How did I end up on the floor? God, my head hurts. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth, and something hard floating around in it. Feels like a tooth. Shit. I spit it onto the floor and remembered why I was on the floor in the first place. Three shining teched up freaks stood over me, their realistic looking hologram faces sneering at me with contempt, their metal limbs and bodies glittering in the bright alley lights.

“Aw, the meat monkey is back online. Lose a tooth, did you?  That’s too bad. You only get so many of those after all.” one of them remarked.

“let’s see if we can even that gap out. Just looks plain uneven.” Another said as he grabbed my hair, lifting my head up before sending a metal fist flying into my face.

At this point, my body is so beaten and bruised that only a vibrating impact is felt. He drops me back onto the floor and they all laugh again. I coughed up some more blood and saliva, dazed and barely holding onto consciousness. 

The third raised his arms in mock protest. “Okay guys, I think he has had enough. Send him some Units to go to a mechanic and get fixed up. Seems like we might have played a little too rough with such a fragile little thing.”

The first freak raised his arm and pulled up a holographic payment transfer screen. His fingers in his other hand screeched as they scratched his metallic head. “Looks like he isn’t even chipped for that! I don’t happen to carry those physical Units they give sad sacks like you. What a shame.”

“A shame indeed.” The third replied, hanging his head. “Oh well!”

The three started to kick me over and over again. I felt a rib crack, and I wasn’t even sure how I was still conscious. The worst part of it all was that they were holding back, a lot. If they tried even a little bit, they could have snapped my bones like dried branches. They wanted me alive; they wanted me to feel everything. I don’t even know how long they continued to beat me, I just curled up as best I could and took it. Eventually, they got bored and stopped, still laughing.

The third degenerate leaned down to my ear and grabbed it with a thumb and forefinger, like how you would grab a vile and filthy piece of trash. “If you show your derm face in this area again, you’ll regret it.” he whispered, his artificially generated voice dripping with venom.

Great, I needed to take this route to get home. Looks like my trip will take twice as long now, since I couldn’t take pubtransport without a chip.

As they left me lying in the cold alley covered in my own blood, sweat and spit, I cursed myself, I cursed my family, I cursed the whole world. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.

In a world where everyone was mostly or entirely machine, I was one hundred percent human. That made me less than trash, a type of leech on society, and an utter outcast. One could replace parts of their body with ease with even a small number of Units. The bare minimum required was being chipped which was practically free. Being chipped allowed you to access any public service, engage in wireless trade, enter any building, and many other privileges.

It was something that everyone had access to and didn’t even think about. But not me, my family and the few that were like us.

We were an anomaly, a small group of people that were completely opposed to any sort of modification to our bodies, due to our religion. Our God had forbidden any of us from desecrating our bodies with soulless and evil human enhancements. Since there was technically an established protection on religious rights, this was allowed.

Authority figures often turned a blind eye to any abuse to the Unmodded. Sometimes they would even be the ones perpetrating the crimes. We were ultimately pests to society at the end of the day.

As I tried to lift myself off the floor, I felt a salty surge from my stomach and wretched what little food I had in my stomach, collapsing down in weakness after. The cold concrete of the alley was mixed with the warmth of the filth my body had made. It was a good thing my nose was broken and swollen or I’m sure I’d be assaulted by a variety of wonderful smells.

My mother would be furious with me when I went home, blame me for what happened. She would always do that, saying I wasn’t faithful enough and deserved these periodic beatings. A couple times she slapped my swollen face for not believing enough. Easy for her to act that way, she hardly ever left the compound we lived in.

I wasn’t alone, the other kids who had to go to school faced the same treatment. We had to go to a low-tech school for those too poor to have brain mods, by law. It was an old-fashioned teaching method, brought by studying and a teacher physically teaching you information. Even among the poorest and lowest tech of society, we were still treated like pests.

Other kids would have virtual sessions where mass amounts of data would be streamed into their heads, permanently sealing whatever knowledge they received directly into their brains. They would only need to do so for about an hour each day, as opposed to our eight hours. Even though there was a limit to how much information could be uploaded each day, so that they wouldn’t fry their brain synapses, a teenager would be comparable to some of the highest academic levels of the past.

A pity that higher education wouldn’t spare people from committing atrocities. It only made them seem better to convince themselves that what they were doing was okay.

With a deep sigh and considerable effort, I peeled myself off of the floor, lest I become prey for some other jackal that wanders by. Higher-ends can scan you for mods and I had to avoid being seen in my state without them. Especially by the authorities. That would just bring trouble back home.

As I got to my feet, I found my right leg was giving out when I put pressure on it. It didn’t seem to be broken, just messed up. I was so numb by this point that who knew, honestly. Propping myself on the wall, I made the slow and agonizing trip back home. It would be far too late by the time I made it back, a lashing verbally and physically being the only thing I could expect. I hoped I would at least be able to eat, even with the pounding pain in the hole where my tooth was.

Sometimes I wished I could get modded myself. My mom was right, I didn’t believe that much at all anyway. I learned that people in the far past would wear primitive prosthetic limbs if they lost them, sometimes even being made of real dead trees. You could replace knees, hair, all sorts of things. Nobody cared back then, no one at all. Why would a God suddenly start to care now that you could replace almost your entire body with something that can feel and was superior to your old parts? It was okay to replace a leg with dead unfeeling material but not something that would completely improve it in every aspect? It made no sense, no damn sense at all.

The line of reasoning I was always told was that God had a plan for everyone, and we were perfect how we were. Hard to feel that if you were born blind or deaf or with a degenerative disease. Hard to feel perfect when someone can run ten times faster than you, lift you like you were a hair, and process information at a speed you could never even imagine.

If God supposedly made us perfect, we surpassed His skill a long time ago.

Even with these thoughts, I couldn’t help but loath the Modded populace. They were all the same, every last one I’ve met in my seventeen years on this planet. The feeling of superiority they felt over the Unmodded was sickening. The things they called us, things they did to us, were unforgivable and ingrained in our very society. I’ve personally seen things I don’t care to retell.

The sad part was it didn’t even stop with the Unmodded. They tore each other down as well. The Higher-ends would still treat the lesser modded as cheap trash, walking piles of junk. This went all the way down the levels of modification. They really could only agree and come together on one thing: hating us.

Maybe when I came of age, I would get modded myself, get out of the compound in which I was trapped. Just enough to be accepted into society, not enough to become like the tech freaks around me. No, the thought still made me sick, like I was giving into to hatred pressured on me. The thought actually made more hatred boil up inside me, more than I’ve felt before.

I had to push that away, and just get home for the time being. Strangely, the world started to turn onto its side. It was then that I realized how truly lightheaded I was. The blood loss and shock must finally be catching up to me. I fell to the ground and struggled to get up, but my body simply didn’t want to. The area I was in was low tech, deserted, and close to home, but not a place you wanted to be unconscious in, if such a place even existed.

“Well well, finally tuckered out are we? Flesh showing its weakness, is it?” a robotic voice called out.

Immediately I was jolted awake by the sound. I struggled to lift my head but couldn’t see anything in the dimly lit area. The voice sounded like it was right in front of me, but I couldn’t see a thing.

“Wherever you are, fuck off. I’ve had enough of you freaks.” I gasped as I lifted myself on one arm with an immense amount of struggle.

A laugh could be heard right by me, within arm’s reach, with no one around.

“Oh you have, had you?” the voice sounded out in an inquisitive tone right in front of me. I could feel something solid and cold under my chin lift me up gingerly. Before my face the large frame of a fully teched person appeared before me. Stealth technology must have hidden them from me ever being able to sense them.

They were massive in size, their body shining brilliantly in the streetlights. From head to toe there wasn’t a single piece of flesh, or synth flesh. Just gleaming and expensive looking tech. Strangely enough, they didn’t even have a hologram face like everyone else who removed their human face had. It was just a blank rounded slate, polished to the point I could see my own thrashed face in it. Somehow, I looked worse than I felt.

“If you’re going to beat me up, you’re a little late. Otherwise kill me or get the fuck out of here.” I said with involuntarily released malice. I just didn’t care anymore. This alloy junkie could go rust for all I cared.

“So be it.” It said calmly. “A slow death it is for the meat monkey.”

With an unrelenting grip, it grabbed the sides of my head and started to squeeze ever so slowly. The pain was immense, and I knew I would be debilitated by pain before long. I could see myself in its wretched metal face, being crushed like an ant, powerless yet again. As a last act of defiance, I spit a bloody, thick glob of saliva into its stupid shining head.

It was all I could do in my rage, and at least I wouldn’t be able to see my own head crushed before me.

The pressure on my head subsided. Laughter rang out from somewhere on their metal frame. They gently laid me on the ground and knelt next to me.

“That is exactly what I expected of you. Just a pure and righteous hatred. I first saw it when you were being attacked by that little cavalcade of scum. I can see your every thought and emotion, and I agree with you.”

I could only lay there and stare into its blood strewn visage, trying to process what was happening. This being was teched to the point of royalty. Almost no one had the scratch to be that upgraded. I could be turned to ash and forgotten immediately. My death had been accepted the second I saw it.

Yet it was now kneeling next to me, speaking to me calmly, without malice.

“I was completely turned at the age of sixteen, against my will. My parents did it to ‘maintain the family line indefinitely’. I killed all of them two weeks after I got a new body. I’ve changed it five times since then. You see, I saw my old body get destroyed. They killed me and made a false image live in a metal body, a phantom copy made of ones and zeroes haunting a pile of steel. Like my parents, I had Syn-Skin over my metal body, a mockery of a skin suit that I removed as soon as I could. No longer was I that old human. I feel like I am me, truly. But I saw the flesh version be thrown into an incinerator, everything that made me a person. Worse yet, that was meant to be something celebrated, watching your own corpse be destroyed. They cheered as it disintegrated and pat my dead robotic shoulders in congratulations.”

The sound of metal creaking came from the shining figures fist gripping tightly. “My little brother and sister were next when they came of age. I killed them with my family to save them the horror of my fate. They would be dead anyway, after all. I couldn’t let them see a crowd of wealthy people cheering for their murder. I couldn’t stand those who would do that. I couldn’t stand them, or anyone like them. I want to get rid of them. All of them.”

It brought its head right next to my face.

“Do you want to help me?”

This situation was completely outside my reasoning and my exhausted brain was straining to figure it out. This could easily be some kind of trap that this teched up monster was setting for me. Yet a part of me believed it, completely. I could sense a rage and sorrow inside its artificial voice, in the way it held its shining body. This entity was wronged, deeply.

I couldn’t imagine seeing your own dead body and having people cheer for its destruction, cheer for the devastation of anything human remaining in your body. The fact such rituals existed was beyond what I ever thought. A spark from the entity’s righteous rage flew into my heart and ignited the fuel lying inside.

“Tell me what to do.” I said shaking ever so slightly in anger.

A cold robotic chuckle emanated quietly from the being; its face still covered in my bloody spit. Rising to full height, its clenched hand opened and suddenly there was a pill in the center of its palm.

“That is the correct answer. Now rise and consume this, and you too will become Nobody, just like myself and many others.”

With strained effort I rose to my feet and took the pill. It almost felt like it was vibrating slowly and subtly. I swallowed it immediately and without question, albeit with a modicum of difficulty in my beaten state.

“What happens now?”

“Within twenty-four hours the bio mechanical viruses in that capsule will have spread all over your body. Harmless to a pure human such as yourself, utterly lethal and contagious to anything mechanized. You will become a living bioweapon of mass destruction. It was a pain to develop, nearly impossible without exposing myself to it. I can’t wait to see what you do. You might destroy the entire city, maybe even the country. All that is up to you.”

I gazed at my bruised and beaten hands as if they had a special mystical power now. Would I really be able to do something that incredible? Could I bring this terrible place to its knees? The shaking in my body changed from anger to excitement.

“Excitement is exactly what I hoped to see in you. I’m excited as well. You’re a part of something bigger now. There are Nobodies of various types all around the world that I’ve initiated, but you’re the first of this line. Do well, my comrade, you will be remembered among us as a hero. Show the scum of this world what they deserve.”

The blood on its face seemed to be absorbed into its blank metal surface. In an instant, Nobody was gone, not a sound or trace of it visible.

Left alone, I started to laugh a stuttering, wicked laugh. I was a Nobody, but that made me somebody. My goal of revenge was within my grasp. All I had to do was wait twenty-four hours. Despite being beaten and injured, my body made the journey home with minimal effort.

The decrepit building that housed the Unmodded lay before me. They were a separate entity from me as I was a Nobody now, a future hero to them. They were not an enemy, but a helpless infant I would save. They would inherit the world after I and my comrades burned it to the ground, after all. I walked past the rows of filthy apartments and people lying in the halls to my apartment and entered, a small smile plastered on my face.

When my mother saw me, she was furious. She spouted some nonsense about my faith not being good enough and other drivel I have heard a thousand times before. She hit my battered face, yet the smile remained. That must have angered her more and she beat me senseless. It was okay, none of that mattered any more. I simply agreed to what she said and went to my closet of a room.

I wondered if that Nobody who found me was sent by God. After all, it sent me on a path to destroy all that we were meant to hate. Exhaustion caused sleep to come easy, and I slept a peaceful dreamless sleep.

The next day I made the journey to school and made it through most of my classes with minimal problems. A beaten Unmodded wasn’t an unusual sight.  If I kept my head down and did my work, it was easy enough to squeeze by. Until my last period class, that is.

In my last period there were a handful of individuals who were fairly modified, at least compared to me. Cybernetic limbs, organs, skin, anything other than the expensive brain mods that separated the lower class from the higher. These scum were some of the worst perpetrators of hate. They simultaneously felt superior to the Unmodded or the poorer students but also felt a deep, deep resentment being held below the ceiling of the brain mods. To the middle and upper class, they might as well have been Unmodded. Not really, but that was a joke among them.

This resentment caused them to torture anyone lower than them in school. Beatings, theft, and beratement occurred in high number from them. They were desperate to feel superior to someone, anyone.

We were in the middle of independent study time when one of the students groaned out loud.

“What is that noise? I can’t even focus! Do you guys hear that?”

“I think it’s someone breathing!” Another chimed in with mock surprise.

“No shit I think it is! A few of you losers are still breathing? Fuckin’ Inhalers man, can’t you just hold your breath until class is over?”  the first replied smugly.

The class started to laugh, even the teacher suppressed a snicker. The few students that were unmodded or still had organic lungs and not automated cellular oxidizers turned red and hung their heads in shame. Everyone but myself.

I turned to face the instigating student with a cold determination, my eyes devoid of fear or shame. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, you soulless metal fuck.” The machine masquerading as a man was lucky there were a few hours until the pill was in effect.

The other students were in shock, as I had never spoken unless asked a question by the teacher. I was always like the rest, desperately hoping to turn invisible by lack of action. There seemed to be an admiration in the eyes of the Unmodded, and that of fear. They were afraid I’d be killed for my actions, or worse, that they would receive wrath by association.

Immediately it stood up, red with fury. “What the fuck did you say you worthless Derm?! I should rip those lungs from your body for that! I’ll finish what someone else started on you!”

“Okay that’s enough!” the teacher shouted. It pointed at me. “Report to the Directors office for punishment, you are out of line. The rest of you, continue studying.”

The instigating student returned to its seat, satisfied. “I’ll see you after school, freak.” it whispered.

Of course, the only punishment went to the Unmodded, not the individual who literally threatened to rip my organs out. Typical, and exactly why I would exact my revenge. I flipped off the student and walked out, leaving my stuff behind. I wouldn’t need it anyway. I had better things to do than school. Instead of going to the Director, I simply left the premises. I’d only return when the time was right. Only when I could cleanse it.

I’d cleanse it for you, my Unmodded comrades.

Filled with a newfound peace I took my time heading home. With leisure I watched the busy streets bustle with horrible activity. Individuals strolled about, some even floating, apparently too good to walk. All of them were moving to perpetuate the sick world we lived in. Most ignored me like you’d ignore a piece of trash on the ground. Occasionally some would look at me with disgust. It didn’t matter, they couldn’t imagine the disgust that lurked beneath my smile.

I stopped at a vending machine, one that accepted my pity distributed physical Units, to purchase one of my favorite snacks, a Beaf Stick with Enhanced Beef flavor. I’d never had real beef, no one had. But the new formula was pretty decent. If it weren’t for this metal world, I might even know what a cow tasted like, maybe even see one that wasn’t a hologram.

Sitting on a bench, I munched my stick and watched a massive screen that floated in the sky, glaring in the dusk that settled from the setting sun. Ad after worthless ad passed by, loud and obnoxious, a sermon on the worthless nature of this world.

“Tired of your dull three cone color vision? Straining to see at a distance or read small print? Upgrade to the Ocutech Super Spectrum 7x7 with seven cones of vision and seven times ocular zoom and see what you’re missing! We’ll even include a seven percent discount for a trade in on your old eyes, organic included. It’s a steal, and any eyes can see that!”

“Smooth. Sleek. Sensitive. Sexual. Superior. Syn-Skin.”

“If you’re like me you have taste and want the finer things in life. You like being faster, stronger, tougher, and why wouldn’t you? Why settle for an inferior mental processor in that case? Introducing the X800 Luxury Processor. One hundred times faster processing than the leading competitors. One third the energy consumption. A small and elegant design that is effortlessly efficient. So go ahead, be the you that you know you are.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the vapid ads that floated by. A new silly gizmo to replace each unique part of yourself. Sickening. It would all be gone soon. At any rate, the pill should be taking effect, so I headed towards the alley in which I had received the still fresh and brutal injuries I limped with. I failed to notice sparks beginning to fly from the electronics in my wake.

Peering down the alley, I saw the same three metallic degenerates posted up against the walls, their false faces snickering at some inane joke they must have made. I walked calmly towards them, confident in what was taking place inside my body. I didn’t know what to do, but Nobody called me a bioweapon, so I figured I couldn’t really mess it up. One of the freaks noticed me and nudged the others.

“Hey now, isn’t that ragged little meat monkey the one we taught a lesson yesterday?”

“I think it is! How is he even walking with those fragile little bones?”

“Well, we all know what happens now, we graciously warned him after all. You won’t be leaving this place, and there won’t be much to hose off the walls when we are done.”

The three laughed maliciously as they walked towards me. They fully meant to kill me, and they thought nothing of it. I wouldn’t think twice about what was going to happen either.

“Don’t you have anything to say? Don’t you know you’re going to die? Did we bust your processor you fucking derm trash?” one shouted.

“You and everyone you know is going to die by my hand.” I said calmly and with a broken tooth smile.

“You little shit!” another said through gritted hologram teeth as they approached me. “lets see how many parts I can break on you before you short circuit.”

As soon as he got close enough to me, I spat a thick glob of spit right on his hologram face.

“Did you just spit on me?!” it roared, wiping it from the shell beneath the image. “hope you enjoyed your last action on Ea-”

Mid-sentence the metallic figure started to convulse violently. Sparks erupted from its head and the hand that touched my spit. The metal arm twisted in horrible and beautiful ways, crunching from the movement. A static filled mechanical scream erupted from the figure as it dropped to the ground, smoking and sparking. It was in pain, a lot of it. Synthetic blood burst from the remaining flesh as metallic parts were spilling out. Everything machine in its body was disintegrating and malfunctioning at a terrific rate. Soon it was a pile of parts and smoldering flesh.

The other two individuals were frozen in horror as this occurred, their false faces struck with horror. With their superior reaction speed, it must have seemed to transpire in slow motion, an hour of watching their friend die horribly.

Yes, fall into despair.

One dropped to check on the pile of parts and another rushed and grabbed me by the throat faster than I could react. “What did you do?!” it shouted in fear and panic.

I couldn’t spit and all I could do was exhale harshly through my nose. As my breath hit its arms, sparks started to erupt. It dropped me and panicked, waving its arm through the air in a futile effort. It turned in response to a second agonized scream behind it. Simply the fumes from the first victim had infected it, and it was convulsing, melting, screaming. The individual who had grabbed me ran down the alley, stumbling and panicking. Its screams continued as it ran further away, and then stopped.

Only now did I notice that all around me everything that was electronic was sparking and smoking. The technological infection was moving at a tremendous rate. It seemed it moved physically and through the air. Guess I wasn’t going home tonight. There were far more important things to do. I had to go many more places and see that it was spread as far as possible. A disgusting and wicked laugh could be heard in the night. It took a second to realize that it was eminating from myself. I had never heard myself utter anything close to it before. The laugh was beautiful to my ears, a sound of justice exacted.

For the first time in my life, I felt powerful. Now was the time for Nobodies like me to truly live.