Russo's Short Story: 'The Clinic'

“This is the third body this week, dammit! How am I supposed to figure this out if they keep dying on me?” Russo shouted, despite the fact that he was the only one in the dimly lit basement he referred to as “The Clinic”. The Clinic was the one place where he could study the effects of the microchip without fear of being caught and arrested. The Officials didn’t really like it when he cut open their precious civilians for science. And he cut them open often enough that The Officials were on to him. Russo hadn 't actually been warned by them -- no one ever warns a serial killer -- but he had noticed men in sharp-looking uniforms, watching him.
He still believed it was worth it. The microchip, Russo thought, was the source of all violence in the world. He figured that the people should learn, rather than having an implant to do all the thinking for them. That’s the way it was many years ago, when Russo was first built. The way it was before The Officials were shoving devices into the people’s brains, and claiming it as “education”. That was one of the things the microchip was supposed to be; a temporary teacher, one that didn’t require a paycheck,

He’d had high hopes that this girl would be the one to solve the problems. She was a valid candidate; young enough that she was obviously given the microchip at birth, if not, a short time after it, but not so old that the microchip would have been damaged yet. When the microchip was first invented the only people that got them implanted were the rich people or the mentally ill. Now, however, it had became so popular that every baby born now gets it implanted in their brain before their mothers could even hold him or her. The microchip, first thought to be the cure for any mental illness and education was being used to enhance every human quality. Babies implanted with it at birth were able to walk within a month, had stronger bones, and could talk fluently after only four