The Windowseat, Red Light Ring - 10:52pm

Quote :

NOTICE: WELCOME TO PROSPERITY

Running diagnostic...
CMCM severely damaged, cause undetermined...
Currently installed:
- CMCM with Modified Neural Interface, cleared for CIVILIAN level access
- Atlan Integrated Deck - right palm, v5 series 32; "Atlan. The whole world in the palm of your hand!"
- Cirius Visionworks "Golden Eye" Module - Left: Functional, Right: LINK INTERRUPTED...; "Failing vision? Take it Cirius-ly."

NOTES:

+ Your Citizen Memory Card Module is MODIFIED, allowing you to interface with most any unprotected port as if it were a personal computer. This is considered an illegal activity in some areas of Prosperity. User discretion is advised.
+ Your integrated deck is not currently assigned to MICHAEL TREVAN. It will be considered stolen property until updated.
+ Interrupted link in your Cirius Visionworks "Golden Eye" Module. Restricting permissions for your own safety. Currently, only camera functionality is accessible. Please seek repair within 48 hours to avoid potential for long lasting damage.
+ Cirius Visionworks Inc. is required to warn you that extensive use of the Golden Eye module can lead to migraines, visual distortion, and in extreme cases, blackouts. Cirius Visionworks is not responsible for unmonitored, unrestricted use of this module. Cirius Visionworks will not cover medical expenses for replacing or repairing modules, damage caused by modules, or damaged caused by the process of installation. Thank you for being a valued customer of Cirius Visionworks.

A black screen with these words overlaid in bright green text is what greets you this "morning". You can feel stiffness in your limbs and a damp, cloying chill in your clothes. As the screen fades and your senses begin to return, the acrid tang of city smog, ozone, and burnt neon assaults you all at once. If you had to guess, you'd say you are laying on the ground in an alleyway. Curious, as this is not where you were when you laid down to sleep, to the best of your knowledge.

Above you, just past the tops of a multitude of shanty-town like apartment buildings, is a thick gray blanket of cloud cover. Curiously, they are permeated by neon glowing patches, as if there's a bustling city above. Whatever is going on up there, it's raining down here. It may be best to seek shelter soon. If not from the weather, then from whoever left you here.

A few things strike you immediately: Your sight is better than it has ever been, although there's a distinct sense of strain in your right eye. A small metal circle in the palm of your hand itches a little, but is otherwise surprisingly natural feeling. At some point, you may notice that you are...not what you remember to be. As if you are wearing a costume suit of some sort.

The alleyway stretches away into darkness in one direction, and a warm red glow cast over a sparse stream of people walking past in the other.

Good morning, Michael Trevan.

Agony, the feeling of muted half relief as chemical distance was put between his mind and body, the muted whorl of noise, doctors talking, the incessant never-ending beeping of medical machines, measuring out moments of fear and confusion, the thumping click, and cloying closeness of an MRI and then...

Michael scrambled backwards, filling his lungs with a jolting gasp, coughing at the acrid city air for a moment, eyes scanning over the text somehow suspended before his vision. Michael ran his hands across his torso. No incisions, different clothes, different... He looked up, watching the sliver of neon patchwork, clearer and more vivid than he had ever imagined anything looking. He cupped a hand over his right eye, grimacing at the almost, pulling sensation.

Slowly, he stood, legs shaky, more from the memory of pain and fear than the presence of his current slew of emotions. He was in shock, that much was fairly clear, but shock didn't cause, well, whatever this was. He glanced down at his hand, momentarily running his thumb over the silver sticker that, ah. No, ok, not a sticker, metal in his hand. Great?

After simply staring at his palm for a bit, too removed from himself for the moment to truly panic, Micheal began to walk towards the flowing crowd, shivering as his body began to register the chill of the rain. People, at least, meant that maybe someone could explain what was going on.

The alleyway opens up into a broad street, although you don't see any cars or vehicles anywhere. Across the street are a handful of storefronts, blatantly advertising sex, drugs, and things you would have thought were illegal no matter where you went. The people who duck in and out, or stop to look through the windows, do so without the slightest hint of shame.

Closest to you is a bay window, a little out of place looking to be honest, and displayed prominently in it is a dancing woman who is in every way very, very attractive. That is just a fact. You find yourself thinking that her face is pretty and young, her form is lean without being too thin, and that her smile is friendly and open. A sign jutting out over the door reads "The Windowseat".

Most people would miss it, or think it was an effect of the rain, but you catch a glimpse of a small mist spitting from the corners of the window.

You remember coming here for your 21st birthday. The Windowseat, a little brothel run by a very strict and very kind woman who made a big deal out of it being your birthday and didn't even rob you afterwards. What was her name...?

Michael blinked. It didn't change much, but did bring to the forefront again the change in his vision.

Memories, memories that didn't fit in with what Michael knew about his life. His twenty first birthday had been mundane at best, and yet. He stopped for a moment, somewhat shocked and intrigued despite himself. That was....downright pornographic, huh. Somehow the contrast between what was happening to him, and his newly acquired memory snapped him partially out of the strange fog that had been obscuring his thoughts, and he stared at his reflection in a nearby window. No not his reflection. What the fuck was going on?

Starved for options and information, Michael clung to the one thing he could see that seemed at least vaguely familiar. A sign, in blazing neon, advertising "Ware Repair, Tech fixed fast and fully, no background checks."

Well, alright, he thought, ducking into the slightly cramped doorway, maybe that was a little shady, but computer repair people were the same everywhere in his experience, even if not all of them were as blatantly non-interventionist.

The storefront is unassuming enough that there's not much traffic going in or out, especially at this hour. Although you can hardly guess at the hour with the sky obscured and the rain and neon haze. The sign does it's part in warding away reasonable looking people, meaning your only company when you enter is a cat sitting on top of a stack of...well, they remind you of VCR players. You're not sure that's what they are, given the wires pouring out of them, but that's what they look like.

Inside looks a bit like an old bookstore, if the shelves were stocked with spare parts and cartoonishly clunky VR headsets. It rings truer to a collector's pride and joy than a shop that's actually selling anything useful, but. Beggars can't be choosers, right? The cat meows loudly, already looking exceedingly bored with your presence, and a muffled thumping starts up from behind the maze of shelves.

"FUCK. Shit, Jesus Christ, why do I - alright whatever, who even...I'LL BE RIGHT THERE."

The man appears to be in his mid twenties. A hard plastic casing is embedded into his forehead, almost on display because of the way he's combed his stringy blonde hair aside, and his eyes are clearly either tattooed or just replaced with serpent-like, dark scelera prosthetic pieces. Other than that, he simply looks tired and unwashed. He squints at you for a moment and you see a range of emotions play across his face before he settles on "confused, but curious".

"Hey there, chief. Sorry about Bella, she's my alarm system ever since...well, whatever. She's my alarm system." The cat leaps to his shoulder and winds around his neck. She stares at you intelligently. Judgmentally. "What's the damage, or is that the question?"

Michael Looked the man (and cat), up and down for a moment. There were actually a number of Things that would constitute 'The Damage' insofar as he could see from the odd message floating in front of his face, but, ever eloquent, he found himself simply blurting out "Hello, I'm incredibly lost, and my eye hurts."

He then took a moment to internally shout question marks at himself, but the metaphorical damage was already done.

"I... think that I may have lost some...time or something?"

Not helping, he berated himself, not how you greet a computer repairman.

The man nods slowly. He doesn't seem terribly surprised, just a little confused and concerned.

"Well, I can tell you where you are for sure. You're in Hack Alley, which is my shop and also my house, right on the outer edge of the Red Light Ring. I'm not going to ask you what your name is, because you don't look like you know for sure."

As if he was not standing in the middle of a disaster zone, the man turns and picks up a thin pane of glass no bigger than an ipad and taps it a couple of times. The screen lights up in a wave of blue text that you can see, rather surprisingly, but cannot quite read at this time since it's backwards and scrolling by fairly quickly. He seems to be scanning for something.

"Huh. Michael...Trevan." He mutters. He starts to walk away, motioning for you to follow at your leisure. "I'm Tim, by the way. Not going to ask about the illegal systems you're running, don't worry."

The room opens up into something that looks like a tattoo parlor, almost. Tim spins the chair around to face you, still reading through the glass tablet in his hand. It's only now that he looks up to even see if you followed.

"Looks like you took a nasty hit to the head recently. More to the brain, actually. I'll have to open up the eye to see what's up exactly, but I'm thinking a circuit blew in your right-side G.E."

Michael sat down in the chair, utterly and completely flabbergasted by his own choices.

"Uh, right, hi Tim." He said, trying to keep his voice neutral, and succeeding mostly, beyond the slight quaver in his voice. "So, the last thing i remember is being in the hospital, pretty sure i was in a car accident? Also, I'm gonna be real with you Tim, I have no idea where this is, like in a more general sense. Also yes, I do seem to have a message notifying me I'm breaking the law, so that's.... great. Do you know how I can get this notice to uh, leave my field of view? I only really see it when im focusing on it but it's getting really hard not to focus on it now that I'm coming out of shock. Sorry for the rambling, i think I'm having several varieties of panic attacks." He finished pleasantly, tone belying the layers of building adrenaline flowing through his body. He wanted to wake up from this very strange dream, but satisfied himself with laying back shakily on the headrest of the chair.

Unsurprisingly, this all gives Tim a bit of pause. His cat leaps down onto your lap and sniffs your face curiously. In tandem, they give you a look between pity and shock. Tim gently places his tablet down on a countertop somewhere behind you and returns to stand at your side with his arms crossed, chewing his lip absently.

"O...kay. Let's unravel some of that before we do anything surgical, how about that?" He does not wait for a response. "You were in a hospital. For a...car accident? And you don't know where you are, as in...what, you don't know you're in Prosperity, or...?"

For what it's worth, Tim seems to be asking himself these questions and doesn't seem to expect an answer.

"Tell you what, let's just. Let's just start with the notifications. Is your deck functional?" A pause. "Do you...even know what a deck is right now?"

Michael looked at Tim with a measure defeated humor and replied, "No."

Then, realizing this was likely not sufficient, amended. "I mean, yes, i was in a car accident, someone....possibly a bus? Hit me? I don't know what or where prosperity is, and I have never heard of a deck in the uh, context you seem to be referring to."

Thinking about it for a moment he added, "But I mean, i can see this uh...startup message in my... eyes?! I think?"

"Brain." Tim corrects. "Your brain is making you perceive information in...well, a kind of primitive old-school way. Probably because it doesn't know any different? Although I don't know why you'd..."

He trails off, closes his eyes, and sighs deeply. You can tell that something painful has occurred to him by the way he pinches the bridge of his nose and walks across the room to lean on a windowsill crowded with ashtrays and stacks of cigarette cartons.

"Mr. Trevan, I have good and bad news for you." Bella kneads your stomach with her paws, claws mercifully sheathed. "Good news is you survived your accident. Bad news is if you don't know what a deck is at all, and if you got hit by a bus of all things, you're remembering something that happened a good century or two ago."

"It's not his fault, Caroline."
"Does that matter?! He's dead, he's gone, because of...because of THIS."

"Oh" Michael responded lamely. "So I've been, uh, asleep or something for, hundreds of years..."

He looked up at the ceiling, eyes taking in the lurid details of the metal's grain. He absently reached up, stroking the wayward feline on his stomach. He felt calm in a way that bespoke the calm he had felt a moment before he had felt the impact of a vehicle throw him into the air. A sort of resigned, forced calm, not born from contentment but from a knowledge that something had happened, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

It could be a dream, he supposed, but the clarity of his senses and the prodding pain behind his eye made that seem unlikely at best. He waited for a few moments, willing himself to somehow find himself beck in a normal hospital, perhaps with a doctor apologizing for putting him on too much morphine.

The moment passed, no such luck.

He looked over at Tim.

"Okay." He said "What should I do? I mean, not in a broader sense, can;t put that on you but... How do I fix myself?"

Asleep isn't the right term, but Tim seems preoccupied and not in the mood to offer further corrections. He looks at you with a sort of pained expression before clearing his throat and bringing his mind back to business.

"Well...there are two steps we should take before you walk out my door. We should make your brain a little less vulnerable, since you're not going to know what to look for if someone wants to tamper with it, and then we should fix your eye."

He doesn't mention that it could technically be overheating right now and explode like buckshot at any moment. He feels that will not comfort a recent victim of a particularly sinister type of cybercrime. He grimaces, sighs, and after a moment of hanging his head Tim simply states: "Betting you don't have a single credit to your name, so this is going to be a loan."

"Oh, yeah i guess i left my wallet in a different... me" Michael said with a slightly hollow chuckle. Lousy humor as a defense mechanism, he thought, novel.

Lost in thought for a moment, Michael nodded, gingerly, given the pain in his eye socket. "Alright, sorry for the trouble and, thank you."

With the adrenaline slowly draining, Michael was, more than anything, tired. Oh, incredibly freaked out, certainly, but when someone tells you that your brain has apparently been hacked, and your eye is busted, and that it is time for emergency surgery effectively, well there's not much to do but try to relax.

Old instincts coming back, Michael reflected. Shutting down until the danger had faded. Boy, that eye was uncomfortable. "So" He said blearily. "How do we start?"

"Gotta say," Tim snorts, rifling through a toolbox on the counter. "you're taking this a lot better than the first batch."

He pulls out a screwdriver and what appears to be a usb cable connector. It seems that even in a world where one's brain can be hacked and cyberware is the norm, nothing can de-throne the Phillip's Head. Tim plucks a few more items out of the toolbox - a small, unmarked tin and a bottle of bright blue liquid. An empty syringe.

"About ten years ago, some group of cyber terrorists started hijacking peoples' head 'ware, replacing their memories and personalities with AI personality programs and backup copies of other peoples' brains and shit." He shudders visibly. "A bad time for everyone. Far as I know, you're the first case to crop up since the cops squashed that particular crime wave."

Tim lays the items out on a table next to the chair. Looks at you critically, seems to determine you've got the stomach for the next steps, and finally answers your actual question.

"Anyway, this is way less intensive than you think it is. To encrypt your neural network, I just have to  plug your brain into mine for a few seconds. To fix your eye..." He wobbles his hand. "Little scary looking, really the least intensive of the surgeries I perform. Just gonna take it apart. Shoot it full of coolant. Make sure you don't have any sparking wires in your face. Close it back up. Five to ten minutes tops."

There was something almost comforting about the degree of abject horror contained in the last couple of sentences Tim had just said to him, Michael reflected. Nothing that sounded that mindbogglingly awful could actually be as scary as it sounded. Probably.

Now something simple sounding, like, a 'bone chip' when one had for instance 'been hit by', say, 'a bus' could be catastrophically awful, but when someone told you your eye had to be removed shot full of coolant and put back in your head, that seemed like something that could really only go up in the doing.

Michael realized that he was distracting himself. Good fuck this was going to be awful.

"Great" He said weakly. "I'll just.....lie here then."

If it brings you any comfort, Bella has fallen asleep in your lap.

True to his word, the cable he's produced plugs into your palm and then into the casing over his temple. The sensation is a bit like a cool breeze inside of your skull, but it's over in just a few seconds. The weirdest sensation is probably the little jolt in your palm and hand when Time casually yanks the cord free and tosses it aside.

"Boom. Encrypted."

The eye procedure is, for Tim, very routine. For you it involves your eye unfolding after Tim taps it lightly, pushing your eyelids apart and letting that cool breeze back into your skull. Your vision goes dark in your right eye. Probably a good thing, as Tim has just shoved a screwdriver into your eye socket. It is, however, completely painless.

He updates you casually as he makes discoveries. For better or worse.

"Yeah, you've got some tampering here. Looks like someone ran a bunch of commands at once to overheat it and knock you unconscious. You basically got tasered in the eye from the inside out. Just a little degredation on the wires, but they don't need to be replaced or anything."

After a few minutes of quiet whirring noises and gentle "tink, tink, tink" sounds, the pressure in your eye socket and skull disappear all at once, leaving a void of sensations for a dizzying moment before normalizing. Your eye collapses back into place, switches on. In your lap, Bella yawns and turns over.

"I updated your interface program, too. Cleaned up the UI a little and made sure the notifications are gone. Added my number, and the number of someone you should get in touch with if you need a place to stay. And it should all only be visible when you consciously want it to be now. It'll, uh. Well, you'll see. You can just tap it like a touchscreen."

As if in response to Tim's comment, a curved orange screen seems to project in front of you. It is, apparently, only visible to you. Tim doesn't react to it at all. The following screen is displayed.

Quote :

NAME: Michael Trevan
CMCM: 102965-R1
ACCESS: Civilian

REGISTERED CYBERWARE:
- CMCM Neural Interface: Custom [230@#%5DFF.><';DF?]
- Atlan Integrated Cyberdeck, Right palm.
- Cirius Visionworks Golden Eye Module, Left.
- Cirius Visionworks Golden Eye Module, Right.
- Encryption System: Custom [HACK ALLEY (TM)]
- OPEN
- OPEN
- OPEN

Notifications: 0 Unread

Notes:
- Empty

Contacts:
- Hack Alley; Timothy Rudd [23849-R5]
- The Windowseat; General [CL-WNDW-R1]
-- Ext: Caroline Krosford [565-R5]

Michael, fresh off of the surreal horror of having his eye just sort of, expand outwards like an ospiscope, chose to close off that short chapter of his life by ignoring it completely and refusing to think about it. Nope, nothing happened, eye just magically stopped hurting.

Having banished his unwanted thoughts to a corner of his brain to curl up and quiver, Michael scanned the screen hovering before him.

"Hey, so, Tim, I'm obviously a little uh, behind the times I guess, and, being that I seem to owe you some money, how would I go about getting it. I mean, I used to work on like, movies and stuff but I guess in this case that's probably, uh... not really something I can jump back into."

Michael tapped an icon denoting what appeared to be something approximating a 'profile', and began looking through to see if he could find anything that looked like it might keep track of credits or, bank accounts or something. He didn't have any money, but, well, if what Tim said was true, then he had apparently inherited someone else's body.

Feeling slightly guilty he set about finding out if his former self had any finances to speak of. Worst case, he figured, he would at least be able to find out about wherever who he had been had worked, or conducted business.

Tim considers this question for a moment.

"Well, media is probably a lot different than you're used to. Now you can make your brain think and feel like you're really there, in the moment, good or bad. Watching TV is a full body experience. Literature is still big, especially journalist pieces and poetry. As for movies, it's all about the old days and the classics, so you actually have an edge there if you still want to pursue that."

He cocks his head to the side and looks out through the rain-streaked window.

"But you're going to need food and shelter, and that's gotta come before a movie script gets written up, huh."

There is a section of the profile that seems to display the letter "C" with a vertical line through it. Next to it, the number -200 is written in red. Not a great sign. You seem to have inherited some debt. Tim continues:

"Way I see it, you can either try and pretend you're Jackson Harvich and dig up all you can about what HE did for cash - or you can live that mercenary life and play it by ear. That contact I added can help you with that option. Hell, she might be able to help you with the first option, too. Information is kind of her specialty."

Ah, double debt. Depressing. Michael waved away the screen in front of him tersely, and then nodded at Tim's assertion.

"Understood, I'll go ahead and talk to her then. Information sounds like a good way to go from where I'm standing right now." He sighed.

Debt, a new world, a new body... Struck by a sudden urge, and seeing an icon that seemed to open up some sort of search box, Michael, struck by the oddity of his situation, tapped a name into the search bar. Micheal Trevan.

And there he was. His face. Older than he had ever been, but... him. He found himself struck with a wave of almost physical emotion, emotion that he could not fully place. He scrolled through pieces of trivia, credits for movies he had directed, and yet, hadn't. He had children, or had at one point, he supposed they would all be dead by now. He pulled up a brief video clip, and an older version of his voice played, talking about the importance of perseverance in art, promoting a movie and-

Michael closed the report. He had lived an absentee life. Looking at it now seemed almost voyeuristic, as though he was walking through his own funeral. He grit his teeth for a moment, overcoming what felt like a clenching fist in his stomach, and let out a deep breath.

He couldn't be Michael Trevan anymore. That man had lived, had died. He had to be someone else, someone who could live in this new world.

"Hey, Tim", he said, looking up, and absentmindedly stroking Bella. "Do you have a manual or something for how this gear works?"

Tim watches your expression and seems to know what you've just done. He looks away to give you your privacy. He'd seen a lot of people do that, ten years back. Mourn themselves. Mourn the lives they would never remember. The way he saw it, Tim himself was just the cop that shows up to tell you a loved one has been murdered.

At the question, he tosses a thin packet your way. A book.

"Keep it. It's a collectible at this point, but it's not doing me any good - especially not on the shelf."

Quote :

CMCM Interface Standard Applications Manual

[Profile] [Contacts] [Calendar] [Datawave]
[Media] [Nearby] [Creditkeeper] [Eagle]
-------------------------------------------
Profile: Basically your ID card, anyone can view this by simply pulling up your picture in the Nearby app.
Contacts: A list of contacts from which you can text, voice, or video call anyone who is registered in your system.
Calendar: A calendar app for scheduling. Includes holidays and important dates by default.
Datawave: Enter a search term to drag the Cloud at your access level and receive a complete summary of available data within 5-10 minutes of your search.
Media: A place to store music, video games, and other interactable media. Media not included by default.
Nearby: An app that displays nearby locations, profiles, and publically broadcasted events.
Creditkeeper: Basically a banking app. Deposit, withdraw, track, etc.
Eagle: The national news app of choice.

Michael caught the packet, giving Tim a quick nod of thanks. "Appreciated." He intoned, a slight hitch in his voice. He drew in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. He had learned, through a childhood that could be at best called difficult, and a job that could at least be called demanding, the value of calm, even if, as it was now, it was a forced and temporary thing.

He ran fingers through hair that was a great deal thicker than he was used to, and nodded to himself.

"Alright, if you don't mind me taking up a bit more of your time, I've got a couple other questions." He said. "So, this city, what country is it in? I guess in the same vein, I'm apparently a civilian, what other roles or ranks are there?"

"Country?" Tim blinks at you. "Man, you really are from another time."

He takes a cigarette from the windowsill and regrets not paying attention in History class.

"Well, when California fell into the ocean, America split up into separate city-states. Prosperity used to be Washington, I think. What turned into the city center today was called Seattle. We got a burst of refugees from California, built as tall and wide as we could to accomodate that population boom before the ocean rose and stopped that shit in it's tracks, and just. Haven't had a unified government since? Everything is run by the megacorps and their private security firms. There's a legal system in Prosperity but it's pretty shit."

He eyes you with a little bit of amusement.

"If you want broader world history, you'll have to ask the Datawave. I'm a techie, not a history buff. That said... I can tell you that America kind of drowned and split into something of a very chunky archipelago a century or so back. Every city state is quite literally a massive island covered in urban sprawl. Any of that ring a bell?"

"......Cool." Said Michael, meaning, if possible the farthest possible thing from that.

"Cooool" Michael said again, drawing out the word. "Yeah none of that sounds familiar. Like i guess most of it doesn't surprise me somehow but i thought i was just being cynical."

He scratched Bella between the ears, trying very hard to drowna new wave of anxiety in the act of petting a cute and fuzzy animal. Sure, California was gone like fucking Atlantis but at least cats were still a thing.

"And the uh, ranks or whatever?" He inquired, increasingly sure he didn't really want to know.

"Oh, right." Tim scratches the back of his neck, cigarette bobbing in his mouth. "There's access levels, but that's less "rank" and more like...keys to different pockets of information in the Cloud. Like you've got Civilian access, which is low tier. That's public records. But I have Commerce access in addition to my Civilian access because I own a business. That gives me some stock info that Civilians don't have, and a little more news about local joints and shit. Upgrading your access is kind of a hassle, in that you have to prove to the system you 'deserve' that info."

He rolls his eyes.

"Anyway, if you pick up a job or trade, you'll probably get new access levels tacked onto your profile just kind of passively. But you can also falsify records and trick the system into giving you access to certain things. Most of the time nobody cares, unless you try to get into the real high level shit. Like the Aegis Foundation could not possibly care less if you, a Civilian, want access to stock info. They will care a lot if you try to gain, say, Atlan access."