A red alert practically screamed across Rui's vision.
Critical Power Failure: Backup Generator Active.
Rui let out a huff, a low, mechanical whir that probably sounded more like a dying hard drive than a human sigh. Seriously? This was the third time this week his main power grid decided to crap out on him. Great. He dragged himself toward the nearest Diner, which was less of a culinary establishment and more of a boxy insult to architecture.
He grabbed a "pump," which was just a stupidly large chrome plug. His hand, entirely synthetic under a whisper-thin layer of fake skin, smoothly lined it up with the port on his inner wrist. The connection clicked home with a faint hydraulic hiss.
On his internal heads-up display, the numbers started to flick down. He watched the digital tally of his funds slowly drain away.
Paying to live.
Well, if you could even call this pathetic existence "living."
The whole system had been installed ages ago.
When they first rolled it out, people did what people do: they rioted. The grid-keepers—or whatever shadowy overlords were behind it—were fast. Every protester got a digital scarlet letter, their access to the power systems revoked until their core batteries just gave up. They were basically forced to a slow, powered-down death. Rui hadn't been around for that mess, or at least he didn't remember it.
Most people didn't...
The only reason anyone even knew was because a few stubborn, old-school types managed to stow away physical documents right under their noses. The ones who somehow found a way to disconnect themselves from the mainframe and maintain some scrap of autonomy.
He'd never met any of them. Frankly, he couldn't wrap his head around how they even functioned. The computer systems had a choke-hold on everyone. Commit a crime? You were flagged and taken away before the minute was up. Everything you did was tracked.
Did they even bother with a moral system anymore?
Rui decided this whole philosophical deep dive was probably system-guided.
Any time a thought of his strayed outside the approved, commonly accepted standard, he was met with a quick zap and a red warning.
And god forbid he sympathize with people not wanting to have their thoughts invaded like that.
Even now.
Quick zap. Flashing red warning.
He couldn't help but wonder why they needed to condition people so often.
Well... he understood, but it didn't make it any better in his opinion.
The most likely reason was to nip any potential riots in the bud.
Everyone was basically a walking, talking super-weapon with a high-powered search engine for a brain. It made sense they'd want control. If they could keep that on a short leash, they could rule with an iron fist and never worry about a mob that could rip apart a tank with their bare hands.
Some people were probably easier to manage, too. The more synthetic the parts, the more there was to control.
Rui figured his own augmentation level was probably pushing the limit. His battery life was garbage, and sometimes his processing abilities were sluggish enough to be embarrassing. Mechanics always gave him the same useless advice: potential CPU issue. He would have gotten it fixed, but that was a wallet-draining surgery, and the data transfer was somehow even more expensive.
More systems, more power. It made a rough kind of sense, he supposed, though he was never entirely sold on the logic. Whatever, he thought, disconnecting from the pump after hitting the bare minimum charge. It's not like it matters that much.
Rui had barely managed three steps away when a sharp, nasty electrical spark spat out between the port on his wrist and the air.
His visual interface glitched, a quick, painful flash of scrambled data. A sudden, skull-crushing wave of static washed over his consciousness, filling his ears with an annoyingly loud ringing.
Then... he would have happily taken the ringing back, because it cut off into a sudden, absolute silence. The world dissolved into a blinding white flash, followed by immediate, terrifying darkness.
Rui's core system officially checked out. He pitched forward, hitting the cold, grimy synthetic pavement like a sack of dead batteries.