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MidReal Story
Brain-computer interfaces allowed people to download skills. Benny
Scenario:Brain-computer interfaces allowed people to download skills. Benny is now browsing the new list of skills that just become available on the black market. One of them is serial killing.
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I clicked on a link and found myself on the Black Market Skills page.
The dark web was a large place, but most of it was accessible to anyone with a decent browser and a few plugins.
Pages like this one required something more, an encrypted network with private access points.
Not something the average tech user could easily manage, but it hadn’t been much of an obstacle for me.
That’s why I was familiar with this site’s neon color scheme and the four columns of skills.
I had seen it once before, but never paid much attention to it.
The tech description in the top banner said it specialized in illegal skills.
There were other sites on the dark web that offered legal skills and even free versions of some of the most common.
But this site didn’t bother with that, instead offering “any skill you could dream of.”
In my world, skills were software programs that could be downloaded directly into your brain through a brain-computer interface.
They were what made us human so exceptional, allowing us to be anything we wanted to be.
The technology had been around for little more than a decade now, but it had already changed everything.
There were no more schools or universities in the traditional sense, no more teachers, no more books or study hours.
You didn’t need any of those things to learn how to do anything you wanted.
As long as it was in the government-approved skill database, you could download it and start learning.
And with enough hours of practice, you could master any skill you wanted.
The only problem was that you might not be allowed to download it in the first place.
Not if you weren’t licensed for it or it wasn’t part of an approved profession.
The licensed professions included doctors, nurses, lawyers, software developers, and even writers.
They had to prove they were competent to do their job before they could start practicing, something that took years of training and study.
For the rest of us, the skills we could download were severely limited by what the government approved for our professions and licenses.
If it wasn’t on the list, we couldn’t download it, no matter how much we wanted to learn something new or how much effort we were willing to put into it.
But what if you wanted to learn something that wasn’t legal?
Maybe hacking, terrorism, or assassination?
The government didn’t offer those skills on its database, not even for licensed law enforcement agents or military personnel.
That’s where Black Market Skills came in, providing any illegal skill you could dream of, no questions asked.
It was a dangerous place to visit, even for someone like me who loved technology and exploring forbidden places on the dark web.
