Here we go again. My dear mother's back. I swear I love her, but lately she's been getting on my nerves like no other person ever has. Might be because I'm not meeting many people right now. I'm not doing much of anything right now...
"Hey darling!"
Ahh here goes the serenity..."Hey mom,how was the shopping?"
"Oh you wouldn't believe who bumped into me at the market!"
No mom I wouldn't.I don't event want to, but I suppose I don't have a choice now, do I?
"Jane,do you remember Jane? Oh we haven't seen each other for such a long time.I can't believe ..."
Yea, I know I don't.
If my time in the army has taught me anything,it's how to zone out when you just have to listen to some pointless bullshit. Granted it has cost me my left ankle, but the doctor said I should keep on taking it very easy for just two more weeks and then I should be ready to work again. Yea,work...Like somebody will hire me with my skill set. Three year army service,deployed right after training,and medically discharged due to a shrapnel wound in my left leg. That's it, nothing else. I'm every corporation's dream employee with my vast palette of skills and abilities,I'm sure I will find a job in no time since I've been looking for one for about a year now.
"And she told me people are getting little computers implanted in their heads there! She said it has many benefits,but I can't think of any,why would you want a machine in your head? How do you even fit it there?Unbelievable...Are you even listening to me?!"
"Mhm,yea,sure."
"Of course you aren't paying attention,what did I even expect?! Ha,and here I thought you changed! You were so interested in everything after you came back! And now look at you, jobless for a year. Why can't you be more like Jane's son, she told me he just got promoted to CEO of Marketing at NextSide! And you are here rotting at home! I know you got injured, but the doctors said it isn't anything serious! How do you think..."
Yea that's the price for zoning out. More pointless bullshit and a lecture on how some guy is the CEO at NextSide. I dislike banks,but I swear NextSide is the worst of them, and now it's the only bank,on account of how they acquired every competitor they ever had. Each day this world is getting closer to becoming the dystopia of fiction I love reading about. At first it was the big corporations and their new inventions, now it's the side effects of those inventions, and of course human nature. The fragile balance of relatively healthy competition on the worldwide market was shattered when the big corps like MegaTech and Orchard Inc. started rolling out their shiny new toys, mainly the BrainVR technology. At first it was clumsy and expensive as all heaven, but a few years down the line and more than half the planet was hooked. A simple and nearly risk free surgical operation near the customers C2 and C3 vertebrae to implant a small chip, after that a synch process with the different peripherals like body suits, VR headsets, gloves, and such things. Undergo the operation, synch your chip and voila, you can now experience any virtual world just like the real one. Smell, feel, taste, hell even shit in VR. But with complicated tech like this, rolled out as fast as this was, come unforseen consequences.
One of those is the Migration Syndrome. That's the official name for it, generally people just call it digitalization, poofing or getting sucked in. When one spends too much time in BrainVR, there is a substantial chance his mind can get sucked into the game. The person feels nothing, but in reality he flatlines, just dies on the spot, and his mind becomes pure code. This can only happen in certain programms supported by BrainVR, one of the requirements is an AI operated central server hub. Somehow, the AI breaks into the BrainVR link, corrupts it and transfers the consciousness of the user into pure code, based on the AI's own code structure, and saves it on the server right by its side. But the worst part is no one knows when all this can take place, you can be logged in for just 3 hours and it happens, but you might also need a week of nonstop connection for it to occur. And there is no way to get you out, once you go digital there is no going back. Initially there was a big surge of digitalization, mostly terminally ill people, the disabled, the elderly. Nowadays it's calmed down, but there are still many people seeking to get sucked in.
And of course it wouldn't be human of us if we didn't try to make money on this. The big corps tried to play it down at the beginning, but quickly changed directions and started to offer different packages and services to the people left behind here by their digitalized kin. Want to chat with your grandma? No problem, just pay us and you can videochat with her high elf avatar from the DarkWorld MMORPG. Want to see how your formerly crippled kid's doing? No problem, just pay us to see a live feed from the current round of Combat. Look at him run from that grenade! It was stuff like this that made those corps obscene amounts of money, enough that about the top 15 biggest companies bought out any current and future competition. And the sudden absence of profit-not-generating people, which often times lived purely off wellfare, enabled many countries to reevaluate their policies. Rapid progress and development ensued so now we have even more robotic implants and toys to play with. I find it quite ironic that the disabled had to vanish in order for us to finally come up with the technology to enable such people to walk again. So what do you do with tech like that and no people interested in it? You make it fashionable. People are getting their parts replaced just because it's trendy. Sure, you've got soldiers and police officers who need the extra edge some implants are able to offer them, but the general public dust it just because.
Funny thing is there are no cybersecurity threats. When I was a kid sitting at my PC, I remember reading news about hacker attacks at different companies, banks, government institutions and such. But now, in a time where people literally live in a virtual world, where a person's arm has more computing power than a laptop from a few years ago, there hasn't been a hacker attack in 17 years? I suspect the megacorps have their muddy fingers in this somehow, but granted I suspect them of everything. But who can blame me, when those corps essentially run the world now. No matter how it all works, I just find it extra weird. In part it's also the reason I'm 100% biological, metal free. Save for some leftover shrapnel in my leg. Anyway, I should probably go stretch my legs a bit, breathe in some fresh air, clear my head on an evening walk.
"Why are you getting up,where are you going?!We are not finished!"
"I just need some fresh air mom,gotta walk the leg. It's starting to hurt again. I'm sorry I wasn't listening to you, I just got some things going on, I will tell you about them when the time's right, still have some polishing to do. I'll be eating out, love you mom."
So I got up and left for the park. I lied about having things going on. I literally have 0 things going on, I just wanted her to stop worrying and let me out. I love her, but I also love being away from her, especially when she's in a talkative mood, which is almost always. Saying the wrong things can suddenly make a normal conversation turn into an interrogation the CIA or KGB could learn from. I found an unoccupied bench with a nice view on the artificial waterfall in front of the huge,ugly NextSide building. I swear the guy who who thought this quarter-glass,concrete,steel and titanium monstrosity was a great idea must have been blind or legally retarded. At least the artificial waterfall and park are nice, actually the nicest places in the city. I love sitting here, watching people move about and guessing their moods, states of mind and such. I can't explain it, but something about hypothesising about some stranger's mental and social state is quite iintriguing to me.
And I must be getting pretty good at it too, because I just know this isn't going to be an ordinary early eveing at NextSide today. There is a veterinary emergency van parked by the building, but the way it's parked... When you pay attention you can notice something is off, wherever you are, whenever you are. And this van is definitely off. First off an animal health emergency at a bank? And the shoddy parking, either some animal is well and trully dying there, or there is something else going on. And you know what? There has to be something going on, because there are no armed guards anywhere. Usually there is at least NextSide's private security standing around the building, or patroling about. Most days there are cops patroling this area or just sitting on one of the benches to my sides. But there isn't a single blue uniform in sight, not a single mercenary anywhere by the building. Weird as all hell.
Just when I almost slipped into my speculation mind mode, the sound of gunfire erupted in the bank.