text: "I hate this," Lucy groaned, scrunching up her face. "It's so gross." "I know," sighed Grimm patiently. "I know it's not what you signed up for with this apprenticeship, and I know you still find it creepy, but it's what sells right now and if we don't adapt then we'll be left behind and you won't have an apprenticeship at all." Grimm picked up a child's skull and passed it gently to her. "Now attach the jacks just like I showed you. The holes are already drilled, you just have to fit them and wire them to the psionic recievers." Lucy gingerly took the skull. She knew it was just bone, but something about touching it felt *wrong*. She overcame the desire to wash her hands and started to rummage around the desk for her tools. Grimm's were already out, but they weren't *hers*. She slid the metal jack into the drill hole wincing as it scraped dryly at the brittle edges. It was so unfair for this to happen to her now, only a year into what should have been a normal mech apprenticeship. Working on robotics, tweaking code, taking apart engines, *that* was what she'd signed up for. Admittedly she'd spent most of her first year cleaning out pipes and organising scrap, but she knew that she'd *eventually* be allowed to do the exciting stuff. And she had; for a month. Grimm had finally relented to her begging, and grudgingly allowed her to do the routine upgrade of a service droid. And she was good at it. Unbeknownst to Grimm, she'd been up late most nights trawling the Weave for courses and tutorials on exactly that kind of thing, hoping to impress him enough to let her do some real work. It'd paid off too. For a whole month Grimm had been letting her help out with his commissions; until the bones were discovered. Lucy toyed with a few fragments of wire, waiting for the sealant holding a jack in place to dry. It'd only take a few minutes, then she could solder the recievers into place. That's where it'd started of course, the psionic recievers. The news spread like wildfire when alloys that reacted to the presence of thought were discovered. Did that mean there was some kind of ether thoughts could move through? Were psychics actually real? Could it prove the existence of a soul? In an effort to prove the latter, a med student had stolen a skull from his lecturer and hooked it up to some of the new psionic material and a neural cap. The student ended up in a psyche ward, broken by the backlash. He raved about memories that couldn't have been his, and the press ate it up. The idea captured the public imagination, and within a week the practice of bone reading was established. Bones, skulls especially, hold memories. They seep into the matter over a lifetime and for a while after death they persist. Not a soul, but more like a footprint in the sand. If you had the right tech and were skilled enough you could pull memories, experiences, even talents from a skull. The market for bones and recievers *exploded* overnight. Eventually the government had to clamp down on the use of bones, establishing a legal trade to stem the sudden rise in graverobbing, and pouring serious research into bone reading to establish a safe way to do it. Reading with no safeties was causing a flood of new and severely unstable mental patients, and as even dead people could tell state secrets now, bone reading represented a whole new branch of espionage. Buffers, jacks, breakers and dampeners were all quickly developed and released, though it was only legal for certain licenced mech shops to fit a skull. And lucky for her, Grimm had jumped right on it. She sighed and reached for the little skull, absently rolling it between her hands. Why would anyone want to use one of them? She understood police wanting access to a victim's memories, or a government wanting some spy's intel, but normal people like her? The thought made her shiver. The cold jack bit into her palm as she toyed with the skull. It wasn't hard to use, you just plugged in a special headset in like it was a macabre music player. The tech did the rest, and you got a whole new set of memories, maybe even lost some old ones... She hastily put the skull back down and jumped up, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. "Grimm!" She yelled, "I'm going out for a bit, for um... for wire." "Sure," he called faintly back, clearly distracted by some other project in the shop. "Don't be back too late, Martha is sending round pizza as payment for that last bot repair." Lucy bit her lip guiltily at the lie, but pulled on her boots as fast as she could and dashed out the back entrance. She stuffed her hands deep in her hoodie pockets and walked quickly down the crowded street. From every side neon signs and holgoraphic posters screamed with rainbows of garish colour, boasting the wares of a hundred shops and stalls crammed into the narrow lane. All around her merchants yelled, calling customers to their stall, mocking their competitiors, telling outright lies about the quality of their wares. "Miss, miss! You look so thin! Come and look at my stall, every kind of candy to put some meat on those bones!" Called a cheerfully plump merchant, waving at lines of sweets gittering like glass in the neon light. "Neutral implants! Cerebral serums! Intelli chips! Discount operations! Totally risk free! Outthink any AI!" "Fruit! Get your fruit! Apples, pears, mangos! All perfectly unnatural, get your genetically modified fruit here!" A woman shouted brusquely, gesturing entusiastically at a collection of oranges larger than Lucy's head. Lucy grinned and shook her head. This was exactly what she needed, a sea of voices to drown out that one whisper in her head. The lights, the crowd, it felt almost like it did before the bone craze. And it wasn't like she hated her job. She loved it here, she'd always wanted to be part of this mad, wonderful, technicolour city and now she was. Maybe things would die down again and she could go back to tinkering in the shop with Grimm like before. "Bones! bones! Fresh bones, filled with memories! Stuffed with secrets! All of the highest quality! I have musicians, artists, scientists, lovers! Got 'em all here!" Lucy's head snapped round to stare hungrily at the stall of dirty, yellowed skulls. An emaciated woman leered at passersby, waving them over with grubby hands. "You! Little girl! How would you like to be a dancer? A poet? A pilot? Got 'em all here, fresh as you like!" Lucy gazed fixedly at a small skull, scarcely larger than her fist. There was still some grave dirt smeared around the eyesockets. Biting back tears, she pushed her way back into the crowd and hurried back towards the shop. Maybe if she tried it just once she could let it go and things would go back to normal, maybe she could just *forget*.