Copper etchings glistened across the green circuit board like the late night streets of a bustling city. “This is a relic!” Novic stated while waving the board haphazardly in his hand at his customer. “This might be a complicated one, but how about I agree to do this for you for free, as long as I get to keep this thing.”
“You’d be doing me two favours,” answered a nervous looking man trying to smile gratefully but only making himself look more distraught. He slid his wallet comically bulging with dollar bills that it was never meant to have.
Novic subtly looked over at the man’s pocket. “Those wouldn’t have helped you anyway. I only take smart contracts too, but the discrete kind.” He flung the board away among the rest of the wire-exposed electronics on his table and started escorting his nervous guest out the exit by wrapping his arm around his shoulders. “Plus nobody uses cash anyway, just to use it you gotta go somewhere official to transfer the funds to a usable format of smart contracts.”
“You’ll get it cleared by Tuesday right? Whatever those drones following me are… You promised-” the jittery man interrupted from being gently pushed out through the exit. “Yeah yeah sure, whatever” Novic gave him a good shove out the door and closed it quickly, locking two physical locks. He rolled his eyes, “god damn foreigners.”
Rolling his eyes down to the table, the copper etchings luring his gaze in. He walked to the table onto where he disposed of the PCB. He moved the reflections around with the lights, flickered in his hands, whispering to himself, “I’ve been looking for you”.
Novic shoved the circuit in his backpack and runs to the door. He carefully looks through the peephole ?peephole? to make sure none of his neighbours see him coming out of the door, unlocks it, gets out, locks it again and runs out of the apartment complex.
Bursting out of the main entrance of his home, he shoulder-checks someone by accident whom reciprocates by pushing him into a pile of black garbage backs on the side of the road yelling “get the fuck off me you little shit!” Staring at Novic menacingly for a moment before walking off.
Novic wrathfully takes out his phone and scans the man like a QR code. Goes through his assailant’s smart contracts, finds a good one, breaks through the security mechanisms and edits a couple of numbers inside of it and grins malevolently while looking at his assailant.
The other man just took out a digital key from his leather jacket and presented it to a door. Which suddenly flashed out a holographic red sign at him saying critical debt, repossession in progress, do not enter. The man is stunned temporarily, “what the hell man, repo-what. I just paid off my debt yesterday.” And slams the doors trying to break it open, “fuck this! Give me my shit back!”
“Serves you right” grinned Novic having severely exhilarated the smart contract on the man’s debts and financial status. And Novic was off again, down the long corridor-like streets of the metropolitan city.
But then he decided that not eating for two days straight might not be the best idea, no matter how exciting the job gets. So he drops by the nearest grocery stores, gets a sandwich and scans his digital wallet on the exit gate, which ends up writing some smart contract that benefits him hugely more than the store itself, still letting him out through the turnstile.
After a long run-walk-eat distance, he turns a few corners into the alleyways between buildings and eventually finds the door he’s been looking for. He signs a smart contract with the digital lock, which lets him in without logging his presence.
Five more steps and he stands before of a man mostly made out of metal and glass parts, copper wires coming out of every joint and crevice like some kind of forgotten hobby project.
“I finally solved that age old riddle of what happens to the human soul after the body dies,” he said reeking of sarcasm, using the PCB to jokingly fan some heat off of himself.
One of the metal man’s four expressionless telescopic eyes pointed a judging look at Novic. “You think you’re funny or something,” he said in a digitized tone.
Novic leans over the table separating the two and teases the circuit board - this time in an purposefully unsubtle manner - under the other man’s nose, “it gets etched in copper.” He was smiling ear to ear; and even though the metal man didn’t like the humour, he was affected by it a little, raising the corner of his lip the smallest amount his servo motors allowed.
“She’s a beauty I’ll grant you that.” He took the circuit from Novic, but as both still had a grip on it, he asked “you’re done with this one right?”
Novic blushed and ripped the plate out of the cyborg’s hand. He took out a cable from his backpack making a whirring sound and connected it to a protrusion on the PCB. On his phone he took out the stylus and hacked away at whatever he needed. After a couple minutes, he stops, looks around carefully and looks back at the cyborg, “got any ethernet ports in this new place?”
The other man pointed his finger at a dark corner of the room and a glow was spread around the area, revealing a long obsolete ethernet port. Novic went to it, whirred out another cable and plugged it into the port. After a few more minutes of fiddling with his phone he took back all the cables and smiled at the cyborg, “all done.”
He threw the PCB lazily and the cyborg caught it, not even looking in his general direction. He took out an old dock from under his desk and slotted the circuit board into the dock. He worked away at his keyboard with a holographic monitor for a while longer than Novic had to, but eventually signalled to him with his left hand “got it. Now it’s all up to you.” The hand gestures turning into a finger pointing straight at Novic.
The cyborg stoop up heading to a doorway in the back of the room. Novic followed. The cyborg immediately sat down on an old dentist’s chair and started strapping his legs and then arms into the seat. Legs, chest and one arm strapped to the chair, the cyborg looked at Novic expectantly, whom got the cue and finished with the last strap.
Then Novic went to another backroom that had a viewing window. He flipped a few switches and all the lights came on, for once properly illuminating the whole room. Sterile and bare, except for the dentist’s chair square in the middle, and the thick cable jutting out of it’s headrest and snaking into the entrance room. Novic knew it was going to connect whoever was lying in the chair with the PCB he just brought.
The cyborg’s back of the head openned up to reveal a socket perfect for the headrest’s plug. Novic flipped another switch and a strong magnet activated, pulling the cyborg’s head into the socket, forcing a painful autotuned grunt out of the man. No matter how synthetic the cyborg’s sounds might be, Novic knew the pain was very visceral.
Novic had his finger over a small red button. “You ready?” he asked one last time? “Yeah”, came a digitized response from the room. He pressed the button.
Immediately the cyborg started convulsing violently, gritting his teeth hard, trying to let out nothing but air from between his teeth, but failing with a strangled yell; the most natural sound Novic every heard him make. The straps were holding; yet only needed to do so for a short moment as the whole ordeal was over in a matter of seconds.
After a minute or so of silence, Novic braved to ask “you good?”
A faint digital voice came back, “yeah…”
Novic flipped all the switches back to their off position and slowly walked out of the viewing room, looking at what seemed like a lobotomy patient, limp in the dentist’s chair. The patient said quietly “mind giving me a hand out of these?”
Novic obliged and unstrapped him. He looked at the man lying in the chair, alive obviously, but practically catatonic. “Can you..” the cybord struggled, “can you grab it for me?”
Novic obliged once more, quietly going to the entrance room and looking at the holographic monitor and saw all nice green graphs and bars: looks like everything worked perfectly. He took out the PCB from it’s dock and went back to the operating room.
“You’re all synched-up” Novic said, handing the other man the circuit board. The cyborg took it in shaking hands and held it up to the sky, looking at it wondrouly. “Thanks Novic. Now my soul can finally rest in peace.”
Regaining some of his strengths from the ordeal, he started sitting upright. “Say,” started the cyborg, “why don’t we digitize your soul as well one of these days? You can never be too young for that.”
Novic waved him away, “No thanks dad. I love technology and all that, but I just can’t believe in the immortalising your soul in a smart contracts business.”
His father, looking at both his own cybernetic body and the board in his hands, “well… once you get old enough, I guess you start to believe in anything that can make you stop worrying about dying.” The cyborg turned his head to novic, all four binocular-like lenses pointing straight at him, “especially after the first time.”