Chapter 6

It took them over three months to work out the chips' power supply, and she found out sooner than everyone else because Mira accosted her in the kitchen and started excitedly reading out passages from the report. They'd gone the biological route. Silicia did her best not to think about the particulars of a tiny computer in someone's head being artifically hooked up to their central nervous system and blood stream, and she felt better for not really understanding most of what Mira read out to her.
When she started explaining how this technological marvel would be achieved, Silicia had to stop her before she got too graphic. She wasn't usually squeamish, but something about the position of the things really wigged her out.

The freakiest part turned out to be the low red light which blinked its relentless slow rythm from all the students' necks once their bandages came off in another two weeks' time. It somehow permeated through the skin in a near unobscured rectangle, and dimmed and grew in intensity like a visual heartbeat.

She hated it, but again that human superpower of getting used to strange things wore the sharp edges off her revulsion, until eventually the idea of the chips became just day to day routine to her. It felt less normal again when it was announced that the staff would be chipped too.

She spent the rest of that day feeling feverishly weightless, and when she came home and heard Mira humming along to the radio in the kitchen she could not for the life of her parse whether she was relieved to have someone to talk to or whether she wanted to turn right back around and run until her legs gave out instead.

She dropped her bag by the door, hung her jacket up like she did every day, walked into the kitchen on quiet soles. Mira turned around with a bright smile.

'You want to chip me like cattle?' Silicia thought, but she couldn't say that, and so she said nothing. Mira must have noticed her mood but danced over to her anyway with that smile of hers never faltering, and wrapped her arms around Silicia to spin her in a happy little pirouette.

Silicia suddenly found it hard to breathe with all the feelings crowding up in her ribcage like they were trying to escape, her lungs being outcompeted for space by the incisive thought that she really loved this woman, despite everything, and it fucking hurt. Mira grinned at her, oblivious, or intentionally ignorant.

---

She walked around all week like she was in a trance, althought she thought maybe she'd been feeling that way for a while now, just less acutely. It was all so hard to tell from where she stood now. Time crawled on, and the day Mira had enthusiastically marked in Silicia's calendar approached. She couldn't actually articulate what she was so afraid of - she knew the project's goals were benign,knew her own girlfriend was heading it. If she couldn't trust Mira, then who could she trust? None of the students had had any problems with the chips. By all accounts she was just overreacting to this.

She still hadn't managed to calm herself by the time she sat down heavily in the lobby waiting area on the day of. Mira had come with and was standing at her side, rubbing her back encouragingly as Silicia turned over an info leaflet on the chips without really managing to read any of it. Medical benefits, improved memory, remote activation, ID, it went on and on and none of it meant anything to her.

They'd torn out an unused side office and turned it into a small infirmary. The clear glass walls had been swapped for frosted glass, so it all remained somewhat see-through. She was not looking.

Finally, Silicia was called in. She passed an employee she didn't recognize on their way out, their neck bandaged and hiding the wound from her intent gaze. Mira was allowed in with her, because of course she was. Really they were very nice to her, although she could remember very few details of what had been said clearly, later. What she remembered was mostly the applicator they'd shown her.
It was something like a cross between a syringe and a scalpel, and she stared at it as the nurse explained to her that the blade was there to make a precise incision for the rest of the apparatus to slip the chip inside the correct way around. He demonstrated how the applicator would move once triggered, unfolding like a praying mantis' arms, or a bass' jaw. Then, finally, he showed her the thing itself, presented in a sterile square plastic bag on the flat palm of his gloved hand.

It was tiny, smaller than her phone's SD card, an unsettling amalgam of technology and biology. Its tissue was bloodless and thus a tender whispy white, almost more reflective under the harsh artificial light than the smooth metal that framed the unpowered red LED. She looked over her shoulder at Mira, also transfixed by it - only she was looking at it with barely contained pride.

Silicia turned back to the nurse and nodded her acknowledgement. A metal arm was swung out in front of her from the nearest machine and a hand between her shoulder blades guided her to put her head on the curved chin rest and press her shoulders up against the pads. The construction somewhat resembled a really weird massage table.

She watched Mira pull up a chair opposite to her, smiling warmly at her. It did nothing to make Silicia feel less trapped.

A gloved hand was run up the side of her neck before the nurse deemed her ok to start.

"Alright. This will sting, so try not to flinch."

She considered nodding, but didn't. Only when Mira took hold of her clenched hands and lifted them out of her lap did she notice that she'd closed her eyes.

The pain itself was manageable - the sting he'd warned of was barely there, the blade must have been very sharp - but the sensation of the chip going into her skin was as indescribable as it was viscerally alarming.

The wound burned as he pulled her upright and wrapped gauze around her neck, and then she was free to go.

---

They'd both taken the day off, and although the tension in her body had started dissolving the moment she left the infirmary, Mira watched her like a hawk the entire time. She had definitely seen it on Silicia's face all week, but hadn't commented - thankfully. They had an exceedingly regular dinner and settled in for the evening like they often had before all this.

That night Silicia had a nightmare. It started off murky and indistinct; she was standing in an unlit room, or floating, or falling. Out of the darkness a warm hand appeared which wound itself around her wrist and tugged lightly upwards - then there was another, grabbing at her elbow, and another that laid itself around her neck. More and more hands appeared, until there were enough to begin lifting her. Silicia struggled, but couldn't get loose even as the dark space around her was illuminated by rhythmic flashes of red light. An unshakeable feeling of dread permeated the entire experience.

She startled awake in bed, her legs tangled in the covers and sweat running down her back. Mira sat up too, calmly, innocently coaxing her to lay back down and go back to sleep. She went to get her a glass of water and Silicia lay in the darkness, listening to her walk around in the dark flat and pressing a shaking hand against her bandaged neck where a small parasite was drinking her blood and unnaturally heating her skin from underneath.

---

She called in sick the day after, but woke early enough to see Mira off to work, mostly because she had trouble sleeping for more than an hour or so at a time after that nightmare.

Silicia spent the day on the couch dozing through reruns of a tv show she'd liked when she was in school until around noon when she was jolted awake by the ringing of her cell phone. At first she hoped it would just stop, but eventually she gave in and dragged herself into the hallway to dig it out of her coat pocket.

It was Anne, who was on lunch break and asking how she was holding up. She'd gotten her own chip the Friday before, and had had the weekend to recover.

"So, Si, feeling the effects of the mind control yet?"

Silicia laughed weakly and muted the tv as she dropped back into her vacated seat.

"Just feeling really tired honestly. Mira said that was normal; I guess the integration of artificial blood vessels does weird things to a person. Interferes with normal tissue repair processes or something."

"Woah, I do not want to hear about what's going on in there. I guess she would know best what to expect though."

Silicia ran a hand over her face, yearning to fall back asleep. Mira was not a medical doctor. Though when she didn't reply, Anna just went on.

"Damn thing knocked me out all of Saturday morning, but come nightfall I was completely fine. But by then of course I'd spent like, the entire day sleeping, and couldn't get a wink... awful Sunday, worst of all for the kid, naturally."

She laughed in commiseration, and it took less effort this time.

---

Having Tuesday off turned out to be enough, although she didn't magically feel alright again like Anne had suggested she might. She just woke on Wednesday morning, tired and with a slight ache in her neck, and went back to work. Fred clapped her on the back and made a bad joke about bird migration that he had to explain to her after, and just like that her life was back to normal. That night she fell into bed early and slept almost 10 hours, uninterrupted by nightmares.

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