Janna set her arm down on the so-called Genius Counter at BioTech Emporium. Her fake-ass arm, not the real one. “It’s wearing down,” she said as way of greeting. “The finger joints don’t work right, and I can barely bend it at the elbow, anymore.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tech behind the counter, who couldn’t have been older than 20, took one look at the disconnected arm in front of him and sighed. Didn’t even bother to scan it. “It’s a base model 59-GX. Ten years old, I’d guess.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her eyes narrowed at him. “What of it? I got a lifetime warranty. Check your files.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His eyes went out of focus as he scanned the arm and brought up the stats on it. At least, she hoped that was what he was doing. Kids on her cruiser got the same glassy-eyed look when they were strung out on Stuff. The last thing she needed was a technician whose mind was taking a vacation while he worked on her body parts. It’d figure. She’d had the rancidest luck since the cruiser changed its course from the Oxelo Belt to the Giriar System.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, he blinked and his eyes focused, first on the arm, then on her. “I can’t do anything. It’s just old.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Of course, it’s old. I phrekin’ shelled out for the lifetime warranty because I knew it’d get old.” She resisted rolling her eyes. What did the kid know? The arm was probably older than some of his teeth. “That’s why it needs fixing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Your warranty doesn’t cover getting old. The parts…they don’t make them anymore.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Janna reminded herself that she didn’t want to get thrown into a cell for strangling the kid. “I need a working arm. Look, I’m the head chef on the Starlight Princex, and the patrons expect a quality that I can’t provide if I can’t bend my fingers. Much less my whole arm. What’s the phrekin’ point of the lifetime warranty, if I can’t use it for my whole life?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The kid shook his head and handed her back the arm. When she was holding it again, he said, “Sorry, it’s just not possible. I mean, if it was in pieces, I could replace it with a new model for free, but with these rancid parts, I can’t do anything because the replacements don’t exist.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Janna gripped the fake arm with her good hand, heat rising in her face as she tried desperately to not blow at this kid. All her friends had warned her she was throwing creds away when she got the warranty. Just lining a faceless corporation’s pocket. But she’d stubbornly pointed out the arm would be with her for life. Why wouldn’t she get a lifetime warranty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There had to be a way around the problem. Someone must know more than how to scan things and parrot answers he found on the Interface. Maybe the Genius Counter employed someone who actually did an engineer’s work. As a last-ditch effort at getting service, she said, “Is there someone higher up I could\u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He looked around and said quickly but quietly, “I said, if it were in pieces…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Oh.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She wasted no time, smashing the arm down against the counter until fingers snapped off and the hidden compartment blew open, spilling cogs and wires like the arm was gushing blood. The elbow, so reluctant to bend properly, had no problem bending now that it held on by a single wire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She put the piece of tech that no longer resembled a limb on the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Looks like you have a lifetime warranty,” the kid said cheerfully. “Can I offer you the 648-PZ as a replacement? Top of the line. Fire- and cut-resistant and guaranteed to be waterproof. You’ll only have to pay for a new warranty, if you want one.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You bet your ass I want one.” Top of the line or not, she could hardly afford not to. Sure, she’d throw a few creds BTE’s way, but the corporation wasn’t quite so faceless as they liked to believe they were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By day, Sage Collins is an aquatic toxicologist, keeping water safe from polluters, viruses, and supervillains. By night, she’s a supermoderator on the Absolute Write forums, where she runs the weekly Flash Fiction Challenge.\u00a0Her stories have been published in My Galvanized Friend, Novellum, Starspun Lit, and Rat Bag Lit.\u00a0Find her on BlueSky at @sagecollins.bsky.social.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Janna set her arm down on the so-called Genius Counter at BioTech Emporium. Her fake-ass…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100043575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3292],"tags":[6,227,3296,2740],"class_list":["post-100043574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-fiction","tag-cyberpunk","tag-fiction","tag-prose","tag-short"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100043574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100043574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100043574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100043578,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100043574\/revisions\/100043578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/100043575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100043574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100043574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100043574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}