Tattoo

By Jeffrey R. Butler

People use tattoos as visible expressions of experience and aspiration; declarations to the world, sometimes hidden, always there.
But what if your tattoos could do more, could remake desire into apparent reality - let you reinvent yourself as anyone, or anything?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey R. Butler
• Release date: Jul 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988166608

Jeffrey R. Butler

Former science worker, current science equipment salesman; supplying the electrodes and lightning towers to the aspiring Frankensteins of the world. Drawn by the power of what we can conceive of in the mind, in worlds of fantasy and science fiction and curious as to what the real scientists and engineers do with those ideas.

Book preview

Tattoo

a novella

Jeffrey R. Butler

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

More information about Jeffrey Butler and his works can be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/JRButler.writer

or through select, online book retailers.

Metallic scent, electric ink. Glowing sigils flow across my chest; a lost alphabet, new circuits illuminating tribal patterns.

Joey was the only one I trusted to tattoo the mod, what with half my enhancements being old-school, and all of them custom. I still had implants for chrissakes, laid in when doped nanotubes were still bleeding edge. Joey had been doing my work since university, since before I was expelled. Not that they’d been able to prove anything.

I was here, finally. I’d spent the last six months banging my head against a wall of circuits and code, and the burn of the tattoo would be my reward. I’d finally worked it out.

Black Hole, my band, would love it.

Sure, Sonic Death and The Happy Torturers had managed to get some crazy holographic effects using bulky external signal amplifiers. They even made all the clunky equipment part of their show, working it into their whole TechDeathMetal aesthetic.

Black Hole had a more stripped-down sound, a stripped-down idea, just like my new tech. With the mods I’d made to my neural implant, we’d be able to do costume changes, even identity changes, with the flip of a thought. Joey didn’t like the idea much. You think that’s anything close to wise? I’ve heard stories of spooks using neural implants to control people.

C’mon Joey, what’s the big deal? I’ve had these implants for years. You know they’re hardened and insulated, so I’d never have to worry about unauthorized access to my head. Ever since the government spooks started putting passive EEG readers in the bus stations. I gestured at the electromagnets that Joey needed to follow the board inking process. Otherwise my head would have blown up when you turned those on. Besides, mine is so custom that they’d never be able to make enough sense of it to hack it.

They could… slave it to another implant... said Joey, flipping a switch."

Yeah, sure, but those stories are just that, stories. Even if that were possible, the mods I’m making to the implant would make no difference. And I made sure the band got as good as I did.

I guess so, man. Anyway, we’re done here. You’re ready for the install.

As the hum of the magnets faded, so did the glow of my newly-inked circuits, and I was left with my traditional ink. They were mostly Tlingit and Haida, but I had a few Yakuza rip-offs done years ago to give me street cred, back when I worried about that shit.

I nodded towards the now quiet machinery. New MRI assembly?

Yeah, Doc Johnson needed some work done on a new gamer dermals. Some good work, but ugly as hell. I prettied up the circuit pattern so it’d look good when the kids slapped ‘em on skin, and took payment in trade. He even helped me with a few tweaks.

I looked at the machinery again. It had been modified a fair bit but… Those are Janssen 1340s, aren’t they? Solid work.

Yeah, and they have room for custom upgrades. Now quit stalling.

I flipped Joey the bird. He just smiled. Swinging my legs off the side of the couch, I shuffled over to his workstation. I placed my right hand against the neural interface and picked up the memory stick with my left thumb and forefinger. The computer desktop overlaid my vision, the real world appearing only as a faint image on my retina. I turned down the overlay intensity so I could still see Joey, and activated the program install. I waited, and felt the burn of the new circuits as they activated. It was a fine gridwork of lines and nodes: contrasting angular grids for the logic boards, and flowing, branching lines along my nervous system. Joey, as always, had laid them with an artist’s eye.

Well? Joey said.

Yeah, yeah, give me a fucking minute. That was a big board, you know. Neural inhibitors or not, that still fucking stings.

Yeah, well wait until you get the real ink – no neural inhibitors for that, you pussy.

Whatever, ya bloody sadist. I paused, made a few keystrokes to move the install along and said, So, you heard that new track from Biloxi? Shitty drums, but that girl’s got one kickass voice.

You’re just a sucker for a pretty voice, but yeah, it’s not bad.

And you’re just a snob – you think that if it isn’t incomprehensible then it’s a sellout.

What I think is that good art isn’t easy, Joey retorted.

Depends on the art, I