The Mechanic [BL]

[79]

Chapter 79 - The Ordinary World (2)

Zhang Xun wore a long, straight, black wig, a thick scarf around his neck that covered half his face, a loose sweater, a skirt that he felt was slightly too short, a thick cotton coat and warm boots wrapped around his legs. He was watching uneasily as a woman nearby in a black leather jacket with a tattoo snaking around her shaved neck was trying to negotiate.

It was a good thing that the distinction between female and male body shapes was becoming increasingly blurred, otherwise if this was just a few decades ago, tall figures like James and Diego would have been caught by the robot police in a matter of minutes.

James had shaved his face and put on a short brown wig and he was wearing a neutral leather jacket, dark jeans and Dr Martens boots. Although he looked too tall and his shoulders too wide he was still very dashing and handsome. Diego, on the other hand, looked a bit like a drag queen due to his overly muscular body.

Diego had found a make-up robot in the garbage yard a few years ago. It would scan the structure of your face before choosing your make-up, then several robotic arms would extend from the robot, quickly applying things like foundation, eyeshadow and eyeliner to your face. He and James used this method to apply heavy make-up to themselves to change the shape of their faces, trying to make themselves unrecognisable to their own fathers.

But cross-dressing and pheromone spray weren't enough, they needed to buy themselves identities so they wouldn't trigger an alarm if they were caught on any cameras. The woman in the black leather jacket was an operator that Diego knew before. She was responsible for negotiating a good price with them and then notifying the internal informant, who worked in the population system, to quickly find profiles that match their appearances in the system, make some minor modifications and then pass back the verification information. This would be engraved as a three-dimensional code and stored in the database to then be sold to the three of them.

That's what Zhang Xun had done the last time he went to the city to collect data, but at that time he had the support of Lost Paradise and didn't need to worry about the details of obtaining a fake identity. Zhang Xun was worried that Adam already knew that he had infiltrated the ordinary world and that there would be traitors in the population system. If Adam had already communicated with Eden, would this method still work now?

As James and Diego approached, the woman in black had already got on a hover-powered motorbike and sped away, leaving behind a blue light that hadn't yet had time to fade.

"It's all arranged." James said, handing a round silver button-shaped device to Zhang Xun, "Your name is Shen Tong, you were born in Hangzhou, China and settled in North America when you were sixteen. An electronics engineering university student."

"A university student?" Zhang Xun glared at James with an "are you crazy" expression, "You think I look like a university student?!"

"You're Asian, you'll always look like you're in your twenties." James winked his right eye at him.

Zhang Xun was speechless, but this unreliable identity had taken some effort to obtain. He pressed the metal disc, known as the Button, against the back of his hand and felt a fine, sticky sensation.

The Button was a portable database currently in common use in the ordinary world, storing each person's identification, wallet and various messages sent from person-to-person, person-to-Eden and various extensions of AI, all sent and received within the network. It was bound to the owner after the first scan of the owner's facial profile and the taking of a DNA sample from the skin, and all data was destroyed once it hadn't touched the owner's skin for more than two days.