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

Trace’s neck felt slightly stiff when he came to a while later. It was like he had been sleeping in the wrong position and there was a massive crick in it that he just couldn't get rid of. Then there were his eyes. Even closed, there was a dry and gritty feeling to them, as though he had been up too long.

With a groan of discomfort, he opened his eyelids and began to rapidly blink. The water from his tear ducts began to rapidly accumulate and coat his new eyes, hydrating the film of protective oil that had been placed on top of the lenses.

Sevorah’s assistant, the one he had never gotten the name of, was watching him closely as he blinked the dryness away. She looked to be a couple of years younger than him and was pretty cute in an odd, completely focused sort of way. Her glowing green eyes pulsed subtly as they ran through one of their built-in sensors. The dark purple hair she had let grow long in the front and then cut short in the back at an angle framed her face as she studied him.

“How are you feeling?” She asked at last. The same pleasant, though slightly robotic voice he had heard on the phone coming from her. The cyberware throat she possessed either hadn’t been tuned properly or was just a little too low-end to properly mimic what her voice should have sounded like.

He tried to crack his neck and failed. “My neck hurts, and my eyes were super dry when I first woke, but those are getting better the more I blink.” Everything was clearer compared to his old eyes, the details more vivid. Even the most basic of eyes had reached a certain degree of clarity years ago, so the small increase was only to be expected. The big difference would be in the sensor suite and the other functions that the eyes came with. All of which were currently disabled.

The girl nodded and turned to the computer on the desk. “Very good. I will tell Sevorah about your neck. While we wait for her to come down, I will start the boot-up sequence for your NetConnect and all the additional functions for your eyes. Get ready, this can be slightly… discombobulating for some people.”

A second later, lines of text began to stream down the upper-left corner of his vision. He was able to quickly read a few items from the thousands of lines, cherry-picking words that popped out at him. It was enough to know that it was going through the boot-up sequence for all the additional functions in his eyes. Just as the girl had promised.

“What’s your name?” He asked as the last of lines finished cycling through his vision.

“I’ll tell you in a minute. For now, you might want to brace yourself.” She warned him. “As I said, this will not be pleasant.”

He glanced over at her and immediately began to regret not following her advice. As part of the startup sequence, his eyes began to go through each of their functions to ensure they were in working order. First, everything zoomed in by stages, and then rapidly went back to normal. After that, they went through the entire sensor-suite, activating each item in turn along with the various vision modes.

He actually learned a fair bit about the capabilities of the eyes during the next couple of minutes. That’s not to say that he didn’t thoroughly hate the experience. The assistant was right. The entire experience was headache-inducing and had his stomach roiling by the time it was over. Still, it had been a valuable learning experience for him.

Without it, he wouldn’t have known the full extent of what his new eyes were capable of.

“You look a little green. Are you going to vomit?” The girl asked, a hint of playfulness entering her robotic voice.

Trace flipped her off and took in a great heaving gasp of air to settle his stomach. “You were right. That was definitely unpleasant. Informative, but unpleasant. What will the NetConnect be like?”

She tilted her head. “You really have never had any upgrades done, have you?”

He shook his head.

“Hmm, well, it completed its boot-up cycle at the same time as your eyes and is now fully turned on. You should be connected to the net once more in just a second or two. Doc Sevorah made sure all of your old settings and information were transferred over as well.”

As soon as she finished speaking, he noticed the familiar icons from his NetConnect beginning to litter the corner of his vision. He would need to play with the GUI for it later to rearrange everything to where he wanted. This new model came with more features than his old one and some of them would be useful to have right away. Others he could remove from his main vision and just go through the menu for.

In the upper right corner of his eye next to the time, the mail icon lit up on both sides. One side was for regular messages of which he now had many, while the other side was for voicemail, of which he also now had several. Next to it, the phone icon began to blink, telling him that he had several missed calls.

He ignored all of those for the moment and navigated through the menu to pull up the specs on his new NetConnect. A long, low whistle came out of his lips when he saw them.

“If these are the specs of a generic no-name model NetConnect, then I would love to know what a proper brand name one looks like,” He muttered in awe.

Sevorah hadn’t been joking when she talked this piece up before. It really did blow his old one away. There was simply no comparison. Granted, he didn’t use it for much, but that was mainly because his old one hadn’t been able to support anything. With this one, he could actually run a few different programs. He would even maybe be able to experiment with programming. It was something he had always wanted to at least try.

The way people talked about it made it sound mysterious, interesting, and powerful to him at times, depending on the speaker. With others, it sounded like the most boring, useless drudgery you could ever slap inside your brain. He wanted to see which it was, and if he was any good at it. If not, then no harm no foul, he would simply move on, but at least now he could do something about it.

The assistant rolled her eyes. “A brand name model from that generation would have roughly half again those specs. A decent increase, in other words. On the other hand, your model does come with an expansion slot for more universal memory. Something that most brand name models don’t have.”

He closed out of the menu and focused on her. “Weren’t you going to tell me your name once that bit of unpleasantness was over?”

“Ko,” She told him softly. “My name is Devko, but I go by Ko.”

“Nice to meet you, Ko. My name is Trace, but I go by Tune whenever I’m on a job.”

“Getting to know one another, are we?” Sevorah asked as she finally joined them. She scanned through Ko’s notes and nodded her head. “I expected the dryness with the eyes. They had been sitting in storage for a little while longer than I would have liked. I’ll give you some eyedrops before you leave that have an oil film in them. They should help to rebuild anything that has been lost during their time in storage. After that, you will be fine. Now let me see your neck.”

She stepped behind him before he could say anything and gripped the base of his head. “The new NetConnect is just a little bit bigger than your old one. There will be some discomfort as your neck adjusts to the new size and additional weight. I made sure everything was properly supported and held in place though, so it won’t be a problem if I do this.”

Sevorah suddenly pulled his head up and twisted it like he had seen chiropractors do in the old videos. Trace opened his mouth to scream as the pressure built up, only for it to suddenly release with an eye-watering pop and an unconscious grunt on his part.

Feeling at his neck, his hand traced the ports of the NetConnect and the slightly inflamed sutures from where she had cut him open. The stiffness was gone, but it almost felt like she was trying to tear his head off for a second there.

“That was a bit violent, but it certainly feels better now.”

Sevorah smirked down at him. “Better get used to it if you are going to keep getting more work done. The neck is easy enough to pop and satisfy, occasionally, but that feeling never goes away for some people. It only gets worse. Imagine your new arm, leg, or kidney feeling stiff right from the beginning.

“Then over time, that feeling shifts to one of irritation, like bugs are crawling beneath your skin. You have to scratch at whatever it is, but you can’t satisfy the urge because it’s all mental. It will only get worse until you try to remove the offending item yourself. Or have created a reason for it to stay, usually a violent one.”

“You’re talking about cyberpsychosis,” Trace said, clenching his fist.

She nodded. “It can start from something as innocent as this. From what we have been able to understand on the subject, it’s all about how people see their body. You saw your original NetConnect as a part of yourself, probably because of how long you had it. For whatever reason, you were less attached to your eyes.

“Having it taken out and replaced has created a sense of dysphoria in you, of your body no longer being yours. That is what ultimately leads to cyberpsychosis. You should never have massive changes done before you are ready and always keep an eye on your mental state. It’s your body. Only you can say what is and isn’t part of it.”

Trace frowned. “I’m not entirely sure how I can convince my body what is and isn’t naturally part of it. Especially if it is already aching, but I think I understand what you are saying. It just takes mind over matter to a new level, is all.”

Ko rubbed her metallic throat. “That’s true, but believe me, if you can get past the initial discomfort, it is certainly doable.”

Sevorah stepped back and hit a button to the side that brought the bed he was lying on into a sitting position. “Well, I think that just about finishes up everything here. If you would like to get changed, we can pull the curtain.”

Trace looked down and noticed for the first time that he was mostly naked. He had been lying there talking to them in his -thankfully clean- boxers the entire time.

“Um, what happened to my clothes?” He asked nervously, suddenly feeling as naked as he actually was.

“I took the liberty of removing them when I patched you up the first time around. I’m honestly surprised you didn’t notice back then. They were covered in so much filth and grime that leaving them on you was out of the question. As it is, I had to run them through the cleaning cycle three times for them to actually become somewhat presentable. I would still suggest you burn them at the earliest opportunity, but you at least won’t get an infection from wearing them home.”

“Thank you for everything, and yes please, if you could close the curtain?” He knew they had already seen everything since they had not only removed his clothes but also let him lay there in his boxers for the last few minutes.

Still, he did have some small amount of self-respect, and that demanded he change clothes in private when possible.

A few minutes later, he was on his way home in a taxi. Feeling better about life than he had in a while when a message came through that he had not been expecting.