Horatio, owner of a struggling tattoo parlor

He could barely keep his attention held to the road as he drove silently through the shining streets of Lincoln.

The roads were slick with rain, smog, and cum. Greens and reds were mirrored in the wet black asphalt of the road, and bright headlights sparkled with blinding ferocity through the windshield. If it weren't for his prosthetic right eye, he wouldn't have been able to keep a straight-on look at the road.

Horatio had invested in a few functional body modifications in the last few years, as the finances had allowed for it. A steady eye and joints in his right side made the careful art of tattooing safer and more pleasurable for clients, as well as much faster. Spaces carved into the back of his palm allowed him to carry up to three colors of ink cartridges, feeding into the removable needle that he'd purchased in place of a right pinkie finger. But even with these special advances, business was struggling.

He tried to fight it, tried to encourage his best customers to join him in keeping their inked flesh, in protecting the art of tattoos. But even with a few regulars, Horatio had to face facts. The industry was dying. There wasn't enough skin to go around, and where there was, the money found its way to metal over ink every time.

This had been his last ditch effort, one final hope that his parlor was going to make it through to next year. Horatio's grandmother had passed away, and although he was sad and grieving, he found some hope in the thought that maybe, just maybe, she might have left him enough money to stay afloat.

But she was poor. They all were. His grandpa had to spend half their savings on an emergency spinal replacement to stay in work, and after he passed, she had but to blow through the rest of it to keep her home, as rent skyrocketed with the increasing volume orgies and mod-shops in the area.

It was a miracle that with all of this on his mind--and all of that failure in his heart--that he was still able to get himself along the unsafe roads and to the door of his tattoo shop. The one he had built from nothing, and that he was now, inevitably, going to lose.

He turned the closed sign on the door to open, inviting a public that did not exist into "Country-Culture." Most people didn't care to remember that Nebraska didn't use to be covered in so much smog that the rain turned to a light mist as it fell. They chose to ignore the miles of now-dead farmland outside the bustling, sweaty city of Lincoln. But for the people that loved skin, it was nice to have a subtle reminder of simpler days.

Horatio pulled out the napkin from he train and sat it on the counter, idly gazing down on it as he waited for a walk-in client that he knew wouldn't come. He had the sudden idea for an exciting new design on seeing, in person for the first time, that famous model in the same passenger car. He didn't know what it was about her--he didn't even really see much of her front--but he couldn't help but scribble some vague lines and impressions. It was modern, there was no doubt about that. The pattern didn't look like anything in particular. Certainly, no one would be able to tell its muse just by looking at it, or even understand it if they were told.

A ring. He looked up at the door to see the last few frames of his bell, hanging above the glass entry, being rung again as it closed in his cybernetic eye. He looked down, unable to collect his jaw from the counter at the prospect of a new potential client.