Rift in the cradle

The refuge

"That would be a.... 5000 Aurums, please." She drawled in a laconic voice, never bothering to feign enthusiasm.

The man nodded as he pulled up his sleeve to press the back of his wrist against a scanner on the counter. The gesture itself was a sign of his wealth and perpetual desire for material glamor. The device read the chip embedded under his skin and completed the transaction. The customer was dressed immaculately in a tailored long suit and full grain leather shoes. Where a pair of spectacles should be on his gray face was instead an old-generation Vision Enhancer. The antiquated gadget resembled a pair of retro cyclops sunglasses, a slim matte black metal box equipped with spectrometers, microscopes, and other instruments that expanded the limits of normal vision. The latest generation of Vision Enhancers were fitted like contact lenses. This man's older pair was more of a fashion choice than a practical upgrade, serving as an obvious declaration of his affiliations.

Actions like these were one of the hallmark expressions of a follower of the Vasaxin Humanoids guild. The decentralized collective blurred the lines set by ethics and law with its legendary technological feats that defied human biology's limits. The Vasaxins would go to any means to accelerate humanity out of primordial darkness, as the movement strived for one and one objective only : creating the posthuman. Their philosophy described that the end goal of darwinism was to create a species that could harness the power of evolution and alter itself. The reckless abandon of its members had gained it a cult following.

The man gently dislodged a module from a port embedded within his craniovertebral junction that lead to the brain. A trained eye could spot the thin lines of circuitry running under the skin from the neck to the temple. The uncanniness of it all barely jarred her as a result of years of experience in her field. She had dealt with such pretentious tinheads, a not-as-nice term for Vasaxin wannabes, all day.

The man nonchalantly placed the module on the counter. Lynk took them, with the intention of trading them out with better updated versions for an additional fee. She leaned to the side in her rolling chair, striking a precarious balance as to not fall over. Under the countertop an array of bioperipherals like memory chips, vision cards, and other extensions were kept. Each type of product was divided into sections marked 0.00 through 4.00 on BioSR, an abbreviation for Biotechnic Scale Rating, the defacto standard of the booming human-modification industry. BioSR ranked all biome devices and synthetics meant for human modification using several metrics describing its quality. BioSR products were adopted by many individuals, as it was necessary to keep their jobs. It was the only way for humans to fight against the automation of labor. If humanity could not compete against the machines, they must become one instead, carbon-based flesh fused with silicon to form the ultimate being. Incorporating BioSR was a key argument of the Vasaxin cult as it made one an approximation of their forthcoming posthuman.

"You want extra coating? Additional 500 Aurums for each." Lynk asked the man, who gave another curt nod in response.

An offer like that would be a rhetorical question. Humanoids, the self-given name describing those who incorporated extreme BioSR into their bodies, had to take extra caution as the overheating or corrosion to metal parts caused a plethora of medical problems. She picked out the peripherals the man had requested and slid them over to him. The man winced as he carefully installed the gadget in the port.

He shook himself and looked around, breaking into the new hardware like someone tries a pair of fresh shoes. The input fed from the instruments in the Vision Enhancer produced something next to synesthesia: of smelling the electromagnetic waves and seeing in infrared or hearing temperatures as a pitch. It made one feel powerful to see the world that way, to not let a single detail slip past your attention. The only downside was that you'd eventually become addicted to the data points, and become unable to remove yourself from the perennial blizzard of information. Now satisfied, the man promptly left the store.