“...last month, when an armed individual stormed the headquarters of Ichor tech giant Telos Industrial, sparking renewed debate over implant safety.”

Keshi had imagined a seedy underground lair, but instead found himself sitting in an ordinary-looking waiting room. 

Everything had gone more or less smoothly. When the receptionist—a man with long, well-groomed hair and a relaxed air about him—asked if he had an appointment, Keshi said “yes” and discretely handed him the yen. He took the envelope without hesitation and told Keshi to have a seat anywhere—and that was that.

Still, Keshi was on edge, anxiously tapping his heel as he quietly surveyed his surroundings. 

Across from him, slumped over a chair, was a sleeping old man dressed in a baggy green tracksuit. His loud snoring drowned out the barely audible newscast that played on a TV mounted above the reception desk. The receptionist had since disappeared behind a vase of red poppies, presumably counting the wad of cash.

“The suspect, 19-year-old Ryu Kubo, used an illegally obtained EMP weapon to target the neural implants of his victims, resulting in five injured, one dead.”

Part of him would have preferred a dingy hideout. Though it lacked the smells and nauseating atmosphere of a proper hospital, the clinic still had that penetrating sterile feeling he had come to know and dread.

When he came to Tokyo, he’d vowed never to find himself inside another hospital or clinic again—no matter how sick he was. To breathe their air. To stare at the drab paintings on their walls. To sit in those stiff, uncomfortable chairs, watching TV he’d never choose at volumes too low to hear.

“After shooting multiple hostages, Kubo was brought down by an aerial sniper.”

He remembered his trips to the bathroom to get away from it all—only for those, too, to become part of the whole suffocating experience. 

"The attack was livestreamed by several Telos employees and shared across the Neuro Net. The following footage has been reformatted in 2D. The final moments have been omitted. Viewer discretion is advised."

Keshi’s eyes slowly wandered from poster to poster on the wall. Most were standard personal wellness PSAs. One cautioned: 

WE CANNOT BY LAW OFFER TREATMENT RELATED TO NEURAL IMPLANTS AT THIS FACILITY.

“Please! It’s whispering to me! At night! …It wants out!” 

As Keshi sat alone with thoughts of IV tubes, hospital food trays, and vomit, the soft sound of gunfire and screaming caused him to turn and look at the TV.

“So take it out!! You put it in my head, NOW TAKE IT—”

Suddenly—the whole building began to shake—the newscast cut out to an emergency broadcast screen with an IP code at the center. Above it, plain bold text read: 

EARTHQUAKE DETECTED AT 35°37’08”N, 139°46’35”E

No one reacted. The receptionist didn’t look up. The water inside the vase of poppies sloshed around, a suction mechanism at the bottom keeping it firmly in place. The sleeping old man remained asleep. 

Everyone was used to the earthquakes. They occurred several times a week in the wake of the Great Flood. 

For Keshi—already uneasy—the tremors only tightened the knot in his stomach.

The earthquake stopped as suddenly as it started.

“Is everyone alright then?”

Keshi turned to see a clinician in baby blue scrubs, holding a tablet. He appeared to be in his mid to late 20s, his chin-length blue-black hair parted down the middle, hiding a receding hairline. He was tall and slender—almost fragile—with a polite, apologetic demeanor.

No one responded to his question.

“What a relief. Young man, if you don’t mind following me, we’re ready for you now.”

Keshi glanced around the room, but no one else was there apart from himself and the old man.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

Keshi followed the clinician down a corridor.

To his surprise, he had been led from the waiting area to a private examination room, where he received a full physical. “A service.” Everything was fine, except for a slightly elevated blood pressure reading.

The clinician’s calming bedside manner had helped to quiet his nerves just a bit. 

Still, there was something off about the guy. The only time he opened his eyes was when Keshi took his shirt off. Other than that, his face seemed almost stuck in that one expression—a disarmingly peaceful smile. Keshi wondered how he could see where he was going.

He couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“So… how long will it take to…”

“About twenty minutes. It’s a quick and painless outpatient procedure.”

In half an hour, he’d have an Ichor. 

A strange feeling came over him.

Keshi was nine when the Neuro Net came online, and, like any kid, couldn’t wait to turn 20.

“Become anyone.”

That promise proved irresistible. Not just to impressionable kids, but to anyone who secretly believed they’d be happier as somebody or something else. Which, as it turned out, was pretty much everyone.

The Neuro Net wasn’t just “fully immersive.” It was real. By inducing a state of mild atonia, the user’s conscious mind dislodged, allowing them to experience touch, vision, hearing—even taste as pure perception. These simulated senses never quite matched the intensity of their physical counterparts. Smell was especially hard to replicate, while taste was eventually banned outright. Too closely tied to vital functions. 

But none of that mattered. It was magic. A shared lucid dream.

The world seemed to thin out in the years that followed. It was as if a kind of rapture had occurred. Everyone had gone up to a higher floor, where an eternal party raged on behind a locked private door. They were still there in the flesh, walking the streets, running errands, going through the motions of life as before. But Keshi could tell that it had become an inconvenience—something they merely tolerated. The way he felt when he had to pause his games to eat or pee. 

Real life had moved on to someplace else, and it wasn’t coming back. 

For kids like Keshi, it was hard not to feel left behind.

He remembered watching a late night special with his mom about people who had opted out of society, spending all their time on the Neuro Net. One girl said that it allowed her to transform into her “true self.” Even if she couldn’t taste the cake she was eating.

No longer did you have to change to exist in society, when reality could be shaped to fit yourself.

For some, however, the boundary lines of the self began to disappear completely. 

“Lifestreams” had become common. Full sensory broadcasts that allowed viewers to fully inhabit the person streaming. At least, until it ended, and they had to go back to their own bodies.

Telos later changed its slogan to “Endless possibilities await.” But it was that initial promise—becoming someone else—that defined the Ichor.

For so long, that was all Keshi wanted. Especially after Runa disappeared. Even more so when his mom got sick.

…Even now.

DANGER: ELEVATOR DAMAGED - OUT OF SERVICE

The sight of bright yellow caution tape snapped Keshi back as the clinician stopped at an elevator at the end of the hallway—a warning sign taped to the left door.

He turned to Keshi and smiled with that same look, his eyes squeezed cheerfully shut.

“We use the same surgical bot as the licensed clinics, if that’s any comfort.”

As the clinician turned and reached for the elevator buttons, his hand stopped short. 

Both buttons were smeared with a bright orange film. The clinician’s expression turned vaguely annoyed. He sighed, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped off the residue, letting out a whisper-quiet: 

“Disgusting…”

Once clean, the clinician pressed both the up and down arrows at the same time. The elevator doors opened with a ding. 

He pulled off the caution tape and gestured for Keshi to step inside.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

As the doors closed over him, Keshi wondered if he’d be able to find his way back to the checkpoint. Eiji had stressed to leave his phone back at the apartment, and he’d handed the directions over to the receptionist with the money.

Except—he wouldn’t need them—he’d have GPS in his head.

He almost laughed. So many things were about to become easier. 

Maybe, the cloud he’d been living in was finally about to clear.

He watched the clinician press several floor buttons in succession as if it were a passcode—his finger still wrapped in the handkerchief. Each was smeared with the same mysterious residue.

“Does... the Ichor help with... brain fog?”

The clinician stopped, distracted by Keshi’s question. For a brief moment, his polite demeanor slipped.

“…Fuck. Where was I?” 

Keshi blinked in surprise.

The clinician wiggled his finger, trying to remember where he was at in the sequence.

“Right.”

He quickly entered the rest of the code.

“You trade one fog for another... is how I’d put it.”

The clinician then turned to Keshi and smiled.

“Of course, you won’t be getting an Ichor…”

The words sent a cold rush of static down Keshi’s scalp.

What?

An arpeggiated tone emitted from the floor panel as each of the buttons lit up.

Before Keshi had time to react, he heard a loud hiss—then a metallic KONK as a row of hydraulic dead-bolts slammed shut inside the elevator doors—sealing them inside.

Keshi’s heart began to race.

Not an Ichor?

The sound of a second pressure lock disengaging caused Keshi to turn. He watched as a panel on the right-hand wall drifted loose.

Wait a minute—Eiji did mention something about implant modding…

But he thought that meant minor alterations—fixing the age on your ID—things like that. 

The clinician grabbed the handgrip on the wall panel and pulled it open, revealing a narrow passageway with a steep L-shaped stairwell that descended underground.

All of a sudden, it hit him—where he was—what he was doing. 

“If you’ll follow me.”

The clinician ducked into the passageway and slowly made his way down the stairs.

Keshi just stood there, staring into the flickering light of the stairwell—head buzzing—every instinct screaming at him to turn around.

For a moment, he thought of the safety of his dark apartment, and for the first time, it felt like home. 

Home.

The word burned its way through his skull like a hunk of molten shrapnel, lodging itself in his throat. He thought he’d numbed himself to it. But like a spell, it pulled him back. To late August.

Keshi took a deep breath, quieting the roar of cicadas in his ears.

There was no turning back—no place to turn back to.

His “home” was just a sad, empty room—no better than the crowded tents—the underpasses—damp park lawns and concrete steps.

Worse, even. 

If there was one thing that living on the street had done, it was keep his mind and spirit focused. 

In just a few months, he’d come to know every organ in his body. 

His stomach. 

His throat.

His skin.

He knew the sound of cars and the morning station traffic. The sour smell of grass soaked with beer. Loud voices and phantom lights at night. And, once, the feeling of being pissed on.

How many department store bathrooms had he washed his clothes in—outdoor fountains bathed in—food lines stood in? How many nights had he gone without a meal at all?

He knew what it was to have a fever, with no place to get warm. 

To scrape by on nothing. 

To survive.

All on his own.

So… What was he afraid of?

It was then Keshi realized—he’d grown complacent.

Too many things in his life until then had just happened to him. Things he had no power to change. Because of that, he’d become a sleepwalker. Always letting other people and outside forces carry him along. Always adrift.

It only took one year with a roof over his head for him to slip back into his natural state. One of comfort—safety.

Pathetic.

Something in him shifted.

Keshi felt his foot hit the stair, then the other—only this time, it was him taking the steps.

Home doesn’t exist anymore.

For the first time in a long time, he was wide awake.