Chapter Text
The new DreamConnect™ system out now!
Available at any StarMart near you
or on MilkyWay Delivery.
Only for ₩35999!
Minseok stared at his hologram watch, speaking of intrusive advertisements on his non-subscription watch. How that one got past his firewall was a miracle. Each time he bought anything remotely technological, he put his engineering and programming degrees to their fullest extent, and he made sure to root the system first before setting up on his own devices. But how this had gotten past all his little tinkering bordered at a miracle, an unwelcome one at that.
He had found nothing relating to the rumoured application that let your dreams connect to those that might be turning out to be fruitful for you. Despite it being in the name. It was the name after all. Did he want his dreams to be connected to a stranger’s? Did he really want to see what they might be dreaming about?
If his own dreams were any indicator, he didn’t want anyone else to live through them. Not only was he an old insomniac that hadn’t dreamt in what felt like forever, but his dreams were the reason he was an insomniac in the first place.
The advertisement was still glaring at him from his watch, waiting to be confirmed. There wasn’t even a function to just close it. Talking about getting every last dime of information about you. Maybe there was a little setting hidden in ‘View more…’.
Suffering from nightmares?
Can’t get a restful slumber because insomnia is plaguing you?
Tired of taking medicine to fall asleep?
We’re having the solution for you.
With our newest DreamConnect™,
you’ll get everything you want from your sleep.
And more.
Everything you could ever wish for.
Minseok scoffed, talking about targeted advertisement. The bane of his existence. Yet he was willing to try new things, but with his modified body running on drugs to keep him awake and functional, he was afraid to give himself to a machine in his most defenceless state. He’d be willing to try it, but only if he could be forcefully awoken if anything was out of order.
But could he even afford it with the measly amount of Woolongs he made as a spacecraft mechanic? Maybe he should reactivate his old connections from his time when he was more of a criminal than now. Maybe he could get together with the folks for a drink or two. Seeing if anyone of them had one. But he might be getting on a cold turkey first with his veins strumming with drugs keeping him awake like he wasn’t human. He wasn’t, partially maybe. Someone in his ancestry had fucked or gotten fucked by something else that wasn’t human and it manifested in Minseok after all those generations. This was also good because it made him more intelligent than some scientists and even computers, but that might be also why he was an insomniac in the first place. His smoothed-out pea brain just couldn’t take it.
That’s at least what Minseok tried to force himself to believe, but that the reason could be just his brain underperforming didn’t cross his mind, he ignored the existence of the thought entirely.
Eight earth days later, the port had an insignificant increase in suspicious-looking space crafts and creatures loitering around. But no one would call the authorities, not when Minseok lived in one of the most criminal regions in the solar system. They didn’t even have a StarMart anywhere close on this moon, so how was he supposed to get his hands on a DC in the first place.
“Is that our crime overlord Xiumin?” Someone bellowed over the marketplace when Minseok was wandering around, unsuspecting, seeing if he could see anyone he’d know. Xiumin was one of those with the highest bounties and still thought after regularly.
Minseok turned around, pointing at himself, trying to figure out who talked shit like that in a public place, “Me? Sorry, unfortunately, I only do look like him.” He still hadn’t located who had said it, but out of the corner, he saw someone moving whom he was very well acquainted with.
“Minseok, my chubbiest little hamster!” Two bulky metallic arms came around his shoulders, squeezing the living daylights out of him. “What happened to you? Why aren’t you squishy as before?”
Minseok tried getting out of the embrace but to no avail.
“Keep quiet, it’s that bounty hunter, Byun, if heard he even tracks down people that only look like criminals.”
“And how often do I have to tell the people that I’m not that shithead! How dare he looks like me! That chucklefuck!” Minseok croaked out, very well aware of where the bounty hunter was loitering around. “Do folks really think I’d be him? Do they even realise what I look like? Now let me down, you shithead.” He whacked the Polymorph over its head.
Kai held its head when it finally dropped Minseok to the ground. “Why are you always so violent, Minseokkie?”
Minseok held his fist into its face, “Because you’re dealing with me like I’m a dumb kid with no idea about self-preservation…” He was genuinely mad.
Kai’s eyes changed colour, “But you’re a human. You’re squishy and you could die any moment…”
Minseok took a swing, his fist easily connecting with Kai’s presumed face. If it wasn’t for the polymorph’s bodily structure, bones throughout the whole face would’ve broken, if it was a human. But instead, Minseok left a crater and caved in till the deepest depths of hell. A polymorph’s skin was hard as Lonsdaleite. Several times harder than Diamonds and polymorphi were therefore almost indestructible. But not for Minseok who possessed inhuman strength. He really needed to find out what it was that was inside him, but not even the slightest traces of foreign DNA could be found within his body, which made him 100% human.
“Any more questions?” Kai shook its head while it was rearranging its human look.
It took hold of Minseok’s head before inspecting it, letting out an ‘oh’ when there wasn’t even the slightest scratch on Minseok’s skin and almost none on the naturally occurring impure Lonsdaleite where his skin was replaced with. He didn’t look like a cyborg to anybody. “I’ve heard you’re looking for a DreamConnect. I can set you up with someone, but I would oversee your alignment.”
Minseok hated polymorphs, but he trusted them more than any other species. Their words were to be trusted, most Galactic High Courts were made out of polymorphs. But Kai was the exception that confirmed the rule. Minseok and Kai had met during the high rise of the rebels. And a runaway polymorph with a penchant for crime wasn’t ordinary by any means. Not as righteous as they tended to be. Minseok was sure some of Kai’s synapses had burned through. Otherwise, Minseok would’ve never been able to command something like Kai.
Everywhere he walked, Minseok saw advertisements for DC, DreamConnect this, DreamConnect that, DreamConnect here’s a raving review of one of our customers from a planetary system Minseok only ever heard about, DreamConnect health benefits of giving yourself to an algorithm which teams you up with your perfect dream partner, DreamConnect were an honest business and why wouldn’t want your hard-earned Woolongs to go to waste and this economy and inflation, DreamConnect we’re the safest and most secure AI-based program you could ever wish for, DreamConnect blah blah blah.
What a load of bullshit. They must’ve had an agenda for running such an aggressive advertisement campaign.
And Minseok wanted just to sleep.
Days later, he found himself in Blue Moon, a bar notorious for its trafficking of any sort, drug dealing, shady creatures even Minseok was unsure about and cheap alcohol. He was on the lookout for the polymorph, but the person, he assumed, on stage caught his eye instead. They seemed human and Minseok’s cybernetic eye was perfect for picking apart the layers surrounding creatures, getting them down to every last atom until he could be sure what they were, but this supposed human was an enigma. He couldn’t get past the first layer surrounding them. They played the saxophone and Minseok knew that it must’ve been a song from back when Earth was flourishing and not the uninhabitable piece of shit it was now. It had a catchy vibe to it, and he felt himself nodding along until he finally spotted Kai.
Kai was sitting next to a creature that Minseok knew as one of the subordinates for one of the more notorious gangsters on Ganymede and the whole solar system. Minseok didn’t like them off the bat, snarling in the general direction of the two folks sitting next to one another. And something that Kai might’ve been connected in more way than another to the asshole sitting next to it. Minseok could tell.
He moved silently past the patrons in the bar, walking past everyone without raising any kind of suspicion and his objective only raised their hands when he pulled out a chair in front of him. His face was impassive and unreadable, but he was greeted with a sick twist of lips and four pairs of eyes staring at him with interest if he didn’t additionally count Kai’s orbs measuring him.
Someone brought over a watery beer for Minseok, as if he wasn’t a regular in that bar.
“So, you’re the cute human Kai spoke about,” the voice was deeper than the young face would’ve let on.
Minseok was neither cute nor fully human, not with all the prosthetics and cybernetics spanning his body, but the less everyone knows, the better it’s for him. He looked back towards the stage where the was still the performer playing the saxophone. “I guess.” He didn’t look back towards the duo.
Kai suddenly moved in front of him, a collar catching Minseok’s interest, and he followed the leash attached to it toward the gangster’s hand. That’s their relationship. He inadvertently shook his head, the fact that Kai had once served under him as a ruthless murderer was beyond him. Kai kneeled before Minseok, hands on his thighs, “Please show my master respect.”
Minseok clicked his tongue, “You’ve once worked under me, he isn’t worth the respect you show him.” He looked back up at the saxophonist.
He finally realised what it was about the person on stage that intrigued him, his eye finally supplying the information he needed; it was the latest state-of-the-art android created during recent developments to fight criminality. And here it was, in the most rundown, dingiest criminal part of the solar system.
His eye relayed the android's information when it looked up, looking straight at Minseok, winking at him before his eye suddenly shut down. Minseok hissed in pain, pressing the palm of his hand to his eyes as if it could reduce the electric current that was running rampant in his electric system.
He looked at the gangster, Kai’s new master in front of him, “What do I need to do, to get the DreamConnect chip?”
“First of all, my name’s Lay, and you’ll be helping me hack into the system surrounding DreamConnect, Xiumin. I know who you are, so don’t even try to tell me anything else.”
“Fucking asshole, I just want a good night’s sleep that I hadn’t in ages,” Minseok hissed. He grabbed Kai’s hair, yanking his head away that it was resting in his lap, looking up at him like an obedient dog. “If you have any thoughts of betraying me, I take him with me.”
The kill switch he had implanted in the polymorph was still there. If he was to die, anyone once working for him would. That had been his insurance all those years back.
And who knows, maybe he’d see the pretty android in his dreams. But he’d didn’t know who he’d be connected to in the end.
Chanyeol was the android’s name, that information he had gotten.