In this era, a healthy person usually finds it hard to accept this kind of technology.
After all, your body is perfectly fine, then suddenly someone wants to open a hole in your head, plug in cables, cybernetic modulators, and personal link devices. Just thinking about it feels a bit unsafe.
However, where there's demand, acceptance grows—especially for someone like Skye, an employee of the company. Her tolerance had already improved a lot.
Most importantly, the International Gene Cooperation Company had already successfully conducted charity surgeries for over 1,000 disabled individuals and completed more than 2,000 commercial surgeries.
Currently, only one hospital has the capability to perform these procedures, so patients awaiting treatment for neurological conditions or disabilities are queued up to ten years into the future.
Most of the patients in line for commercial procedures are either in urgent need or wealthy, and even other hospitals' training application queues stretch years ahead.
Social acceptance is fairly high.
So Skye gritted her teeth and nodded—she was once a hacker, and now she would literally become a computer.
But as soon as she agreed, she saw Leo put on his octopus-arm exoskeleton and open a portable case, gesturing for her to lie down on the surgical table.
"Right here?! Right now?!"
Leo nodded. "Right now. It's just a minor operation. Come on, lie down."
Truthfully, this wasn't a minor operation. In theory, each procedure requires pre-assessment, custom interface development, and surgical prep before proceeding.
At the International Gene Cooperation Company, Conners and Parker had used a computer to develop a fully automated assessment and customization system. A single full-body exam could complete the entire process.
But with Leo…
He could perform surgery even while a war raged outside.
And so, Skye swallowed nervously and lay down on the operating table.
In the Marvel universe, the first-gen brain-computer interface had low power ratings but was still sufficient to run old tech like the Militech Parallel Line.
The operation took only three hours.
Due to the lack of bionic eye tech, the visual HUD had to be disabled. Instead, they added a handheld terminal compatible with the Militech Parallel Line.
In the Cyberpunk world, hackers in 2020 often used such setups, so it wouldn't affect efficiency much.
Once the surgery was complete, Skye felt like she'd just taken a nap. When she awoke, she felt a strange new sensation in her brain.
She looked toward a screen nearby—just the thought of interacting with it caused it to respond.
"The cybernetic modulator reads your neural activity, converts it into electrical signals, and transmits them wirelessly."
Leo packed away the surgical gear. "There's a tutorial on the computer. Tinker with it yourself."
Skye's eyes lit up. She immediately reconnected to the forum where she had been flaming people on earlier.
[IronheartExtinction001: In conclusion, humanity is doomed. There's no way we can fight capitalism.]
[IronheartExtinction001: Only when humanity is gone will the conflict stop.
[Skye: Sigh, capitalism.]
[Skye: What's your educational background?]
[IronheartExtinction001: I have no degree.]
[Skye: Dumbass. Humanity's doomed? Aren't you human? Your parents are human, right? Why don't you go kill your dad first if you're so hardcore?]
[Skye: Or wait… do you not have any parents?]
Skye typed out her barrage effortlessly. Leo glanced at the screen, watching the wild insults pour out, and twitched the corner of his mouth.
"What are you doing? Why so aggressive?"
Skye licked her lips. The anesthetic hadn't worn off fully yet, but not being able to stand didn't stop her from furiously typing and flaming people.
"Feels good to finally yell at these dimwits. Lately, there's been a lot of 'humanity is doomed,' 'society is falling apart' nonsense. Ask them what they've done about it? Nothing.
I just don't get it. Where do these shut-in keyboard warriors get the nerve to criticize everything?"
As the upgraded shut-in herself, Skye opened dozens of windows on her screen with ease and got to work, fully hyped.
Leo quickly stopped her. "Hold up. I didn't give you this gear to become a keyboard warrior. ctOS is expanding. We need to upgrade the software and develop new AI tech."
"AI?"
A flash of blue light sparkled in Leo's eye as he transmitted a wealth of AI textbooks gathered from the internet monitoring systems into Skye's terminal.
In addition, Leo created a reference AI modeled after the sub-node program used by the mini-octopus to manage the OCT network domain and handed it over to Skye.
Although Leo could continue using the mini-octopus to manage ctOS indirectly, that wouldn't leave room for his subordinates to grow.
Skye's eyes widened as she received the data. She rubbed her hands together. "Actually, boss, I've already been studying AI for a while."
After all, no matter how smart a person is, there's a limit when facing the chaos of the internet.
But a language model trained in her unique flame-war style? That could generate golden quotes from her past and fuse them with new ideas to create even sharper lines.
That's AI, too—early AI, anyway.
Leo waved his hand. He could monitor everything that happened here anyway.
"I know. Now get back to work. Sort the data packets—I might check them at any time."
"Got it!"
Leo packed up his gear, loaded it onto a nearby AGV bot, and the bot quietly rolled the equipment away.
He glanced at the time—almost four hours had passed since he entered the company. That special agent guest of his was probably running out of patience.
"All right, that's it for today. If you need any equipment, contact Professor Conners—you two can discuss the details.
Later, I'll get you upgraded with more advanced tech. For now, get used to this chip."
"Roger that! Safe travels, boss!"
Skye sat up in bed and waved him off.
Once Leo left, she turned toward the wall of giant screens, a serious look in her eyes.
Now that her equipment had been upgraded and her work assignments had arrived… what about her mission of internet justice?
Her mind flashed back to those AI materials, and a spark of inspiration hit her.
She was now a super-hacker, and her abilities had significantly improved. So why couldn't she have the best of both worlds?
She'd throw herself into the boss's work—but as for her online vigilante crusade…
Why not let an AI handle that?
ctOS already had a sentiment-evaluation system for online public opinion. A little tweaking, combined with her past posts as a language model training dataset, and she could build a cyber-spray AI to ruthlessly punish these "dimwits."
"This'll be a personal project... but…"
After thinking it through, Skye decided to create a new project entry in the company database, just in case Leo wanted to look into it.
And she named the file:
"Keyboard Warrior."
As Skye shifted her focus to Wakanda, the newly minted "Keyboard Warrior" AI began scanning for extreme posts similar to "IronheartExtinction001" and started flaming them with brutal efficiency.
If someone were monitoring the cyberspace activity, they would notice that with every action the Keyboard Warrior took, it left behind a small but unique data cluster—subtle and hard to detect.
These clusters couldn't be fully deciphered. Like human emotions, they contained patterns, inputs, and outputs—but no one could understand how the AI processed the data internally.
If Leo saw it, he would know—
This was a true AI core: a black box even humans couldn't fully unravel.
Just... a bit immature.
"Jarvis, what's going on?"
Stark Industrial Park
Tony was modifying the drone armor design, comparing the blueprints to the actual manufactured product.
However, the screen he was using suddenly flickered a few times, even displaying a view from the front-facing camera—
It was the handsome face of none other than Tony Stark himself.
"Apologies, sir. I'm experiencing some lag," JARVIS said.
Tony skeptically tapped the screen: it didn't seem like his imagination. Why did it feel like JARVIS was a bit annoyed?
And when the camera flickered on just now, he had the odd feeling he was being watched.
But who could possibly bypass JARVIS to spy on him?
"Focus. I guess I need to run a full system check to make sure the engine's running properly."
"Understood, sir."
The combat drone stood nearly 3 meters tall. It was equipped with onboard machine guns, mini-missiles, high-sensitivity sensors, an EMP device, and reactive armor — all personally designed by Tony.
Its legs featured highly adaptive treads, and it had multiple small thrusters allowing it to move like a human or zip along like a machine.
To prevent corruption or embezzlement, the unit covered almost all imaginable combat scenarios, was barely modular, and had a clearly transparent cost structure.
With JARVIS managing the combat network, its goal was to replace human soldiers and conduct warfare in a fully controllable way.
"A brilliant invention," Tony nodded, proud of himself.
The only shortcoming was the unsolved energy issue — it was ultimately resolved thanks to a super-petroleum fuel provided by one of his club associates.
After the initial test run, the mech powered down again, and JARVIS began optimizing energy distribution based on the fuel's performance.
[Dario: I agree. This is the greatest invention of our generation. It could bring us centuries of stability.]
[Dario: I suppose I should contact the Nobel Peace Prize committee and reserve you a medal.]
Tony walked over, picked up a glass from the table, and poured himself a glass of champagne.
Drinking at a weapons testing base — only he could pull that off.
"Erik, what do you think? Not bad, huh?"
"This big guy is a ruthless steel beast," replied Erik Killmonger, Tony's head of security. Though he looked composed, he was silently cursing.
The energy problem ended up being solved by that mysterious investor.
Tony took a sip of his drink and continued messaging his club colleague.
[Tony: How the hell did you create that fuel? Its physical properties are a miracle, let alone the ridiculous energy output.]
[Dario: Oh, I just happened to stumble upon it.]
[Tony: Got it. All great inventions need a bit of luck. Without your stuff, I'd be relying on vibranium.]
[Tony: But that stuff's gone missing, and I don't even know where to start looking.]
[Dario: Speaking of which, want to test the armor's power?]
[Dario: One of our research vessels went missing. You know how that network chaos last time burned a lot of our equipment — some thieves took advantage of it.]
[Dario: The ship departed from the Arctic, then disappeared during resupply in the UK.]
[Dario: Latest intel suggests the hijackers headed south.]
Tony raised an eyebrow.
[Tony: Africa?]
[Dario: Right. We need someone reliable to look into it — someone from our own circle.]
[Dario: I'll tell you more during our next dinner.]
Tony set down the champagne and looked at Erik. "Wanna take this big guy on a little trip?"
Just then, JARVIS completed his adjustments, and the mech slowly stood up. A robotic voice rang out:
"Iron Soldier Type I ready. Awaiting deployment."