This is Part 6 of the Serial called Disconnection.
* * *
The com of the triad played at drinking a bitter whiskey while her companions monitored her heart, and the rest of the room. Her skin felt tight, her teeth chattered — information passed through her at a rate that was making her fingertips buzz, her eyelids flutter.
* * *
She broadcasted, live from the silent zone, bypassing Nex’s permissions with a subroutine that Runig could not help but admire, even as it infuriated him. “Bastard’ll end up on this side of the wall and in my chair within less than a decade,” he muttered to himself, offline and unrecorded. If Runig had any idea just how right he’d be, he probably would’ve been using a word far stronger than ‘bastard.’
Within moments, the main host itself was accepting the transmission and rerouting it to play back over nearly every known device. Hell, even unknown devices — a woman connected only minorly to a sub-tertiary grid began to pray as her antique toaster began to hum with life and describe, in intimate detail, precisely how it was going to insinuate itself into the main host and infect it with something that would bring the age of connection to a snarling, sparking halt.
When it laughed, popping up two charred slices of marble rye, caraway seeds black and smoking, she fainted.
* * *
The Old Jones 
Ah, to watch yourself become obsolete before your very eyes as the next generation replaces you. It’s a feeling we all go through I guess. That Runig better learn to play nice with the next gen if he wants to the new world being born before him. That scene with the toaster was gold by the way. Great stuff! Keep it up!
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Hah, thank you! And yes, Runig has a hard time with young upstarts — it’s always the way, I imagine! 🙂
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