The Cyborg's Daughter ( I'm close to 100K reads! Then Party)

Chapter 16/lip-syncing with fire

Yeh!! we've got to 17 in SciFI with 10K reads! Thanks, everyone. The writing gods have been kind to us and we have had time over the Easter to get a lot of stuff written. We thought we would celebrate with a new chapter. 

Video: shamelessly stolen from one first used by the mighty KaranSeraph in her excellent book Ironman. We thought this was a very good demonstration of how Kimjodo might look.  RK+Reb

***

Streets of DownTown City 05 ( formally Known as New York).

It was two intensive weeks later and the night of the first 'dance' contest. We had begun to feel safe perhaps too safe. The Kimjodo was illegal so our suspicious behaviour was protected under a cloak of knowing nods and smiles. My collar was loaded up with untraceable bit-coins and the apartment was under one of Bret's aliases. While Little Jenny and I trained, Hunter spent hour after hour looking for the resistance but he found little but a rumour of a man they called 'The Frenchman'. Unfortunately while Hunter asked to talk to 'the Frenchman' it seemed the 'The Frenchman' didn't want to speak to him. While Little Jenny and I were dead beat after every training session I tried to go with Hunter and approach people, but it didn't help.

Tonight I was nervous and little Jenny was wonderfully oblivious to the impending hurt. She had taken the punishments in training well like the way she had taken the punishments in school. She did get punished a lot at school.

Teacher "02 what is the second law of humanity?"

Jenny "Never say Never?" followed by a level two buzz.

Sometimes she would get huge thing right and the teacher ignored her especially if she put her hand up to answer a question. So the training was a lot less painful that time at school. That didn't stop me worrying about her. She seemed genuinely happy about the dancing. It did make me wonder what the resistance wanted her for? Perhaps she was someones daughter.

We were driven by a cyber-car over to the west side. It was a machine area, the high towers here were dark standing like cold monuments to humanities former industry. We got out and walking into a tower via a small side door blocked by a man who stood aside when he noticed Bret Fox. We had gone some small way into the tower when we began to pass large cylinders on their sides. They seemed to be connected to some power system.

88 noticed me looking at me looking them.

"This is a pod bay- they keep humans frozen here." said 88.

It clicked each cylinder was a freezer pod like the one Hunter had been kept in. We were in a store house of sleepers. We passed a series of complex pipes and translucent bags.

"What is that?" I said.

Hunter played the part of the co-lab master "No speaking with out asking permission. Your lucky its before a match other wise I would be running level 2 on you"

"Hunter did you know this is one of the few failed simulant laboratories?" said Bret Fox

"Simulants? biscuit" said Hunter.

"Yeh didn't they hear of them in region 03? - twenty ish years ago the machines tried to genetically engineer these humans which would only produce blood. Failure then they tried to make fully grown blank humans which could be programmed. The idea was Eternals could be uploaded into a new biological body rather than a machine one."

"What happened biscuit?" said Hunter as we turned a corner. There was a roar in the distance.

"When the Continuity took over they kind of cut the head of the CPU off." said Bret "The CPU was super-sentient but the core though processes were removed. The CPU now runs the world but at the will of the Continuity. With out the head the CPU can't do new research or make new Laws. This included work on Simulants or a chip able to work like the A.I blood chip but without human blood. Luckily for all the dance fans of New York, they left a large logistic space."