LJI 11 W1: Resolution
His eyes stared sightlessly towards the fragmented rainclouds weeping over him, mirrored steel reflected the dark grey above in a way that reminded Jonni of wet tarmac and desolation. Occasionally the eyelids blinked to clear raindrops from the lenses, while tiny actuators inside struggled to bring the sky into focus. The tiny hole between and just above the eyes, and the giant one behind them, ensured that they were wasting their energy. Some things can't be fixed with clever programming.
It had taken Jonni most of the day to find him, when a few chance rays of late sunlight slipped thru the clouds and illuminated the gap where someone stuffed the body. He had known where to look, that part was easy. Every city had a location like this near the outskirts, where last year's high tech piled in mountains of obsolete junk. Fashion and innovation drove everything, from holoviewers to implants to cybernetic limbs, to null value faster than the drones could deliver them, and it all had to go somewhere. Occasionally the meat went with it, and nobody worth anything would poke around out here to know. The rats took care of the messy parts soon enough. Jonni worked his way over the piles of detritus to the body and, ocular spudger in hand, bent over the body to get to work.
"Hoi, choomba! Big mistake there!"
Jonni froze for a moment, then slowly turned towards the voice on the path behind him, keeping his hands visible. Two men in bulky combat trenches watched him, though the definition of "men" was questionably flimsy. The first one, the one that had spoken up, had his eye cavities greatly enlarged and fitted with implants that sparkled brightly around the giant pupils. On closer look they resembled a cross between stained glass windows and the view thru a kaleidoscope, multi-colored glowing fragments that flipped and shifted to form a mesmerizing dance of suggested shapes and movements. One moment they looked like flowers blooming, the next a series of geometric shapes that climbed around and over and under each other. Across his scalp were inset lines of glowing plastic ridges front to back, pulsing in colors that matched his eyes at any given moment.
The second was shorter by over a foot, most of his middle and upper face replaced with enough electronic eyes he'd give a spider nightmares. The sleeves of his trench were ripped off and the holes enlarged to make room for specially articulated shoulder joints that each supported a pair of chrome and steel cyber-arms. The forearms sported an array of robotic tools, the selection picked judiciously between a surgeon's instrument tray and an auto mechanic's workshop, each independently controlled. He tilted his head back and forth as he silently watched Jonni, and the taller one continued to speak.
"Ain't a cred worth left there, even if spoonin' them out left them working! You looking for something usable and cheap? Maybe..."
He flipped open his coat to both sides, revealing rows of small fluid-filled bags of eyes staring out at Jonni, and smiled.
"...EYE can help! Max Vizzion at your service! Affordable plans, great selection, and they're even sterile! Guaranteed first ownership. Petey here is a pro grafter, only take minutes! With the right neural processors and just a slightly higher plan we'll fit you with a pair with a rez so high you'll be able to see the spy satellites staring back at you!"
Petey's eyes clicked open and closed seemingly randomly as he leaned back and forth watching Jonni, then held a hand palm up towards his partner.
"Nix top end, neg neurals. Nooooo. Neg augs, pure vanny, wagyu, lead free."
Max stopped his pitch cold and looked at Petey with one giant eyebrow arched.
"Impossible, nothing? Are you sure?"
Petey blinked all eyes at Max in unison and said nothing.
"Right, right. Sorry." Max turned back to Jonni. "Well, there's a first time for everything, and I'm the guy to help YOU to YOUR first! It'll be a bit more cred but-"
"Nah, ain't looking for modding. I'm out here investigating a murder." He pointed at the body. "That one. Neural comps completely blown out in the kill shot, so need to check the eyes for recordings, buffers, whatever."
Max shook his head. "We scanned him earlier when we found him. Base model knockoffs, some low light and thermal but all straight thru processing, retina straight to... whatever was inside there. No implants or even a scanner to search with, I guess you're fucked unless he quick wrote a note and stuck it in his pocket."
Petey gave a chuckle and shook his head, then quieted as Jonni spoke up.
"I have other methods I was hired to use if needed."
He reached up and touched a small metal dog tag attached to a leather line around his neck. Max looked closer and saw a single symbol stamped on it. "末"
"Fuck me, an Ender. What megacorp sent you after a shit scrub like... that." Max waved a dismissive hand gesture toward the body and made a face.
"I freelance, currently hired out to Zik Zak. Seems he sent this scrub out to scout around, he's looking to expand his gang's profit ventures into mod work on the side and needs to find open territory."
Petey watched the conversation without a sound, while Max hmmmmm'd and narrowed his eyes, their colors spiraled in a cool series of blue waves around the pupils.
"A solo Ender with no corp backing? I understand the lack of cyber, I heard it messes with... uh... what it is you do. But not even a gun? Surely that'd work, and out here there are not so reputable individuals to deal with."
Jonni frowned and shook his head, looking off down the path. "That's a personal choice. With everyone else jacked for combat, there's no sense. Wielding a gun without augments is just dangerous in the worst of ways." He promised himself, never again. Not after what happened to him.
"Well, it doesn't really matter. I mean, he was shot in the head. The way we die carries over, right?"
"Kinda. I still gotta try, the client's paying."
Max stared at Jonni intently. "Do you mind if we observe? I'm dying of curiosity."
Jonni just nodded, still lost in his thoughts. He stepped down to a clear patch of ground below the pile of junk and turned to face the body. He stood calmly, arms down at his side, his breath slow and deep. His face relaxed, his breaths slowed as did his heartbeat. He brought both to a stop. The world darkened as his vision started to fade, but instead of going to black, he slipped thru to view the other side.
He looked around him, thankful that this far out from the city there were few souls to see. The ones that were there still disturbed him. Enders of previous eras used to walk the other side all the time, visited the dead and talked with them to help ease them onward. Jonni only did what he had to, knowing what waited here, how many souls never moved on. He and the others tried when they could, but there were so few of them and so many souls piled up.
None of them had eyes. Max had a small glimmer of the truth, a truthful lie the Enders let society believe as it was way too late to tell them what really happens. Society couldn't handle knowing the flesh they so easily abandoned in life took pieces of their soul with them, more and more of what it meant to be human lost forever as they turned into machines. Cybernetics didn't interfere with what Enders did, they just knew the eternal horror that waited if they did it.
The eyes always went first, the gateway drug to machine integration. Instant gratification you could see, nobody could resist. Neural brain augments usually came soon after, expanding and sharpening memory and senses and willpower. Now the dead wander, blind and confused and lost, and there are only a few that could help them on their way. Jonni looked up and saw Wilson sat next to his body, a hand rested on his former chest. There wasn't long to work, at most a few minutes before Jonni needed to return to living or stay forever.
"Wilson. I need your help, so I can help you."
The soul 'looked' around, the hollow sockets where his eyes should be no help in finding Jonni. He was glad for it, Wilson couldn't see his expression as he saw thru the sockets into the hollow space where the brain implants used to be.
"Help, yes I need help. It's so dark. I was... I was doing something. Looking for something."
Jonni tried to be calm and sound friendly. "I'm trying. Do you remember a person you were talking to? Do you remember hearing something loud? Who was there?"
Wilson slowly worked his mouth for a bit with no sound coming out, then he found enough words to speak again.
"I was looking for something. I was looking."
Jonni slumped a bit, the signs pointed to what he already knew. With a lack of short term memory boosters and the bits of brain they replaced, there was nothing left to give him any clues. Sometimes there were a couple bits of disjointed memories he could piece together, but more often than not there was nothing.
He felt a slight tingle of a touch on his shoulder, and when he looked up he gazed into his eyes, his beautiful eyes full of love and concern. Jonni knew they should be full of judgement, or even hate, but he never felt that way. As a fellow Ender Shane had never gotten augments, so his beautiful eyes still survived on this side. Jonni knew the method of death doesn't carry over, but every time he still looked for the gunshot wound in Shane's chest. Shane reached up and put a palm on his cheek, turned Jonni's gaze back up and smiled at him.
"Some day I'll get you to stop looking at me like that, my love. I'll take care of this one, you need to get back. Those two have dark shadows, and you're out of time."
Shane turned and reached down to help Wilson up and guide him beyond, and Jonni watched for a moment more before he took a breath again. Just as he did, he heard Wilson say to himself, "Maybe it was the flowers I was looking for, it was nice seeing them again."
Jonni sucked in a deep breath in surprise and desperation to return to life, the world snapped back into place with a jarring blow. Max and Petey stood with mouths wide open gaping at him. Petey excitedly chittered something Jonni didn't catch. Max grinned at him.
"Dead man standing for almost two minutes, I wouldn't believe it if Petey hadn't seen your vitals and measurements with his own medic-response grade eyes."
Jonni looked up into Max's eyes, still gasping in breaths of air as he watched the colors as they shifted and formed pattern after pattern. "The flowers."
"Oh fuck me, REALLY?! That's the last thing fucko over there said. Amazing, I was half convinced your kind were making the whole thing up. Well I doubt they'll send another of you out here when you disappear, so it's time we bring things to an end, Ender. Bet you wish you weren't unarmed now."
Petey extended all his tool arms and licked his lips. "Barbecue."
A loud roar bellowed from over the junk pile behind them, but Jonni didn't even look up. There was flash of blood red light as the metal clad, gas powered drone burst into view and crossed the last rays of sunset that slipped under the clouds, then a brighter white flash as the EMP payload strapped underneath it went off. Max and Petey jerked like marionettes that had a bird caught in their strings then dropped to the ground in violent spasms. Just as fast the drone finished its fly by and vanished over the next metal mountain. A few minutes later Jonni felt as much as heard the heavy stomps of his friend approaching.
"Unarmed, but not alone. Good call. Gregor still wishes Jonni carry weapon, but Gregor make pretty good weapon."
Jonni looked up to the mobile conglomeration of armor plating and hydraulics that called itself Gregor, and that Jonni called his friend. Who Gregor was in the past was long, long forgotten. What was known was someone managed to upload just enough of Gregor's neural patterning into a surplus Soviet combat cyborg chassis to make him sentient, but didn't have enough room for his memories of being alive. Maybe that's what made him the first non-insane, non-psychopathic, meat-free human.
Gregor wandered over to the spasming Max and picked his head up off the ground by a glowing plastic ridge. Many of the glowing panels in his eyes had smashed when he landed face first on the pavement, and they ground bits of glass and plastic in between the small panels as the moved about. "That hurt bad soon when circuits work again. Good." He dropped Max face first onto the pavement again. Mostly non-psychopathic.
"They make parts fancier and prettier and faster and STUPIDER! Real parts..." Gregor clanged his huge metal fist against the plate armor across his torso, "Russian parts. Uralvagonzavod! Built ugly, built strong, like tank! Never break!"
Gregor grabbed Max and Petey's coats in one hand and scooped Jonni up in the other. "We drag these two to Zik Zak. We get paid. We go have drinks!"
Jonni nodded but spent several minutes trying to figure out exactly how that was supposed to work.