Surrogate

by Raugos

Chapter 2

Cliff Breeze lifted his muzzle from the sink and stared into the mirror.

He remembered having a sky-blue coat and feathers, but it all just looked kind of grey and washed out in the dim light of his bathroom.

Rivulets of water ran from his sodden mane, down his cheeks and dripped from his chin, almost like tears from his bloodshot eyes. The bags under his eyes were so dark that he almost expected the water to draw out streaks of mascara from them.

How’d he even manage to look like a ghoul so quickly after his client had kept him healthy and presentable for the better part of a week?

He smiled.

It looked wrong.

Fake.

Undeserved.

Nopony was supposed to make that expression. At least, nopony that was him.

He glanced down at his dripping hooves, at the scarred tissue around his fetlocks where the hair refused to grow back completely. He angled himself to look at his side and lifted his wing—a similar scar ran from the wing pit to about a third of the length of his humerus.

No. Not today.

Cliff folded his wing and turned off the water.

One day.

Just one more day, and he could let someone else take the reins again. Someone with a little more appreciation for… whatever they saw there. Leaving him free to sleep and be not.

After briskly towelling himself off, Cliff almost balked at the prospect of finding something to fill the rest of the day in his ratty hovel of an apartment. It was getting too cold to go outside, and he didn’t want to deal with people right then.

He’d already surfed through most of Hoar Frost’s memories for the week in a single day. He could go for repeats, but only the first recall was almost as good as living them, and the diminishing returns was steep.

His tablet got him about a couple hours’ worth of engagement. He’d already exhausted his library of websites and social media updates. There wouldn’t be anything worth checking for the next few hours. Movies and shows weren’t worth the subscription these days.

He listened to news reports and podcasts he wouldn’t remember whilst he sorted out his finances. His paycheque had arrived on time, so he was set for a while. He just needed to place orders for his meals, supplements and the next batch of anti-blockers. Pay his rent. Taxes.

One particular news blurb briefly caught his attention:

“—yesterday evening, Miss Alice Jensen was acquitted of homicidal negligence in a Canadian court of Earth for the death of Mister Log Rhythm, part-time surrogate, whose body was injured by a manticore whilst uplinked to her control. The prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that his suicide was due to his horn disfigurement, as he was found to have been displaying signs of severe dysphoria and compulsive memory surfing even before the accide—”

Cliff switched channels.

He glanced around and saw food packs overflowing from the waste bin and crumbs peppering the concrete floor. Taking out the trash was doable, but sweeping the floor and wiping down his table and chair didn’t seem worth the effort. It wasn’t as if he was living here most of the time, anyway.

Maybe he should’ve just stayed asleep.

His lunch of Kirin noodles was the highlight of the day. The burning taste of spice in his mouth was almost enough to bring a little colour back. He used to like going to the arcade. When Mum and Dad were still around…

Lunch had given him enough of a kick to pick up his guitar.

It had been years since he’d logged into his old Harmony Tunes account. He didn’t dare. There would probably be hundreds of comments from his fans asking what had happened to him. He had no idea how anypony could’ve been a fan of his music in the first place.

He plucked a couple of strings. Forced his throat to hum.

Wrong!

He strummed. Whistled.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

He clenched his teeth and just barely managed to resist throwing his guitar at the wall.

Pathetic.

After taking a nap that felt far too short, Cliff forced himself to finish dinner, which consisted of an awful hayburger and fries. Princess Burger’s quality had dropped beneath even his abysmal standards; he really should’ve splurged for more Kirinese soup and noodles. Would’ve helped to wash down the bitter supplements for keeping his slug healthy.

He then spent some time unpacking the parcel of sculpting supplies he’d ordered. Once he’d gotten everything in place, though, everything just… refused to proceed. No matter how much he kneaded and moulded the lump of clay, it never resulted in anything better than what a foal might produce in kindergarten arts and crafts. Cliff knew deep down that it was ridiculous to expect any level of skill on his part when it had been Hoar Frost who’d made decent sculptures of Princess Twilight and the Canterlot Express, but couldn’t he at least have felt a fraction of the simple joy that permeated those memories?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He’d seen snowmares with more accurate body proportions than this.

Wrong!

Cliff wiped his eyes and smashed the clay figure back into a misshapen lump.

It was already bedtime.

If he never woke up again, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

---

Somehow, going back to the surrogate centre had a way of lifting his mood. Maybe it was the anticipation of acquiring more experiences to leech on later, like an addict perking up at the thought of taking another hit. Or maybe it just coincided with the amount of time needed for his brain to get over his funk.

Whatever it was, it helped Cliff to pass for a functional pony before each uplink.

Sternum gave him the usual check-up and blood test to ensure that he was fit for service, and Cliff soon found himself comfortably strapped into the uplink unit, which was pretty much a dental chair with extra technological bells and whistles. His slug and feathers tingled as the adjacent thaum emitters powered up in preparation for neural linkage across universes.

“Let’s hope your client’s a little more punctual this time, eh?” said Sternum as he stuck a clear IV tube into Cliff’s foreleg.

Normally, he’d never show any nerves during this part of the procedure, but this time, Cliff couldn’t help feeling a little jittery as the regulator beeped in response to receiving the results of his bloodwork. Then, as it pumped the necessary dose of stims, catalysts and thaumoxone for unwanted substances in his body, he imagined the memory blockers as a black jet of inky poison mixing with everything else as the cocktail flowed into him.

Apparently sensing his apprehension, Sternum shook his head and said, “Let it go, Mister Breeze. Those experiences are off-limits, for all our sakes.”

Cliff hoped he couldn’t taste his relief about the mistaken conclusion.

As usual, the blood test had failed to detect the dose of anti-blockers he’d taken shortly before coming in, because it was still in the digestible baggie he’d swallowed. By the time it dissolved enough to leak out its contents, it would be long after he’d been released into his client’s control.

He just hoped he’d taken enough to completely neutralise the upped dosage of blockers that Sternum had administered. Sternum hadn’t specified by how much, and asking about it would only raise further suspicion. At least the only consequence of an overestimation would be an expensive waste of his supply rather than any toxic side effects.

“All right, our client’s on the other end.” Sternum flipped a switch and buzzed his wings as he monitored the readings on his tablet. “Initiating neural hoof bump.”

Cliff gasped as a sharp jolt pulsed from his slug and rippled through his nerves to his extremities.

“Leyline is stable. Binding.”

Cliff glanced down and saw his forelegs strapped to his side. His deep chest rose with each breath.

He was one.

Cliff blinked and saw a pair of forearms overlaid on his forelegs. An image of a flat, clothed chest intersecting his own. A small, claustrophobic room appeared within the walls of the med bay. His nerves and bones positively vibrated with magic and electricity.

He was two.

“Uplink established. See you in a bit.”

Sternum tapped on his tablet to execute the lock-in sequence, and Cliff’s eyes rolled up into his head. His hearing became muffled and his mind sank beneath the waves.

He was none.

---

Cliff stared at the implant suspended in a little vat of clear fluid as it was wheeled to the operating table by a griffon dressed in scrubs. Up close, it looked like a fluke worm crossed with a neuron cell, dull-green in colour with sickly pink and yellow veins branching out all over its surface.

“So that’s the mind control implant?” asked Cliff.

“Mind control? Hardly,” the griffon surgeon scoffed. He then flashed a toothy grin and traced a talon across the surface of the vat. “This is a Synchronous Leyline Uplink Ganglia module. It connects your nervous system to the will of a client whilst keeping you blissfully unconscious—nothing quite so barbaric as the caged awareness you would experience under traditional mind control. Its enchantments are attuned to universal leylines, so it is not subject to latency or signal disruptions even across dimensions. No, this is a true marvel of biothaumic engineering, courtesy of our human and changeling friends!”

“I… I see,” Cliff said as he watched it pulsate gently. “It’s smaller than I thought.”

“Our latest model has been downsized to fit nicely between the axis and atlas vertebrae—much more comfortable for you. Just be careful; the lack of a carapace casing means that it is vulnerable to blunt force trauma, even when covered by your muscle tissue.”

“I didn’t know I was getting an experimental version.”

The surgeon’s smile didn’t waver. “It is not. It has already been deployed in a few of our employees, with great success, I might add. No one has damaged their slug so far.”

Cliff frowned. “But if it does get damaged, it’ll heal on its own, right?”

“Alas, slug regeneration is extremely limited, so my advice is to treat it as if it was your last functioning kidney. Your contract does not cover for replacements, and a single one of these will put a significant dent in your finances.”

“Then why ditch the casing?”

The huff was a little indignant. “Why, discretion, of course! Clients appreciate not being immediately identifiable as such. And in all likelihood, so will you, once you have to live with it. This gives us an advantage over our more… financially ample competitors.”

The surgeon then rubbed his palms together like a mad scientist and practically purred, “So, are you ready to open up a whole new world of experiences for our friends from Earth?”

Cliff opened his mouth to answer, but his stomach beat him to it with a loud grumble.

The surgeon raised an eyebrow. “You were instructed to have a modest meal before coming in for this procedure.”

“Yeah, well… I’m a little short on bits.”

After a bit of staring, the surgeon sighed and stalked out of the room, saying, “I suppose that is a fairly common impetus for getting into this profession…”

When he returned, he tossed a ration bar into Cliff’s hooves. “Eat.”

“Are you sure?”

As if on cue, his stomach growled again.

“Yes. Your gastric resentment is inconvenient. I will wait.”

The next couple of minutes passed in relative silence as Cliff munched away. Once he’d appeased his stomach, he laid belly-down on the operating table and kept still as his wings and legs were restrained with thick straps.

As the surgeon pressed the gas mask to Cliff’s muzzle, he smiled gravely and whispered, “Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing.”

I already don’t.

Comments

[Lexiebommel10]

Your gastric resentment is inconvenient

Lmao

[Raugos]

11904764
That doctor ain't putting up with annoying tummy rumblings in the middle of surgery.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

Its nice to get a real good look at our protagonist's self.they are wounded.