The mission was simple: procure sustenance. The target was a shelf of nutrient paste in a brightly lit megastore aisle within the lower sectors of The Sprawl of Saint Protagoras. But his hand trembled, caught in the gravitic pull of two opposing absolutes. It hovered, a millimeter at a time, between two plastic tubs. On the left, the clean green packaging of Nutri-Social. On the right, the bold red-and-white of Sovereign Sustenance. A simple choice. A binary decision. And for Dr. Julian Croft, it was an impossible one.
The air smelled of ozone from the humming coolers and the faint, sweet perfume of industrial floor polish. A public address system murmured algorithmically generated reassurances about in-store specials. His hand drifted toward Nutri-Social.
Then came the flood. It wasn't a thought, but a full-spectrum data assault from the Equity-Aggressor parasite nested in his limbic system. Infographics bloomed behind his eyes, their lines sharp and accusatory. He saw charts detailing the brand’s exploitative labor practices in off-world protein vats, a history of union-busting rendered in stark, unavoidable clarity. A montage of news clips, sourced from a dozen progressive feeds, scrolled past, detailing the founder’s problematic statements on cognitive diversity. His hand recoiled as if the plastic tub were hot. The moral certainty of the parasite was a physical force, a wave of revulsion that tightened the muscles in his arm.
His hand, now free, began a slow drift toward the other option. Sovereign Sustenance. Before his fingers could get within a centimeter, the counter-assault erupted. The Patriot-Primal, a creature of scorched-earth logic and barbed-wire pride, surged from his brainstem. It was a different kind of data, less analytical, more visceral. It showed maps of capital flight, a web of offshore holding companies designed to circumvent national tariffs. It screamed betrayal. The ingredients, while technically pure, were sourced from non-allied economic zones. A data-point flashed: Purity Score -40%. His hand flinched back again, caught in the crossfire.
He was a pendulum, frozen at the apex of two opposing swings. The Host-Swarm, the waking state that was his life, was locked in perfect, agonizing equilibrium. On his forearm, the embedded Somatic Sigils, the bio-implants that broadcasted ideological allegiance to the world, couldn't resolve the conflict. They flickered, a frantic strobe of magenta for the Equity-Aggressor and electric blue for the Patriot-Primal. The rapid signal switching sent a jolt of neural feedback up his arm, a painful spasm that made the limb twitch.
A woman pushing a cart down the aisle gave him a wide berth. Her own sigil glowed a steady, placid green. She glanced at the strobing light on his arm, her expression a practiced blend of pity and distaste, the look one gives a malfunctioning appliance or a sick animal. The social pressure was a new weight, another variable in an already impossible equation. His signal integrity was failing, the biological equivalent of a dropped call.
Through the storm of parasitic static, a sliver of something else pushed through. A ghost. The rational mind of Julian Croft, the scientist who was supposed to be in charge. It was a moment of clarity that lasted less than a second, a flicker of lucid insight in the hurricane of belief. It was not a voice, but a pure, cold recognition of the absurdity of his situation. A man, a scientist, paralyzed by the marketing of processed food.
The insight was enough. It was a lever. His fingers, which had been trembling uselessly, clenched into a fist. He was still holding the cheap plastic fork he’d picked up in the food court an hour ago. The tines dug into his palm. He squeezed.
The fork snapped. The sound was a sharp, clean crack in the dull hum of the megastore. It was a gunshot in a library. The physical shock, the tiny pain in his palm, was a pattern-interrupt. It broke the feedback loop. The warring data-floods receded, the certainty of the parasites momentarily scrambled by the intrusion of pure, physical sensation. His mind was his own, for a moment.
He didn't use the moment to choose. He used it to flee. With a shuddering breath, Croft abandoned his shopping cart, its single, squeaking wheel a final accusation. He turned and walked, his movements stiff, forcing his legs to move before the paralysis could reclaim them. The anxiety was a physical thing now, a hot slick of sweat on his skin, his heart hammering against his ribs. His internal monitors registered an anxiety level of 89%.
He pushed through the automatic doors and out into the perpetual grey drizzle of the Sprawl. The rain was cool on his hot face. He leaned against the cold ferrocrete wall of the megastore, breathing heavily. The mission was a failure. His internal log, the passive system that recorded his biological functions for later analysis, tagged the event: Procure Sustenance, 0% success. Parasite Dominance, Unresolved. The data was stored, another file for the Analyst to dissect in the sterile, white room of the REM Diagram, the only place Croft was ever truly himself.
The rain hissed on the pavement. A transport drone rumbled overhead, its lights cutting through the smog. He felt the familiar despair, the sense of being a passenger in his own body.
A high-priority chime, crisp and insistent, cut through the noise of the street. It came from the wrist-comm fused to his skin. He looked down. A single line of text glowed on the dark screen, a mandatory debrief alert from Cognitive Immunology Division Headquarters. Alert Priority: Alpha-7. The system he served, the one that classified him as a uniquely valuable and dangerously unstable asset, was calling.
The system demanded its broken tool report for duty.
