“Agent Plus,” he says proudly. “You will receive a five percent discount on your essential subscriptions, including cleaner air and potable water. Your corporate apartment will be returned to you, minus a cleaning fee for the men you killed.”
“Shit. I really killed them?”
“Oh, yes. The cleaning fee was substantial, I’m afraid. But don’t worry. We know you deserve a real raise. So from tomorrow onwards, you are getting an exclusive fresh vegetable subscription, delivered to your door once every two weeks.”
“That’s what… that’s what I get?” Vegetables? I like tomatoes, but that’s about it. All these years of service, all this being ripped out of my own consciousness every five minutes, and I get veggies?
“Also, you’ve forgotten to pay your subscriptions while you were under the memory effects, so you’re actually technically several years in arrears, but don’t worry. We’re prepared to offer you apayment program. You’ll pay off your arrears at a rate of thirty-three percent interest. Very fair, I think you’ll agree.”
I do some quick mental math. By my reckoning, I’ll have minus two hundred credits every week. I guess I’m going to have to really stretch my vegetable subscription. Or I could just kill the man in front of me.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Brown says, clearly reading my face, or perhaps just directly listening into my thoughts, for all I know. “I’ve been waiting for someone to do it. It may as well be you. Then it will be over for the both of us.”
Hard to kill a man who doesn’t mind if he dies. Just feels… wrong. Like I want to talk him into wanting to live first, and then kill him so I know he wasn’t suffering from poor mental health.
“So I’m fucked.”
“You’re no more fucked than anybody else,” he says.
I’ve betrayed the mates who loved me, and I’ve gotten nothing for it.
“I want the chip out,” I say. “I don’t mind the debt, but I don’t want to stay your little… creature anymore. I want my own mind back.”
He gives a shrug. “It’ll only add to your debt, but if you’re happy with that…”
“Fucking delirious,” I say.
“Alright. Down the hall, to the left. Ask for the brain surgeon.”
“It’s that simple?”
“When you’re dealing with corporate funding, anything is possible, Ms. Mills.”
I do as he says, and before I know what’s really going on, I’m being prepped for brain surgery. They don’t sedate you, because it’s the brain, so it turns out to be a pretty easy process compared to others.
“Being decommissioned, are we?” the brain surgeon says. “Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
I take a seat in the chair.
“Can I keep the chip once you take it out?”
“It’s proprietary,” the surgeon says. “Sorry. I can give you a smiley face sticker, though.”
“Cool.”
The surgery doesn’t hurt. They whack me full of painkillers, shave a patch of my head, drill a hole, and retrieve the chip. From what I understand it’s on the surface of my brain, not deep in the folds or somewhere in the actual brain… flesh? Goo? Material?
“What are you giggling about?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“We might be stimulating a mirth center. Make a note,” the surgeon says. “Alright. I’m going to restore the chunk of skull we took and glue it down. Then we’re going to put a foam helmet on. Wear it for the next twenty-one days at least.”
I look goofy.
But that’s the least of my problems.
I’ve betrayed the three mates I love for a vegetable subscription and a lifetime of corporate debt. That’s not a good deal no matter how you slice it.
