Episode 1 - The Beam

but if you wanted a double cock or an asshole that could shrink to carry a pin or expand to swallow a bookcase, you went to FG. But in all of the stores, what he found paled in comparison to the equipment at Xenia by a factor of ten.
    Doc shook his head, annoyed. Then he swiped the search away, rose, and circled the room snuffing lights by pinching his fingers at them. A tune rose as his canvas recognized his movements, and after that, Doc let the computers do the rest. The light in his bedroom came on low. The music was mellow, almost hypnotic, filled with subaural reverberations that would tune his CNS neurons while he slept. The bathroom light came on, beckoning him. Doc washed his face, changed, and tapped the mirror to bring up the next day’s weather. Much of the weather was artificial inside the NAU’s protective lattice, so predictions were usually accurate and conditions fairly good. Doc called up the report and swore. They were letting it rain tomorrow. He’d probably end up hiking through the city and getting soaked on his usual rounds, thanks to the fucking protestors.
    Doc shook his head, left the bathroom without swiping the lights off, then watched as they went off anyway. He climbed into his bed, feeling it adjust to his body and warm beneath him. The music and lights dimmed. In ten minutes, they’d both be off, and so would Doc. After the same routine night after night, sleep came easy no matter the preoccupation of his mind.
    But after just a few minutes, when the lights and music were only down to half volume, Doc heard a noise in the living room. He stopped and listened, then heard the noise again.
    “Canvas,” he said.
    He heard no answering chirp.
    “Canvas.”
    Nothing.
    Doc turned, keyed at the headboard of his bed. When nothing happened, he felt his heart pound. Like almost every non-Organa citizen of the NAU (and, let’s be honest, plenty of Organa citizens, too), Doc wasn’t comfortable when severed from The Beam. The Beam comprised Doc’s extra senses. Since it was always there, he’d gotten used to knowing anything he wanted to know, being able to see wherever he wanted to see, and being able to tell with certainty that it was going to fucking rain tomorrow.
    He checked his wrist. His nano tattoo was still working fine, and he saw that it was nearly midnight. But the enhancements in Doc’s body that required a Beam connection to function were quiet. He felt like he’d lost a limb, or several.
    He jumped out of bed and called for lights, already forgetting his link was down. Then he tapped the wall to turn them on seconds later, forgetting again. He slammed his toe into the door jamb and winced, suddenly thinking that the glowing toe enhancement maybe wasn’t so stupid after all.
    His heart pumped harder. Something was wrong.
    He heard the sound again, but this time recognized it as the clatter of his doorknob. Someone was trying to break in. That wasn’t supposed to be possible. Tuco was tied down tight, inaccessible at the outer door and elevator to anyone without an embedded Beam ID that matched the supposedly unhackable resident roster. There were two guards at the door and a lobby attendant. And how could anyone pick his lock? There was a manual piece to the lock, of course — a plain old ordinary thing that fell on a deadbolt, to provide a tangible feeling of security — but of course, if his link was down, that deadbolt would be the only game in town. The Beam-enabled locks and security wouldn’t be functioning. There was supposed to be a triple-redundancy in the system — a box inside the door that wasn’t wired into The Beam, plus a failsafe in the lock itself. The power supply was supposed to be self-contained. But despite all of that, Doc could hear someone picking with regular tools, as if the lock were nothing more than a stick shoved through a hole.
    “Who’s there?” Doc called out, feeling stupid. It was the kind of thing people used to do in old movies, back before identifiers and Beam tracking. Before locks that you could command to repel a specific person from your door if you wanted… and if your link was up.
    Instead of getting an answer, Doc watched as his front door burst open and a silhouette sprinted toward him. He saw lights on in the hallway.
    The intruder was halfway toward him, running. Had he been discovered? The guy wasn’t fucking around. Was he here to wipe Doc’s memory for good? Or was he here to wipe Doc — as in “wiped from