Rechipped: CIty of Finland by DeVere Taya

Author:DeVere, Taya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DVM Press
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Fingers nervously patting the rat’s slick back, Sanna stares at the gathering. The Chip-Center yard is filled with Chipped people, all standing, all waiting. Sebastian is standing in front of her, Celestine to her right. Sanna should feel safe. But each time she manages to calm her breath, her gaze wanders outside the fence and finds the bulky mound on the road. She pretends that the mound is building material for a new fence—not the twenty-four people Celestine murdered yesterday with her bare hands.

The crowd looks smaller than Sanna expected. Fewer people holding signs and other odds and ends, at least fewer than in Kristian’s story—or maybe it’s because those ones in his story are now dead. Remembering his eerie description of the VRP tower, Sanna glances up toward the sky. A tinted, dark window encircles the top of the building. She can sense pairs of curious eyes behind every window, gazing down.

A beeping sound brings Sanna back to this moment. Ignoring the smartphone in her pocket, Sanna wraps her fingers protectively around the rat next to it. Celestine turns her strangely beautiful face and investigates Sanna closely as she pulls the rat out of her hoodie pocket.

The smartphone beeps again.

“Your creature is beeping?” Celestine asks.

“No, it’s my phone. And bot adverts.”

“Bot adverts?”

Sanna side-eyes Sebastian, wishing he’d take part in the conversation. But Sebastian continues to mumble to himself, his hand on the handle of the glass door. He’s been oblivious to his surroundings for several minutes. Sanna might be disappointed about him being this aloof, but she’s too impressed by Sebastian’s willingness to proceed with his Pico Map plan. Sebastian’s inclination to keep his promise to Maria makes Sanna like the top-hatted man even more. However, she’d be even happier if he wasn’t leaving her alone in this conversation with a strange murder bot.

“Bot ads target your emotions through your chip data,” she says politely to Celestine. “It was a thing some years ago, behavioral and nervous system-based advertisement targeting…” Sanna frowns, looking at Celestine in wonder, “Shouldn’t you know this? I mean, you are a bot.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Adverts.” Her striking blue eyes move from Sanna’s to the rat in her hands. “Would you be so kind as to tell me more?”

Sanna shrugs. “Not much to tell. You can read about it on the Chip-Net, if you…” she wets her lips and inhales quickly. She’s scared to say the wrong thing and upset the murder bot. “It’s an algorithm that gathered person-specific chip information and used it in an online auction. Before the chips, it was people’s phones, tablet computers, cars, and entertainment systems. The bots monitored your online behavior, your facial expressions, your everything, then found products fitting your current moods, wants, and needs.”

Just like you do, Sanna adds in her mind. She swallows nervously, remembering Kristian’s strange adventure up in the VRP tower. But Sanna knows Kristian never told her the adult version of what happened. The bots didn’t just serve the VRPs food and drinks and then clean up after them.

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