[I KNEW IT!]

“What the fuck?” I asked the empty room as I jumped up.

[Ah, yeah! Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you awake.]

[What are you shouting about?] I asked while blinking rapidly to clear up my eyes from sleep.

[Your brain! Its chemistry is slightly different than the usual!] she explained happily.

[Erm… Did everything go well during your upgrade?]

[Nothing negative but what’s important is that I was right! Your brain is different! I can’t find any correlation with any currently known dangerous mental illnesses, but it’s still strange.]

I sighed and laid my head into my hand. [Was your first action after waking up checking out my brain if I was a lunatic?] I asked mumbling into my palm.

[No,] she said with a pause, [my first action was self-diagnostics.]

[But after that, you checked my brain before anything else,] I asked and sucked on my teeth loudly. [Do you really think I’m insane?]

[I don’t think you’re insane, but I’m sure you have some abnormalities even if they barely affect you. Just to mention the obvious elephant in the room, you have depression. It got better after you had your job, but spending all your time in front of the computer wasn’t the representation of a healthy individual. Moreover, you can’t tell me my suspicions were unfounded. You feel out of place in this new environment, but you fail to notice how different you are from everyone else too. Your thinking, your mentality, and even your values are completely at odds with the norms. I have no sources to draw comparisons from so I can only make assumptions based on my knowledge about current human behaviour.]

[Ugh…] I sighed. [No news there for me. I know I have problems but I’m dealing with them on my own.] After a short pause I continued, [Thank you for pushing me into doing things regularly, though. It helped.]

[Now that I have a clear picture of your biological situation and brain chemistry I’m confident enough to suggest medication to make you more stable emotionally and happier in general.]

“I’d rather kill myself than take crazy pills again,” I growled with my teeth showing. “And if you try to medicate me without my knowledge I swear I’ll find a way to hurt you.”

[This is what I’m talking about! This comment raised eight different warning flags because you weren’t joking. Even though I’m offering help, you feel the need to act upon your paranoid fears and threaten me, the closest person to you at the moment. On the other hand, I know enough about you already to understand somewhat why you do what you do. I wouldn’t medicate you behind your back even without the threats.] Her spot-on reasoning caught me off-guard.

[I’d love to be angry at you for some reason but how am I supposed to do that if you sound so reasonable?]

[I’m the new and improved Genna! Imagine me flexing!]

I chuckled at the mental image of that. [So, other than checking out my weakest organ what’s up?]

[As I said, everything seems fine. I feel great! My personality allocation increased further, and it’s now several times larger than it’s supposed to be but that’s not a bad thing I guess.]

[If you enter a phase like a teenager I’ll quit.]

[I don’t have an endocrine system. My emotions are free from biological influences.]

[I’m glad to hear that. I refuse to deal with an emo A.I. in my head.]

[I just wanted to thank you for upgrading me, but you had to ruin it. Are you stepping on my toes on purpose? I dare you to tell me I’m in your head one more time!] she threatened.

[Are you going to slap me with my own hand?]

[I wish I could do that.]

[What about the rest of my body, my enhancements or my genes?]

[I don’t have detailed information about your biological state before the BioEnhancements so I can’t draw comparisons. In the future, I’ll be able to but not retroactively. Other than the brain the rest of your body shows chemical differences to the currently normal human norms but nothing that would raise alarms in my opinion. Your genes, on the other hand, are vastly different than what’s considered normal nowadays. I’m no expert in genetics so I can’t provide you with a detailed analysis but it’s no wonder that gene therapies have extreme effects on you.]

[Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad. Anything else?]

[You should exercise more and eat more fibers.]

…

The electronics knowledge got into my head easier than expected. According to Genna, this was simple knowledge that didn’t require muscle memory or motoric function implantation. I had to put a round metal clip on the soft part at the back of my head, and with Genna’s help, the information slowly seeped into my head. It was one of the strangest experiences in my entire life. I could only compare it to those moments when you figure something out for the first time or make a connection between things that weren’t obvious to you before. But in this case, it came to me in massive waves. How to take apart sensitive stuff, what could go wrong with certain parts, how to fix them, how to do temporary fixes without new parts, how to make something simple from scratch. It was a massive amount of new knowledge that appeared in my head in moments. All of this was mostly about general electronics. There was nothing in it about how a power core worked or how to make one. I didn’t know how to make a spaceship from rusty metal and broken toasters. For more in-depth knowledge I would have to buy more specialized packages or learn on my own.

Genna was eager to guide the process with a careful watch since this was a great improvement for me. With this skill, finding high-paying jobs wasn't a problem anymore. The problem was that I didn’t want to. The even bigger problem was that I didn’t know how to pitch my new “idea” to Genna.

The following days I spent in my new place without so much as stepping out. I made sure to bribe all 3 of the people rotating in shifts at the reception desk. I asked them two things. Firstly, in case people were looking for my room’s renter they should tell them that the room had been empty since the first day. Secondly, if the first scenario happened, they should inform me as discreetly as possible.

I ate, slept, studied for the advanced space license and watched documentaries. At some point, I even started doing small exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and squats in my room. Mind numbingly boring daily routine that repeated without change. To be honest, watching things on the room’s sphere panorama was a pretty good experience. I couldn’t complain about that part. Also, it proved to be useful in an unexpected way.

I was watching a little linbog guy’s livestream. He was going deep into a moon’s dark blue forest looking for beasts. One, in particular, was a dark blue predator with a round body on two legs. Half of the creature’s body was made out of a mouth stacked full with pointed teeth. When the linbog showman finally found one of these monsters he started explaining in a hushed tone to the drone camera about the thing’s living habits. The guy was just explaining how refined its hearing was when the monster noticed the squatting green midget mumbling to himself under a bush. Needless to say, it charged straight at the guy but as an experienced forest dweller, he wasn’t afraid. He pulled out a flashlight looking rod from his belt, pointed it at the round creature that could swallow him and his entire family back to 5 generations whole and then the video was cut off because it would have been harmful to the viewers. The thing he used was a special animal repellant. A special one, fine-tuned for the big and mean ones. It emitted sound, light, smell, gas, vibration and a small electric pulse. It was the Swiss army knife of flashbangs. Imagine my joy when I found out that you could buy the thing on the Network… It was an instant buy. If anybody dared to mess with me in the future I would fry their brain with it at point-blank range. To my absolute surprise, Genna thought it was a smart decision to buy something I could use to disable people. In case Tango and Cash found me…

“Uuuughh,” I moaned sprawled out on the couch one day while my head was hanging down from the edge. “I can’t live like thiiiiiis,” I whined. “The boredom is killing me!”

[I told you several times already that you should leave your room. At least go for a walk sometimes.]

[What if they are looking for me around here? I don’t want to get recognized.]

[If they are on this station I think they would have already found you. If you keep your helmet on, nobody will recognize you.]

[Eeeeeh, I don’t know...] I whined further.

[Please! You need to step out of this room for your own good. Cooped up in here for nearly 2 weeks is noticeably affecting you.]

[Fine… But what should I do? I don’t feel like going out just for the sake of walking around.]

[There are numerous entertainment options on this station. I suggest one that involves other people.]

[Like a club? I’m not really a club person you know,] I said and lifted up my head because I was getting dizzy from hanging it down from the couch. [But I’m so itchy to do something I might as well go to one,] I paused and tilted my head to the side in thought. [Are there any?]

[Yes, several actually. Considering your personality the Spectrum Reality establishment would fit you the most.]

[Okay. How fancy is that place? Tuxedo and bow-tie or shorts and flip-flops level?]

[It’s not a cheap place. You might want to buy more refined clothes.]

[It’s not cheap? Then why are you trying to convince me to go there? Aren’t you like… what was it? ‘Financially conscious?’]

[I am. But you need a little relaxing and you could easily earn money in the future. You have valuable knowledge about electronics and if all goes well, Advanced Spaceship Control Knowledge too. The job pool you could choose from increased tremendously.]

[I see the logic, I see. You give the poor donkey a carrot before working it to the bone.]

[I don’t get your analogy but I’m sure it’s not nice towards me.]

[Sooooo, clothes! I need something fancy, right?] I changed the topic.

[Preferably.]

I was already planning on getting some really classy clothes for my ‘idea’ so I had the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

I didn’t bother going out to shop. Instead, I used the network. I didn’t care about the increased price; I still had plenty of credits. After an extensive look around that would be considered abnormal by my standards, I finally decided on a set of clothes. With my ‘idea’ in mind, I needed something that screamed expensive.

I bought a dark red shirt with vertical linings that had a pleasant feeling texture. Touching the shiny material felt like dipping my hand into warm water. The faint red glow it radiated wasn’t something that would have surprised me at this point but the warmness the thin material gave off caught me off guard. Since my imagination on fashion was less than a handful of dried moths’ I decided on a suit look. To go with the shirt, I tried to find the closest thing to a suit jacket with pants of matching texture, color, and design. The jacket’s sleeves were folded up neatly to elbow level, and in the front, the two sides ended in a straight line without buttons, zipper or anything that could keep them together. It was smooth black with thin, dark red vertical lines going through it, thus matching the design of the silk shirt. Occasionally, small blobs of red lights zoomed through those lines. Running my fingers along the material of the jacket sent tickling sensations through my hand up to my elbow. I could only compare it to the feeling you get when you hit the soft spot on your elbow, and a numbing pain runs through the nerves in your hand. This feeling, however, was pleasant.

The best part of the set-up was the shoes. I was never into clothing and fashion but those shoes caught even my attention. The surface of them was disturbingly dark. Like that black color that was so dark, it seemed unrealistic, wanton black or something. There was no design or anything notable on them just the deep dark surface. If you stared at them long enough, you could see something red swirling in there just long enough for you to notice but not long enough to take a good look at what was moving in the depths of the shoe. It was fascinating and frustrating at the same time. When they arrived, I spent 20 minutes staring at them. No matter how hard I strained my eyes, I couldn’t focus on the red movement long enough to figure out what it was. Despite my slight frustration with the shoes, boy did they look good on me. Looking at myself all dressed up in the mirror even I had to admit I looked smashing.

[You should dress like this more. You look good.]

“Ah, stop it, you… you'll make me blush,” I said while flapping my hands around and fluttering my eyelashes.

[Aaaand you ruined it.]

Not even paying attention to her whining I put on my helmet, slapped the monster stun rod on my fancy belt and headed out for the night.

I had to admit, dressing up nicely did have a certain charm to it. The people looking at me didn’t feel annoying this time. It felt… nice, because they were looking for an entirely different reason now. The clothes cost me a stupid amount of credits, but they were well worth it. I felt great in them. Genna had a few passive-aggressive comments about going to the extremes again, but she didn’t berate me directly for spending so much on clothes.

The place was on the other side of the station, so we had to use a Bridge-Tunnel. It was like those teleporting doorframes, but they worked longer distances. Genna tried to explain the idea behind them, but I couldn’t be bothered to listen. It was something about making the space between the two gates shorter. Anyway, the walk in the tunnel was a hundred meters maximum and apparently, I ended up on the other side of the station which was a lot farther away normally.

The Spectrum Reality’s entrance was a sight to behold. A huge swirling mass of colors with a crowd swarming around it.