Exigency

Chapter 1.2

John Li reclined in his office chair, perusing the incoming pod’s inventory. Scrolling past the usuals—supplements, meds, power cells—to the extras section, he quickly scanned for the object of his interest: fone upgrades.

John’s fone had been giving him persistent pain for months. Pablo had pulled it out and run diagnostics but found nothing wrong. John remembered the look on Angela’s face when she entered sick bay and saw John’s hollow right eye socket. He’d watched with his left eye, the real one, as she blinked and rubbed her own fone eye. It seemed that despite their complete dependence on the technology, not many liked to be reminded of their implants, or the amputated bio eye they’d replaced.

“I think it’s in your housing,” Pablo had said. “Not the fone itself. Don’t see any physio problems. Maybe a firmware upgrade will alleviate though … whenever they come …”

John had nodded and thanked him. Pablo didn’t think it a critical issue because John didn’t convey it as such. “Some occasional pulsing behind the cavity,” John had described.

“How bad? Would you consider it debilitating? When it’s at its worst?”

John had forced a convincing laugh. “Not remotely. Just something I thought I’d put on your radar.” Would it have helped to describe the pain as that of a thumb pressing in on the fone, harder and deeper? The sensation of building pressure, ever threatening to burst?

John had had to live with the consequences of downplaying his pain, not the least of which was a lack of meds. Without a reportable override, Pablo was the only one who could program adjustments to crewmembers’ water.

The throbbing behind John’s fone continued as he used the source of his pain to drill down into the pod’s tech manifest. He held his breath as it popped into view before him, virtually hovering in the air a dozen centimeters away.

     Brand: LEN   Model: LEFONE 8.5   SW: 5.366   FW: 5.30 

     Image: NS23-9   QTY: 12

Their current software and firmware were in the 3s, so he looked forward to whatever improvements two generations had to offer.

He switched back to the medical supplies in search of ocular housings, but found none. The chances had been slim, anyway. Adult housings were considered permanent, and new fones were expected to be backwards compatible all the way to the original 21st Century housings. Not many people were willing to take the risk, or invest in the surgery required. Once your housing was installed, replacing a fone could technically be done by yourself in a mirror, albeit unsanitary.

On Earth, while the vast majority preferred a perfect color match (rendering an implanted fone indistinguishable from a bio eye), others opted for bold-colored irises, wearing matched contact lenses over their bio eye. Kids used them as fashion accessories, choosing fones not for quality or functionality, but for the special gimmicks the off-brands used to entice them, such as animated color-shifting irises, or shocking, full coloration such as all black or all red. Before entering training, John remembered seeing a teenager at the airport with a repeating message scrolling across his fone eye: JAX, MEDZ, SONDZ—a possibly ironic update to “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.”

27 years later, he couldn’t imagine what gimmicks the manufacturers and modders had come up with since. He was excited, however, to learn what functional enhancements had been achieved 20 years ago, back when the incoming pod launched from Earth.

Upgrades brought not only augmented software, but also typically included higher resolution pic and vid capability, greater magnification in binoc mode, occasionally new visual spectrums beyond the standard thermo, infra, kinetic, and mag. New versions of ear modules were rarely released, as they too required a surgical installation.