Vincent types a searchstring for the near-latest Claws available within his price-range, wooden gone-hand one finger stretched, the others in a loose fist. There aren’t many: Claw jobs don’t pay that well. True, they’re cheaper than the fourteen-digit double-prosthesis you need for dataentry, but. He’s not clerk. He doesn’t have the diplomas that go with fast typing. What he is is Claw: he’s wearing what’s basically a crab-pincer at the end of his left arm with a scanner light pulsing neon blue.
Scrolling and head-shaking, a succession of Claws on the wallscreen. All new models compliant with Resolution 150: Employers are no longer required to provide endorphined neural connections. Older tools will have to be back-engineered to comply. That’s another hurdle. The Claw and Affiliated Union is just not powerful enough to fight this. CAU is concentrating instead on resolution 151, aimed at authorising companies to equip workers with pain-triggering TENS module, up to a level 5 resistance. So. Up to date Claws will no longer supply the elusive buzz one gets when processing a good, rare or expensive ticket nomore, but scanning an out-of-date stub may knock you down. CAU says one has to choose one’s battles, but. Fuck.
A new Claw won’t fit anyway. He’ll have to upgrade his port first, then install. Vincent never manages to make enough to upgrade to the latest iteration, always having to remain two, or even three versions behind when times are hard. False economy, he knows, but nomatter, coz that’s all he can do anyway. Staying behind. Adding an intermediate Mod-layer to his existing graft would look bulky and ungainly, wouldn’t confer this air of confidence and above-boardness he needs to get good ticket contracts instead of being terminally LondonTube-confined. Maybe plug in garlands, like they do in Japan. A micro-chyron with inspirational quotes, or a holographic funnies projector. Christmas lights, pulsing vibes for high-qual raves, stuff like that. Make it fun, irreverent, heart-shaped, cynosure. But. He lives in London, not Tokyo: people here more likely to headbutt than bow.
For a fraction of the money, he could get a no-Res150 Claw, from the CryptWeb, maybe from the Mod Massive, or the E-chthonic Crew. Guaranteed to have way higher specs than his current one. He’d risk a tool laced with whatever random software the original builder saw fit to add to it though. It could be nothing, from a prank tone, or a weird angular design, to a malicious AI-neurovirus fucking up, and ultimately offing, his interface. Then no job. Maybe no wrist, even. It’s been decades since it last happened, he’s heard that the Subterraneans have quieted down and that it’s all a whole lot safer now. But. CAU will never sanction unregistered anyway. Also: non-Union Claws are silly preys to unscrupulous bosses, nothing more. So…
“Shit”. Vincent swipes the screen off with a flick, arches his back against the wall, and slumps back over again. He slides down on the bed and stares at the grey ceiling, keeping the naked bulb below his cheekbones so he’s not blinded. Blinking the left and right eye to see the light move. He lingers left.
The last tenant knocked off a square of bricks illegally, and that’s his own private window, the only one this side of the building, he’s sure. He’s pulled the curtain away and uncovered a flat geometry of light, landmark London orange. Nightsounds fleet through: horns, alarms, the constant hum of drones, and some human voices too. The occasional gun-bang at the weekend, followed sometimes by ambulance laughing like hyena. A LondonLouder, not far, like antique Dickens town crier. Lying on the bed, he reflects that maybe, just maybe, just this time, he could milk mum’s cult statute a bit, get himself some saintly-favour. Mary, Angel of the Claws. But no. Vincent’s not pure, but not grafter either. Mum is not martyr to him, she’s mum. She’s never looked after him from the Void&All, coz she’s dead. Her post-mortem status of politico-social sacrifice is not something he’s ever encouraged or monetised. And he’s always been against preferential treatment anyway. That comes from mum too.
Being Claw sucks. Being Mod sucks. Too late though, he’s partially unlimbed now, been like that since his eighteenth birthday. Vincent caresses the polished lines of his hickory digits. He did think about bio-gluing patches of Feelie DNC on them, to regain touch, but. Too dear, can’t afford. Or rather, he could afford the sheets, just, but not the nerve-relinking surgery, so… only his right hand feels now.
He was deployed the length of the District Line today, checking people’s tickets in-car. Got pleaded with, then insulted, debased, his CAU insigna spat on. He knows some colleagues carry modified miniature laser knives that will surreptitiously burn a tiny revenge-hole in someone’s coat or bag. He doesn’t, but he might one day. Now even. Or he could simply jam someone’s index in his prosthesis’ interstice and snap it in two: a Claw needs respect.
Montagne is Feelie. A touch-addict with extra nerve endings grafted over his dermis. He covered his penis and genitals years ago, then his buttocks and nipples. Now he may allow himself to orgasm from his shoulders when he carry his backpack, from his palms when he shakes hands, from his scalp when he massage his head. A crammed Caterpillar is bathing in carbonated water. A rave is random flashes of bliss when he’s bumped into, when a beat-panting girl, or a man, brushes his arms with their hair. Rain on naked skin makes him scrunch his face in delight-pain.
He has a sub-cutaneous slider on his right forearm that he caresses up or down to control his level of responsiveness, to protect himself from overload: otherwise walking through a crowded street at lunch time might just kill him. And so he micro-adjusts his settings to get to the right balance between buzz and jizz, between pressure and pleasure. Between blood and semen. Every day is a one-notch upgame, a challenge to thin his defences, to slide higher, to more. Sometimes he even sets the controls to random, he won’t know if this collision with a stranger on the pavement will burst his heart or have him ejaculate.
His addiction is not public knowledge, he doesn’t always wear his Union symbol, the Circle. People may sense his need though, sometimes. Perhaps is he standing too close. Maybe it’s the way he approaches them, open, empty, receptacle-like, maybe it’s the start of a silent groan that sometimes escape his lips, or his frank eye contact and in his pupils the reaction to the discharge of phenyl ethylamine. It may happen that some random stranger tunes in to his craving and plays along, in an Underground train, breathing down his neck, letting themselves stumble and gripping his elbow. Such encounters are rare and ever-cherished, thanked with a beatific smile and a wink. They respond with a knowing smile coming off the train, and he wants to follow them home and buy them presents, he dreams of morphing into a sofa for them to sit comfy in.
Montagne has Feelie friends whom he meets at regular interval, they talk of techniques, of gear and clinics, of patches of skin self-reinvaded, pleasure-reclaimed. Of work with such company or other, of the tests they endure for pay. They touch one another and have sex, men and women gasping coz they forgot to breathe. During slowed, lazy orgies in soundproofed, low-lighted rooms, they subtly prick and poke and lick and squeeze, and it’s a constant explosion. Such sessions are eminently exhausting and leave him a raw rag, shuffling back home, slider all the way downway. They leave his skin blotchy, couperosed, rough to the touch, and it’s a week or so before his satiastate fulfills and he’s ready again.
Stolen story; please report.
Today he’s going deeper. Settings to extra-low, his derma tranquilled, he walks with purpose but slowly, projecting in his head the heights he presumes he’ll reach. He’s walking to the next step, remembering the first and anticipating the ones that will inevitably follow: today, after the exterior, Montagne is going to colonise his innards, epiglottis, anal enclosure, intercostal walls, cricoid cartilage, and his intermediate regions too, the back of his eyelids and his knee&arm pits.
On his sedate way to the Feelie bucodental centre, where he has an appointment to line the sides of his mouth, he imagines blissing out when eating broccoli, when chewing gum, when bedtime-gargling. When kissing. Ambling: one storey red busses like mutant ladybugs, black taxi gnats, wafts of paki-jerk or sushi&chicken, food as thoroughly mixed as people: London is alive and gross as always. The air is thick&heavy. The giant fans that ventilate Mayfair, South Kensington and the length of the River from Chelsea to Tower bridge, where tourists go and Montagne doesn’t, are far away. The Queen is aerated, her subjects less so.
His extra nerve implants cut off, the world is so flat and dull, but Montagne endures the boredom, waiting in the reception area where another person is sitting, eyes stuck to the floor, their left legs beating an endless reflexive tattoo. Their skintone is pale, tiny violet curls travel up their collar to their Adam’s apple and Montagne knows something is wrong so he looks away: he doesn’t need other people’s sadness in his life. He unfolds when he hears his name and follows Josy, his surgeon’s assigned assistant, through ochre-carpeted corridors. There is no noise, doors bear neither name nor number. One opens for them, a room with no window, only a dentist chair in the centre and a tray. On the tray sheets of greenish DermoNeural Culture soak in a jellified saline solution. They resemble tessellated leaves with pink hexagonal nervures plucked from some blood-orange tree.
The nurse unbuttons his shirt in precise, clipped movements and presents him with the sleeves of a surgical top, which she laces at his back. He places his hand flat on her own flat palm and is guided to the grey chair. He lies. He’s staring at the ceiling when the surgeon emerges from a side door. Mary-Ann. Very dark blue iris, bun-haired, full lips, his faithful purveyor of fleshpleasures. She wears a thin Circle on the back of her left hand, even though she doesn’t have to. She redid it today: he can see the little pinprick in the centre, where she stuck the oldskool compass in her flesh. She does that everytime the two meet, like ritual. She smiles.
“How are you, Montagne?” Montagne smiles back. “A few words about the procedure. I’m sure you know how this work, but nonetheless, I have to warn you that you might experience some discomfort for a few days, yes? The mouth is a delicate area. No chewing, and intravenous saline drips only for the next twenty four hours”.
“Yes, goodygood, I’m used to it”.
“Indeed you are”, the surgeon nods, placing two fingers on his internal slider, checking it’s downway. She signals Josy and Montagne’s cranium is braced in a head-lock helmet. A line of small porcelain clasps hook onto his lower teeth: his jaw is forcepsed down. They taste of ice. Rigid blocks of moulded celluloid bite into his tongue and it is uncomfortable until Josy jiggles them around to fit better.
“Lovely”, she says, her hand on Montagne’s shoulder, thumb brushing his jugular artery. When she bends over him to check the operating angle, her pupils are dilated and her breast pushes on his chest slightly, just below the collarbone: it’s an opportunity a fellow Feelie like her would not let pass. She sits on his left. Surgery gloves snap once, twice
“We’ll do the back of the throat first, then we’ll work our way out, left then right”, the surgeon singsongs softly to herself, sitting behind his head. A spray of cold mist, minty local aesthesis. He hears the faintest of scrapping, she’s tweezered a sheet of DNC. “I’m placing the sheet right at the back”, she run-comments in soliloquy. “The neural receptor sheets have a smooth cuticle side, it faces outward. The other side of the lamina is rough, that’s the side with biostems, they will hook to the epidermis in synechia”.
Montagne would smile if he could, but he can’t, so he winks and the nurse winks back.
Helen is LondonLouder. Louders are usually male, coz of their pre-existing thoracic volume advantage, but sometimes a female Louder is needed, to target specific demographics or notes. Well-paid jigs: the feminine undertones she can deploy a specialisation one degree higher on rates-scale. Today’s script easy to remember&broadcast, the sky is dry, the air is clear: one can see three streets ahead. Louding is half her mind, the other composing noobeat (stance&stanza).
She is allowed to take the implant off at regular Union interval, to eat and spit and breathe. She does so now. She bends forward and gently unhooks the Cylinder’s thin clips from the fleshy sides of her cheeks, from under her chin and over her philtrum, where it bit into her top incisors. She looks groove-moustached. She holds the Device between quickly slicking fingers, saliva and phlegm dripping to the ground like pink lava lamp globules. She spits and coughs downwards projections of thickened fluids and mucus. The area around her mouth is exhangue, bruised, starved of oxygen, its scarring delicate. She dabs at her yearlong scabs with a soft handkerchief: paper towel shreds and leave fragments like shards of beached kites on jagged sea-rocks. Her jaw muscles are distended, her teeth, filed into a circle to accommodate for the metal and electricity Cylinder that fits her mouth, taste of chrome and stale gingival paste. Mandible joints are sore, as if a capillary wire inside her skull was pulling her ears closer together. Her neck muscles are taut, her shoulders are tense, her tendons are tired, she’s been wearing for five straight hours, Louding for a grand total of three, 3/4 hour rest now for lunch, then two more, no seizing. Her feet are painful, her soles wooden, walking around the crowd to dispense her message as close as.
The Device she tucks away in a sterile container hanging at her belt. She blows out some air, performs physical therapy grimaces to retrieve elasticity, grabs the corners of her mouth and stretches them out as wide as the skin allows, a horizontal toothy slash. She touches her edges gingerly, applies some neutral cream and conductive unguent, sucks in air in wide rasps. Tongue out-out-out, then twirl, extreme cheek-blowing, switches to prognathous, whole face for a final scrunch up and… yame.
She sighs and unwinds. She unscrews her plugs out of her ear canals and the world is harsh again with other people’s voices. She sits on a faded garden chair pockmarked with cigarette burns. The communal police crew sector is a few metres apart from today’s Underground crowd-mayhem, she can’t be seen by the commuters from there, and anyway only her voice really exists for them. She pops open a Tupperware box with an ill-fitting, microwave-warped lip. Leftover mellowgrass-spiced tabbouleh, boiled egg, raspberry donut, victuals that she doesn’t really need to chew, and she eats with her head tilted up to avoid inadvertent spillage. The masticated egg is a balm-paste that sticks to the roof of her sandblasted palate, jam sugar lines her hoarse throat and alleviates the grit ingrained there. Fizzy water bubbleheals.
A colleague sits next to her and performs his own purge, plunging in index and major to hiccup drool. He applies a square of gauze over the whole bottom part of his face and it flaps with his breaths as he fishes, like Helen, a Tupperware box from a backpack.
“How ya doing?” His voice is cotton-filtered and Helen shrugs. “Mondays”.
“Yeah…” The circular gap between his front teeth adds a whistling lilt to his words, like her. “Three more hours for me”.
“Two”, Helen responds, lifting two fingers in a V. He nods and then stares ahead. He wears the tattoo on his forearm of a double square frame containing his HolyDoodle. It means he’s found his personal graphic-representation, the Significant Scribble that defines him in the Void&All, the sinuous, intersecting line a sect-map to his soul, the double frame meaning he’s an Officiant in the Order. Helen nearly joined once, after a mescal-mediated Doodle-reveal session, but she couldn’t find it nor did she feel like spending years trying to. She has no soul perhaps, no allocated place in the Holy Void&All. It figures.
