Ch. 36 – A Blinking Green Light

Derrick said, holding Big Mike’s Beacon up to the light.

He had seen a few fake Beacons before, but the embossed serial number on this one looked and felt genuine.

Big Mike sat up in the examination chair and squinted at the Beacon. “Are you telling me that thing was giving me all those problems? FUCK the DMV. I had to wait for hours in line there to get my license renewed, and then they break my leg for me.”

“Your Beacon . . . could be the cause. I mean, you stopped feeling the tremors coming from your leg prosthesis right after I took it out, right?” Derrick cleared his throat. “Do you mind if we try that again?”

“What do you mean?” Big Mike said, the grin fading from his face.

“Exactly what it sounds like. To help confirm if the Beacon is linked to your mod malfunction, and possibly troubleshoot the issue.”

Big Mike growled. It was long, and drawn out, like that of an angry dog staring down the package delivery drone. “Okay, fine. Hurry up and get it over with.” He leaned back in the chair and kept growling.

“Perfect, it shouldn’t take too long.” Derrick slotted the Beacon back into the indent, and fastened the strap. “Go ahead and try extending at the knee, the same way you did before.”

The shudders returned, as strong as ever. But something was different this time, or at least hadn’t been as obvious the first time that Big Mike had tried extending his leg. The glow from the small green LED on the side of the Beacon—which was partly concealed as the Beacon was seated inside the indent—seemed to be blinking rapidly.

Derrick gripped the leg to hold it still. “Keep extending, keep extending. I’m just checking to see if the Beacon is sending some sort of signal.”

Big Mike scoffed, but kept extending as he was told.

Derricks brought his face mere inches from the mod’s cool metal exterior shell. At this distance, he could feel the heat given off by the Beacon on his face. And the green LED’s blinking became very obvious.

“Okay, something is definitely going on with this Beacon,” Derrick said. “It seems that way to me, at least. Are you sure you didn’t activate any of the integrations?”

“No, I told you. I didn’t turn any of that on.”

“Forgive me for asking, but is there a reason you wear it on your prosthesis at all? I recall you said that you got the Beacon at the DMV when you got your driver’s license renewed. But you could have just left it at home, right?”

“Oh . . . yeah,” Big Mike said, raising his eyebrows. The White Leopard put his chin in his palm, and looking into the distance in a thoughtful way that the rank and file Leopards were rarely seen doing.

“Um . . . yes?” Derrick said.

“I forgot. I use it for the bus. The bus and the metro.”

“Ah okay. That makes sense.” New Shore City was pushing hard for everyone to use Beacons on public transit instead of their old subway pass, or their cellphones. And then Big Mike had left the Beacon in his mod for convenience’s sake, and hadn’t realized that it was causing the problems, because it had become so integrated into his routine, and its usage was so normalized in the wider New Shore City area. “But you didn’t notice any problems immediately after you put the Beacon in, right?”

“No, or I would’ve taken that shit out right away.”

“Right.” Derrick nodded at Big Mike. They both fell silent, and the rumble of the air conditioning system filled the air. “Well,” Derrick started, “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but I bet it’s some sort of bug. If I were to guess, maybe your Beacon is activating its prosthetic calibration and motor control assistance features, even if you never told it to.”

“What?” Big Mike barked.

“Like, the Beacon has a feature that helps you move your mod in the way you want it to. This could help in a number of situations: like if you just got your mod installed and aren’t used to it, or you’re an athlete and need to move precisely. It can even help you transfer your calibration information to a new mod. So if you get a new mod installed, you can slap your Beacon in, and skip over the adjustment period.”

“Okay, so I should toss this thing in my sock drawer, right? Whose dumb idea was it to make a card that can mess your mods up? What a waste of time. Fuckin’ New Shore City politicians.” Big Mike started shuffling off the examination chair.

“Hold on, please! Yes, I would just leave it off your mod for now, and go back to using your old subway pass. But if you’ll just stay maybe thirty minutes longer, I think it’s worth doing a full investigation of the mod and Beacon, so we can be more sure that the Beacon was actually the problem, and not something else.”

“Fine. I’m already here, anyways.”

“Yes, sir.” Derrick typed a few bullet points into the laptop’s note-taking software, and grabbed the cable once again. “Next we’re going to run some diagnostics on the mod, with and without the Beacon inserted—ah.”

It would be impossible to do so, because the diagnostics port wasn’t accessible when the Beacon was inserted. It lay at the bottom of the indent, which would be covered up by the Beacon when it was attached.

“Hm, okay. So the Beacon is blocking my diagnostics cable. Let me get a baseline of just the mod by itself first.” Derrick pulled the Beacon out with his fingernails, and plugged the diagnostics cable into the mod. The window on the shop laptop scrolled down, displaying the Stoneridge Prosthetics part number and serial number for the leg prosthesis, which was then followed by a live-feed of the mod’s logic sequence and raw sensor data, transcribed into a scrolling log that filled the screen. Nothing looked out of place in the log . . . per se, but it had also been a while since he had worked with a Stoneridge mod, so the notations on the raw sensor data in the log could be easily misinterpreted until he sat down with a reference.

“Looks pretty normal so far, like we’d expect,” Derrick said, nodding to Big Mike. The White Leopard nodded along, before going back to glaring at his leg prosthesis. His frustration was understandable. If Derrick’s arm had started shaking uncontrollably, it would make his job—and his life—a lot more difficult.

“Okay, I’ll leave that cable plugged in so we can get a record of what the mod’s thinking and doing as you move around. Try extending your leg again.”

Big Mike complied, and a burst of sensor data flooded across the laptop screen.

“Good. Now, bring your leg down slowly.” Derrick grabbed the cable, and held it in a loose loop. “Let’s get some data of you just walking around. I’ll hold the cable so you don’t trip over it or anything.”

Derrick followed Big Mike’s leg with the loop of cable as the White Leopard swung his legs down, and hopped off the examination chair. They walked just a few feet away from the chair—since the cable wasn’t that long—and then turned back, and got Big Mike seated back on the examination chair.

“Okay,” Derrick said, smiling. ”The last step is to try and get some data with the Beacon plugged in. He put the edge of the Beacon into the indent, and jiggled it closer and closer to its fully inserted position, while trying not to crush the diagnostics cable under it. Whatever the detection threshold was for the Beacon to start communicating with the mod, it was much closer than Derrick could maneuver it while still keeping the cable plugged in. The Stoneridge engineers had really dropped the ball on this design.

Derrick wiped the sweat off his brow, and shook his hands out to stave off the cramping. “Sorry, I don’t think I can get the Beacon inserted while the cable is plugged in. Don’t know why they put that port inside the little indent for the Beacon. Anyways, I’ve got a bunch of data from your mod I can look at. So for now, I’d recommend just not attaching the Beacon, like you said.”

Big Mike, who had been nodding off for the past few minutes, wiped a bit of drool off the corner of his mouth. “I could’ve told you that twenty minutes ago. Whatever. Thanks for taking a look at it, doc. So is my leg fine?”

“It should be. You can have your friend over there”—Derrick pointed at the younger White Leopard, who was leaning on the wall, scrolling on his phone—“watch you as you walk home, or wherever you’re headed to next. He can catch you if you start to feel unsteady. And if that happens, feel free to contact me again. I’ll look at the leg and see if we missed anything during this assessment.”

Big Mike nodded, and hopped off the examination chair again, leaning his weight from leg to leg. The mod moved smoothly, as if it had never malfunctioned in the first place.

Derrick pulled out his phone, and opened up the shop’s payment app. “I’ll go ahead and ring you up now, sir.”

The White Leopard grumbled, but pulled his own phone out and held it up next to Derrick’s phone. The digital arrow jumped from Big Mike’s phone to Derrick’s.

Derrick had charged the Leopards full price: a pill that was easier for Big Mike to swallow if he was ostensibly getting reimbursed by his gang.

As the Leopards left through the front door, Derrick glanced down at his phone again, and the cash that was sitting inside their account. It would go towards the costs for food, utilities, rent . . . A few dozen more of these visits, and Derrick could start digging them out of this hole.