There were three women in the dark room; perhaps three female generations of the same family, for there was some resemblance. All three sat in rotting chairs, clothed in soiled rags, white arms extended, pale fingers curled around unseen spheres; I could see the slim metal cable curling through the oldest woman’s white hair to the black deck on a dusty tabletop. Identical cables twisted from the daughter and granddaughter’s skulls. Wireheads. In the last stages of uplink anorexia from the looks of it. Someone must come in occasionally to feed them intravenously and to change their soiled
...more
