Okay, this is ten dinners of money left. Warm, golden-tinted, calm dinners. At least the rent is paid for a month in advance. Maybe I should pick fasting now, so that I can stretch it for longer. And feel the screaming green of extreme hunger and deprivation.
Borrow money from a friend (do I have any left?) Find a shitty job (emigres don’t get to choose.) See the people for what they are: salad green of money walking in and out.
But what I’m not doing is going back. I don’t want to get this operation. I don’t want my brain fried.
I keep getting their messages. Counting the per cent I owe them for escaping with the first implant.
In ten days, my account will be deactivated for not checking in. At least they won’t have my contacts any longer. I’m ready to inconvenience myself for that.
I often forget what pre-augmentation life was like. Bleak colors, fleeting faces, inconsequential names. Non-evokative ideas. Useless trivia.
I see colors now. True colors. The sea green of desperation, shimmering with its gas sparkles, like a belly of a dung fly. The Terracotta of tastes I have left, deep and smelling of earthy spice. The ivory of stinky bathroom tiling.
Today I decided to kill myself. I'll have this last dinner I have money for. And then I will hang a rope on a conveniently placed ceiling beam. (There are benefits to living in the attic, after all.) And I'll strangle myself.
I long wanted to feel it. Indescribable feeling of vaccuum, silence, emptiness. The colors of nothingness.
The moment my heart stops beating, the exhaust of the implant will be released into my blood. That’s one of the downsides of the first implant they made. I only learned it a month ago from another subject. Found dead with blood turned petrol rainbow. There’s beauty in that. Ironic, given that this beauty would only be visible with the dead implant.
The second implant would’ve balanced that. But disbalance myself, giving me two years of life. Until my brain bleaches out from too much stimulation. Death from burned circuits.
Hey, Myk, we know you're killing yourself.
We’ll zero your debt and pay your family if you donate your body to the company.
You will be the beauty to see for those getting the implants.
You in?
CC-BY 4.0 2022-2026 by Artyom Bologov (aartaka,) with one commit remixing Claude-generated code. Any and all opinions listed here are my own and not representative of my employers; future, past and present.