Both of these facts concerned him equally. He couldn’t remember his name or where, exactly, he was, which made the impending kill-team all the more worrisome. He opened his eyes. His vision was blurry and unfocused. His head felt filled with sand.

Roland (–Oh shit, that’s my name! Roland!) wondered how long he’d been asleep. He reflexively triggered his deck before the dim firing of a synapse reminded him that he’d permanently disabled his data connection…well, a long time ago.

Five million two hundred twenty six thousand minu–

His “hindbrain,” what Roland called the acres of microscopic processors and databanks spun into his blood, spat the knowledge out unbidden into his conscious mind. Roland tried to curse but wound up spitting out a wad of brackish phlegm instead. His eyes settled on a quarter-full bottle of fungus whiskey. He grabbed it, drained it, and rooted around on the table where he’d found it until his digging turned up a sheet of acid. He ripped the sheet in half, ate one half, and pasted the other on his sweat-damp chest.

Roland’s brain didn’t wait for the acid to do its job; nanomachines couriered the lysergic diethylacid direct to his synapses. The drugs took hold in a manner of seconds. Acid softened the world around him. His hindbrain’s running commentary faded into a sort of generalized hyper-awareness of the world around him. He sighed, relaxed, and remembered.

A woman hovered over him, her hands on his shoulders, her knees on either side of his body. Sweat dripped down from her short black hair onto his face and chest. Her pupils were the size of dinner plates. She smelled like acid and desire. She smiled, revealing a row of damascus-steel teeth–

Roland pulled himself out of the memory. He felt the strike team advance. His hindbrain generated a map of the approaching assassins. They were still a solid minute from his hovel.

There were six men and two women on the team. If he’d wanted, a microsecond’s focus could’ve told him which members of the group were vegetarians, where two of the team were on their menstrual cycles, and how recently each of their firearms had been cleaned and oiled. But Roland didn’t care about that information. He was trying to remember where he’d left his gun.