Chapter 7: Information Broker

When Ben was done, he was no different from his appearance ten years ago, albeit looking at little more adult like. Though he can still grow past seven feet at will thanks to his robot body underneath all of the implanted skin.

With the feeling of skin back, Ben left the establishment with his threats to Milton about his identity and with only four thousand left in his wallet. His stop at the gun store consisted of him buying out the hand cannon rounds that were left in stock for a few hundred, and an armpit holster so that he wouldn't have to put the gun in his pants, then continuing on to the broker.

When he arrived he was greeted by a high tech skyscraper deep in the city of London. Surrounded by corporate facilities, Ben journeys into the two thousand foot skyscraper.

After making his way into the office that Annabel told him about, he asked the secretary in front of the door about his appointment Annabel set up for him.

"...Yes....November 17th, 2062 at 12:00AM, under the name.....Amon....?"

Ben nodded. "Yes, that's right."

The secretary nodded her head and alerted the broker about the appointment. "Ms. Davies, a counseling session is scheduled in five minutes. Do you want me to send him in now or after?"

She waited a moment before a beep went off her earpiece. "Let him now, I'm just finishing up here with Sir Evans."

"Ok." The secretary looked back at Ben who was enjoying the view of being a thousand feet in the air. "You can head in Mr. Amon."

Ben nodded and walked into the room. What greeted him were two people. The woman behind the desk had tan skin, and short neck length black hair, she was wearing a black pantsuit that went well with her hair.

The man in front of the desk was wearing a bright red suit with a white shirt underneath. He had salt and pepper hair with facial hair coating the bottom half of his face. His dull grey eyes turned to see the new visitor.

"So you're Ben. Annabel talked a lot about you."

Ben glanced at the older gentleman. "I know who I am, yes, but the question is, who are you, Sir Evans?"

"I don't think we have a good enough relationship for exchanging names now are we?" Ben and Sir Evans watched each other before being interrupted by a cough from Mrs. Davies.

"Boys, no one is out for your throats and the second you see each other you get hostile. You two don't even know one another!"

Sir Evans glared at Ms. Davies. "I don't need to know him to hate him since you can see just by looking at him that he is a sentinel."

Ms. Davies looked at the old man confused. "Just by looking at him? Sir Evans he looks like a regular person, albeit a no good merc, but still a person nonetheless."

"This is why I insist on you getting those cyberware optics, Karen." Sir Evans shook his head in disappointment.

"OI, get your facts straight old man! I am not a part of the sentinels and never will be!" Ben was already mentally stressed about coming to learn any information about his family, then this old coot shows up and accuses him of being a part of a sentient A.I country that caused the death of his friend's mother? The nerve of this bastard-

"Say what you want, but know that I am watching you." Leaving with that threat, Sir Evans walked out of the room, cold as an ice bath.

"Sigh, don't mind him. He is just a little worked up from work."

Ben turned back to Karen. "You know I can understand his anger and Miss Ann trying to butter up to me for the chip." Ben narrowed his eyes on the woman. "But why are you trying to butter me up as well? Isn't the chip Miss Ann's gig?"

The woman dropped her warm exterior and glared at Ben." I see you can derive a lot from Annabel in just a few short days. That's not something for you to know. Now then you came in for some information, yes?"

"I need a guarantee that what I ask and receive will stay in this room."

Karen raised an eyebrow at such a condition. "And how would you guarantee that?"

"I want your record of this meeting deleted permanently by me."

The woman frowned. "You're a smart boy. So why in the world would I have to listen to that arrangement? Much less agree to let you into my head."

"Because if you don't, I might as well just self destruct the chip in my head now and end all of this bullshit right now." Ben couldn't risk any harm coming to his mother and sister, and if Karen decided that she was going to share what conspired here with her organization, then Ben would just end it after finding out about his family.

Even if his family was okay or dead, because this just proved that he wasn't needed and could move on to the afterlife that he was robbed of with the chip out of the way.

He might stay a little longer if his family was dead to hunt the killer but then he would just end it straight after. His family was his everything and if him showing back up from the dead would ruin what they built in the ten years that he was gone then he would just go back to being dead.

Karen was startled by the act. "You're willing to die if I don't agree to your condition? Are you crazy?"

"Yes." Ben answered as a matter of fact. You don't go into a void of nothingness for ten long years and come back sane. What's good about Ben's madness is that it is very hidden.

"Sigh fine, but if you do more than delete this conversation, my comrades will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth."

"You have my word that I won't do that."

Karen scoffed. "Let's see if your word actually means anything. So what do you want to know?"

Ben took a deep 'breath' and asked the question he so desperately needed an answer to. "I need to know about the current condition of Isabella Wilson and Bell Wilson."

Karen's eyes widened before a bolstering laugh that didn't fit her frame, came out of her. "Hahaha! You! For all this build up you wanted to know about the Wilsons? Hahaha!"

"Just answer the damn question, woman!"

Karen turned to her computer with a grin stuck to her face and typed in a few things into the search bar for her files before turning the monitor to Ben. What he saw baffled him.

[Isabella Wilson and her daughter Bell Wilson, leading programmers of the Satoshi Corporation builds new chip that preserves the soul! The soul preserver chip has won her and her daughter an ACM Turing Award and millions of dollars in donations for their invention of immortality!]

His optics danced along the computer screen taking in every detail. What baffled him was his mothers connection with Satoshi. Ben had suspected one of the big wigs being involved and Satoshi was one of the suspects, but why would they allow a chip that preserves the mind go into the private market. This was basically the same chip he was on, or that's what he thought.

'There's got to be a catch. Why would Satoshi, who has an enigma as its CEO, allow a technology that lets people come back from the dead?'

Ben ran this thought through his mind again and again, but he could only come up with one solution. 'This chip is probably different from mine. I live in a robot, completely sentient of my actions. While this knockoff is probably not returning people back from the dead, but their controllable constructs.'

Ben was ultimately different from those people. He was an advanced engram, who had his mind completely downloaded to the virtual, while those people that used the soul preserver chip had their spots in the world replaced by constructs that Satoshi had copied thanks to the chip. This was reinforced by the fact that only very very very rich people could by this chip!

'They are reinforcing their power in the higher world of society, making it controllable, but I can't be the only one who came up with this. The leaders of the world and the other enigmas have know what's going on, they just can't stop a super corporation like Satoshi...'

Ben didn't care about the fact that his mother and sister built a death weapon that let Satoshi get more leverage in the world, no, he was more worried about the fact that they were working there in the first place.

'This confirms Satoshi are the ones that killed me, and ripped my family away from me...' The hate in his mind for Satoshi was at an all time high, but he wouldn't let that hate dictate his everyday actions like what happened with Jose.

When Jose's mother died he went all in on designing wetware that allowed people to access and interact with the net while being separate from it so that humanity could obliterate the Sentinels. He spent every waking moment of his life like that, damaging his health and worrying the only parent he had left.

Ben told Jose that fateful day to not let his hate consume his life, and trample on his mothers memory. Yes, Ben hated the Sentinels for what they did to someone he consider his aunt, but that said aunt always told them that if she died because of someone else then they were to not avenge her. She didn't want the boys throwing their lives away for her in this already hellish world.

That's why Jose's father didn't do anything near as drastic as Jose. Yes he was sad, angry, and maddened by the death of his wife, but in the memory of his wife he put his full attention to his child. Alas, anything he tried for Jose to stop was for naught as the boy was in the same amount of misery his father was in, but Jose was six! His mind was fragile and learning about the death of his mother just shattered it completely, he only started to mellow out thanks to Ben and his fathers efforts.

"Alright, since you already asked your question I think we're done he-"

Ben put his hand up interrupting her. "That question barely validates everything I want to know, I paid ten thousand dollars for this opportunity. Next thing I want to know is about the current condition of Jose Vida and Michael Fischer."

Karen tried to put up an argument but Ben shut her down with logic. After she was done typing into her files, fewer results showed up than last time. "Michael Fischer is in charge of the Limitless company, they research A.I. and the like... They are funded by the German government."

Then she typed a few more things into the keyboard. "Jose Vida however fell off the grid about five years ago-"

"Bullshit, No one can fall off the grid, these days. The net is connected to literally everything."

Karen glared at Ben. "Don't interrupt me, do you want your info or not? Anyway, Jose Vida fell off the grid, but there have been sightings of a man of similar looks, heading the Eden gang down in Mexico."

Ben, startled, asked one more thing. "What about his father?"

Karen typed a few more things in the file searcher. "Hmmm....seems like Miguel Vida died 2055."

Ben was thrown down from his joy abruptly. He felt happy about all the people he cared about being alive, but the fact that the only father figure in his life was gone was hard to stomach.

"How did he die?"

Karen glanced at the downtrodden Ben before answering. "He died saving fifteen people in an apartment fire. All of the skin on his body was burned off and his bones were seared to his flesh. They couldn't get the proper cyberware implants in time, because he didn't have enough money for them."

".....I see...."

Karen then closed the file tab on her computer and turned to Ben. "Now that that's done, how about we get this whole record business out of the way and then we can head our separate ways no?"

"Okay, give me your chip slot, so I slot my plug in."

"...You know, that sounds a little sexual, couldn't you have worded that differently?" Karen said as she turned her back to Ben and moved her hair out of the way.

"That's just because you have a dirty mind. Now get ready, it's gonna get a little disorienting."

When Ben was done, Karen felt like she had just blinked in the middle of the conversation with Ben about the conditions and was all of the sudden here. "I'm never gonna get over that." Karen said massaging her forehead.

"Ok, since we're done here, I will go."

After Ben left, Karen reorganized the timeline in her head. "Damn, he was pretty thorough." However the grin on her face let out an important detail. "But not thorough enough." Karen pulled out a recording device she had implanted on her ear and plugged the computer into it.

"In the end you're just too young boy..."