Chapter 18

Kayla woke up in a panic, struggling to disentangle herself from the sheets of her bed. She sat up with a start and gasped for breath. She was no stranger to nightmares; they had represented most of her dreams since she was ten years old. Most of them had at least become familiar and routine enough to no longer wake her, but occasionally she’d have a new one that would take her by surprise. This one had been a doozy, and as she flipped her legs over the edge of her bed and caught her breath, bits and pieces of it flashed through her mind. People she cared about tied to train tracks and the train was approaching fast. She was running to pull them out of harm’s way, but seemed to be only moving backwards with a voice in her ear telling her she couldn’t stop it.

She squinted in the light of the early morning and groaned as her head throbbed like a sword had been lodged between her eyes. The window in the bedroom became opaque, responding unconsciously to her pain. If the nightmare hadn’t been enough to wake her, the hangover certainly would have. She glanced over at the partition in the wall; Craig snored loudly from the other side. Maybe the snores had made up the train’s chugging in her dream. As she swung her feet over the bed, her stomach churned with the movement and she bolted to the bathroom to unleash the contents of her stomach.

After cleaning herself up from that unpleasantness, she sat at the dining table with a raw throat and a fresh coffee. It was still very early, and Glyph was charging in their station, looking frazzled. They had been fully charged by the time that Kayla and Craig had returned from the bar and were already going about the task of finding themselves an identity matrix. Judging by the state they had been in at the time; this wasn’t a pleasant experience.

She shook her head in frustration, already regretting the night of drinking herself stupid as she took a drink of coffee. Unsurprisingly, alcohol had done little in the way of clarifying things or presenting solutions. Even worse, it seemed like the revelation of impending nuclear holocaust had only strengthened the choice of remaining here with Glyph in Craig’s eyes. She couldn’t deny that it had become a difficult position to argue against. Between that and Glyph’s need to dedicate their time to securing an identification for themselves, it was clear that she was on her own in trying to find a way to avert the apocalypse. Hell, Glyph seemed more than convinced there was nothing to be done about it anyway.

Wanting a break from her own thoughts, she turned on the neural gaming system and selected Adrenaline Spike, however she instantly turned it off when she saw the face of Tal Sweep on the menu screen with the words, “NEW DOWNLOADABLE RACER: JUST t100!” Glowering, removed the game from her library and went to pour herself another cup of coffee.

As she filled her cup, an idea sparked in her pained mind. Tal Sweep’s voice rang through her memory, “An implancement makes your brain better: you think faster, your reflexes improve, memory skyrockets.”

If she had a brain like Glyph’s, she should be able to research this problem astronomically faster than she had any hope of doing so now, and without being bogged down with a bunch of regulations like Glyph was. She didn’t trust that their refusal to help wasn’t just a PTICA Industries programming thing.

She’d already done some investigating into implancements. According to the connetwork, the best place to find them (as well as installation plans) was a high-end tech store, like the one in the Neurasseum. A determined glint came to her eye. Looks like she was going back to Vancouver.

She dressed and prepared for the day in a rush, making her teeth bleed with her furious brushing and grabbed a lone piece of fruit for a quick breakfast on the go. She set her status in their shared ITSTU network to do-not-disturb with a message saying she wanted some alone time today, then made her way to the public teleport station.

After popping into Vancouver, she took a red car back to Citadel Parkway. She stole an anxious glance at the giant oak in the park, and the cathedral beyond it. It was much quieter now, likely due to the early hour.

“For one as displaced as you, the course of history can be a very fragile thing indeed,” the voice of the Vytrus echoed in her mind. She set her jaw and pulled her purse up onto her shoulder, then marched to the Neurasseum.

While the park hadn’t been as busy as her previous visits, the Neurasseum certainly was. Kayla assumed the place must never close, and the events ran day and night. She strode past the giant holographic display of the different events, but paused momentarily to look at tiny racers as they crawled their way around the mountain. Implancements would give her the ability to compete, but she shook her head, and scolded herself. She couldn’t get distracted. The apocalypse came before motocross.

She glanced around for the tech stores. She’d been back to the neurasseum a few times, but had only viewed events. As big as this place was, she didn’t know where to look. She instead started searching for an attendant or any other person in the bright green uniform of the neurasseum staff to point her in the right direction.

“Hi! Welcome back to the Neurasseum!” Astra, the passaro holograph greeted with gusto; popping into existence right in front of Kayla’s face. She jumped back and nearly screamed at the sudden, cheery jump-scare, “We’re so thrilled to see you! I understand you’re looking for implancements! We’re always eager to add more contenders to our events here! Do you know what you’re looking for?”

She held up a finger and caught her breath. Astra waited patiently, though whether because he was used to this reaction from people or whether he was an emotionless AI construct of some kind was still unclear to Kayla.