Interfacing with the world is a lot like flexing a muscle.
Alex assumes the inventor of the neural link had some understanding that it needed to be intuitive. Not something sciency folk usually think about but Zhong Yusheng understands people just as much as his craft. At least that’s how Keji Long inc. likes to advertise it. Personally she thinks they’re just propping him up on a pedestal as their poster child. Fucking Corpo’s
Still though, she can’t deny that it’s convenient. She just has to do what feels like flexing her brain and a whole world of technological possibilities opens up for her to fiddle with. Which is why when it stops working she gets more than a little pissed off.
She tries to ping the vending machine in front of her for the tenth time in a row, and once again gets no response. It’s not a digital only machine, there’s an option to use your card. But frankly, who the fuck carries a credit card in the twenty second century? Fucking weirdos that’s who. She pings it again, just for posterity, and considers kicking it in it’s stupid glass face when it doesn’t work again.
She doesn’t of course, that’d hurt her a lot more than the inanimate object. Only thing she can do is file a complaint to the apartment manager. She imagines they’ve gotten quite a few by this point.
A sigh escapes her lips at the wasted trip. She really wanted some mango iced tea, at least she didn’t face this disappointment after a walk or some shit. She shrugs and heads for section G pinging the elevator, and is satisfied when she gets a response.
Sadly her day couldn’t be that simple, could it?
She hears it before she sees it, what sounds like a man crying and sobbing as others yell. Alex turns around to witness a civilian being dragged by two bikers of The Road, with a third following close behind. Deciding that this isn’t any of her business, she turns away and waits for her elevator.
Unfortunate then that the gangers stop next to her with the snivelling mess of a man in their grasp. Yelling in his ear as the third one occasionally beats him.
“Shut the fuck up homar! All this whining is fucking pathetic, at least have some dignity when you go to face Rashid,” one of the bikers says, a buff woman whose left arm is chromed alongside a turret emplacement on her shoulder.
Rashid huh? She’s heard that name before, but she doesn’t recall where. Doesn’t really matter, The Road’s too big of a gang to keep track of every middle man. Just gotta know Anubis and her Mulazimin and you’ll be fine. Well, whoever this dude is won’t be but the point still stands.
“Please,” the man begs. “I swear it was an accident! I didn’t want to hit him, he ran the fucking light!”
“Intah abbite? You think saying it for the thousandth time is going to change anything?” The man following from behind says. He doesn’t have any visible cybernetics but he is wearing the gang’s netrunner uniform. A sleek black and red bodysuit under a leather jacket.
The man just continues to struggle, earning him another blow.
The elevator dings open and Alex lets the four of them get in first as she joins them. Most aren’t so bold as to do the same, leaving just her alongside them. She’s familiar with gang shit and they’re familiar with her so she’s not worried.
The elevator closes and Alex can’t help it, she’s curious.
“What’d he do?” she interrupts the concert of sobs and insults, causing two of the bikers to turn to her while a third keeps berating the man in very verbose arabic. A language he clearly doesn’t understand, but she does and it’s mildly entertaining to witness the string of syllables that she pulls together.
The netrunner looks her over, his eyes contracting then dilating. “You’re Alhayig’s daughter, I’d recognize that scrawny frame anywhere”
“Oh?” Alex raises a brow. “Baba’s gotten famous if random gangers can spot me out.”
“That’s certainly an understatement,” turret woman snorts.
“So?” Alex asks again.
“Idiot wrecked Ibne Rashid’s car, now he wants to teach him an objective lesson,” The netrunner shrugs.
“You’re gonna let him live?” Alex raises a brow.
The netrunner snorts. “Unlikely, Rashid isn’t keen on those who fuck with his blood.”
The man pales and his gaze turns to Alex, as though she were his last lifeline in raging storm. She can tell what he’s going to ask before he asks it, and feels more than a little awkward.
“Please,” he begs. “Tell them to stop, my name is Gillian. I’m a father of three, please, please. Don’t let them take me, my family depends on me. I-I don’t want them on the streets, they’re too young.”
The gangers don’t interrupt his pleading, letting out slight chuckles of mirth even. Alex finds the whole affair extremely uncomfortable. Luckily the elevator reaches her floor and she doesn’t have to respond, heading off and abandoning the man.
“No! Please, don’t leave me! I don’t wanna-”
He’s cut off by the elevator doors closing.
-
Sayyid stares down a grumpy Alex as she pouts at him. He’s holding a box with heaven’s gift and refusing to give it to her, like the lame ass dad he is. Alex heightens her staring, putting all the intensity a teenager can manage. It’s not very effective but she tries anyway.
Then he does something unforgivable. Looking at her with his four eyes he crushes the box between his chrome hands.
Alex lets out a squawk of surprise and gapes at the man. “MY CREPES! What the fuck Baba?!?”
“We’ve been over this, you only get one per week,” Sayyid says sternly. “With how your health is, we can't afford you gaining weight.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“But I didn’t order any this week!”
“Don’t try that shit with me. I saw your transaction history, you went to Cavity Delights on wednesday and got yourself an extra large.”
“You stalk my bank account?!?” Alex glares
“I have to when you’re decidedly untrustworthy,” Sayyid says. “This situation only proves the point.”
Alex’s mouth does an excellent impression of a fish as she tries and fails to come up with a rebuttal that doesn’t involve ‘fuck you’. The bastard absolutely deserves it, but he’s still her Baba; and starting to unironically cuss him out is not a winning strategy if she wants to keep her crepe addiction happy.
Sayyid grunts at her non-response and walks over to the trash chute. He opens the chute and shoves the crumpled box into it. just like that Alex’s soul has officially left her body after witnessing such blatant blasphemy. She would fall to her knees for dramatic effect but that’s a bit much. Also getting back up is a pain in the ass.
“Go study,” the man grunts as he walks back over to her. “I’m not paying for your education for nothing. If you’re gonna develop an obsession with that basic shit then you might as well have a brain as well.”
“Basic?!? I’ll show you basic you…you…mean person,” Alex says.
Sayyid smiles wide and malicious. “Yeah that’s about what I thought. Go on now, I know your English grades, and finals are right around the corner.”
“Fine. But I’m only doing it because I’m a responsible daughter! Not because you told me.”
“Sure,” he waves her off.
Alex pouts one last time to emphasise her displeasure before walking over to her room. She does her best attempt at slamming a door as she can manage. Her upper bodies still weak as fuck since she hasn’t really been training that, she doesn’t really know where to start though. She saw a body weight exercise where you grab your own leg and curl it like you would a dumbbell.
There’s no shot she can do push-ups, even using her knees as supports.
Someday she’ll be a gym freak. It’ll be glorious. For now she needs to exercise her mental muscles, go over pre-recorded lectures, and finish review assignments. Not an exciting addition to her day but she has been avoiding it for too long, and Baba’s right unfortunately. Her first exam’s in a week, and she is not so confident in her history as to get anything other than a sixty. Practically a sin in Arab families but Baba isn’t really the type to give a shit. Her grandparents make a stink of it though.
So she hunkers down and starts her studies, going over a book about gang violence and how very bad it is. The federal government's funny like that, they’ll scream to the rooftops about how evil the gangs are and’ll do a whole lot of jack shit to deal with them.
Other than that there’s a short story about a talking mouse that digs into peoples heads and infects them with something that turns them into rodent-people. That ones much more interesting, though it’s quite trippy.
She read it while high once, it was a good time.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been trudging through her classes (if her internal clock is accurate then it’s been years), but she gets a call from Sasha. Her caller ID’s a cute pink panda so she doesn’t even hesitate to pick up for her bestie.
“Goooood evening!” Sasha sends to Alex’s brain with vibrant enthusiasm. “How’s the magnanimous you doing on this fine day?”
“Like shit. But that’s not a surprise I’ve been studying for…hold on. Only thirty minutes?!?”
Alex hears cackling on the other end of the call. “Oh you poor soul. Must be studying English huh? Or is it social?”
“Social,” Alex sighs. “Fuck this is gonna take forever.”
“This is why you study in advance~”
“Bitch, I literally teach you.”
“Which is why my science and math grades are so great! Other stuff not so much.”
Alex rolls her eyes instinctively. “You can’t see me but I’m rolling my fucking eyes. What do you want?”
“Weeell, after exams I’ve got a few days where I’m free from contracts. Could drop off Mimi at your place and celebrate our shared suffering of the cursed school system.” Sasha says with more than a little giddiness.
Alex lets out a soft chuckle. “Yeah sure, I’m down”
-
Alex barely holds herself up by the knees, another day of excruciating exercise. It’s been almost two months since she got the weird ass virus/game, and she’s gotten a lot stronger for it.
She can almost do thirty cycles, and can maintain a normal stride when walking. Practically unfathomable for her, even when ignoring the insane rate of growth. She’s been praying, daily, if only to give something back to whoever did this. She doesn’t know if prayer actually does anything or if it’s some made up shit but she does it anyway.
Can’t exactly offer anything else.
She hopes they’re happy, because she’s ecstatic. Since she got the S.E.S it hasn’t interrupted her days with any other notifications, which she was a little worried about. What if she’s doing something wrong? It’s a game interface so she assumes there’s some form of experience or some shit, but how does she get it?
For the body stat she assumes that’s exercising, the only thing that makes sense really. Which, depending on how it’s calculated, it could take forever. If it’s a static addition system then there ain’t no fucking way her walking and stair climbing are going to get her anywhere.
Luckily, that’s apparently not how it works.
[CONGRATULATIONS, USER, YOU HAVE LEVELED UP [BODY] PLEASE CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS]
-
SKILLS
STONE BONES:Your bones are harder to break.
SURVIVOR:Your body can take significantly more damage before it fails.
ENHANCED REGENERATION:You heal faster than what should be possible.
UPGRADES
ACCELERATED GROWTH→CONDENSED MUSCLES
CONDENSED MUSCLES:Your physical capacity is no longer stunted by inferior biology
-
Alex already knows which one she’s going to pick, survivor is obviously the superior of the bunch. But she hasn't picked yet for two reasons. One, it’s still surreal as fuck to have a game interface that actually changes reality pop up like an exuberant mother-in-law. Secondly, she’s contemplating how this shit works.
If she has one complaint it would be that this shit didn’t come with a manual. She has to guess blindly at how shit works. How much faster would she heal if she picked enhanced regeneration? Will her bones literally be as hard as stone? Or is that just a cool name whoever made this tacked on?
Will she still have these skills available to her at the next level up? She hopes so, both of them are pretty good in their own right. Considering she can’t tolerate cybernetics and can’t afford bionics this is the only real way for her to get stronger
Then there’s the very important question of what the fuck is upgrading?
Would she lose the benefits of her skill if she did that? The horror of that prospect makes her vehemently against upgrading. She still has dystrophy after all, all she’s doing is outrunning it. Though the appointment with the maestro will prove whether or not that’s actually what she’s been doing.
She’s not looking forward to that bullshit.
But that begs another question, do skills upgrade more than once? If so, what’s the limit?
All of this is just speculation, and Alex hates that she doesn’t have the convenience of answers. She just sighs and picks her new skill.
[YOU HAVE CHOSEN THE SURVIVOR SKILL…]
[SKILL ACQUIRED
SURVIVOR:Your body can take significantly more damage before it fails.]
[PROFILE:ALEX FATMAH
STATS
BODY(2)
ACCELERATED GROWTH: Your muscles grow faster than what should be possible
SURVIVOR:Your body can take significantly more damage before it fails.]
***
Index:
Ibne: Son of, (person)’s son
Mulazimin: Lieutenants (plural)
Mulazim: Lieutenant (singular)
Intah abbite: Are you dumb?
Alhayig:The Berserker
