Chapter 30 - The Twin Earrings of Aahad Caria (I)

The other room was oddly similar to Wizah's, with a massive Interface taking front and centre. Uari supposed it made sense, and made himself comfortable on a chair nearby as Yan Guowen settled himself in front of his Interface. He gave Uari a glance.

"I won't touch anything," Uari assured. The youth blinked at him once and turned away to focus on his Interface.

It wasn't five minutes before Yan Guowen waved at him. He looked up from the VendoStor packet he was studying, and a screen flashed: What name do you want?

"Ah," He hadn't thought about it. "Up to you. Just make it a common name, I guess."

Yan Guowen blinked at him again, then turned back to the screen and continued to...do whatever it was he was doing online. Out of curiosity, Uari asked how it works.

Yan Guowen pulled up another screen, but instead of a prepared answer, he typed this time:

takes longer if I need to explain

"Okay," Uari went back to the curry packet instead. It was mild, and also had apples in them.

They repeated this exchange several more times, with Uari waving him off each time and requesting something reasonable that matched his physical identity.

After an hour, the profile of Aiam Adhick stared back at him, registered to his eyes and blood. Uari sighed. "If you're going to be mean, you could be smarter about it."

Yan Guowen's nice narrowed in challenge, and Uari backtracked immediately. "You don't have to, I mean, it's a nice name."

The youth sniffed, looking cattily pleased with himself. Little bitch, Uari thought fondly. "Here's the rest of the payment. I might need another identity for a colleague, so she might drop by later."

A ready-made screen flashed:

Come again!

The new software on his portable Interface allowed him to switch between registered digital identities. When he picked Uari, that's who he would be associated with. When he picked Aiam, that's who his eyes and blood would then be associated with.

A thought struck him. "Hey, was there another identity attached to me?"

Yan Guowen raised an eyebrow and pulled up another screen, with his rates on them. Uari tsked in amusement and paid digitally this time. Another screen:

Thank you for your business!

And then:

ill contact you when i have info

Uari left, satisfied. Onto the next thing.

Gildest had been advertising an exclusive auction very loudly with both physical and digital ads. Banners hung from buildings and his new registered identity allowed him to see the localised digital ads as soon as he crossed into the city from the slums.

There was a particular thing he was interested in, displayed on almost every banner, every poster. It looked like everyone and their mother might want them.

An artefact of the 'greatest scientist in known human history,' the person who'd brought the light to humanity in the 24th century, the everlasting genius of mankind, the Arabic scholar-scientist who extended humanity's reign on Earth—

The Twin Earrings of Aahad Caria were up for grabs.

Even without looking it up, he knew what they represented. Other than his beloved research, Aahad Caria had left behind six artefacts he had developed personally. No blueprints existed of their design, and no one had successfully ever managed to replicate his genius.

Of the six, only four remained in the world.

One had been broken apart in an attempt to study its mechanisms, and the engineering team had instead found the artefact dissolved instantly in acrid acid. Aahad Caria's amusing last prank on the world.

With one artefact lost and a heavy suspicion that the others would go the same way, engineering teams turned instead to imaging methods, attempting to visualise the innards of another artefact. Exposed to increasing levels of radiation, the artefact broke instantly and the same acid bubbled out again.

Baffled, everyone stopped attempting to replicate the artefacts, and instead carefully stored them away in the annals of history. They passed through the hands of capitalists eager to hold a symbol of wealth in their hands, remaining unused for nearly two hundred years. Now they've surfaced again, and Uari bet they would be better off seeing the light of use than being stuck in some home museum for the rich to gloat over.

The Twin Earrings had the ability to copy the entirety of a person's physical attributes, and then superimpose that over someone else. It was a foolproof, superficial cloning method that didn't depend on holograms and held even when the clone was unconscious or dead. The clone's eyes and blood would pass physical detection systems without a hitch.

All he had to do was ensure that the earrings were passed through a freshly bleeding hole. Probably had something to do with the DNA, but Uari wasn't too concerned about the details.

He registered quickly under his new identity. Gods, even the registration fee would have cost him five years of salary. Exclusive indeed.

He had no intention of turning up physically, and so just tuned in digitally even as he filled in the holes in the rest of Aiam's new identity, setting up accounts, transferring money, signing up for chat apps and the like.

The auction began with all the fanfare rich people could afford, with exotic performances or whatever. Uari paid half-hearted attention, situated as he was in a booth corner of a café since he didn't want anyone looking at his screen and harassing him—either for his new identity or for attending an auction that was obviously for rich people only.

The event itself began in earnest after half an hour of useless fawning. Uari sat up straight—there might be other toys he might want, or that could be useful.

Several hours passed in this fashion, and Uari tested the bidding function on the digital screen with several products just to see what it was like and also to make sure he didn't fumble when it came time to bid for the earrings. While he had taken interest in several items, he couldn't quite justify their use for himself and didn't push too much to acquire them. He played around with a few people and pushed prices higher just for the heck of it.

As expected, the Twin Earrings only popped up as the very last artefact to be auctioned off. The auctioneer did a fantastic job at hyping up the crowd for the item—even for those who weren't bidding, the auction itself would make a fantastic show.

"THREE BILLION GEEGLECOINS!!"

An instant racket arose from the physical crowd at the very first bid placed for the earrings."Esteemed guests, the first bid has been made for three billion Geeglecoins! Is there anyone—THREE AND A HALF BILLION GEEGLECOINS! My goodness!"

Uari watched the anonymous catfighting for a while. He was lucky that there were at least two other people who were interested in purchasing the earrings, and would wait until the numbers began to reach an asymptote before he joined the bidding.