I hope you’re enjoying the story! If you want to read the latest chapters of Hack Alley Doctor, check it out on Royal Road or Wordpress, as they get updated first.

https://royalroad.com/fiction/40487/hack-alley-doctor

https://hackalleydoctor.wordpress.com/

Please boost Hack Alley Doctor on TopWebFiction! It’s easy, and it will help more readers find my story :)

http://topwebfiction.com/listings/hack-alley-doctor/

****

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

“And why the fuck would it do that?”

“It could be anything. Maybe the server’s not lying, but it’s got a bug; it’s stupid. It’s telling your mod the wrong things because it doesn’t know any better.

“Or maybe whoever controls the server has it out for you. That would be either Revolute Prosthetics, or their partner: Better Butler. Maybe they’ve decided that, for whatever reason, they want the server to lie to your mod.

“Or maybe someone hacked into the server, or your account, and is fucking with you. That’s what I think is happening.

“Someone hacked my account?”

“Yea, or whatever account is linked to the mod. Do you know if someone named Davidson had ever used this mod?”

“Nope.”

“Have you ever logged into an account for your mod?”

“Man, I didn’t even know this thing had accounts.” Williams stopped dangling his shoes and stared up at the ceiling. “What is all this shit, I just want my dick to work.”

“And I also want it to work. Just bear with me, okay? We’re going to figure out what happened, and get your mod working again. Sit tight, and I’ll contact the the vendors to see if we can reset the account linked to your mod.”

Derrick put on his headset, turned on the speakers—so that Williams could hear the engineer—and dialed Revolute’s technical support number. The voice of a pleasant sounding young man answered him.

“Goooood afternoon, and thank you for calling Revolute Prosthetics’ technical support—”

“—seven seven two, diagnostic menu,” Derrick interrupted. “Input. Type: software support, indicator: integrated service, part number: 091374, priority: high.”

The young man’s congenial voice disappeared, and was replaced by a cool-sounding, robotic female voice. “LifeLike Greeter bypassed. Rerouting priority: high. Please hold.” Thankfully, Revolute, and other prosthetic makers like them, all used the same AI greeter system, with the same diagnostic menus. While the greeter AIs were great at conversation, and soothing angry customers, none of them could actually answer a technical question more involved than a simple: ‘turn it off and on again.’ A good old flesh and blood engineer was better for that, as cranky as they were—for now, at least.

A woman answered the phone. “Hello? Hello? Could you hold for a second?”

“Sure, take your time.” Derrick said. Pissing off the engineer was usually a bad idea.

Elevator music played for around a minute, before the woman returned. “Sorry about that, let me review these notes for a second.” She hummed under her breath. “Oh, right. I’m Denise. Could I get your name?”

“Hi, I’m Derrick, a mod-doc looking at a patient using one of your leg prostheses I’m calling on his behalf, since he’s been having issues, probably with the smart home integration?”

“Okay, it’s showing up now. I’m seeing it’s part number 091374: Perfect Penis, is that right?” She stifled a giggle. “Sorry, I just don’t get a call like this every day. I’ve no idea what the marketing people are thinking.”

“Oh, are you the right person to be speaking to? Or is there a specialist available—”

“—Don’t worry, I’m the specialist. I call it the dick mod instead of ‘Perfect Penis’—such a silly name. So what’s going on?”

“My patient’s been unable to maintain an erection, even when his arousal levels are high. I asked him if he had been able log into an account associated with Revolute, and he says he hasn’t been able to. I looked at the diagnostic logs—my shop has your service toolbox subscription—and they were saying something about mood lighting, which sounds like a smart home integration to me.”

“That does sound like it’s the case. Do you have the logs open in front of you?”

“Here they are.” Derrick read the lines from the log about mood lighting.

“Okay, so this is for the patient ‘tdavidson,’ right?”

“Yes, tdavidson.” Likely the actual owner of the mod.

“Yup, you’re right. This looks exactly like the erection levels were affected by these smart home integration instructions. And you said that he couldn’t access his account, right?”

“Right.”

“Let me see if I can reset his access.” The clickety-clack of an old-style mechanical keyboard came through the phone. Derrick had always loved the sound, although they didn’t have any of them at Hack Alley; they were more of a novelty these days.

“Actually, I don’t think I can . . . Yeah, it says right here there’s a security feature enabled for the account where you can’t remotely reset it. You need some sort of proof of purchase to reset it over the phone, or you’ll have to come in to a Revolute shop to get it verified before we can reset the account for you.” This sort of security feature was common among large mod vendors. It made it so thieves who stole a mod couldn’t also steal the accounts associated with it, to gain access to all of the mod’s features. If the thieves came into the Revolute shop to try and get verified, then employees would be able to determine the mod was stolen and call the cops. It was a pain for paying customers to deal with if they had simply forgotten their account login details, but it had actually served its purpose in this case, as Derrick was pretty sure Williams’s mod had been stolen. Going into a Revolute shop, then, was definitely not an option.

“He doesn’t have the proof of purchase, and the nearest shop is pretty far away. Is there another way we can try to at least deactivate the smart home integration? He doesn’t need any of the features.”

“Mm, sorry, no. You can’t deactivate the smart home integration; it’s always on. And I can’t change your settings remotely without having your proof of purchase. But, if you have a Beacon, we can use it verify your identity. Once we have your identity via the Beacon, and your unique bio-signature sent via the mod itself, those two can serve as ‘proof of installation,’ so that we know it’s actually hooked up to him. You said you have our service toolbox subscription, right?”

“Yes, I do.” Or at least Derrick had Revolute’s leaked credentials.

“Ok, great. You would need to use the service interface to send in the bio-signature without being logged into his account.”

Derrick moved the mic away from his mouth and glanced at Williams. “Do you have your Beacon?” he whispered.

“No, man! I don’t bring no Beacon with me. You carry that shit around, cops are all over you, wherever you go. It’s like they’re in your head.”

“Is it at home?”

“Why—why do I gotta tell you?”

“You heard the lady. They need it to unlock your account.”

“. . . Yeah, it’s at my house.”

Derrick nodded and moved the mic back into place.

“He doesn’t have his Beacon with him right now,” Derrick said. “In the meantime, is there anything else we can do to unlock it?”

“Not really. If you want to modify the smart home integration, you need to either verify his identity with the Beacon and send us his bio-signature, or find the account login details somehow. It’s kind of weird, though, I’m seeing that his account’s logged in as recently as yesterday in the vicinity of New Shore City. Isn’t that where you’re calling from?”

Derrick used a VPN to mask his location when calling tech support for high-end prostheses. The system that Revolute used usually put callers from low income neighborhoods like Chinatown further down the queue, as they were less likely to be upsold on a higher-tier service plan. “Uh, yeah, but it isn’t him that’s logged in.”

“That’s weird . . . His account might have gotten hacked then. I’d recommend he change his password as soon as he gets his account reset.”

This call had turned out to be a lot more useful that Derrick expected. Not only had the engineer basically confirmed that someone else had stolen Williams’s account, she had also given them a hint as to where to start looking. “Alright then, thanks for your help.”

“Don’t sweat it. Have a good one—oh, wait. Has he ever had gene therapy? It’s a long shot, but I always ask, just to be sure.”

“I’ll check with him, but we don’t have the records right now . . . . Why do you ask?”

“Well because we’ve had some customers try to show ‘proof of installation’ by verifying their Beacon and sending their bio-signature, but the system kept rejecting it because their bio-signature was different than the one we had file, you know: the one we took when they first bought their mod.”

Oh, shit. Revolute must have started taking bio-signatures upon purchase as part of their normal sales procedure. “Wait . . . so your system compares the new and old bio-signatures, and gene therapy can change someone’s bio-signature?”

“Exactly. The other engineers thought it must have been a software bug, but I noticed that every single customer running into this issue had done gene therapy. I think that the mod’s bio-signature feature was detecting those genetically modified cells. Anyhow, if your patient has done gene therapy, might as well just go visit a Revolute shop as skip all the headache. Bye bye now!” The Revolute engineer ended the call.

Derrick put his headset down and sighed. If Revolute mods could detect a genetic change due to gene therapy, they would definitely be able to tell that Williams wasn’t tdavidson.

Xavier Williams had long since zoned out during the call with the Revolute engineer, and was playing with the shoelaces on his new shoes. Derrick cleared his throat. “Bad news, Mr. Williams: we can’t get your account reset remotely, and I’m guessing you don’t want to go to a Revolute shop, since you didn’t, um, acquire your mod directly from them.”

“Well shit, what do we do then? You telling me I just wasted my hundred dollars for nothing?”

Derrick hadn’t expected the job to be this involved, but as long as Williams was willing to keep paying . . . . “If you want to get your mod working again, we’ll need to go on a field trip to find the person who hacked your account.”