Written in 365 Parts: 81: One in a Million

“What does that mean? How far away were the third generation from the first?”

“Well rejection rates improved to one in a thousand from one in twelve, so that’s nine times better. Whereas incidents of cyberpsychosis went from one in six to one in a million.”

“That’s a nice round number.”

“It’s more like one million, twenty-nine thousand and seventy three. But one in a million sounded cleaner. I figure you don’t want the decimals for any of these stats?”

“No. What you are telling me is that the third generation were one hundred and fifty thousand times less likely to go insane?”

“That does cover all elements of the affliction from the milder more neurotic tendencies, all the way to full on reality altered mental collapse.”

“However, that’s still an impressive change.”

“You have to understand, Drick, that the idea of implants while normal to us, to others it is as alien a concept as you can have. It isn’t just a mental reaction, there is a lot of physical rejection that happens based on emotional response. It’s sticking things in your body and having them control parts of your reality and perception. That’s some gut wrenching alteration for the uninitiated. This could be the reason that Marsh’s unit was repressed so much. Maybe they didn’t want it doing anything more than translation to reduce the chance of him flipping.”

“That makes some sense. But it is still another niggle. I don’t wholly buy that he is just some long frozen man who has been in a chiller for over a thousand years. Why was he frozen for so long? Why wake him up now? Why the hell give him an implant? I get that you might want to speak with him if you did wake him up, but that implant is a heck of an excessive piece of tech for that.”

“I can’t help you any more than I have already Drick.”

“I know. I want you to dig around a little more into the base levels of the implants memory and operating processes. See if you can dig out how long it has been there and if there are any snatches of data residual in any of its systems. It is a small chance but you never know what you might dig up.”