Chapter 50: Festival Rumors

Arron, now with a thick white gauze covering his right eye, was led out of the dim operating room by Dr. Impleman and into the bright lobby room.

“The Gaseous Ethylene should wear off in a minute or two. You are welcome to sit here until it does,” said Dr. Impleman, waving his hand toward an empty cushioned couch, before starting typing up the bill for the implant surgery.

Arron sat down on the couch to wait for his fuzzy head to clear up.

“Don't remove the patch over your right eye or touch it before tomorrow morning. If you have any problems in the morning I can take a look, anything that happens after that will cost you credits,” said Dr. Impleman, as he swiped his hand towards Arron sending him the invoice for the operation.

It took Arron a few seconds to react as his mind was still fuzzy. When he opened the invoice his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He had to calm himself so that there were no adverse effects to his new implant.

With a shaky hand that was not caused by the Gaseous Ethylene, he pressed the okay option and paid the 7500 credits.

His savings was almost completely gone with this one purchase.

Now he would have to join Ward with pinching every credit he had for the rest of the month.

Luckily, there was only one week left until next month's payment would arrive.

Once the payment was verified and the credits transferred, Dr. Impleman turned his attention to the next customer and led them back to the operating room.

When Arron's head cleared up he stood up and left the building. As he stepped onto the moving sidewalk that was heading to the MagLev station he opened his contact list and tapped on Kix's name to start a call.

“Hey! You're alive! So I guess the operation was a success?” said Kix as soon as the call connected and he saw Arron's face.

“It was. The doctor said it should be fully set in the morning,” said Arron.

“Doctor? You went to one of the expensive places?” asked Kix with a whistle.

“Don't all the implant shops have doctors?”

“Nope. Only the top-tier places do. You may find some washouts in the medium tier shops but their service is hit or miss, the cheap low tier shops are all manned by bots so they can complete as many operations as quickly as possible 24/7.”

“I didn't know that.”

“It's probably for the best that you went there. You only end up with even more problems a year later with those other places. So, how is your head feeling?”

“I only just got off the Gaseous Ethylene a bit ago, but my head is fine, I feel no pain.”

“That's great. That new eye should really help you out now. I was going to call you later since I just heard a new rumor. Tomorrow will be the start of a planned week-long 'Festival', so you better get all the sleep you can tonight.”

“A week-long Festival?”

“If the rumors are true, then you only need to wait till tomorrow and you'll find out all the details. Well, my synth tv dinner just finished cooking so I'll see you tomorrow,” said Kix, before ending the call.

Arron looked at his contact list and was debating with himself whether or not to call his parents and Mel to update them on how things were going. After some thought, he decided to put it off since his current situation would only cause them to worry.

Instead, he opened the holonet and searched for information on the upcoming Festival... but nothing came up in the search results.

***

When Arron woke up the next morning he walked to the bathroom scratching his chest. He had slept like a log. It was the best sleep he had had in almost a week.

After taking care of his morning business he once again found himself looking into the bathroom mirror.

As he stared at his face he started to pull off the sticky gauze cloth patch that was covering his right eye. When it was completely removed, his closed right eyelid slowly opened revealing a bright electric blue eye.

Arron leaned in closer to the mirror and upon a closer inspection he could just make out several specs of white in the blue iris.

When he compared it up close to his left eye he could definitely see a difference between the different shades of blue. It would probably not be that noticeable to other people, only if they took the time closely inspecting both his eyes would they notice anything.

Arron noticed a few messages appear up in the right corner of his right eye's vision.

The text was all in green.

[Software updating... Completed.]

[Installation... Completed.]

The messages blinked for a few seconds before slowly fading away.

'I wonder what software I was given...' thought Arron as he exited the bathroom to get dressed for work.

When he was fully dressed he went to the kitchen and opened one of the wall cupboards and stared at the rows of synth-energy jelly pouches.

As he was deciding on which flavor to eat this morning, a white transparent line popped up from the pouch he was looking at. At the end of the extended line was a string of white text [Pickled Pickle flavor Synth-energy Jelly. Expected expiration date: Never].

He turned his gaze to several other packs in the cupboard and each of them had the same thing happen when he looked at them for a longer period of time.

“So that's what it is,” said Arron as he nodded to himself.

As he exited his apartment and entered the Mag-shoot, he found that the white lines popped up from the other people's heads with their names when he looked at them.

'So it is sort of like my helmet visor, just not as detailed,' thought Arron.

***

Arron and Kix sat in a row of hover seats near the back of the large conference room along with the other members of the ERF Unit 3.

The room was filled with both the ERF teams as well as the normal M1 patrol officers and was full of chatter. Such a gathering was extremely rare.

Many of them were gossiping and guessing the reason they had all been called to the conference room.

“Listen up you ruffians!” shouted Chief Chesty Buller, as he stormed into the conference room with the head officers of ERF, Logistics, M1 patrols, and mechanics following behind him.

They walked up onto the short stage at the front of the room and turned to the several thousand M1 officers that were now staring back at them.

“As some of you might have guessed, Mother and Father have planned a Rage week Festival starting from today to the end of the week,” said chief Chesty Buller.

Several of the officers in the rows of hover-chairs nodded their heads as if expecting this news.

“For those of you who have never experienced a Rage week festival either as a civilian or an officer. Think of the normal daily difficulties you go through each day... and times it by at least 10,” said chief Chesty.

Arron thought he saw the chief's scanning gaze stop on him as he said that last part, but I soon moved to look at the other officers.

“For this reason expect to have your workload this week doubled if not tripled, every day.”

Chief Chesty let the words sink in before continuing.

“I know some of you like to flaunt the rules of not staying with your partner at all times since you believe you are safe enough. The rules are there for a reason. The Rage week Festival is not a time for you to goof off. You better be giving it your all this week, because I don't want to have to go to your funerals because of some stupid mistake.”