"Way the world works now," Kovacs says, making no apologies for it. It wasn't him who had started the whole thing but he'd benefitted from it immensely. He'd be dead and long gone if it hadn't been for cortical stacks and sleeves.

"If people don't want it happening, they religiously code themselves and stay dead," he elaborates a little further. "Or they do something to the sleeve that makes it impossible to use. Burning beyond recognition is a pretty popular way to go."

Not that he knows that for sure. It's not like there are researchers studying that that he knows of.