His sellrat swagger had diminished as he tried to reassure her. In fact, he’d become almost sheepish, which made him actually quite pleasant, she thought. “Thank you for telling me, Andy. Do you scan all your customers?”
“Oh yes. Mainly for dodgy implants. There’s quite a few gangs try to siphon our software fleks. Then we do sell bugs ourselves, see, so sometimes we get cops coming in and trying to find who those customers are. Jude’s Eworld has a strong neutrality policy, which we enforce. We have to, or we’d never sell anything.”
“Can you get them off me?”
“All part of our customer service. I can give you a more detailed scan, too, see if there are any others.”
She followed his instructions, standing in the cubicle, which gave her a comprehensive bodyscan down to a subcellular level. So now someone else knows I’m pregnant, she acknowledged in resignation. No wonder Earth’s population value their privacy so, they don’t get very much of it. The bodyscan located another two bugs. Andy applied a small rectangular patch similar to a medical package (same technology, he said) to her arms and leg; then she pulled up her T-shirt up so he could press it against her back.
“Is there any way of knowing if the police sting me again?” she asked.
“An electronic warfare block should tell you. We had a shipment of front-line equipment in from Valisk a couple of months back. I think there’s still some left. Good stuff.”
“I think you’d better put one of those removal patches on the list as well.” Louise called Genevieve into the room, and explained what’d happened. Thankfully her sister was more curious than outraged. She peered at her skin after Andy took the nanonic package away, fascinated by the removal process. “It doesn’t look any different,” she complained.
“They’re too small to see,” Andy said. “Which makes them too small to feel. They shouldn’t call it getting stung, really. More like being feathered.”
When Genevieve scooted back into the shop to continue her appraisal of consumer goodies, Andy handed over the box of Kulu Corporation neural nanonics to Louise. “You need to check the seal,” he said. “Make sure it hasn’t been broken, and see that the wrapping hasn’t been tampered with as well. You can tell that by the colour. If someone tries to cut or tear it, the stress turns it red.”
She turned it over obediently. “Why do I have to do this?”
“Neural nanonics connect directly into your brain, Louise. If someone changes the filaments or subverts the NAS codes they could get into your memories or manipulate your body like a puppet. This guarantees the set hasn’t been tampered with since it left the factory; and you have the Kulu Corporation’s assurance that their design wouldn’t sequestrate you.”
Louise gave the box a closer examination. The foil seemed intact and clear.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said quickly. “It’s a standard speech; we implant fifty of these a day. I mean, think what would happen to the shop or the manufacturer if anything like that did ever happen. We’d be lynched. It’s in our interest to make sure everything’s kosher for you. Another reason we have sensors at the door.”
“Okay, I suppose.” She handed the box back. Andy broke the seal in front of her, and took out a small black capsule a couple of centimetres long. He slotted that into the back of a specialist medical implant package. The only other item in the box was a flek.
“This is the operating didactic, which is standard, but it also contains the first time access code specific to this set,” he told her. “Basically, it allows you to activate the neural nanonics. After that, you change the code by just thinking of a new one. So even if someone got hold of your flek afterwards it wouldn’t do them any good. Don’t worry, it’s all explained in the didactic.”
She lay face down on the cushioned bench, with a pair of collar wings holding her neck steady. Andy pushed her hair to one side, ready to apply the medical package to the nape of her neck. There was already a tiny nearly-healed scar on her skin. He knew exactly what it was, he’d seen it a thousand times before, every time the implant package was taken off.
“Is everything all right?” Louise asked.
“Yes. No problem. It just takes a minute to line this up right.” He datavised the bodyscan cubicle’s processor. Its memory file of her scan confirmed there was absolutely no foreign matter in her brain.
Andy took the coward’s way out and said nothing. Mainly because he didn’t want to alarm her. But something here was desperately wrong. Either she was lying to him, which he couldn’t believe. Or . . . he couldn’t quite decide what the other options were. He was trespassing deep in Govcentral territory. All that did was enhance her mystery up to the level of pure enchantment. A babe in distress right out of the sensevise dramas. In his shop!
“Here we go,” he said lightly, and put the package over her existing scar. Now there would never be any proof.
Louise tensed slightly. “It’s gone numb.”
“That’s okay. It’s supposed to.”
All the medical package did was open a passage through to the base of the skull, and ease the capsule containing the densely pleated neural nanonics into place. Then the filaments began to unwind from each other and porrect forward, their probing tips slowly winding their way round cells as they sought out synapses. There were millions of them, active molecular strings obeying their AI formatted protocol; instructions determined by their own structure of spiralling atoms. They formed a wondrously intricate filigree around the medulla oblongata, branching to connect with the nerve strands inside while the main filaments seeped further into the brain to complete their interface.
With the implant package in place, Andy fetched the didactic imprinter. Louise thought it looked like a pair of burnished stainless steel ski glasses. He put the flek in a small slot at the side, and placed it carefully on her face. “This works in pulses,” he said. “You’ll get a warning flash of green, then you’ll see a violet light for about fifteen seconds. Try not to blink. It should happen eight times.”
“That’s it?” The edges of the imprinter had stuck to her skin, leaving her in total blackness.
“Yep, not so bad, is it?”
“And this is the way everyone on Earth learns things?”
“Yes. The information is encoded within the light, and your optic nerve passes it straight into your brain. Simple explanation, but that’s the principle.”
Louise saw a flicker of green, and held her breath. The violet light came on, an otherwise uniform sheen broken by that unique monotone sparkle which a laser leaves on the retina. She managed not to blink until it went off. “Your children don’t go to school?” she asked.
“No. Kids go to day clubs, keeps them busy and you make friends there. That’s all.”
She was silent for some time, considering the implications. The hours—years!—of my life I have sat in classrooms listening to teachers and reading books. And all the time, this way of learning, of discovery, existed. One of the demonic technologies that will ruin our way of life. Banned without question. That’s nothing to do with keeping Norfolk pastoral, that’s denying people opportunity, stunting their lives. It’s worse than cousin Gideon’s arm. She clenched her teeth together, suddenly very, very angry.
“Hey, are you all right?” Andy asked timidly.
The violet light came on again. “Yes,” she snapped primly. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Andy didn’t say anything else until the didactic imprinter finished. Too scared he’d say the wrong thing again and annoy her further. He hadn’t got a clue why her mood had swung so fast. When the imprinter did come off, it revealed a very pensive expression.
“Could you do me a favour?” Louise said. A knowing smile licked along her lips. “Keep an eye on Genevieve for me. I promised I’d buy her something from here, so if you could steer her to some kind of gadget that’s relatively harmless I’d be grateful.”
“Sure, my pleasure. Consider her guarded from any possible digital grief.” Andy had to use a nerve override impulse to prevent her from seeing how crushing that request was. He’d been counting on using the time it took to implant the neural nanonics to talk to her. Yet again, Andy blows out, he raged silently. Just once, I’d like to score with a major babe. Once!
The games section wasn’t nearly as exciting as Genevieve had expected. Jude’s Eworld was actively promoting a thousand games through its display screen catalogues, with direct access to ten times that many over
