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After giving the sterilized bags a final look over, Derrick put them back in the case and packed it in his bag.

“Thanks for the help, Nathan. Let me know when you want to schedule your ‘blue tooth’ checkup.”

They nodded to each other, and Derrick waited for Nathan to leave the alley before himself leaving from the other end.

Derrick took the bus back out of the city, and returned to Hack Alley. There was a light drizzle on the way back, which luckily stopped midway through the bus ride.

Beads of rain sat on the Hack Alley neon sign, and a large, pink, double-canopy umbrella sat near the door.

Huh.

They weren’t expecting any customers to visit the office today until 3 pm, which was when Xavier Williams was coming. It was only 2:15 pm, and that umbrella definitely didn’t look like it belonged to Xavier.

He entered, closing the door behind him, and heard the noise of the kitchen vent coming from the back. Well actually, he smelled it first: fried bacon and eggs. A woman’s voice, emphatic and incredulous, as if reacting to a prime piece of gossip, occasionally pierced through the din of the vent.

Derrick set his backpack down on the workbench and grabbed a wrench—he wouldn’t be caught flat-footed if it was another homeless person like last time—before marching towards the kitchen.

“HEY! What are you doing here?”

The woman shrieked and jumped, sending the eggs and bacon flying up out of the pan. She miraculously managed to catch some of the food with the pan, while the rest of it splattered onto the kitchen floor.

They both stared at each other.

She was skinny, barely filling out her blouse, and bangs that drooped over her large, plastic glasses.

“Oh, you must be Derrick, right? I don’t think we’ve met yet, even though I’ve come here with Tony before.”

Ohhh . . . She was one of those bar girls that Tony kept bringing back, although she didn’t really look the part.

Derrick sighed.

“Yeah, whatever. Just clean it up.”

“Sure thing. I’m sorry about the mess!”

Derrick went around the shop, preparing things for Williams’s arrival, and was wiping the examination chair down, when he noticed that there were still scrubbing sounds coming from the kitchen. He put the rag down and popped around the corner, only to find the bar girl half-laying on the floor, propped up on one elbow and wiping at the egg yolk and bacon grease with the intensity of a sleepy two year old. The mess was a yellow and red smear at this point.

“Holy shit, how many paper towels did you use!” Derrick said, upon seeing the trash bin, which was filled to the brim. “This stuff doesn’t fall from the sky.”

The bar girl’s bangs were stuck to her forehead, which was slick with sweat.

“Gimme that.” Derrick ripped the half-empty roll of paper towels from her hands, wet a towel, and cleaned the smear off in a few wipes. “Now, could you get your things and leave? A customer is coming in soon, and I need to clean the place.”

She picked herself off the floor and replied, panting. “Now . . . is that any way to treat someone . . . who’s trying to help?”

“Well, the mess is gone, so I don’t need your help anymore.”

“I’m . . . a guest here.” She took a few deep breaths. “I’m not leaving until Tony wakes up.”

No doubt to try and cajole him into coming back to the bar again to empty his wallet. Booze and women, Tony would be five times as strong if he just lost of them. Derrick didn’t have time to waste, so he marched over to Tony’s room and pounded on the door.

“TONY, GET UP! YOUR FRIEND IS WAITING FOR YOU.”

There was stomping in the room, and then the door burst open. “Alright, I’m up!”

People gave off a different aura depending on their expression; even the most beautiful models could look haggard, or even ten yeas older if they scowled or grimaced the right way. For those who weren’t lucky enough to be born beautiful, it was a little different. Derrick sometimes unlocked his encrypted photo album, looking at pictures from before the incident: before he had the surgery done. He was a dull-looking, snotty little brat in most pictures, but boy, did he have a heck of a smile.

It was the same case with Tony. As an average guy, he typically looked every bit the lecherous drunk he had become, but when his gaze landed on that bar girl, he transformed. His beaming smile smoothed out the wrinkles on his face, and made him look . . . carefree, for once. It was a bit disturbing.

“What, so you met Derrick already?”

“Yeah, and he wasn’t very nice,” the bar girl said, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, by the way, here’s your snack.” She held up the frying pan with the splattered egg and bacon she had recovered.

Tony pounded Derrick on the shoulder. “This is the girl I was telling you about! Would it kill you to be a bit nicer?” He wrapped an arm around her and popped some egg in his mouth. “Sally, this is Derrick, Derrick this is Sally. Let’s all get along, now.”

“Nice to meet you . . . Sally.” Humoring Tony was the fastest way to get him to shut up. “I’d like to chat more, but we’ve got a customer coming soon, and I’m getting the shop ready. Could you come back some other time?”

Sally smirked, and then giggled. “Oh, acting polite now, huh? Well, that’s fine. I’m sure we just got off on the wrong foot. I’ll see you later Tony.” She started walking towards the entrance.

“Ah wait up. I’ll walk you to the bus stop.” Tony ran to keep up with Sally, and then waved back at Derrick. “Let me know how the customer visit goes, I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Waitwaitwait—what happened, man? I thought you were preparing for the contract work next week? How’d you end up bringing a bar girl home?”

“Ah, well the preparations didn’t take to long. I just happened to meet Sally at the corner store on the way back. Anyways, I want you two to get along, okay? You promise? Okay, good. I’ll see you.”

Derrick wasn’t able to get a word in before the door closed shut, and the shop was finally quiet.

He really wanted to smack Tony sometimes.

#

After getting all of the measuring instruments ready, and the contact info for Revolute Prosthetics and Better Butler—the software providers for Williams’s prosthetic penis—Derrick sat down and closed his eyes. He was actually kind of hungry himself, but there probably wasn’t much left in the fridge.

Hm . . . what was he hungry for? Steak . . . dandan noodles . . . mapo tofu . . . pork ribs . . .

The next thing he knew, someone was knocking at the door. The door opened, and the sound of sneakers squeaking on the tiles filled the shop.

“Hey yo. Anyone up in here?”

He must have dozed off. Derrick shook his head and sat up, waiting for the vertigo to go away. It was time to get to work.

“Mr. Williams? Good to see you again. Come on in.”

Williams had gotten himself some new shoes, it seemed.

“Do you have the payment ready?”

Williams grinned. “Shit, I got the payment right here. Wasn’t easy.” He thumbed out twenty dollar bills onto Derrick’s hand. “. . . eighty, one hundred.”

One of the bills was stained red in the corner, although the stain was faded and dry. Did Williams mug someone for the money? As long as it didn’t bring trouble to Hack Alley’s front door, Derrick wasn’t exactly rich enough to complain.

“Thank you very much.” Derrick pocketed the money. The rule at Hack Alley was to never show customers where you kept the money—one of the wisest things Tony ever taught him—so Derrick kept it on his person until the patients left. “How’s the mod been behaving recently? Any changes since we last spoke?”

“No, man. It’s rough.”

“Alright, why don’t you go ahead and have a seat here for me.”

Williams plopped onto the chair and crossed his legs, dangling his new shoes around as showing them off. “So, what’s the deal, doc?”

“Let me show you.” Derrick pulled some—mostly blank—pages out of the old magazines they kept for scrap paper, and then began drawing on the desk where Williams could see it.

“So, your mod was originally made by a company called Revolute Prosthetics.

“Revolute designed the hardware, which is the actual mod itself, and Better Butler designed the software, which is all the programming that tells it what to do.

“And what can it do? Your mod is able to detect when you’re feeling aroused, and then the artificial unit will get harder or softer to match it—”

“—Man I know all this shit already—”

“—But that’s not the only thing it does. Your mod can also talk with other devices in your house.”

“What . . . like my phone?”

“Your phone, definitely. For other things, it depends on what you buy. If you have an audio system, it can talk to your mod over the net. Let’s say you bring a lady over and put on some sexy music; the mod will start getting hard automatically, it can even pulse with the beat. If you’ve got smart lights, they can talk to your mod over the net. When you get hard, the lights dim automatically. Stuff like that.”

“No, no, I don’t got nothing like that.”

“Do you use an app on your phone for it?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, good to know. Now let me tell you more about how your mod talks to devices. It doesn’t talk to them directly, it’s more like a chain. Your mod talks to a server on the internet, which then talks to your devices, and that whole thing happens in reverse, too.

“So basically, your mod doesn’t know if it was actually talking to your mood lighting, for example. It only knows that it’s talking to that server on the internet, and it trusts that server to be speaking for the mood lighting.

“But, what if that server was only pretending to talk for the mood lighting? What if that server was lying to your mod?”