G.H.O.S.T. System online now

A bar appeared in front of his vision, followed by a percentage marker that ticked rapidly upward, filling the bar as it went. As soon as the bar hit one hundred percent, it vanished, and a new icon appeared in the bottom corner of his vision.

Somewhat hesitantly, he selected the program icon and ordered it to start. Instantly his vision filled with lines of information, most of it in red, and displaying various errors. After a few moments of panic, all of that went away, and he was left with a new screen.

‘Welcome to the G.H.O.S.T. System. This screen will only be displayed once when the program has been opened by the current user for the first time. This system was created to help humanity adapt to their cyberware and assist in the further development of their knowledge and abilities. This is an experimental system, and the end product will be shipped to people with severe limitations in place. This is the unlimited version of the program, which means you must have gained the trust of my mother and myself. Be careful and let us know if you run into any problems.’

The screen vanished and was replaced with a list of selections that were almost entirely all in red.

‘Body, Intelligence, Mental, NetConnection, Technology, Nanite, and Learning.’ All but the last two were in red. In the upper corner of his vision, a notification explained why.

- Current amount of special nanites is insufficient for certain functions of the G.H.O.S.T. System

- These functions destroy the special nanites during their usage

- Create more special nanites to unlock these functions

He wanted to hit something. The nanites had just created that stupid production factory inside him, and now he knew why. It was because of this. They were going to be constantly producing new ones if he wanted to make use of this system. Which he did. It sounded interesting just from the names of the different options and that small introduction message.

After a moment of dithering, he selected the ‘Learning’ option first. He briefly saw the words ‘Absorb Data Prism’ before they were replaced by ‘Absorb Teaching Module’. That was interesting. It was already changing items in the interface to go along with the current nomenclature.

With a mental shrug, he selected it and let them do their thing. In the upper corner of his vision, underneath the clock, a countdown appeared, letting him know how long it would take. One hour, he couldn’t decide if that was a long time, or a short amount of time for something like this.

Either way, the normal icon for accessing the teaching module had turned grey as soon as he had selected the option. That meant for the next hour, he needed to find something else to occupy his time with.

Nothing a quick nap wouldn’t fix. He had never really had the luxury of doing something like that and found the idea rather appealing. Simply being able to take a nap because you were tired… What a novel concept.

Which is why that was exactly what he did. Not having to scrimp and save for every credit he came across was something he was rather enjoying. It helped that he was in a safe place, with plenty of food and drink as well. Still, he could get used to this sort of lifestyle.

When he opened his eyes, well over an hour later, the program had finished and there was a new icon on his main HUD. The main teaching module had regained its original color, and right next to it was the new icon labeled ‘Enhanced Basic Programming TM’. He assumed the ‘TM’ was an abbreviation for teaching module.

Trace hadn’t been expecting it to perform an enhancement on the teaching module. Then again, he hadn’t really known what it would do besides absorb the information from the teaching module.

He was interested in discovering what these enhancements were and quickly clicked on the new program. At first glance, everything was the same as before. However, as he was going through the lesson, he began to notice that concepts from earlier lessons began to come back to him easier.

Unsurprisingly, each lesson built off the one prior, and while he knew that, it didn’t mean something wasn’t occasionally forgotten. Now, all of those pieces were coming back to him, and planting themselves firmly inside his mind. He still needed to pay attention to every lesson and learn the material, but it was easier for him to remember everything that he had learned. It wouldn’t simply drift away afterward because he hadn’t practiced it for hours on end yet.

Once he understood it, the concept would click into place as though he had practiced it dozens or even hundreds of times.

There was one more surprise still in store for him though. When he left the enhanced learning module hours later, he got the shock of his life when he realized that only a quarter of that time had actually passed. Teaching modules were known for teaching their lesson in an accelerated environment. All that meant in practice was no distractions and no extraneous, useless information. They taught you what you needed to know, and nothing else.

There were no fancy time-dilation effects. That tended to screw with people’s minds, at least the ones on the common market did. This one was something else altogether.