Rent is due.
I wouldn’t even have this problem if Dad hadn’t Ghoststreamed me the minute I turned eighteen. No warning, no conversation—just out. Like the second the clock hit midnight, I stopped being his responsibility.
One day I was his kid, the next I was extra weight he couldn’t wait to drop. He didn’t even help me pack. Just tossed a garbage bag at my feet and told me to figure it out. Like I was supposed to magically know how to survive with nothing.
I finally landed a loop work job, but it turns out loop work just means credscrape enough to cover rent and bills. Forget food. Forget living.
Decent is a lie people tell you when they don’t want to admit how close you are to drowning.
I eat cereal for dinner most nights. Sometimes dry, because milk is a luxury now. Synthetic dairy’s cheaper, but it tastes like melted plastic and algae.
Most nights, I sit in this tiny apartment, counting the change in my pocket like it’s some kind of ritual. I add it up twice, even though I already know the answer: not enough.
Cred chips. Microcoins. Some old-world pennies I still keep out of habit. The actual numbers don’t matter anymore. Half the time, digital credits vanish before you can blink—auto-deducted by rent bots, utilities, mandatory building security fees.
What’s left clinks together in my pocket like loose teeth. All sharp edges and no solutions.
The neighbors were fighting again.
Same voices, same pattern. I could practically script it at this point.
Thin smartwalls don’t keep much out—not sound, not cold, not the feeling that you’re trapped in someone else’s life. I sat on the floor by the window, knees pulled to my chest, listening to every slammed cabinet and muffled curse from the apartment next door. Same argument as last time. Probably the same ending, too.
A crash. A door slam. Someone crying into a pillow.
I stopped trying to tell if it was the husband or the wife anymore. It didn’t matter. Sad is sad.
Part of me wanted to turn up the old flatscreen in the corner, drown them out with some late-night infostream selling bio-blenders or cut-proof kitchen bots I could never afford. But I didn’t.
I already knew the script of those, too.
Noise is company when you don’t have any.
I picked at the corner of the rent envelope on the table. It wasn’t sealed yet. Half of me wondered what would happen if I just… didn’t send it in this month. Let the whole thing fall apart. Let the eviction drones show up, clipboard screens in hand, fake-apologizing while they neural-swipe the locks.
They always fake-apologize. Like it’s not their fault. Like it’s just business.
But I always send it. Somehow.
Even if it means skipping meals or pawning something else I care about.
That’s the part nobody tells you about upgrading—not the doctors, not the shiny holo-brochures at the clinic. They don’t mention how it feels to stand on the edge of something huge, like surgery, while everything else in your life is barely holding together.
The pamphlets all say gender euphoria like it’s a coupon you clip and redeem. They don’t tell you about counting coins on the floor at midnight.
I’m supposed to go in next week. Bottom bio-up. Fully covered—thank God for medi-net. But medi-net doesn’t pay rent.
Medi-net doesn’t keep the heat grid on or the cooler box working.
And what’s the point of finally getting the body that feels right if I end up homeless in it?
What’s the point of fixing the mirror if the world outside the bathroom door is still broken?
My phone rang.
I flipped open my lousy burner—a plastiplex flip model you can still find at pawn hubs. The plastic creaked like it might snap in half if I pressed too hard. I can’t even afford a real holo-screen, not with rent, bills, and everything else hanging over me.
The buttons were worn down. The screen scratched. Half the time the battery barely held a charge.
“Hello?” My voice came out scratchy.
Like I hadn’t used it in hours. Which I hadn’t.
“Hey, Isabella, whatcha doing?”
I rolled my eyes so hard it almost hurt. “Chelsea, do you have to say that every time?”
There was a pause, then a soft chuckle on the other end. “Well, yeah. You did pick Isabella from that one-hundred year old TV show Phineas and Ferb.”
Her voice always had that edge of teasing—the kind that made you want to smile even when you didn’t mean to. Old shows still make the rounds on the retro-streams. Stuff like that sticks.
I sighed, pressing my forehead against the window glass. It was cool and a little grimy, but I didn’t care. “Just because I like the name doesn’t mean you have to keep quoting the show.”
The grime left a faint smudge on my skin, but I didn’t bother wiping it off. The apartment’s auto-cleaners stopped working months ago. The landlord never sent repair bots.
“Fair enough.” Her voice softened. “So… signal check—how are you holding up?”
That’s the part that always gets me. The shift from teasing to real. Like she knows exactly when the smile drops off my face, even through a cheap burner.
I hesitated. Could’ve lied. Could’ve said fine. But my throat caught instead.
“I’m scared, Chelsea.”
“I know.”
She said it easy. Like breathing. No judgment, no fixing. Just knowing.
“My surgery’s next week, and I—” My voice cracked. “I don’t even know if I’m gonna have a place to come home to after.”
“I’ve told you—you can move in with me,” she said, soft but firm.
That tone meant business.
“I know.” I pressed my lips together, staring at the chipped plastiwall near the window frame. “I just… I don’t want to be a core-load.”
The paint coating peeled like old skin, curling at the corners. I picked at it sometimes without noticing.
There was a rustling sound on the other end—probably Chelsea shifting in her sleep pod or pacing her kitchen barefoot on the solar-tile floor like she always did when she got serious.
I pictured her in pajama pants, pacing between the synth-fridge and the hydrowave, the burner pressed to her cheek. Her kitchen was always too cold at night.
“You’re not a core-load, Iz,” she said. “You’re my patch family. Family’s not supposed to sleep on cold apartment floors worrying about rent the week before an upgrade.”
Her voice cracked a little, like she hated that this was even a conversation we had to have.
My throat tightened. I hated how kind she was. Kindness always hit harder than cruelty when you don’t feel like you deserve it.
Cruelty? You can armor up for that. Kindness gets under your skin.
“I just—what if I’m not ready?” I whispered.
“For what? To not be homeless?”
I let out a shaky laugh, but it wasn’t funny. Not really.
“For… all of it.”
I glanced down at the paperwork spread across my lap.
The smartpaper flickered slightly under my fingers. The holo-text looked heavier than it should. Like if I dropped it, it’d crash through the floor.
Womb Synthesis Procedure.
Those words stared back at me in bold letters on the smartpaper screen. It had taken me a while to decide. Weeks of back-and-forth, late-night Net searches, vid calls with doctors, scrolling through support forums until my eyes burned. Implantation? No uterus? Synthetic? Biological? I’d gone in circles until I finally landed here.
Full internal construction. Full reproductive capacity.
It’s not like the old days—not like back when trans women had to choose between a reskin and a life. Now, the tech exists to grow organs, synthesize tissue, connect everything the right way. The whole system, not just the surface.
And yeah, it’s expensive. But not for me—not this time. Universal medi-net covers it, finally. After decades of protests, lawsuits, and system overrides, they added trans reproductive care to the list. First in pilot programs, then globally.
I was lucky enough to be born late enough for that.
But even now, it’s still scary as hell.
No one talks about that part. They hype it up in the holo-brochures—“true womanhood,” “fully affirmed anatomy,” “seamless integration.” But nobody warns you about sitting on your floor at 2:00 a.m., wondering if you’re really ready to version swap your body that much.
This isn’t just surgery. It’s creating something that wasn’t there before.
I’m not just getting a vagina—I’m getting a womb.
A uterus, ovaries, the works. Biotech-grown, but fully functional. If everything goes well, I could get pregnant someday.
That’s the part that freaked me out the most. Not the pain, not the recovery—the possibility. The idea of making life with a body that never had the chance before.
And then there’s the lesbian thing.
Or—technically—a transbian. That’s what many people call it. I’ve never liked men. Not even once. It’s always been women. Always.
So for me, this isn’t about pleasing anybody else. It’s about having a body that feels like mine. One that does what it’s supposed to, not one I have to explain to someone in a bedroom later.
It’s about breathing without flinching when I see myself.
So for me, this bio-up isn’t about pleasing anyone else. It’s about being comfortable in my own skin. About looking in the mirror and not feeling like I’m wearing someone else’s body.
It’s about breathing without flinching when I see myself.
“Hey, Isabella? You still there?” Chelsea’s voice crackled through the phone, cutting into my thoughts.
I blinked, realizing I’d been tracing the same line on the screen over and over like it might change something if I just kept touching it.
“Yeah,” I breathed. My voice came out small. “I’m here.”
“You went quiet.”
“Sorry. Just… neural spin.”
“Neural spin’s dangerous this late at night,” she joked, but her tone stayed soft. She knew better than to push.
“What’s on your mind?”
I looked at the papers again, my stomach twisting.
“I’m scared, Chels.”
“I know, babe.”
“I’m scared I’m gonna finally get this—finally fix this thing I’ve carried my whole life—and then lose everything else.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. The words felt raw in my mouth.
Chelsea sighed into the phone. “You’re not gonna lose me.”
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
“And you’re not gonna lose a place to sleep either,” she added. “Not on my watch.”
There was a noise at the door—a soft scrape, then the rustle of paper sliding against the plastifloor.
My heart jumped into my throat.
My cat Bean, naturally, jumped at it like the paper was a toy she’d been waiting for all day.
“Chels, hold on,” I whispered, phone still pressed to my ear.
I crossed the room, heart thudding.
A single sheet lay just inside the doorframe, half-curled like it didn’t even want to be here.
I picked it up with shaky fingers.
Big bold letters at the top:
NOTICE TO VACATE
The holo-text blurred for a second, like my brain refused to read it.
“Isabella?” Chelsea’s voice crackled in my ear. “What is it? What just happened?”
I pressed the paper against my chest. My eyes burned.
“They’re kicking me out,” I whispered.
“How could they do that?” Chelsea’s voice shot up, sharp with anger now. “It’s only one month late! Don’t they need a court order or something?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Technically, yeah—they’re supposed to.”
“So this isn’t even legal?”
I sank down onto the floor, my back against the door. My knees hugged up to my chest.
The smartpaper flickered between analog texture and holo-projection like it couldn’t decide what century it belonged to.
“Welcome to baseline bug housing, Chels,” I whispered. “They count on people like me not fighting it. Poor, queer, no backup plan. We’re easy targets.”
AI landlords don’t care about ethics. They care about efficiency. And the algorithm always says: Evict the unprofitable.
Chelsea went quiet, but I could hear her breathing—tight and quick, like she wanted to punch someone but couldn’t reach through the phone.
I always wonder how the past was like because in 2125, you can call anyone instantly from anywhere.
You just can’t make the world fair.
“I’m coming over,” she said finally.
“No—Chelsea, you don’t have to—”
“Shut up, Iz. I’m already grabbing my keys.”
The phone went blank.
Chelsea had hung up. No goodbye—just action.
Like I’m coming over meant there was no room left for argument.
I stayed there on the couch, phone still in my hand, staring at nothing.
The walls glowed faint blue from the static ads they projected sometimes—cheap apartment perks in grindloop towers like this. Rent subsidized if you let the walls run ads while you sleep.
Tonight, I didn’t even notice what they were selling.
Everything felt distant. Like I wasn’t inside my body anymore.
And then the tears came.
Quiet at first. Just a sting in my eyes, a lump in my throat.
But once the first tear slid down my cheek, the rest followed like they’d been waiting all night for permission.
I buried my face in my hands and let it happen.
The holo-clock blinked past 2:00 a.m., pulsing silently.
Everything I’d been holding back—the fear, the anger, the what-if-this-goes-wrong core-load—poured out in slow, shaky breaths.
I was supposed to be excited. This upgrade was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel.
But right now?
It just felt like another thing I might lose.
****
Ten minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
I wiped my face on the sleeve of my hoodie, even though I knew I still looked like hell. Eyes red, nose running. Didn’t matter. Chelsea had seen me worse.
She’d seen me at three in the morning once, face streaked with mascara and snot after my first code-crash. She didn’t flinch then, and I knew she wouldn’t now.
When I opened the door, there she was—standing in the hallway with a stack of moving boxes under one arm and a roll of packing tape dangling from her wrist.
Her hair was tied back in a messy bun, pajama pants tucked into sneakers, like she’d barely paused to get dressed before racing over. Her keys hung from a lanyard looped around her wrist, swaying as she shifted the boxes. Her holo-glasses blinked softly in standby mode. She must’ve forgotten to turn them off.
“Hey,” she said softly.
I blinked at her, my stomach twisting. “You didn’t have to—”
“I know I didn’t have to.” She pushed past me gently, like it was already decided. “But I did. So scoot.”
Her shoulder brushed mine as she stepped inside, bringing with her the faint smell of peppermint gum and cold night air. The hallway’s recycled oxygen always smelled sterile, but somehow she still carried outside code with her.
I stepped aside.
Chelsea set the boxes down by the couch and looked around my apartment like she was sizing it up for battle. Her lips pressed into a tight line, like she was holding back the kind of lecture only a best friend could get away with.
Her eyes flicked to the stained plasticarpet, the half-dead window plant that barely got enough LED light, the sagging bookshelf I’d found on the curb last year. She didn’t say a word, but I could tell what she was thinking.
“This place hard lags anyway,” she muttered, tearing a strip of tape with her teeth. “You’re coming home with me.”
I didn’t have much stuff.
Mostly clothes. A few books. My old flatscreen that barely worked unless you smacked the side of it just right. That was about it.
Half my wardrobe was thrift store hoodies and shirts from Pride events. My books were dog-eared and secondhand, paperbacks so worn the spines didn’t even crack when you opened them.
Most normal people read on ocular stream or in full-sensory holos. But me? I liked paper. Paper feels real.
Still—I felt overclocked.
My chest was tight, like everything was happening too fast and not fast enough at the same time. Like I couldn’t breathe right.
Packing meant it was real.
Chelsea popped open one of the boxes and started folding my hoodies into it like this was just any other Tuesday night. Like we were getting ready for a softpatch night instead of an eviction.
Her hands moved fast—muscle memory from every time she’d helped me clean up after a bad night or reorganize my closet when I was glitching. She didn’t ask what went where. She just knew.
Bean padded out of the bedroom—tail flicking, eyes half-lidded like she didn’t give a damn about what was going on. She hopped onto the couch, gave the room a lazy once-over, then picked the nearest empty box and climbed right in.
Like this was all for her.
Her box now.
“Hey, Bean,” Chelsea said softly, scratching behind her ears before going back to packing.
Bean purred, low and lazy, as if everything was fine. As if home wasn’t shifting beneath our feet.
I watched them—Chelsea moving through my life like she belonged there, Bean acting like nothing had changed—and something in my chest cracked a little more.
The part of me that wanted to stay strong? It faltered.
The part that thought I could handle this alone? Ghoststreamed.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered.
Chelsea didn’t look up. She just kept folding.
The sound of cardboard creasing and tape peeling filled the space between us.
“Too late,” she said. “We’re already doing it.”
****
About an hour later, everything I owned—and one frightened, wide-eyed tuxedo cat—was crammed into the back of Chelsea’s car.
Her EV hatchback hummed quietly, battery pack glowing faint green under the dash. It wasn’t big enough for all the boxes, but Chelsea made it work.
The seatbelts were looped awkwardly around the stacks like that would somehow keep my life from stream-locking in the backseat. My backpack sat at my feet, stuffed so full the zipper barely closed.
Bean was curled up in her carrier, pupils huge, breathing fast like the world was ending.
Maybe for her it was. For me too, in a way.
Her fur puffed up slightly, ears twitching with every new sound—the soft whoosh of auto-traffic, the low drone of delivery drones overhead. Her little pink nose pressed against the carrier door, fogging it up with each sharp breath.
I wanted to tell her it was going to be okay, but the words stuck in my throat.
I didn’t know if it was true.
I sat in the passenger seat, clutching the keys to the apartment. My hand was tight around them, metal digging into my palm.
The sharp edges left little crescent marks in my skin. I welcomed the sting. At least it meant I could still feel something.
Then, finally, the anger bubbled up.
“Fuck this apartment,” I said, my voice sharp in the quiet car.
The words came out louder than I expected. Louder than the core-load in my chest.
Chelsea glanced at me but didn’t say anything. Just let me have it.
Her fingers flexed slightly on the steering wheel, but she kept her eyes on the nav-display.
We pulled up to a red light, and that’s when I saw him—a homeless man sitting near the curb, wrapped in a tattered blanket, eyes glazed over from cold or exhaustion or both.
He looked like part of the sidewalk. Like someone the city had forgotten how to see.
No one even stopped for people like him anymore—not with AI social services scanning for biometrics instead of talking to people.
I rolled down the window without thinking.
Cold air rushed into the car, biting at my face.
“Hey, you,” I called.
My voice cracked a little, but it still carried.
He blinked, looking up slowly like he wasn’t sure I was talking to him.
His face was lined and raw, lips chapped, eyes the color of old denim washed out too many times.
“There’s a room available for the rest of the month. Or as long as you want.” I held the keys out through the window, dangling them from my fingers. “Go softpatch in there.”
The keys jangled quietly in the air between us. My heart pounded, but my hand stayed steady.
Chelsea stared at me, eyes wide—but she didn’t stop me.
She knew better than to interrupt whatever this was.
The man shuffled closer, confused but cautious. His fingers brushed mine as he took the keys.
His hand was cold. Bone-thin. Nails cracked. He looked at me like he wasn’t sure if this was a trick.
“Why should I care what happens now?” I mumbled—not really to him, just to the night air.
The neon streetlamps painted everything in soft violet. The world kept turning, like none of this mattered.
Chelsea reached over and squeezed my hand.
Her palm was warm against mine, steady. Her thumb brushed across my knuckles once, grounding me.
“You still care,” she whispered. “That’s why.”
Bean meowed softly from the backseat, like she agreed.
Or maybe she was just hungry.
Same thing, really.
Chelsea’s apartment wasn’t far, but it felt like we were crossing a whole stream channel.
The city grid flickered by outside the window—neon strip lights reflecting off wet pavement, drone delivery lanes blinking overhead in regulated patterns. Even the air felt different over here, like the filtration units worked a little harder on this side of town.
Her building was newer—one of those mid-rise pods the city started cranking out after the last climate reboot. Solar skins on the windows, self-tinting glass, plant walls in the lobby that were supposed to filter the air. It looked nice from the outside, like a brochure for a better life.
The towers curved slightly at the edges, eco-arch design meant to resist heatwaves and windstorms. Everything gleamed under the night lights, polished like the future was already here.
Inside? Same old grindloop, just with better lighting.
The same late payments, the same loop work jobs that didn’t pay enough, the same tenants whispering in hallways about grid outages and food rations—just with walls that changed color depending on the hour.
We pulled into the parking dock, and the car auto-slid into a charge bay.
The dashboard blinked green as the vehicle synced with the building’s charge ports, humming quietly as wireless energy locks clamped around the wheels.
Chelsea didn’t even wait for the doors to fully open before she unbuckled, shoving the keys into her pocket.
The car hadn’t finished its auto-off sequence, but she was already out.
“Come on,” she said, popping the hatch. “We’ll grab Bean first.”
Bean’s eyes were still wide, pupils like black saucers. Her chest rose and fell fast, little shallow breaths like she was trying to softpatch her system in real-time. She made a tiny warble sound, her version of what the glitch is happening?
Her whiskers twitched against the mesh of her carrier door.
“Same, girl,” I whispered.
My throat tightened. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to her or to myself.
Chelsea slung one of the boxes onto her hip and led the way through the motion-lock door.
The lobby scanner blinked to life as we approached, sensors tracking our vitals in soft pulses of blue light. Her building had a palm scanner, but she’d already added me to the patch list by the time we got there.
My name flashed on the panel as I followed her inside:
WELCOME ISABELLA JAMES
—TEMPORARY ACCESS GRANTED—
Temporary. Of course.
Everything in this city ran on biometric access now—jobs, housing, even groceries. Temporary status meant the system was already counting the minutes until you were ghoststreamed.
“You always have the best up-to-date tech,” I whined, even though I didn’t mean for it to sound so bitter.
Chelsea glanced over her shoulder as the door slid open, her box still balanced on her hip.
“Yeah, because my building doesn’t run on duct tape and drain zone hope.”
I forced a smile, but my stomach tightened anyway.
Her place wasn’t fancy—not really—but compared to where I’d just come from, it felt like stepping into another version branch of human.
Different tax bracket, different system layer.
The lobby lights adjusted automatically as we walked in. Soft, warm tones at night—eco-sensitivity settings, probably.
They even smelled different here. Plant wall oxygen had a leafy edge to it, like a sim-stream of outside air. Somewhere, a quiet ventilation hum kept the flood sensors active, part of the standard anti-climate-failure package.
Chelsea’s building had all the bio-upgrades: energy conservation modes, smart air filters, anti-flood barriers for when the ocean glitches decided to throw another tantrum.
Still, the paint wasn’t perfect. There was a crack along the ceiling seam near the security cameras, just visible if you knew where to look. The future always looked better from far away.
Inside, though? It was still small. Still just life.
The elevator recognized her face and unlocked. The doors slid open with a soft hiss.
We stepped inside, Bean’s carrier clutched to my chest like a lifeline cache.
“You know this is your place too now, right?” Chelsea said, reading my silence like a screen.
I shrugged. “Feels like visiting a nicer server while your own life’s still glitching.”
Chelsea snorted. “It’s not that nice. Half the water taps here leak carbon filter failcodes every other week. You’re not exactly in the elite zone.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” I mumbled, shifting the carrier.
Bean’s nose was pressed against the mesh, eyes still huge. Her tail flicked once, a twitchy neural metronome of stress.
The elevator hummed softly under our feet. No buttons—just destination presets and eye-track nav that always made me uncomfortable.
I stared at the floor to avoid triggering anything. Eye-tech always felt like a ghoststream risk. Too many trackers, too many records. Cheap apartments didn’t have that problem—no one cared enough to monitor you.
Her floor blinked:
LEVEL 12: OCCUPANT CHELSEA MARIN. GUEST: ISABELLA JAMES.
Temporary Access Granted.
Again.
We stepped out into the hallway. Pale green walls, soft-lit floor panels.
Everything looked clean enough to eat off, but it smelled faintly of ozone and life-stream tax air.
The lights pulsed faintly underfoot as we walked—part of the anti-fall safety firmware for late-night tenants.
The luxury of the future was still just… survival with better packaging.
Chelsea nudged the door with her elbow and it slid open to her apartment.
“Home sweet upgrade rental,” she muttered.
I set the carrier down just inside the door and unzipped it halfway.
Bean bolted out like she’d been nano-hacked from a cannon.
Her claws clicked against the smooth floor panels as she skittered across them, tail puffed up like a malfunctioning duster bot, then stopped under Chelsea’s couch to reboot her threat matrix.
Her eyes glowed slightly in the floor lights, pupils still huge. Watching. Processing.
The smartpanels under the couch reflected just enough for me to see her little chest rising and falling, sharp and fast.
“Welcome home, Bean,” Chelsea said, kicking off her shoes by the door.
“Try not to hack up a furball on the charge ports, okay?”
Bean blinked at her like she was making no promises.
I crouched down, fingers resting on the cool plastifoam floor, just watching Bean breathe for a second.
She was safe. We were safe. For now.
That part of me—the part that wanted to full reboot—loosened its grip just a little.
Chelsea plopped the moving box onto the couch and started peeling back the tape.
The sound of the adhesive crackling in the quiet room felt louder than it should.
“We can deal with the rest of this tomorrow. Right now? You’re sitting down and eating something. Hard yes. Non-negotiable.”
I didn’t argue. My legs felt like wet noodles anyway.
The smart fridge pinged softly in the background as it re-upped the patch scan, like it was already preparing for me to stay.
****
I must’ve fallen into sleep-mode, because the next thing I noticed, it was daytime.
Light filtered through the auto-tint windows, shifting from sleep-mode into morning mode.
The panels adjusted in soft waves, mimicking natural dawn even though the real sun wasn’t anywhere near this precise. Sim-sunrise, tuned to avoid cortisol spikes.
Fancy, but my body still tensed up like I’d overslept something important.
Old instincts didn’t care about smartglass patches.
Bean was curled up right next to me, her tiny body pressed against my ribs.
Her fur twitched with each slow breath, tail wrapped around her like a comma.
Her purring had slowed to a barely-there hum, the kind that synced up with the low, steady thrum of Chelsea’s apartment filters cycling clean air.
I shifted a little, careful not to wake her.
Chelsea’s guest bed wasn’t really a bed—just a mod-foam fold-out, one of those modular slabs that adjusted to your body type.
The bed flexed automatically, sensors bio-aligned around me as I moved.
Better than my old plastifoam crashpad, but still hard enough to remind me I wasn’t home.
Not that I had a home anymore.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out how long I’d pinged out.
My holo-lens blinked quietly in the corner of my vision: 08:42 A.M.
The system must’ve auto-synced to Chelsea’s netspace overnight. Of course it did.
Everything syncs now, whether you asked it to or not.
Bean let out a tiny snore, and my chest tightened in a way I didn’t expect.
All my boxes from Chelsea’s car were here.
I blinked at them, stacked neatly by the wall like some softpatch of my life had already arrived ahead of me.
I didn’t remember moving them. I didn’t remember anything after sitting down last night.
Either Chelsea had gone down to the parking dock a hundred times like some kind of stubborn human drone, or she’d called the apartment bots to bring them up for her.
Knowing her? Probably both.
She was the kind of person who’d haul half your life on her back just to prove she could—then quietly let the drones do the rest while you weren’t looking.
Bean stretched beside me, let out a soft chirp, and blinked up at me like, Well? What’s the patch now?
Good question, Bean.
I looked at Chelsea’s TV on the wall.
It was huge—had to be at least 200 inches. One of those hyper-thin holo-skins that practically glued itself to the surface, no frame, no border. Just wall-to-wall entertainment.
I thought about my pathetic 65-inch back at the old apartment.
The one I had to smack on the side to get it to turn on. The one that glitched every time someone flushed a smart-toilet too hard.
Half the time the image would freeze and pixelate into static bursts like some retro stream-lock aesthetic, except it wasn’t supposed to be aesthetic.
Having a 65-inch screen is like owning a rotary holo-port. Sad. Embarrassing, even.
Chelsea’s setup probably had all the extras too—full holo-ports, spatial sound, immersion mods if you wanted it.
You could dive into someone else’s life and forget your own for hours. Just swipe in, click Hard Yes on the liability waiver, and disappear into fantasy.
Total sensory override. Plug-and-play ghoststream.
Part of me wanted to do that right now. Just… vanish for a while.
But Bean shifted beside me, let out a tiny sigh, and reminded me where I really was.
Her tail flicked once against my hip, a soft reality ping.
No matter how big the screen, life was still here.
I headed to the kitchen to make breakfast since I had to get ready for loop work at noon.
I wasn’t even sure why I was bothering—part of me felt like hard ghoststreaming everything today.
Rent might’ve been canceled for now, and the eviction notice ghosted, but bills didn’t stop just because my life hit pause-mode.
Energy credits still auto-drain from your account whether you feel like existing or not.
When I stepped into the kitchen, Chelsea was already there.
She had breakfast ready for both of us.
“Hey,” she said, without looking up. She was busy stirring something in a pan—real eggs, by the smell of it.
Not the synth packs or protein print-powder I was used to. Actual bio-up food.
The pan hissed softly, steam curling toward the ceiling where the air filter panels whisked it away.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I muttered, standing awkwardly in the doorway.
Chelsea glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows raised.
“I know I didn’t have to. That’s kind of the point.”
Her apartment’s kitchen was small but clean. Solar burners, patch-fridge, microplastic-scan taps—everything I didn’t have before.
The cabinets softly lit themselves when you walked past. The faucet ran a built-in scanner to check for microplastics in your cup.
Everything I still wasn’t sure I deserved.
“Sit.” She nodded toward the table.
I sat.
Bean followed me in, rubbing against my leg like she owned the streamspace already.
Her claws made tiny tapping sounds on the smartfloor, sensors blinking as they registered new motion patterns.
I sat at the table while Chelsea finished up at the stove.
“Real eggs?” I asked, still kind of stunned.
Chelsea smirked.
“Don’t get too excited. They’re lab-grown Gen-4 bio-ups. But they’re not powder, so that’s a win.”
She plated the food and slid one of the trays in front of me.
Toast, eggs, some kind of synth-bacon that still spoofed the smell sensors well enough to glitch you for a second.
The toast wasn’t even burnt—that’s how you knew Chelsea had hacked her kitchen settings perfectly.
I picked up a fork. “Fancy.”
Chelsea dropped into the seat across from me, cradling her mug between both hands.
Steam curled up from it, something herbal. Probably nerve-buffer tea from one of those sub-boxes nobody cancels.
“Don’t get used to it,” she teased. “This was leftover from my mom’s last shipment. She keeps sending me food crates like I’m living in sleep-mode.”
“Well,” I said, stabbing at the eggs, “I am in drain zone, so tell her thanks for me.”
Chelsea laughed, but her eyes stayed soft.
“Consider it a patch family housewarming gift.”
Bean jumped up onto the bench beside me, curling into a warm, purring loaf.
I broke off a tiny piece of egg and handed it to her under the table.
She sniffed it suspiciously, then licked at it anyway. Her little pink tongue flicked out, tentative but curious, like she wasn’t sure if breakfast was a matrix glitch.
Chelsea sipped her tea, tapping her thumbnail against the side of the mug.
Her nails clicked lightly on the ceramic—real ceramic, not plastimug printouts. Small luxury.
“So… signal check. How you feeling today?” she asked carefully.
I swallowed, trying not to make it weird. “Tired.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
She let me sit with that for a minute. No pressure. Just… space.
Then she smiled a little.
“At least we didn’t get relocation-drone evicted in the middle of the night, right?”
I huffed out something close to a laugh. “I dunno. I kinda miss the glitch thrill of it.”
“Oh yeah?” Chelsea raised an eyebrow. “Next time I’ll call a repo-bot to scoop you up by the collar. We’ll make it an adventure.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please don’t.”
“Hey, you’re the one that ghoststreamed your apartment keys to a random guy on the street.”
I shrugged, mouth full of eggs. “At least I’m consistent.”
Chelsea shook her head, but she was smiling.
****
We finished breakfast like that—quiet, easy, no big speeches.
The kind of silence that didn’t feel heavy until the core-load rebooted.
But when I set my fork down, the core-load came back online.
Like gravity had just remembered where I was.
The holo-clock blinked softly in the corner of my eye, syncing to my peripheral HUD. The numbers stayed there like a silent accusation: 09:27 A.M.
The world didn’t stop just because you wanted it to.
“I have loop work at noon,” I said, mostly to fill the space.
Chelsea leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.
Her mug clicked softly against the table, the dregs of her tea still steam-looping in tiny spirals.
“You’re still going in?”
“Yeah.” I picked at the edge of my plate.
My nail scraped against the ceramic, my brain in softpatch autopilot.
“I mean… what else am I gonna do? Can’t exactly afford stream-out time.”
She studied me for a second, her eyes narrowing just a little.
Her gaze scanned me the same way her facial ID unpacks door locks—quiet, precise, no fast-forward skips.
“You’re allowed to ping out, Iz,” she said, using the nickname soft. “Especially right now.”
I shrugged. “Rent might be paused, but life isn’t.”
Chelsea reached across the table and soft-patched my wrist, just for a second.
Warmth in the middle of cold air. The smart-table lit up briefly where her hand brushed the surface, tracking contact out of habit.
“You’re not doing this solo-stream anymore, okay?”
I swallowed hard.
The smartfloor hummed faintly, like it could sense the shift in my pulse.
“I know.”
But knowing it and hardwiring it were still different codes.
“What about after the bio-up?” she asked.
Her voice dropped just a little—not sharp, not pushy. Just real. The kind of tone you can’t argue with because it’s not meant to start a fight.
“You can’t go to work in pain-sync, Iz.”
I pushed the eggs around my plate, not really looking at her.
The texture of the food blurred under my fork, soft synth yolk glitching into toast crumbs.
“I’m using sick-mode leave. But that’s it.”
Chelsea frowned. “That’s not gonna be enough time to softpatch-repair.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“You do,” she said, her jaw tightening. Her voice stayed level, but I could see the way her throat moved when she swallowed.
“You just don’t like it.”
I sighed, leaning back in the chair.
The plastifoam cushion stream-shifted under me, too soft to feel solid. The chair’s posture sensors pinged, sending a polite haptic nudge to my wrist screen telling me to sit up straighter. I ignored it.
“I’m not trying to be dramatic, Chels. But sick-mode leave is all I’ve got. No paid recovery patch, no backup income, no fairy godmother. Just me, my job, and whatever’s left in my credstream.”
Chelsea’s lips pressed into a line.
Her smartglasses dimmed automatically, her pupils contracting—stress reflex code. She hated this. Hated that I was already planning how to get back to work before my stitches would even bio-dissolve.
“Maybe you could stay out longer,” she offered, voice softer now.
“At least stay here. Heal. Let me help.”
“I’m already letting you help.”
I tried to smile but it code-crashed on the way out. My face didn’t want to follow the command.
“I’m literally patch-living on your couch, remember?”
“You’re in the bed,” she corrected, narrowing her eyes. “Big difference.”
I huffed out a breath, but my stomach twisted anyway.
Some part of me wanted to melt into the bed and disappear. Another part wanted to ghoststream out the door, like if I stayed too long, the system lag would catch up with me and revoke whatever kindness I was getting on empathy loan.
Bean curled tighter in her loaf position, her tail flicking softly against my leg.
Her world was simple—food, sleep, safe loop.
Mine felt like a glitching OS nobody could softpatch fast enough.
I pushed my plate away and checked my wrist screen.
The PrimePort delivery queue was already updating, notifications sliding across my vision in quiet pulses.
Route Assigned: 14 deliveries. Estimated steps: 22,000. Estimated complaints: at least one.
The algorithm was honest, if nothing else.
“Work,” I muttered.
Chelsea glanced over. “You’re still running PrimePort grindloop?”
I shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta carry the stuff drones can’t.”
The smartdrones did most deliveries now, but they still wouldn’t touch stairs past a certain incline, or buildings with pre-update infrastructure. That meant human runners like me got the leftover glitch routes—rooftop drops, unscanned entryways, anything the system flagged as manual assist required.
Chelsea frowned. “They should be credit-stacking you for that.”
“They don’t. But they do track my stair lag.”
She rolled her eyes, but there wasn’t much else to say.
We both knew the system.
These days nobody hard-starved—technically.
But surviving still came with a system tax.
****
By noon, I was already halfway through my grindloop route.
The PrimePort wrist scanner kept pulsing blue, feeding me delivery after delivery.
No breaks. No questions. Just an endless stream-lock of addresses, package weights, and estimated docking times.
The scanner never slowed down. Even when my pulse did.
Most buildings let drones do the dirty work now, but there were always the exceptions—the towers with broken receivers, the neighborhoods where bots got hacked too many times, the old folks who still wanted human touch delivery because it made them feel special.
The company sold it as a luxury upgrade.
I got paid the same either way.
My legs burned as I jogged up a narrow staircase in a complex that reeked of melted synth-cheese and body spray, carrying a Priority+ package that weighed more than it should’ve.
Some customers used the delivery service to ship things they technically weren’t supposed to—heavy hardware parts, untagged medkits, illegal bio-ups. But PrimePort never cared. As long as the credstream cleared, the runners did the lifting.
My back was already screaming, but I kept moving.
Late deliveries meant pay-code penalties.
PrimePort liked to call them performance softpatches, like changing the wording made it fair.
My wrist screen pinged again:
DOOR 14B – HUMAN CONFIRMATION REQUIRED. CUSTOMER PRESENCE: DETECTED.
Great.
Human contact.
I pasted on my best I-don’t-hate-this face, knocked twice, and waited.
My knees popped when I system shifted my weight.
The door hissed open just enough to reveal an eyeball and half a forehead.
“Package for Taro Singh?” I asked, trying not to sound drain-zoned inside.
A hand shot out, grabbed the box, and vanished.
No thank you, no have a nice day. Just a door slam and a rating swipe.
My wrist buzzed:
Customer rating: 4.0/5.
Feedback: Delivery speed good. Eye contact awkward.
I sighed, wiped my forehead with my sleeve, and swiped to the next waypoint.
My sweat stuck to the scanner band. The inside of the strap smelled like recycled plastiskin.
By stop number nine, my feet felt like signal fuzz—numb but still glitching with ache.
My thighs twitched with little micro-spasms every time I hard-paused too long.
The PrimePort scanner pinged again:
NEXT DELIVERY: BUILDING 83A – ROOFTOP DROP.
Of course.
The drones couldn’t dock here because of the tower’s faulty sky-ports. Human patchrunners got the leftovers. Always.
I took the stairs because the lift was out, like always.
A bio-lift panel blinked error codes at me as I passed it—out of service since last November.
By floor seventeen, my lungs burned.
By floor twenty, I stopped pretending this was cardio-mode.
My mouth tasted like copper. The recycled air in the stairwell was thin, pumped in from budget filters that buzzed faintly overhead but didn’t actually clean anything.
My bio-monitor kept pinging hydration warnings into the corner of my vision, but I swiped them away.
At the top, the wind hit me in the face—cold, sharp, and metallic, like breathing in battery acid packets.
The city air scrubbers were grindlooping overtime today, but they never reached this high.
Rooftop sensors lined the rails, blinking quietly, pretending to system-patch the air.
I dropped the package into the bio-lock chute, scanned my wrist, and waited for the confirmation ping.
DELIVERY COMPLETE.
Payment deposited: 2.15 credits.
Two credits.
Not even enough for synth-caf.
I stood there for a second, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
The rooftop’s solar panels flickered underfoot, struggling to pull power from the overcast sky.
The city stretched out in front of me—gray towers, drone lines streaking the sky like glitchstream constellations, advertising wraps scrolling soft neon text around glass and steel.
Somewhere out there, people lived baseline lives.
I wasn’t one of them.
My wrist buzzed again.
NEXT DELIVERY: HUMAN HANDOFF REQUIRED.
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: CUSTOMER PREFERS FACE-TO-FACE EXCHANGE.
I groaned.
“Of course they do.”
I took the stairs back down, muscles aching with every step.
The building’s stair-sensor auto-logged me, tracking my exact speed, heart rate, and recovery time to PrimePort HQ. Part of the wellness metrics suite. For “team optimization.”
Bean was probably home asleep right now, curled in a sunbeam patch, living her best life.
I shoved the thought away and kept grindlooping.
****
By the time my shift ended, my legs felt like recycled rubberware and my back was glitch-screaming.
I swiped the PrimePort scanner to clock out.
SHIFT COMPLETE.
Today’s Earnings: 38.40 credits.
Estimated energy burned: 2,100 calories.
Hydration level: below optimal.
Suggested recovery time: 12 hours.
I laughed under my breath.
Twelve hours to softpatch from a job that would start again tomorrow.
For less than forty credits. Nano-pay loop. Barely enough for a day of food, never mind bills.
I checked my credstream balance anyway.
The number blinked in my vision:
Total Account: 64.92 credits.
Cool.
Not even triple digits. But hey—at least the system live-streams your broke status now.
I stuffed my scanner back into my pocket and headed for the nearest tram dock.
The wind cut through my jacket on the walk, but I didn’t care anymore.
My legs kept moving. Because what else was I gonna do?
Stop?
****
By the time I got back to Chelsea’s apartment, my legs were noodled code and my stomach felt like a black hole cache.
I keyed into the building with the guest patch code again.
WELCOME BACK, ISABELLA JAMES
—TEMPORARY ACCESS GRANTED—
That word still hit me every time.
Temporary.
I shuffled into the apartment, letting the door close behind me.
The lights auto-shifted, warm tones fading up from the floor panels. The smart-environment system detected overclock fatigue and softpatched the brightness down.
Chelsea wasn’t home yet—probably still at her day-loop shift, or maybe grabbing more supplies she didn’t need to buy for me.
Bean padded over from the couch, tail high, pupils huge like I’d been gone a stream cycle.
She headbutted my leg once, then flopped dramatically onto her side like where’ve you been?
“Hey, Bean,” I mumbled, crouching down to scratch behind her ears.
My shoulders cracked on the way down. The cartilage felt like it wanted to soft retire early.
The apartment felt too bio-upgraded for me. Too quiet. Too safe.
Even the air smelled cleaner here. Filtered, lemon-coded, no stairwell grime packets.
I collapsed onto the couch, dropped my bag onto the floor, and checked my wrist feed.
That’s when I saw it.
[1] NEW MESSAGE: MEDI-NET SURGICAL COORDINATION
My stomach glitch-flipped.
I tapped it open with my thumb, pulse-spiking even though I hadn’t run a fuel loop to justify it.
Hello, Isabella. This is a reminder of your upcoming Womb Synthesis Procedure scheduled for Thursday at 9:00 a.m. Please confirm your arrival time and pre-op compliance check.
There was a holo-link under the message.
A little glowing circle that read:
CONFIRM / CANCEL / RESCHEDULE
I stared at it, my finger hovering just above the Confirm node.
Bean meowed softly, her tail flicking against my ankle.
My throat tightened.
I wasn’t scared of the bio-upgrade itself—not really.
I was scared of everything else. The what-ifs. The after. The fact that life didn’t auto-patch just because you ran an upgrade.
But I pressed Confirm anyway.