“I’m not sure,” again a strong look of confusion, “everything is all jumbled in my head.”
“Try to not over think. When they sprayed you it would have had a mild anaesthetic mixed in along with the other chemicals. They call it a pacifying attack. That’s not what I would call it as I think they would make anyone mad as hell, but the mix is strong enough to incapacitate you so that you can’t do anything about it. So I guess pacifying works. Anyway that’s going to mess with your short term memory and add to your feelings of confusion. So let’s go longer term. Do you have a name?”
“Yeah, sure people call me Marsh.”
“Well, Marsh, that’s a start. People call me Drick. You want to share where you’re from as with your arms strapped behind your back I can’t see your skindent.”
“My what?”
“They must have given you a heck of a dosage of that, or maybe you just react badly to it. Your skindent. The identity tag tattooed on your wrist.”
“I don’t think I have one.”
Drick raised an eyebrow and laughed, “sure you do Marsh, everyone has a skindent, you can’t even buy a glass of water without one. How do you pay if the vendor can’t access a register to draw from an account?” Drick shook their head, “look,” they said moving so Marsh could see their arms. There were tatoos going up the forearm from the wrist, they moved updating to show different symbols and shapes or graphs. Marsh could see current time, heart rate, tasks lists and other information in one tattoo while a band on the wrist scrolled constantly with a range of numbers.
“I have five of them,” said Drick, “the wrist one is of course my tube tag but I got the others for various helpful functions. Everyone has a tube skindent Marsh, you get it implanted when they pop you out as a new birth.”
Marsh shuffled round so that Drick could see the arms strapped behind. Drick stared at Marsh’s wrists. Stared at them for a long time before speaking again. “Shit” was what they finally said. “You don’t have a skindent Marsh. Who the hell are you?”
