Chapter Two: V.U.I.

As they walked, Daniel scratched the back of his neck where he'd chosen to have his AeEx chip implanted.

AeEx was an old company with a grand vision, One that seemed to have a near infinite amount of funding for their research and concepts. Clearly the government initially supported what they were doing, since the entire company was immune to injunction or common research laws. For years it seemed as though AeEx was just another weapons company, creating unique and interesting weapons for personal use and wartime. Then, a few years before Daniel went to college, AeEx went fully public, with their first commercial product being a microscopic chip that could be implanted anywhere on the body.

The chip was officially titled the Virtual User Interface Chip, or VUI Chip for short. A V.U.I.Chip did a wide variety of things, ranging from serving as a contact service to serving as a calendar. Cell phones were soon outdated and by the beginning of Daniel's first year in school, cell phones were considered tools for children.

V.U.I. Chips operated by using the user's own energy field, absorbing energy through a secret and heavily patented device made of Aether that could take in energy and remain active until the death of the user. The device within the chip was so small that it only took up a tenth of the space on the chip and scientists at AeEx were under contract to never speak of it to anyone.

Aside from being able to make and receive calls, the chips were also able to send text based letters and play games. This was possible because the V.U.I.Chips accessed the brain's neural pathways and could alter how your body perceived things and made it possible for the user to see their interfaces. It also made it possible for the user to feel as though they were actually pressing buttons when they used the interface. Beyond the obvious uses, this was one of the reasons the chips were capable of making calls.

The chips also kept track of security clearances and a wide variety of other uses, enabling members of the school and the government to work with AeEx to set up gates and clearances on campus and the workplace so you could only see what you were meant to see and to alert security when unauthorized people were trying to access information they weren't supposed to see.

Changing the purpose or capabilities of a user's chip was as easy as updating the chip's programming with a simple flash of a specially designed light. The programming regarding the chips was heavily monitored and all external uses of the chips, from web browsing to phone calls were all routed through a massive system of satellites that spiraled around the earth at all times. The chips and programs for them were cheap, but there was an age requirement due to the capabilities and implications of something with so much potential.

Six months prior, at the beginning of his first year of college, Daniel turned nineteen and was officially at the age to get his V.U.I. Chip. He'd chosen the back of his neck because he'd figured that he wouldn't be able to tamper with it there, but it did itch from time to time, something he'd been told occurred because of how much energy the neural pathway has in transit near the base of his neck. There was a positive to that though, with so much neural traffic, his chip would integrate with his body faster and be more usable for him than others.

Hearing a soft bell he looked to his upper left and saw that he'd been left a text message. Looking at Lilliana and seeing that she was focusing on her food, he tapped the image and his message opened up.

Report to my office as soon as possible.

-Marcus

Closing the message, he saw Lilliana glaring at him and she asked him angrily, "Who was that?" Daniel shrugged and said, "Marcus".

She shook her head, clearly annoyed, and went back to her food. Lilliana always hated when Daniel read messages while she was with him, but one of the only people he ever talked to, other than her, was Marcus and it was usually important when he was contacted.

Lily, as Daniel called her, didn't care though. She was a jealous girl and she never really seemed to believe him when he told her that he was talking to Marcus. He stood up and walked to her, leaning down and kissing her gently.

"Why can't I come with you," she asked sadly.

Daniel shrugged and said, "Marcus prefers to talk to me alone."

She looked him in the eye and said, "I'm friends with Marcus too and he never wants to talk to me alone."

Rolling his eyes, Daniel kissed her forehead and apologized to her, to which she said, "You owe me dinner tonight then. We'll be going to Golden Gate."

Golden Gate was a horribly expensive restaurant that used AetherTech designed to look and feel like a diner in San Francisco, Lilly's home town. She hid it well, but Daniel knew she missed her family and home desperately. Nodding his consent, she smiled for him, kissed him and said, "Go. Marcus isn't a patient man."