Copyright 2025 Old King All rights reserved

  To secure a strategic buffer, the Shenzhen Republic annexed all of Dongguan, merging it with Huizhou into the New District. The once-thriving manufacturing hub of foreign investment had long faded. In place of millions of migrant workers, refugees from the inland flooded in. Post-war drifters clashed relentlessly with warlords and inland factions, with the shattered mainland having long since plunged into chaos. Civil war survivors had tried to flee to the relatively safe coastal regions, but escape was brutal—most had died on the wreck-strewn roads. After its founding, the Shenzhen Republic faced armed invasions by cannibalistic swarms, making its border defenses the tightest among coastal states.

  Amin hauled his contracted truck along highways in the rolling hills. His headlights guided him through the pitch-black night, as he dodged wrecks littering the route. Swelter clung to his chest, but he skipped the AC to save fuel. In 2032, Amin had paid $10,000 to be smuggled into Shenzhen, desperate to feed his family in Hunan’s ruins. Usurious loans and truck contract fees crushed Amin. For a temporary residence permit, Amin sold his consciousness to HuaCent three times, $50 a pop, earning the nickname ‘Split Brain’ from splitting headaches caused by the procedure.

  The cargo depot, once a logistics hub, now crouched behind rusted barricades, armed guards scanning trucks with laser precision. The engine hadn’t even killed when three dockworkers shoved past clunky HuaCent bots to yank open the doors to unload. Amin smirked—locally made bots were so shoddy they barely threatened human jobs. Self-driving tech was a joke without imported sensors and chips; drivers still had work. A reek of diesel, exhaust, and piss choked the air. Cheap plastic-shelled robots shuffled, stacking crates under 5 kilos to match their feeble specs. Patriotic’ purchases, HuaCent preached, mandated by government quotas with subsidies to sweeten the deal.

  “Hey, Split Brain, grab some food and a drink!” Drivers hollered from a barbecue stall, Budweiser cans strewn across their table. Amin waved them off, dodging offense, his pockets too empty to join. The stall’s ‘mutton’ and ‘beef’ skewers were Soy sludge, flavored with chemicals and grease—before the war, duck had been commonly used to fake mutton, but now even duck was a luxury, though the taste was close enough.

  Amin ran routes from New District to Salt Port and Circuit North, hauling machines, toys, parts, food, and cybernetic limbs. Anything that paid, he took, including black-market side gigs. Evading checks? Small stuff in pockets, big stuff in crates—pure luck. The more trips Amin made to new places, the more flexible his network became, and life eased a bit. He rented a cramped “coffin room,” a stacked capsule in a warehouse corner, shielded by a tin roof, with water and power for $800 a month—his only splurge.

  After unloading, he pocketed $50 in fees, parked, and hit Old Li’s Mutton Soup Stall for a bowl and two flatbreads—$5, not bad. “Split Brain, yo!” a young driver hollered. “They say HuaCent jammed a woman’s mind in your head—true?” Familiar faces who knew Amin roared with laughter.

  Amin stayed cool, slurping the steaming soup. No mutton, but it mimicked the flavor, packed with glass noodles and limp vegetables. All from chemical broth mixed with water—just edible enough to survive. Old Li, the stall owner, shoved two flatbreads into Amin’s hands, and with a beaming smile told the crowd, “Drink the soup! Drink the soup! No more joking…”

  The kid, egged on by the laughter, pressed: ‘Joking? They say you skip booze, smokes, and girls—what kinda man are ya, ah?’ More laughs erupted. “Heard massage joints got $50 smart silicone dolls with Soul Ore—your brain in one?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Amin swallowed a bite of flatbread, flashed a strained smile, but stayed quiet, a thin sheen of sweat beading on his forehead and cheeks. Seeing him stay silent, the crowd lost interest in further mocking him and turned to talk about women, mentioning a new sauna in Yellow Kiang with five-star decor, tons of girls, and fancy tricks. Old Li ambled over to him: “Amin, take this for me tomorrow.” Amin silently took a brick-sized plastic bag without looking up, tucking it under his thigh. “Still the one in Salt Port?”

  “Mm,” Old Li grunted, turning to tend to customers. Old Li, the boss, seemingly unremarkable, secretly controlled the depot’s black-market network, rumored to have made a fortune smuggling over the years. He tapped Amin’s quiet nature to deliver goods to buyers.

  As Amin ate and sipped, the crowd’s talk pulled his thoughts to Soul Ore. Desperate migrant workers had sold their mind to HuaCent. The state treats people as resources, right? Naturally they are Human Ore, so their consciousness became Soul Ore, the underclass’s name for digitized minds. Amin, a for-profit college graduate skilled at driving heavy trucks, earned $50 per copy, while ordinary migrant workers got only $10. “What’s to fear? It doesn’t cost a chunk of flesh—just a bit of headache.” they said. HuaCent also shelled out big money for the Soul Ore of highly educated, skilled elites, though Amin didn’t know how much. Depot rumors swore overseas graduated PhDs could rake in a fortune—$100,000—for high-end robotics, swapping the Tesla robot’s AI for minds so lifelike in touch, reaction, and movement—sexually lifelike—you’d swear they were human.

  After paying, Amin was about to leave when Old Li stopped him, glanced inside, and pulled him into the stall’s shadows. He whispered, “Be extra careful this time…” Amin nodded silently, clutching the bag tightly. Old Li swallowed hard, “This must be delivered to him in person—no one else. Know ThunderVolt?”

  Amin frowned. “ThunderVolt? What, some new bot?” Old Li hushed him, voice low: “Shh! HuaCent’s security chief. Alloy cyberarms, runs a crew of cutthroats. Checks cargo tighter than customs!” Amin hesitated, “Sounds like trouble. Get someone else, yeah?” Old Li shoved the bag back. “Urgent job. You’re the steadiest. $200. In or out?” Amin gritted his teeth and took it.

  In a quiet corner, Amin snuck a peek at the plastic bag—a hard drive, likely a Soul Ore disk. On the black market, these pirated Soul Ore drives, swiped from HuaCent, were hot with robot factories, but dirt cheap, barely worth a few bucks. Itching to know more, he slipped into a repair shop, reeking of machine oil, solder, and chemicals. “Boss Amin!” Kim Eun-hee called, AR goggles on, not looking up. “Truck running smooth?” A North Korean defector who’d clawed her way to Shenzhen, she scraped by fixing black-market gear, picking up local slang and building dark web contacts, all to evade the North’s agents and the Republic’s immigration sweeps.

  Amin handed over the hard drive. “Check what’s inside, yeah? How much to copy it?” Kim Eun-hee pulled out a data cable, jacked into the drive, and muttered, “HuaCent’s encryption layers—nobody else can crack this. I’ll need dark web rigs to crack the seal.”

  The screen flickered with data streams. She frowned. “This Soul Ore scrap’s worth squat… but there’s an encrypted log…” She yanked off her VR goggles, voice heavy. “Mentions a Bastion lab accident—something about ‘consciousness splitting,’ ‘executive approval,’ and a project called Chest-Born. Boss Amin, this ain’t no small fry.”

  Amin squinted. “Chest-Born? What’s that supposed to be, man?”

  Kim Eun-hee fixed her gaze on him. “Thirty grand.”

  Amin’s pulse froze, mouth dry. “No way it’s that big?”

  She hefted the drive, lips curling. “Know anyone who’d bite? I’ll dupe it—you take both the original and the copy, and I’ll fix up a buyer and split the take down the middle. In?” Amin chewed it over, then grunted. “Done!”

  They didn’t see the drone lurking overhead, a Chinese character “Thunder” engraved on its shell, red beam cutting the dark. A shiver hit Amin’s spine as he grabbed the drive, weighing it, whispering, “This haul’s gonna make me a lot…”