He had Doc add a wet sheath over the top of the plating some months ago, save for the spot on the chest with EXD 3:6 on it. It was a variant of a dermal, but modified to feel cool and slippery, sexy, glistening… sort of like snakeskin.
The cherry-grape snake writhed faster as Moses continued to stare.
The sheath was great because thugs had a hard time grabbing onto him. He'd tried to get a chameleon modification with it, but Doc said combining those features was a few years away. So he settled for adding a near-meter-long head of fiber-optic hair, bright orange with a cascading effect of yellow and red at the tips to make it look like fire. Because he styled it often, it was wearing a little thin in places and sections of it needed to be replaced.
That's why Moses had come down here tonight… to get some nuyen to pay for more hair and some other enhancements. He had his heart set on getting some horn implants. He'd been fitted a year or so ago for bull horns, but decided they were a little too big, and too expensive. Last week he'd put some second-hand goat horns on layaway, at the same place he'd get the hair replacements-from his trusted ripper doc. Bright, white horns with a mother-of-pearl glaze-fixed implants, as the retractable ones were a little out of his price range. Doc promised that the horns wouldn't itch.
Some of Moses' other implants did, and scratching them in public had gotten him banned from more than one establishment. The penile implant was the worst, with its mentally-controlled gel reservoirs and synthetic skin that he had some sort of allergic reaction to. He hoped he could remember to ask Doc for some more ointment for the rash.
'Nuyen,' he said. 'Came down here to get me some.' He repeated 'nuyen' until it became a mantra that twisted in time with the cherry-grape snake. 'Nuyen for the tech-fix.'
'What's he starin' at, ya think?' The speaker was an elf, a live one, but she wasn't nude or dancing. She was wearing a sand-colored plastic dress that crinkled when she crossed her arms in front of her probably-enhanced chest.
'The puddle. Maybe he lost something in it.' Her companion was also an elf, face painted garishly and lips three times any natural size. 'Didja lose something in it, mister?'
'Lose? Lose yourself. Get lost,' Moses said. They stood too close to the water and made it harder to see the snake. He heard the sand-colored dress crinkle as the pair strolled away. The snake could swim freely now.
An ork peddler walked by, selling hot soyjerky. Passersby commented on the spicy smell. Moses couldn't smell it. He couldn't smell anything.
Moses had a direct neural interface connected wirelessly to the various built-in computers nested in the implants that allowed diagnostics checks-and said checks told him several things were either malfunctioning or were overdue for maintenance… his failed nasal receptors for example. They'd been out of whack for the past eighteen… or was that eighty… months. His enhanced taste buds didn't register anything either. He could be eating… well, pretty much anything… and not hurk it back up because of the taste. He only ate to keep his strength up and because his super thyroid implant demanded it.
'Should get 'em fixed,' he said. 'Maybe.'
He'd need a lot of nuyen for the repairs. He had Kevlar bone-lacing with RFID sensor tags, a blood circuit control system, and a datajack engraved with elaborate Japanese kanji-signs that he couldn't read… it was a used model and so he hadn't been picky.
'Nuyen,' he said. 'Sashayed down here to get me some.'
The encephalon he'd went under the knife for six or so months back hadn't helped. Hardwired into Moses' brain, it was supposed to boost his information-processing. It only seemed to scramble things now. At least the math subprocessor unit whirred along without a problem; he could calculate rent and utilities in a nanosecond, and it doubled as an alarm clock. His internal GPS worked without a proverbial hitch, too. It's how he found his way to this corner without making a single wrong turn. Too bad he hadn't thought to load his sister's address into it. What was her name? Ruth. Yeah, that was it.
'Ruth. Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen.'
The radar sensor was another matter. It was supposed to emit terahertz and ultrawideband radar in frequency pulses, analyzing Doppler and bounced signals. It never had worked right-another piece of used equipment he probably shouldn't have had installed without first asking Doc for some sort of warranty. At least it functioned as a motion detector, except that it never registered the snakes. He'd remember to ask Doc for a warranty on the pearlized goat horns.
Once more he thought about taking what little nuyen he had stashed away-coupled with what he was going to score tonight-and spending it on repairs to his existing systems. But he really wanted the goat horns, and he was being good by repairing at least one of enhancements-his fiberoptic do. Besides, if he spent all his nuyen on repairs, he'd never be able to afford the cyberfins he'd been thinking about. Saw an advertisement for them a couple of days back… or was that a couple of weeks… or months?
His memory played tricks sometimes.
'Nuyen,' he said. 'Came down here to get me some.'
His regular ripper doc could implant the webbing between his fingers and toes so he could manage the butterfly and backstroke in record time. Of course, Moses knew he'd have to take swimming lessons first.
The two elves returned, the sand-colored plastic crinkling a little louder.
'Geese,' Moses pronounced them. It was the right neighborhood for hookers. The women were looking for someone to dock with-for nuyen, naturally-their gander probably somewhere close by for safety. Moses wouldn't mind docking with the one with the overlarge lips, but he needed to save his cred for the hair replacement and the fins… and to fix something. What attachment was he going to repair? Besides, his father had taught him to stay away from those kinds of women. They were sinful. Moses was SIN-less
'And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with the fathers; and his people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither thy go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Deuteronomy thirty-one-sixteen.'
'Talking all Biblical. Still looking in the puddle, he is,' big lips said. 'Yo, Clint.' She sidled up to Moses. 'You interested in a little whoring, maybe we-'
'Get lost,' Moses said.
'S'matter, don't like elves?'
'Live nude dancing elves,' Moses said, looking up at the sign again.
Big lips shuddered and swayed down the street, arm-in-arm with plastic dress.
'Tadd would've spent his nuyen on them geese.' Moses missed his old chummer.
The last time they were together Taddeus told Moses he didn't discriminate enough, that he bought pre- owned cyberware on the black market when he should be shopping at legitimate places. 'The legal clinics won't deal with the stuff you're putting in your brain,' Taddeus had said. 'Who knows where that stuff came from? I oughta turn your doc into the authorities.' Tadd said other things, too, but Moses hadn't had his data filter turned on, and so could only remember a few sentences.
Ripper docs, shadowclinics, Taddeus wouldn't have anything to do with them, Moses knew. But then Taddeus didn't have near the modifications as Moses. Taddeus wasn't quite better-than-human. Tadd was still mostly human.
Moses had been better-than-human for several years.
'Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen.'
He liked his ripper doc 'cause he could pick up modifications that weren't exactly legal, and he never had to supply an ID or SIN. And it wasn't like he had these things done in a back-alley filth parlor with half-used, unsterilized medkits at the ready in the case of accidents. It wasn't technically a black clinic or a body bank. His Doc had a real medical degree and operated out of the basement of a tattoo parlor, a real high-end underground clinic. Moses had done his research before going under the knife. Doc hadn't had his license pulled for any of the usual reasons-too many malpractice cases or amputating the wrong limb. He'd simply experimented a few times on a few unwitting and later protesting patients… and got caught. Moses wasn't unwitting; he underwent each modification with both insect-like compound cybereyes wide open, and he didn't care when Doc suggested a little muscle doping now and then or a little trial genetic infusion.
And Doc was a real ecologist, as green as they came. He believed in recycling-bioware implants, nanoware, cyberware, augmented limbs. Because Moses bought most of his stuff second-hand from Doc, he could afford the
