Sally Strect lay motionless, her dark auburn hair fanned out around her head, in the ergonomic medical recliner. Her breathing was slow and even. The monitors and respirators worked diligently and evenly.

“The chip has been removed, sir. We will now move the patient to recovery.” said the lead doctor in the powder blue operating room. His 8 assistants scurried to close Sally’s eyelids and prepare her to be wheeled away on the recliner. Her eyes could be seen to move back and forth under the lids with quick and constant motion.

As she was wheeled out, the distinguished-looking, mid-sixties, man, in a perfectly cut, dark grey, suit that was wrinkled from a long day, turned to the well-dressed young man on his right with a grim glare. The brown of the younger man’s suit was a shade that did not flatter his pale skin tone. The blush of anger and worry still contrasted sharply with the older man’s elegant grey of hair on his temples and the still vividly dark hair on the rest of his head. “Explain again, how did my only daughter end up assigned to a lab, where she was involved in a dangerous experiment!”

“Sir! She pretended to be one of the volunteers. It seems she paid the other girl off to take her place.” replied the young man who was sweating nervously.

“Andy, have any of our ‘experts’ been able to explain why my daughter chose to insert her into the product testing group? I would also like to know how she managed it! When you have information for me, I will be in the infirmary. I expect regular updates on your investigation. I also want to know how an experiment that should be as simple as testing a new watch hurt my daughter!” With that, he strode away from the smaller man and went after the comatose girl as she was wheeled out of the room.

—===+++===—

Alontheus bypassed the security in the research facility with ease. Once there, the rerouting of the chip from secure storage to the defective chip storage was simple. All of this was handled electronically and did not involve a human, even the physical movement of the chip from point A to point B was automated. The chip he placed in the secure storage was a perfect duplicate. It just did not contain the crucial microgram of crystal that made it special and far less data. It only had to fool them for a short while anyway.

The defective chips would be sold to the discount distributor. That was where the plan would deliver the candidate.

---===+++===---

            Matthew did great at the interview. They loved his new tie. His suit (the best he could find at the thrift shop) had come out of the dry cleaner’s beautiful and perfectly mended. He had no problem answering the tech questions. He suspected the cute blonde who interviewed him was even flirting with him! Everything had been fine until he found out that he would need a dermal PDA. The guy from HR had assumed that he had the resources to get the latest model. It turned out the even clocking in would require him to be registered as in the office via his PDA.

            “Make sure you get one with a good clock speed and plenty of expandability in case you need to upgrade.” said Richard from HR.

            Now, he was scrounging in the bargain shops for second hand PDA’s. Matthew just hoped that he could make it to his first payday with whatever half functional crap he could find for a lousy $1,000.

            Bob’s discount was a new place to him. It was the only store he had not tried in this area and the shadows were getting long. It was already Friday, and the new job started on Monday. It took up a dingy, corner storefront. The dirty windows cracked in only a few places by the stray bullets of some random street shooting last month. It would likely be vacant in another month. That was the way it worked in this corner of the city. Most of the goods were either stolen or defective and second merchandise, some of it scavenged from warehouse and factory dumpsters. Matthew had, at last, come to this final stop in his search. The closest he had found so far had been a substandard unit that was $1,200. He had almost parted with the extra cash until he realized the damned thing had asynchronous cache errors that caused the registers to overflow unpredictably when speculative execution order was needed in parallel processing tasks exceeded the usage levels of the average highschool coding class. In short, it would have crashed on the simplest tasks in his new job and that would have been the end of that job. No, he needed a reliable implant.

            The autocannons whined as their servos brought the multibarreled agents of destruction to track on Matthew. They looked well worn, but clean. He had been in these questionable shops all day. The grimy shelves of the store were stacked with the leavings of hundreds of burglaries and stolen shipments meant for far more legitimate and tasteful establishments.

            As Matthew inspected the scratched shell of a medium range gaming system, adorned as it was with a single frayed and scuffed pink bunny sticker, the proprietor of the shop cleared his throat from behind a row of plexiglass display cases in the back of the cluttered store. “Can I help you find something?”

            Matthew looked up to see an older gray-haired man. He was potbellied and sporting a spectacular amount of dirty, gray beard over a worn and faded concert T-shirt, and faded red suspenders that supported a pair of spotless khakis. The name of the band, faded beyond recognition under its obscuring screen of facial hair. Even an idiot would not have missed the military grade machine pistol harnessed to the man’s left side for an easy cross draw and a similarly impressive taser on the right.

            “What do you have in the way of dermally implanted PDA chips?”

            “I have a few series 3 and 4 chips. I also have some that just came in that need to be sorted and valued.”

            “I need at least a series 6 for the job I’m starting. Can we work out a deal? I could sort and prep the box of chips for you for a discount on a series 6. I can show you my credentials. I’m a qualified tech. “

            “Sort this pile and you can take your pick from the box. I don’t know this stuff and I would have had to pay someone to get them ready for sales. If you mess it up, I’ll take the cash you have and kick your ass kid.”

            Putting his wallet on the counter Matthew pulled out his freshly minted certification card, Matthew nodded acceptance of the deal. They held direct eye contact for a moment as if they could gaze into each other and determine the length that they could each could trust the other to. The older man put his hand out to him, and they shook hands on the deal.

            “Nice to meet you, Bob!”

            “Not my name kid. I’m Lou. Bob was the last owner. I’m just too cheap to change the branding…”

            “I’m Matthew. Here are my credentials.” he replied as he slid the card with his education records to the older man. Lou slipped the card into a reader.

            “It says here you graduated a month ago. How come you’re broke?”

            “It’s been rough getting a gig. I need the series 6 to be able to do my work at the job I just got. I start Monday.”

            “You had better get started on those chips then. The testing will take a while. This is Thursday. No Friday night plans?”

            “No, just getting set up for this gig.”

            “Come in fresh and early tomorrow and we’ll finish up by early afternoon.”

            “I’ll be here at 8:00 am sharp!”

            Lou’s reply was a curt nod.