Men like Darrow used to be above your paygrade. Men like Darrow used to be a dime a dozen, just another VIP, another name to register and discard while you got your work done. Now you owe him your life just as much as you do Sarif. Time to do your homework.
You put the bowl and spoon in the sink, giving them the most token of rinses. The cleaners'll take care of it like they've taken care of the whole place for the past six weeks. Two Korean women, mother and daughter you're pretty sure. Friendly enough, English didn't seem bad, but given your mood that's all you've cared to learn about them. You got used to having someone else clean up after you, eventually. You just try not to let them show up to a sty week after week. You pour yourself a glass before you put the milk away and shuffle your way over to your bedroom, sipping all the while.
Soft groan of relief as you sit down in your padded computer seat, the desk pressing up against the side of your bed. There's a few open cereal boxes lying around on the shelves from when you snacked on them dry, rubbing shoulders with painkillers and antibiotics of every stripe. En-suite bathroom - shit that's right, you need to talk to the super about your new mirror. Later. When the normal people are awake. You set down your half-empty glass of milk and type in your password. Hunt-and-peck of course, with agonising slowness.
You reach over to your glass again, and pause. It's covered in hairline cracks, more like a fractal art piece than kitchenware. You curl your hand into a tight fist and grimace. So much for that. You distract yourself by opening up the search engine and starting to look into Darrow.
England-born son of Martin Darrow, founder of the Picus Group. Before he was a genius he was an athlete, captain of every sports team under the sun in high school. Apparently robotics interested him more than the rest of the curriculum, because he dropped out to compete in the 1994 run of Robot Wars. Which he lost. Chalk that one up to the weird irony of history.
Then the skiing accident a year later. Details are fuzzy - obviously not his favourite subject in interviews - but long story short it ruined his right knee beyond all repair. He's been hobbling around on a cane ever since. But instead of letting that get to him, he just went back to England to buy up a prosthetics R&D lab and merge it with his existing robotics company to make Darrow Industries. By the early 2000s he'd pinned down the makeup of the PEDOT cluster, the neural interface technology that's the reason you can even move. Then came the biosensors, the only reason you can feel at all. It's here his paths cross with your boss - 2007 was the year Sarif took it upon himself to give his hometown a shot to the heart. He bought up all the dilapidated auto plants and had them churn out augments instead. Apparently he and Darrow became close around then, the cause of Sarif Industries even existing. They've both mentioned it in interviews, but nothing specific. Maybe you'll get around to asking Sarif one of these days.
2011 saw the birth of LIMB courtesy of a €50 million loan from Darrow, though it wasn't branded as such for two years. And what years they were. VITAS came along and killed millions, the human race split into three, then immortal dragons woke up from their aeons-long slumbers and decided they wanted a slice of corporate America. The Mayan prophecy was right. December 21st, 2012, was the end of the world. The Fifth World, they call it now. Jury's still out on how long the Sixth'll last.
Tech boomed after the Awakening, but none more than augmentation. In two years Darrow'd developed a deep brain implant that successfully cured Downs. Same year you signed up for the DPD. You knew a couple guys who could've used that implant.
Fast forward into the new 20s. Where things get strange. The decade augmentation boomed, still is booming. The greatest thing to ever happen to Darrow Industries. The highly publicised case of Antoine Thursdale v the State sets precedent for the right for perfectly healthy people to augment themselves. It'd been happening for years behind closed doors of course - what doesn't? - but the case opened the floodgates. But instead Darrow starts retreating. He sells the Neuropozyne patent to VersaLife and starts selling off company branches. Then just when it looks like he's angling for early retirement he buys the Omega Ranch in Singapore from the WHO and fills it with a brand new team of researchers.
Then Goblinisation hit. People all over the world just dropped in the middle of the street and mutated into orks or trolls. Not the most photogenic of metatypes. Naturally stronger and tougher than humans, trolls-
promise I won't hurt'cha I said take the shot Jensen
... trolls even more so. Closer to three metres tall than two on average, built like brick shithouses, strong as an augmented human if they so much as feel like it, and naturally bulletproof. People started needing conversion surgery to update their augs for their mutated physiologies, it was a nightmare. And nobody knew why Darrow Industries were footing the bill, funding research and outreach, until 2023 when Darrow finally broke radio silence to confirm that he was taking medical leave to deal with the health complications that had arisen from his own Goblinisation.
And then... nothing. You look everywhere, open two dozen tabs, check and recheck, but that's it. Darrow's done absolutely nothing of note ever since. Oh his people have been busily working away at their ordinary jobs, aug tech is still on the rise, but the man himself is a Nobel-Prize-winning ghost. Rumour was that the Omega Ranch was working around the clock on Essence theory and how to tackle the health risks associated with it in augmentation, but there hasn't been a peep out of them. Megan managed to beat them to it without even trying.
And look where that got her.
You sigh, heavily. You're squinting at the shadows when you're still relearning how to see. You go to rub your eyes, and jump. Your hands click loudly against the metal implants framing your eyes, the touch of the cold steel makes you flinch. You stare at your offending palm, as if accusing it of the instinctual movement.
You turn off the computer and down the rest of your milk like the last few fingers of whiskey. It hits your stomach in a cold rush, distracts you a little from the ache behind your eyes. If Darrow's your 'father', he's a hell of a distant one - and you feel no closer to understanding the man than you did an hour ago.
"HUD on," you murmur. Glance at the digital readout. Past 3am.
Not like you really have anything to be up early for.
[ ] Go to sleep anyway. Turn up the white noise and sleep in a real bed, hopefully you won't dream.
[ ] Do your physio. Passing out on the floor for a few hours from the pain'd be a plus at this point.
[ ] Take another look at that clockmaking guide you picked up cheap online. Building your fine motor skills is PT too.
[ ] Get dressed and go up to the roof for a smoke. You need to unwind before you break something again - on purpose.
