what’s that? more alluka-the-dystopian-cyberpunk-rebellion-leader? when I should be sleeping but I just turned in another 10k edit of my work paper and I’m too tired to sleep or do anything productive? why of course I have more.
(this got uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh real long so. here’s a cut. sorry mobile people, I feel your pain)
for people who download “legally” (i.e., rich people), they usually have some sort of pod for holding their bodies linked up to a closed-circuit net, something that allows them to come back whenever they please. it also prevents attempts at overrides or downloads. militaries involved in interplanetary warfare often will download mercs or specialized forces (like Hunters) into soldiers hardwired into being temporary IPRSes (Inter-Personal Remote Servers--the polite term is tipper, but most people just call them drones or meatsacks)--most of the time, this is much easier to accomplish with just sending people, since you need a link to send someone between bodies. or a ridiculously high-powered server.
Hunters have access to one, but there are so few of them (because they die a LOT or just get lost between up/down somewhere and never come back) and they are so scattered, there’d be no way of keeping track of them if they didn’t. it’s still nearly impossible. (ging abuses this power incessantly. gon is almost as bad by the time he runs into killua; there’s a reason he considers his own body to be a meatsack.)
but the zoldycks have one of equal power, used only for the family. silva prefers physical transport for himself in most cases, as he’s getting a bit older and prefers the power of his own hands--he calls it old-fashioned, alluka and killua know it’s just a way of solidifying power and re-emphasizing his wealth. but for the dirty work the family does, work that they only don’t go to prison for because so much of it is legally done? their kids and select employees can be sent across the system just barely under the speed of light, from their server rooms hidden in the bowels of mars.
(please note that if this doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry, it’s late and I’m not an IT person. if it helps, call it space cyberpunk magic)
killua, once he’s trained enough (so, 12ish) spends a lot of time assassinating people on the other side of the system, often on ios or triton or occasionally luna colony, and si fairly comfortable in bodies not his. it gets less distressing as he grows up, no longer having to adjust for the occasional adult body once he’s 18 because he is an adult and hormone levels are regulated in meatsacks most of the time. illumi stays close, more often than not, until killua’s 16 and formally named the zoldyck heir (and even then illumi does “check in” from time to time). kalluto joins the spiders, who are based on earth, but maintains a regular drone with one of the butlers. milluki runs the family servers, and kikyo is incredibly active in the field--her optic implants allow her to access a wide range of data visually, and she can basically be in two places at once. unlike silva, she loves downloading and getting someone else’s hands dirty, seeing through someone else’s eyes. even just hacking someone else’s eyes is almost good enough.
alluka doesn’t quite get that opportunity. she’s...not coddled exactly, since she knows she’s a girl and no one but killua really believes her, but ignored. given access to the family resources, as long as she stays in the mansion underground. and honestly, most days, “the mansion underground” looks more like an idealized outdoors than anywhere else on mars: blue skies, green grass, warm solar lights. alluka doesn’t know mars has a red sky until she’s 12 or 13, when killua takes her out of the mansion for a day trip.
but she keeps ending up in the download bays, trying somewhere new. someone new. at first, the butlers would accompany her, often tsubome or amane--”a family tradition,” gotoh explained once, which...fair, most of the family does travel with another, even if they’re less tradition and more tailing alluka (and killua, when he’s rebellious, which is more often as he gets older and has more responsibilities).
she rolls up her sleeves and installs her own download bay in her part of the mansion when she’s 14. she makes the butlers ensure she has the proper hardware installed on her brainstem, the same process every other zoldyck goes through. milluki complains to silva and kikyo, but alluka complains to killua and then no one complains after that.
so alluka wanders: to ios, to see the ice caps and the O2 drills. to luna colony, to see that vast cities and immense urban sprawl and the fashion. she goes to earth and stays with a family with barely enough to eat, whose only reason for survival was their daughter’s not-entirely-complete hardwiring. even as far as the kepler belt, so far it takes her days to get used to her own feet once she returns. but killua’s out--for days, for weeks, maybe, doing things that make him look empty even when he’s back in his own head--so no one notices. no one ever notices she’s gone for so long, server pods keeping her muscles active and blood pumping even when she’s not using them. for years, she leaves home and tries to learn about others’. for the most part, she hates what she learns. but sometimes, she finds things so beautiful, so moving, so good, she can’t help but weep. she hopes killua gets to see some of that even in his worst jobs, something to remind him that the world isn’t entirely worth killing carelessly, and saves away the memories for later.
when she’s 16, alluka decides to explore mars.
she tells tsubome--still hovering, still worried, still smiling a caring smile when she’s not paid to--she’s going to check out the domes near the remnants of the ice caps. domes she visited already, knows the ins and outs of, but that no one else knows she did.
she wants to explore the city rooted in the zoldycks’ mansions, the city that feeds them and is nourished by them and that they feed on. so she picks a young girl to download into, someone who lives on the surface and works for the farms. alluka intends only to joyride, to remain quiet, let the girl do her work and help where she can. but once she’s downloaded, before the girl awakens, alluka notices a body with no name tucked into the corner of the available tippers. this isn’t a bad shop--alluka does have standards--but it’s not a place that zoldycks should be getting a drone from. but the other drone in the corner, standing but not seeing, looks different. and it’s not just the chalky white skin and blank black eyes, hair cut to a soft fuzz on their head to best display a poorly-centered hardwire on the back of their neck.
“you don’t want that one,” the dealer says. “it’ll never be quiet with that one. it can’t move, but it can’t shut up. bad for business”
alluka immediately buys out her contract on the spot--hard creds only, killua taught her that’s important to not be traced. she’s not sure what she’s going to do with the tipper, if she’s as faulty as the vendor says, but alluka can’t just let the drone stay there with him. who knows what would happen.
she re-loads into the new body, not sure what to expect, and walks out of the shop into the grimy mars undercity, only a few levels below the dusty red surface. for a minute, there’s nothing but the usual fuzz of someone else’s consciousness, not quite coherent but still there, pressing at the edges of the link.
she absolutely doesn’t expect the quiet hi.
alluka blinks their eyes. this person, this girl...this girl is like her. “hi,” she says. “what’s your name?”
the other girl is quiet long enough that alluka wonders if maybe the link is broken. because she can feel the girl pressing, buzzing at the edges in a way that almost feels like speech. it should be annoying, but alluka finds it comforting, that someone else is there with her.
something, the girl says. or well, she says nanika, a glitch like an accent making her voice echo.
alluka grins. “nanika,” she says, and the buzzing eases a little. “my name’s alluka.”
alluka. alluka is me. nanika seems to take a minute to process this. you have wish? images flash across alluka’s mind, violence and disgust and fear laced through them all like she’s experiencing the emotions herself. it’s terrible enough that she drops to a corner, the store’s coarse civvies not a comfortable fabric at all.
“no, nothing like that!” alluka says when she stops shaking. the software in the wiring are supposed to stop feedback loops, but whatever’s taken nanika’s speech has overridden whatever programming that kept her quiet, leaving her nothing but echoes. alive, but not. like a ghost. alluka’s abruptly furious at whoever let this happen, ready to burn. “nanika, is that what you want?”
the buzzing ricochets around alluka’s head in a vehement negation. it’s replaced with sunlight, or at least the sort of sun you get on mars, filtered through several layers of dust and canopy and shelter, reflected down into the undercities. hidden deep in a tunnel, there’s a beautiful blue flower growing on a vine. and there’s relief, that she doesn’t have to be scared anymore. that little spark of something beautiful, something good, that might be able to take hold if only all the grime and muck and bad were gone.
alluka won’t let her be scared.
alluka is me. nanika is alluka.
they smile. “let’s go see the sun,” alluka says. “we’ll start cutting the weeds down after that.”
