somebody ; minsung

XIV ; game plan

Sleeping as a cyborg is surreal. Every time I wake, I feel my human pieces, skin and flesh, but the rest of my body is numb, inert, all the way down to my littlest mechanical toes. I lie in paralysis until my body boots up.

Throughout the night, Jisung is always on the move. First he's curled up with his legs to his chest. Then he's pacing circles in the dark, chewing through a complimentary bag of pretzels. Next he's sitting up, typing madly on a holo-monitor.

The final time I wake, he isn't there at all. Light is shining in through the window. I pull myself up, palming my head.

Jisung pops up over the edge of the bed. "Good morning!"

I flinch and clutch my heart. "What the fuck?"

"Check out time, get up!"

His hair is chaotic and his expression is... excited. I'm not sure whether he's actually happy or if I activated some kind of mood-inversion protocol in my sleep.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"I thought of something last night! Get up get up, I'll tell you everything once we're out of here."

I can't make myself match his sudden energy; I feel like a brick come to life. Eventually we're in the lobby of the love hotel, handing in the keycard. We cart our luggage out onto the busy sidewalk and head northward.

I wasn't expecting to dive into his plan immediately, but I also didn't expect our first stop would be a walk-thru coffee bar. Mini-traffic lights guide us through the queue; he orders through a speaker and then collects his coffee and sandwich at the pick-up window. We sit on our suitcases in Moss Plaza, next to a large statue of a goose.

"I'm sorry if I talk with my mouth full," he says. "God, I'm probably being weird and manic right now — I think I'm riding some kinda inspiration high."

He digs into his sandwich. I try not to stare but I'm staring. I don't know what I'm feeling but it isn't quite hunger; I haven't felt genuinely hungry or thirsty even once since I gained consciousness, yet the smell of coffee makes me want to bathe in it.

"Minho, are you listening?"

I didn't notice he was still talking. "Uh, sorry. Your food looks really really good."

"Your brain instinctually has the desire to eat, but your body isn't programmed to have an appetite, nor accommodate food as your stomach was removed."

I think on that for a minute. "If I don't have a stomach, where's my, you know, spit going when I swallow?"

"It's purified and repurposed as perspiration."

Shouldn't have asked. "That's fucked up."

"You're telling me, I'm the one who had to design an internal grey water system." He hands me his coffee. "Here, sniff all you want."

I breathe it in. "Holy shit, wow. Er, you were saying something?"

"Right. I was thinking last night — what's the point of all this? What's the thing that everyone wants?"

"Sandwich."

"No. Adrantine. Everyone's fighting for it, falling over each other to keep it — Oracle, the scientists, the military. I'm starting to think it'd be better if Adrantine never existed in the first place. So... what if we destroy it?"

I freeze mid-sniff. "What?"

"I know! It's crazy, it's insane!" He grabs the coffee, takes a swig and gives it back. His glasses are askew.

"Jisung, how are we supposed to destroy it?"

"Years ago while we were working on the formula, there was a hypothesis that Adrantine may have been susceptible to hacking via the outlets on your back. Worst case scenario, the 'enemy' would've been able to hijack your bodies by manually transferring control to another source.

"We conducted experiments to see if the hypothesis held any merit. The Adrantine fused too tightly with the human body to allow for expropriation. But we never asked, never even wondered, whether Adrantine would be vulnerable to biological threats like disease — Adrantine-specific viral attacks."

"You're saying that, after everything, I could catch the robot flu and die?"

"No! Well, possibly, but that's off topic. Simply put, since Adrantine is partially biological, it has latent proviruses that come inbred in its cells. The viruses are dormant, but I realized last night that they could be triggered."

He tries to take the coffee again but I hold it out of his reach.

"Jisung, no, you're vibrating."

"I'm fine." He blinks a few dozen times. "Listen, my hypothesis is, if Adrantine cells are put under stress, the virus could be activated. That's a similarity between cyborg bodies and human ones; stress hinders proper function. One virus is cellula putredine — latin for 'cell rot,' self-explanatory — it's called an invisible virus because it looks no different when it's latent than when it's active. That means, hypothetically, nobody would know that the virus is active, therefore they couldn't treat or reverse it."

"How would you put the cells under stress?"

"If everything goes according to plan, I'll be able to manually increase the proximity between cells, thus intensifying molecular strain. We'll make a few revisions to the files at Oracle, then all future Adrantine robots will be vulnerable to the virus too."

"How are you gonna access the files?"

"Well... it'll take a little more breaking and entering."

"Wait, more?"

"I have to test my theory — for that, I need a lab. And for something else too, something I think you'll like. Despite your aptitude, until now you've been running on a six out of ten, no offensive functions, no advanced abilities. I want to authorize your full capabilities."

I start to smile. I haven't even begun to wonder what else I might be able to do, how much stronger I could be. Then nothing could get in our way, not crooks or androids or power-mad laboratories. I could protect him.

He crumples up the packaging and gets up. "I'll explain everything on the way. You still in?"

I spring to my feet. "Let's go."