I woke up in my clothes on top of a soft queen bed in a very plain blue room. I sat up and stretched my arms. I still felt a little weak, I was sedated for a few hours.

A boy about 14 years of age walked into the room. “How are you feeling, Anthony?” He asked. “Fine.” I responded, not fully processing what he was asking.

“How are your ears?” He asked. I mentally checked how my ears were. “They’re fine.” I responded.

“Feel behind them. I put both my pointer fingers just behind my corresponding ears. and felt around. There wasn’t anything. “There’ nothing there.” I responded. “How is that?”

“The beauty of modern technology. It is still technically a cut to your body, but it will heal without a scar in a couple days. “Cool, but, how?” I asked.

“Its fake skin. The implant is only in your dermis, so it’s fine to put biodegradable stuff there that just waits for more skin cells to replace it.

The boy grabbed one of three chairs at a table, brought it over to the side of the bed, and sat down in it facing me. He picked up my phone from the bedside table and offered it to me. “Wanna try it out?” He asked. “It works with Bluetooth. It’s called ‘ahb-device’.”

“Isn’t that a security risk? To keep bluetooth on and visible?” I asked, “Not really, it can be disabled and enabled with a number station, and it responds to pairing attempts when it’s off. I’ve taken the liberty to enable yours for now. You can disable or enable it at any time via our app or email at any time.”

I took my phone and unlocked it with my six digit passcode. I opened up settings, and paired it with “ahb-device” I then went to the plex app, and shuffled my “favorite songs” playlist. I got the song, “Dream of Micky Mantle” by Bleachers. The song started to play, not really from anywhere, but it was perfect quality. The music was as loud as it could be, but it didn’t feel like it was damaging my ears. I put my right index finger on the top of my ear, and moved it down towards my lobe. The music turned down and a minimal click sound in both my ears indicated the new volume. By the frequency of the clicks I guessed there were 64 volume settings, there was 50 the last time I looked at the specs three days ago. I 75% the way down. “Who are you?” I asked the boy. “Mr. Sanchez” He responded with a slight smile. “Wait,” I started, “you’re Mr. Sanchez?” “Well, yeah, that’s me. Everyone keeps asking me that do people really not know what I look like?”

“No. Everyone just uses the PGP stuff now. What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Since you were an integral part in making the implants I decided that you would be the first to get it, I wanted to come see what it was like. I’m also here to get mine.”