Prologue: The Heretic

Year: Unknown

Location: Judgement Spire of sector 53

"Who is this poor Schmuck?" asked poohead6969.

"Some fucker who thought he could get away with putting in multiple brain chips if he hid a few in his thighs" replied Furriesloveyou420.

This was just a small snippet of conversation that Jose saw in the chat of the live stream he was conducting. While typically posting video game lets plays, the big item of the day was the burning of some fool who thought that he was above the law. On the flickering screen was the visage of a 18-year-old boy strapped to a pole dotted with small holes slowly letting out the vaporous air distortions of gas. On the back of his head was a bleeding wound that used to hold the connector for his AI chips. The platform it was built on was a large metallic disk that overlooked a sparkling metropolis with 12 other figures on it.

This dude had made big waves not just for his illegal body modifications. Apparently, he made a clone body of himself in another system that he mind jumped too when he was about to be caught. It took a month’s long, multi system man hunt just to catch him, the fruit of which was now the center of tonight's entertainment. One of the larger figures came forward.

"Eli, name stricken. For the crime of heresy against..."

The speech devolved into some long-winded diatribe about society and the rules that bind us all together. But the point that drew the most interest at this moment was the fact he was delivering this address with no mask or anything in between him and the accused.

This was being done face-to-face.

Jose suppressed a shiver just thinking about it. This perverse act wasn't illegal, but neither was shoving your junk into a blender and both had the same impact on your social media metrics. Sadly somethings are written in stone as far as executions go and this is what the large cloaked figure was paid the big bucks for.

He looked back at chat and saw how the technology developed and deployed across galaxies, and all the wonders and dangers therein, to allow people to communicate instantly across the milky way was being used to discuss how profoundly homosexual this act was. However, the object at the center of this maelstrom was ignorant of all the Socratic methods, intellectual feints and jabs, and multi-tiered power point presentations being deployed around his every move as he threw a torch onto the damned, burning him to a crisp instantly.