<\/p>\n
She had put out the advert a week ago and had been waiting ever since. Luckily there was a free internet portal just around the corner, she remembered typing every letter of the advert and wondering if she was done the right thing. It was pointless wondering that though, there was no longer any other choices for her. <\/span><\/p>\n For a week she had been sitting, alone in the alleyway. Cardboard boxes beneath her, rotting blankets on top of her. Her stomach screaming in pain because she hadn\u2019t eaten for, well, she couldn\u2019t remember the last time she had eaten. There had been no sense in moving, or doing anything else. She couldn\u2019t. She needed the money that a response to the advert would bring before she could even contemplate where she could go next. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a human yard sale,\u201d her mother had scoffed last time she had visited, back when Abi had still had an apartment and a job. A lump formed in her throat when she realised that had been five years ago. \u201cSelling your, what does it say here,\u201d her mother had held up the tablet and squinted at the screen, \u201coh yes, \u2018selling organic matter from the brain to assist in the construction of the photonic network. You shall be part of the connected world forever.\u2019 It\u2019s a disgrace.\u201d Her mother had continued to rant on and on about how disgraceful it was as she flicked her finger viciously across the tablet screen to scroll through the rest of the article. <\/span><\/p>\n Abi had thought the same at first. It seemed so invasive, so violating to sell parts of your body. Selling cells from your brain so that the photons from those cells could be used to build a network that moved any and all kinds of information at high speeds. People came forward though, desperate people. The unemployed and those facing unemployment which, due to the ever increasing automation of the world, was a startlingly high number. Abi was one of them. The money for the cells was good though, but was it good enough?<\/span><\/p>\n But, as there were donors, the photonic network was built. It linked whole cities together, then cities to other cities, then countries to countries. It wasn\u2019t long before there was no longer a need for a postal service as everything could be sent across the network. Shops disappeared, everything was ordered online. Cinemas, bowling alleys, all of them disappeared as you could play a game of bowling with you friends in the comfort of your living room if you were connected to the photonic network. <\/span><\/p>\n The wind whipped down the alleyway. Abi pulled the rotted blankets tighter around her, wincing at the stench of them. She coughed and could see her breath in the air. It was always cold where the sun didn\u2019t touch. Abi followed the sight of her breath. It swirled and dispersed in the air. As she looked up she saw the pathways of the photonic network. They were embedded into every wall of every building, high up so no one could reach them. The wires seemed to glisten with a myriad of colours, even in the darkness of the alleyway. They connected every bank to every business, every computer to every person. Every bit of data about every single thing went whirring by in those wires. <\/span><\/p>\n Soon Abi would be part of it, if her advert was answered. <\/span><\/p>\n She watched the bustling street through the narrow slit at the end of the alley. The cars shot by on the electromagnetic roads. Smartly dressed people who all looked the same marched past. Everything was plastic and glass, a world of wires and white walls. The people out there did not care about the people who now dwelled in the dark places of the city. <\/span><\/p>\n There came a humming from just above her and sparks of colour began to spew from the photonic network wires. Abi began to shake. Her advert had been answered; the visitation was happening. Like a ghost from old ghost stories, something seemed to seep from the photonic wires and form a glistening sphere in front of her. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAbigail Frances Davies?\u201d the Visitor said, its voice mechanical and coming from no one point in particular. <\/span><\/p>\n She nodded. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou advertised that you are willing to sell the rights of extraction of cells from your cerebral cortex?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n She nodded again. There was no going back now. There were so many stories about what happened to people afterwards. Sometimes they remembered nothing, thought it was ten years ago when things had been better or they just died. But at that moment Abi had nothing to lose; sadly, the prospect of brain damage or death was worth the fee they paid for the extraction. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou are offering three units of extraction?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Abi nodded again. It was advised, on the government website that only one unit (whatever that meant) should be extracted at a time. On the forums however, people said they could stand having four or five units extracted in one go. As Abi had not had an extraction before, she went straight in for three because the money would get her food, clothes and a ticket out of the city. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPlease stand.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Abi stood, shivering and forgetting about the empty pain in her stomach. She looked up and down the alleyway, there was no one around. Then again, even if there had been, nobody would have stopped the Visitor. <\/span><\/p>\n From its round transparent body, two long arms extended. Bright sparks shot up and down; the colours seemed to be chasing each other. It placed the transparent glistening tips of its arms onto her temples. The media had a campaign running to legally rename the temples to \u2018the human USB port,\u2019 HUSB. Abi laughed as she thought this. She supposed that was all the temples were now, a port through which the very matter that made a person a person, was extracted. All in the name of progression and technology. <\/span><\/p>\n Abi felt her whole body tense as the Visitor floated before her. She could feel the electric energy from it, warm but with a sting behind it. Its arms touched her temples and she waited for the pain. But it never came. Slowly she opened her eyes and saw only the spherical Visitor floating in front of her. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThank you. The extraction is complete. The money has been transferred into your account,\u201d the Visitor said and Abi smiled. She wasn\u2019t hurt. Relief flooded over her. Now she could eat and get out to the city. She could start to live a life again. <\/span><\/p>\n When the Visitor removed its hands that is when the pain came. Screaming at her like a maelstrom. She clutched her head. As she tipped her head forward, blood trickled into her eyes. It must have come from her temples. She didn\u2019t feel anything when she fell on the cold hard concrete, cardboard boxes beneath her, rotting blankets around her. The last thing she remembered was noticing that there was no one in the alleyway. No one to help her, but then the people in the world of white walls and wires didn\u2019t care about the people who dwelled in the places the sun didn\u2019t touch. <\/span><\/p>\n END. <\/span><\/p>\n by J.M.Kennett<\/span><\/p>\n J.M.Kennett writes speculative fiction and lives in Birmingham UK. She is currently working on a gothic steampunk novel and has had work published in ‘Mad Scientist Journal’ ‘Longshot Island’ and ‘The Weird Reader.’ Follow her on Twitter @J_M_Kennett.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She had put out the advert a week ago and had been waiting ever since. Luckily there was a free internet portal just around the corner, she remembered typing every letter of the advert and wondering if she was done the right thing. It was pointless wondering that though, there was no longer any…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2,11],"tags":[13,17,18,20,21,28,29,30,56,72,76],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","category-astounding-stories","category-neural-nets-uplinks-and-wetware","tag-13","tag-ai","tag-android","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-blade-runner","tag-cyberpunk","tag-cyberpunk-stories","tag-cyborgs","tag-matrix","tag-science-fiction","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}