Chapter 9 -- The Demo Booth
The civic street thrummed beneath my feet as I left Wall Pod behind, heading toward the Republic's IP demo plaza. The ground tiles channelled silent transit pods and logistics drones like arteries in a living body — no cars, no horns, no wasteful sprawl like back home in the Southern Commonwealth. The Republic built its cities for function, not vanity. Drones skimmed the rooftops in perfect formation, cargo shuttles slid between towers on magnetic rails, and civic buses glided without sound or friction along their designated paths.
Everything moved because it had a purpose. That was the Republic's foundational law: create IP, or serve those who did.
The walk gave me time to think, which wasn't always a good thing. Six months of pod cleaning had left me with too much mental space to catalogue my failures. Systems engineering degree from Republic University — four years of neural network theory, reality synthesis protocols, and grid optimisation mathematics. All of it gathering digital dust whilst I scrubbed sweat stains and reset haptic feedback calibrators.
But the walk also reminded me why I'd come here in the first place. The efficiency was intoxicating. Traffic lights that anticipated pedestrian flow. Delivery systems that never congested. Even the air felt cleaner, scrubbed by atmospheric processors that turned exhaust into energy. This was what human civilisation looked like when it was designed by engineers instead of politicians.
The demo plaza stretched out before me as I crossed the final intersection, part science fair, part street market, part gladiatorial arena. Booths pressed shoulder to shoulder across the vast civic square, inventors shouting like hawkers at a festival. Neon holo-markers floated overhead, flashing provisional patent numbers and House affiliations in scrolling text.
"Suit design! Fireproof, vacuum-proof, waterproof — guaranteed certification!"
"Neural bridge enhancement — third-gen implant support, zero latency!"
"Quantum grip manipulation — bend steel like clay, reshape matter at will!"
The noise was relentless, a cacophony of desperate ambition. Every booth represented someone's life savings, someone's last roll of the dice. I could see it in their faces — the tight smiles, the rehearsed pitches, the way their eyes tracked potential investors like predators watching prey. Most would fail. The Vault accepted maybe one in fifty applications, and of those, fewer than ten per cent ever generated meaningful royalties.
The successful booths were easy to spot. House banners fluttered overhead — Bear, River, Stone, Dawn — like flags of protection. Vendors with emblems stitched into their chest uniforms stood tall, backed by bloodlines and legal teams. Their demonstrations drew crowds, their prototypes gleamed with professional polish, their pitches carried the confidence of people who knew their applications would be processed quickly and favourably.
But it was the other booths that drew my attention. The ones without banners. Without crests. Without shields.
In the far corner of the plaza, half-hidden behind a row of more impressive displays, sat a booth so plain it looked abandoned. A sagging fabric banner held up by bent poles. A battered VR rig that looked like it had been assembled from scrap parts and held together with cable ties and prayer. No emblems. No House colours. No protection.
Just two young people who looked like they hadn't slept in days, and a flickering holographic sign that made my steps slow:
D-Day: A Deep VR Historical Simulation — Experience the Storm
I stopped, my engineering instincts kicking in despite myself. Historical simulations were notoriously difficult to code. The computational requirements for accurate physics, authentic dialogue, and believable NPCs in a wartime scenario would strain even Bear House-certified hardware. Yet here were two kids trying to run it on equipment that looked like it belonged in a museum.
The girl caught my glance first. She smiled — not the plastic grin of a desperate seller, but something genuine. Warm, persistent, tinged with the kind of stubborn optimism that refused to acknowledge the obvious futility of their situation.
"Interested in trying?" she asked, her voice carrying a slight accent I couldn't place.
I stepped closer, drawn by curiosity and something else — a recognition I couldn't name. "D-Day simulation? On this hardware?"
"Semi-VR for now," she admitted, gesturing to their jury-rigged setup. "We don't have funding for full immersion pods yet. This is proof-of-concept work."
Her brother looked up from the terminal where he'd been troubleshooting what appeared to be a cooling system failure. Same age as his sister, same features, same exhausted determination. Twins, clearly. "I'm Rob, this is Sarah. We're trying to demonstrate viability so we can apply for Bear House development funding. But first we need usage data. And data means volunteers."
I looked at their booth again, noting details my cleaning experience had taught me to spot. The VR rig was ancient — at least five years old, probably salvaged from a closed arcade. The neural interface cables were aftermarket replacements, not certified for extended use. The cooling system was improvised, a desktop fan jury-rigged to blow air across overheating processors.
And yet something about their setup nagged at me. The code running on their displays looked sophisticated. Too sophisticated for hardware this primitive.
"You're not displaying House affiliations," I observed, nodding toward their plain shirts and unmarked banner.
They exchanged a quick glance — the kind of wordless communication that only came from sharing the same womb and growing up in each other's shadows.
Rob answered carefully. "Yang. Rob and Sarah Yang."
The name hit me like a recognition algorithm finding a match. "House of the Bamboo?"
He gave a short laugh, but there was no humour in it. "Yeah. Bamboo — flexible, resilient, impossible to kill. Medicine, biotech, neural research, therapeutic applications. Everyone knows the reputation."
But he wasn't smiling, and neither was Sarah. There was pain there, carefully controlled but visible to someone who understood what it meant to carry a name that promised more than it delivered.
"But before you get the wrong idea—" Rob gestured to his plain shirt, his unmarked chest. "We don't wear the emblem."
"Why not?"
Sarah's voice was softer than her brother's, but carried the same edge of carefully managed disappointment. "Because emblems aren't birthrights. They're recognition. They belong to the power line — the ones who sign the patents, collect the major royalties, sit with the patriarchs in the House councils. The inner circle."
Rob picked up the thread seamlessly. "Us? We're general branch. Blood relation, documented ancestry, legitimate claim to the surname. But no standing. No recognition. No access to House resources or protection."
"Same roots, different forest," Sarah added quietly. "The blood is real, traceable through three generations back to one of the founding researchers. But without formal recognition from the power line, without the emblem ceremony, no one sees it. We're Yang in name only."
The words landed harder than they meant to. My own situation wasn't identical, but it was close enough to sting. Commonwealth-born Xiong, documented Bear House ancestry, zero recognition or access. We were all orphans of the Republic's blood aristocracy, carrying names that meant everything and nothing.
For the first time since arriving in the Republic, I felt a kinship with people who understood what it meant to be on the outside looking in.
"Want to try the simulation?" Sarah asked, her voice carrying a mixture of hope and resignation.
I looked at their pathetic rig again. The chair was held together with duct tape, the neural cap looked scorched around the edges, and the whole setup radiated the kind of desperation that made smart people do stupid things.
But Sarah's eyes carried something I recognised — the stubborn belief that if you could just show people what you were capable of, if you could demonstrate your vision clearly enough, merit would overcome politics. It was naive. It was probably doomed. It was exactly the kind of thinking that had brought me to the Republic in the first place.
"Sure," I said, settling into the makeshift chair. "I've got fifteen minutes before my supervisor starts screaming."
The frame groaned under my weight, cold metal biting through thin padding. Sarah moved with practised efficiency, adjusting the neural cap with gentle precision. Rob smirked from behind his terminal.
"Fair warning," I said, trying to lighten the mood. "If this thing gives me PTSD, I'm billing you for therapy."
Rob snorted. "If that happens, we'll apply for trauma-realism certification and claim it as a feature."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Ignore him. The system's been tested. Just... be prepared for something different than standard VR. We've made some modifications to the immersion protocols."
I lowered the visor, and the world around me dimmed. The familiar tingle of neural interface activation ran along my scalp, but something felt off. The connection sequence was wrong — too smooth, too deep, like falling into warm water instead of plugging into a machine.
Then the system messages appeared:
[Initialising...]
Standard startup. But then:
[Detected anomalous override. Bypass accepted. Uploading... Modifying scenario...]
My pulse spiked. That wasn't their code. Couldn't be. Override protocols were locked behind Bear House encryption, impossible to access without certified hardware and authorised credentials.
[Enjoy your experience, Master.]
The world dissolved.
I was in a landing craft, metal deck slick with seawater and vomit. Soldiers crammed shoulder-to-shoulder around me, faces grey with fear and seasickness. The smell hit me first — salt spray, diesel fumes, unwashed bodies, and the acid tang of terror-sweat. One man retched into a bucket. Another whispered prayers in a language I didn't recognise.
But these weren't NPCs. The fear in their eyes was too real, too specific. When I shifted in my seat, they reacted. When I breathed, they heard it. When I looked at them, they looked back with the alert awareness of men about to die.
"GET READY, YOU DOGS!" a sergeant roared from the front of the craft. "WHEN THAT DOOR DROPS, YOU RUN OR YOU DIE! ANYONE FREEZES UP IS FEEDING THE CRABS TONIGHT!"
The words were too vivid, too immediate. In standard VR, dialogue felt scripted, artificial. This felt like memory.
I tested the boundaries, speaking without consideration. "Fuck you."
The sergeant turned upon me, eyes blazing with authentic fury. "WHAT DID YOU SAY, PRIVATE?!"
He could hear me. Not just programmed response triggers — he was reacting to my tone, my attitude, the casual disrespect of someone who didn't belong in his world.
The craft lurched forward. Engines roared. The ramp began to drop, revealing a stretch of sand already stained red with blood.
Machine gun fire erupted like thunder.
"GO! GO! GO!"
Men poured from the craft, and I found myself moving with them, boots splashing through surf that felt cold and real and deadly. A soldier beside me crumpled, skull exploding in a spray of bone and brain that spattered across my face with visceral accuracy.
This wasn't simulation. This was memory. Someone's actual experience, digitised and uploaded, complete with the neural patterns that made it feel absolutely real.
That was impossible. Memory extraction existed in theory, but the computational requirements were staggering. You'd need quantum processing cores, military-grade neural interfaces, and hardware worth more than most countries' GDP.
Not a salvaged arcade rig held together with tape.
I forced myself to focus, to think like an engineer instead of a soldier. Menu access. System diagnostics. Something to prove I was still in a machine instead of genuinely reliving someone's war.
The interface responded, but sluggishly, like it was fighting me.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
My watch alarm cut through the simulation like a blade, dragging me back to reality. Break time was over.
The simulation shattered like glass, reality reassembling around me in Wall Pod's familiar fluorescent lighting. I tore the visor off, gasping like I'd been underwater, heart hammering against my ribs.
Sarah froze, watching me with wide eyes. "Are you okay? You look..."
"That wasn't just immersive," I managed, my voice hoarse. "That was real. Actual memory engrams, not programmed responses."
Rob frowned, looking genuinely confused. "You mean... realistic? We've been working on authenticity protocols, but—"
"No." I stood on shaking legs, looking at their impossible rig with new understanding. "I mean real. Actual neural memory patterns. Where did you get the source code for that override sequence?"
They stared at me blankly.
"What override sequence?" Sarah asked.
I looked at their primitive setup again, then at their faces — confused, innocent, completely unaware of what had just happened. Something had enhanced their system beyond its physical limitations, creating experiences that shouldn't have been possible with their hardware. The technology responded to user intent in ways that defied conventional VR programming, somehow translating desire for realism into actual enhanced immersion.
Which meant someone else was involved. Someone with access to technology that shouldn't exist in civilian systems.
Someone who had somehow enhanced both experiences beyond their hardware limitations.
I turned and walked quickly into the crowd, pulse still racing, mind reeling with questions I couldn't answer. Behind me, I heard Sarah's voice, trembling with excitement and confusion:
"Rob... what did he mean about override sequences?"
But I was already gone, disappearing into the stream of inventors and dreamers, carrying with me the impossible truth that I'd just experienced something that shouldn't exist.