The premise to this story, which I probably will only write one chapter a week to, is it is an AU version of Worm. In this AU, Riley (Bonesaw) triggered with the QA bug controlling power while her parents were being tortured. She managed to kill Jack Slash with a few thousand angry wasps that nested nearby (there isn't a lot of fancy footwork the Broadcast shard can do when several thousand wasps swarm you while you're inside a building.)
Other than that, Taylor's life proceeds as normal and she triggered in the locker starting to get Bonesaw's original power, however at the same time she swapped places with a version of Taylor Hebert who was living, somehow, in the CP2077 universe, circa 2062. The CP2077 universe isn't one of the alternate Earth's the Entity's have access to or are imperiling, so the Shard wasn't completely transferred along with Taylor to CP2077. She ended up with mostly a Thinker power with encyclopedic knowledge of medicine, but it included some Tinker elements, but since the power level of the Shard is not quite there in this new universe, it cannot perform the usual Tinker-tech miracles. It can do some implausible things, but mostly anything she creates will have to be at least sort of possible.
I'm also bad at naming things, so the name of the story might be subject to change.
The premise to this story, which I probably will only write one chapter a week to, is it is an AU version of Worm. In this AU, Riley (Bonesaw) triggered with the QA bug controlling power while her parents were being tortured. She managed to kill Jack Slash with a few thousand angry wasps that nested nearby (there isn't a lot of fancy footwork the Broadcast shard can do when several thousand wasps swarm you while you're inside a building.)
Other than that, Taylor's life proceeds as normal and she triggered in the locker starting to get Bonesaw's original power, however at the same time she swapped places with a version of Taylor Hebert who was living, somehow, in the CP2077 universe, circa 2062. The CP2077 universe isn't one of the alternate Earth's the Entity's have access to or are imperiling, so the Shard wasn't completely transferred along with Taylor to CP2077. She ended up with mostly a Thinker power with encyclopedic knowledge of medicine, but it included some Tinker elements, but since the power level of the Shard is not quite there in this new universe, it cannot perform the usual Tinker-tech miracles. It can do some implausible things, but mostly anything she creates will have to be at least sort of possible.
I'm not great at writing first person stories, nor am I the greatest at writing perspectives that seem genuine when the POV is someone else's characters, which is why my POV characters are almost always OCs. So apologies if this seems weird/wrong.
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I thought I would die inside that locker, and I thought for a while that I did, but that couldn't have been what happened. I had been trapped in there for hours, screaming myself hoarse... school had already let out, and I was just hoping a janitor might find me. It was a futile hope after none of my fellow students, and I was pretty sure even teachers ever helped me, but I wasn't going to give the Trio the satisfaction of murdering me without even trying to save myself. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, my mom would have quoted.
Did you know that Winslow turned off all the heat as soon as school was out? I mean, when it was working at all. I lost consciousness shivering, wondering whether it was the hypothermia or toxic shock that would kill me first.
I regained consciousness thumping onto the floor as if I had rolled off the top bunk of a bunk bed. I hit with considerable force, and though I groaned in pain, the wind having been knocked out of me, I had already diagnosed my shoulder, which I mostly landed on with nothing more than a contusion.
I thought someone had opened up the locker, and I must have spilt out onto the floor like a sack of potatoes, but opening my eyes and glancing up, I appeared to be in a small, efficiency apartment. I could see the small kitchenette directly in front of me, and it looked like they hadn't even finished unpacking because the ground was littered with brown cardboard boxes with the name "MILITECH" stencilled on the side.
Great, I was kidnapped by a gang that was... doing a... guns deal? Gun trade? What the hell? That doesn't make any sense. It made more sense that I died, except...
If I died, I wouldn't still be covered with the blood and filth that was in the locker, surely. And the afterlife wouldn't be a shitty apartment full of cardboard boxes. And there wasn't any trail of such filth coming from the door, so there was no way I walked or was dragged in here.
Wait...
Wait one second!
I teleported! I must be a cape! I gained powers in the locker, somehow! Specifically, a teleportation Mover power? But please, why did I end up in the middle of some stash house full of whatever is inside these Militech boxes? It had to be some kind of weapons in there even if they looked more like moving boxes; I mean... the name!
I always wanted to be a hero, but I sure wasn't ready right now! Power, I like your moxie in trying to break up a gun deal first thing, but we have to get ready first! You're moving almost as fast as Ladybug did when she killed Jack Slash as soon as she triggered over half a decade ago.
Since his death, it had been theorised that the famous serial killer had some type of Thinker precognition power that was especially useful against other capes, which allowed him to get away from so many heroes that attempted to bring him down so often, but when a six-year-old girl Triggered with bug-controlling powers while you were torturing her parents, who thankfully hadn't gotten around to calling the exterminator to remove the giant wasp hive in the backyard, well... there is only so much fancy footwork can do against thousands of wasps, all controlled with a singular purpose-- to murder you.
Power, we don't even have a mask! I stood up and squinched my eyes. Power! Go back to Winslow, for now!
...
Power? ... Go back... to my room at home!
Uh, go... anywhere else but here? Wait, anywhere safe but here! I don't want to be in a volcano, next to Oni Lee or at the bottom of the ocean!
I stood there with my hands balled into my fists, eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed and face scrunched up. It suddenly dawned on me how ridiculous I looked. I looked like Carrie after she was drenched in pig's blood trying to hold a fart in.
The thought of the blood and my cut fingers, damaged fingernails and numerous scratches on my body had a number of possible bacterial infections and toxic shock syndrome coming to my head. In fact, I was already infected with a number of harmful bacteria, which might proceed to sepsis in as little as twelve hours if left untreated. I was sure of it. Prompt treatment was important at this stage, and I started moving without realising what I was doing. There was no phone visible to call emergency services, and leaving this apartment was fraught with peril, so I would have to treat myself, which was not a big deal at all...
---xxxxxx---
I came back to my senses in the shower, just letting the hot water run all over my body. It felt heavenly after being stuck in that locker for hours. Not only was it disgusting, but I was a tall girl, and my shoulders and neck were crinked from being in there so long... or at least they were. Rolling my neck, it felt a lot better after having the hot water run on them for so long.
I sort of remembered what I had been doing as if my body had been on autopilot for a while. I stepped out of the shower, giving the bloody remnants of my clothes a wide berth. I didn't care if this was Lung's personal stash house; there was no way I would ever wear those clothes again. I'd rather run through the Docks in nothing but this towel!
I glanced at a mug that read "World's Number One Dad" that was half-filled with an off-white powder. I had already taken about twenty milligrams of the powder. It was a shame that there were no gel capsules around, and the time necessary for me to fabricate an actual pill press would have caused my treatment to be delayed unacceptably.
This drug was an extremely effective broad-spectrum antibiotic. Only one treatment was necessary to eradicate everything from syphilis to MRSA and everything in between. Honestly, there was really only one negative side effect to it...
I immediately threw my towel off my body and rushed to the toilet. Thankfully in such a small bathroom, it was only two steps away.
"Oh, shit..." I said aloud as I felt my stomach rumbling dangerously.
And shit, I did.
---xxxxxx---
I realised I was a Tinker about halfway through the twenty minutes I spent on the toilet. I would have learned immediately, but for the first ten minutes, there was no real conscious thought at all. Just groaning and pain.
The antibiotic had literally destroyed every micro-organism in my body, which actually would have been a really bad thing as humans had evolved to depend on their microfauna biome. Except it wasn't the only thing, I made when I was in a fugue.
There were no amounts of courtesy flushing that would forgive the sin I committed against this commode, so I just flushed it for what must have been the twelfth time once, grabbed the mug full of super antibiotics and walked out of the bathroom.
I had made four drugs at the kitchenette, which I found incredibly impressive. It wasn't even a proper kitchen; it was the kind that you might find in a hotel that you rented by the week or crappy apartments... like the crappy apartment, I was currently in.
I had memories of already taking two of the drugs, the other one I needed to take immediately, and the last was made as a contingency.
The second drug I had taken in my fugue made me frown deeply, and I started to get pissed off. It was an anti-depressant, and it was as good as the antibiotic was. It was guaranteed to normalise neurotransmitter levels within six to twelve hours of administration and only needed to be taken once a week.
Did my power think I was depressed?! ... well... I mean... It still didn't have the right to take the decision out of my hands itself!
Wait, why was I talking about my power like it was another person? The Agent theory of Parahuman powers was widely denigrated, and only crazy crackpots on PHO actually subscribed to it. I just wasn't used to going into a fugue as I had done.
At the back of my mind rested a deep field of absolute knowledge, like I had a hundred different encyclopedias hooked into my brain. The knowledge was mostly about medicine, biology, anatomy, organic chemistry and genetics. I had also been trying hard not to think about the vast trove of psychiatric data I had access to.
According to the same part of my brain that diagnosed the exact strains of staph bacteria I had been exposed to, I was at a mental health crisis point; just one bad day would have been all that it took to push me over the edge into some permanent solutions. It felt that gaining powers was only postponing the inevitable and that I would likely do something foolish and get myself killed in a classic example of self-destructive behaviour if I didn't take things in hand. It felt that my mental state was a bigger danger than the bacteria. It could be treated pharmacologically, but that wasn't really a cure.
I did... not like being confronted with this. But, my possible mental breakdown and a psychological break could wait. I was really at some risk if I didn't take this third drug very soon.
I had made it out of a can of yoghurt and some miscellaneous kitchen chemicals, the latter of which was the same thing I made the other three drugs out of, which didn't make me feel that much better about them, except that I knew that they would work and be fine.
Sighing, I grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and ate the entire can of yoghurt. Mmm, it was strawberry flavour. This would replace all the beneficial microbiomes in my digestive system after the earlier antibiotic wrecked it.
After finishing the yoghurt, I glanced at the last drug I had made, which I hadn't thought much about. I made it as a contingency, as a tool to escape. I was already exhausted, but if I was in the middle of a dangerous area like the docks or deep in Empire or ABB territory, I might not have enough time to stay in this stash house. There was no telling when someone might arrive. It might be months or minutes!
So I made a very potent dopamine reuptake inhibitor; it was a very strong and long-lasting neural stimulant. One dose, and I could stay awake for at least forty-eight hours with no real side effects.
My hand rushed to cover my own mouth in shock. Aghast, I said, "Oh, no..."
Had I just Broken Bad and created super-meth? Already? Oh god. No, no, no! I will not be Skidmark's second girlfriend! What will they call me? Hollar, to go with Squealer?! I felt ill.
I shook my head rapidly to clear it and stared at the over six hundred grams of powder in an empty old margarine tub as if I had just made some mashed potatoes or something. Oh god! A single dose was only twenty-five milligrams by oral administration! The PRT would get me for distribution! If the gangs didn't catch me first!
It was all over!
I started panting, acutely aware that I was hyperventilating and having an anxiety attack but ignoring the corner of my brain that was brimming full of medical advice. I sat down, slumped on a couch on the other side of the room, which was surrounded by boxes full of guns and stared out into space for a time.
---xxxxxx---
I wasn't sure if it was because the super-antidepressants were starting to work, but I only let myself have a panic attack for about five or ten minutes at the most. After that, I started calming down a little bit, even if I was still kind of hyperventilating. I realised I wasn't thinking straight. Nobody knew what I had done. I could flush the incriminating evidence, and it would be fine.
I started to get up to go do just that, but something caught my eye on the coffee table in front of me. It was one of only two tables in the apartment, the other being a small table next to the kitchenette that was stacked full of cardboard boxes. This table, however, only had what looked like a smartphone on it. It was either a small tablet or a large phone, and I considered the latter to be more likely. Smartphones were still quite expensive, and this one looked even swankier than the DragonTech phones that were all the rage if you were rich.
That made me become very, very scared. Nobody would leave their expensive phone here if they were not going to come back and get it, and soon. I had to call the BBPD or the PRT right away, or I was going to be dead meat! I didn't think that the PRT would care about saving me at all, but they would be at least interested in all of these boxes, and I might get saved as a result, but I had to move fast. I had already spent at least two hours in a fugue making those drugs!
I was pretty sure you could still make an emergency call even if you didn't have the PIN number to unlock a phone, so I grabbed the phone off the table, the screen coming to life as soon as she picked it up.
What I saw caused me to drop the phone in shock, it slipping through my limp-with-shock fingers and tumbling onto the floor with a clatter.
Dad was death on cell phones, even flip phones, so I had never had one, but I was pretty sure what I saw was called the lock screen. You could select a picture that would be displayed while the phone was locked.
So, why, then, was a picture of me and my mom the lock screen photo of this phone that presumably belonged to gun runners?!
Everyone said that powers were bullcrap and you shouldn't try to understand them with normal logic, but there was a point when things got too crazy to explain away with that simple platitude.
I reached down and grabbed the phone from the floor, the screen lighting up again. I didn't recognise this photo of my mom or me, and I was confident it was never taken. They were on the roof of a building, and the background was a cityscape that would look more in place in Tokyo than in Brockton Bay. I was absolutely sure I had never been there!
I tried to move the photo around with my thumb, but as soon as I touched the screen, a green padlock icon appeared along with the text, "BIOMETRIC MATCH." Then the phone unlocked, and I was looking at a totally unfamiliar screen full of odd icons and glyphs.
Wait... what?! Did this phone just unlock to my fingerprint?! I did a lot of research on fingerprints back when I still thought the teachers and school officials would still do anything about the Trio. How stupid I was back then. How could this phone unlock to my fingerprint? Maybe any fingerprint unlocked it? That didn't seem to sit right with the words biometric match, though. This was starting to get weirder and weirder, and I was half-expecting some kind of SAW situation from that disgusting Earth Aleph horror movie.
I looked at the unfamiliar glyphs on the screen, but there was one that looked like an old-time telephone, so I pressed it. For the moment, I was ignoring the fact that the Home Screen picture was my dad and me with my dad wearing some kind of military uniform. I find the dialer and enter 9-1-1 and CALL, putting the phone up to my head.
The phone answers immediately, and the voice is slick but slightly computer generated, "Night City Emergency Services, Miss Taylor Hebert, I see your location as the twenty-ninth floor of Megabuilding H8 in Westbrook. Please be advised present response times to your position exceed ONE ONE ZERO minutes. Do you wish to continue?"
What?
I stammer out, "No, thank you," and get another computer-generated response, "Very well, you have been charged ten eurodollars for this service. Have a good day."
I glance at the phone's screen in shock, in time to see a red alert at the top of the screen indicating that ten eurodollars, whatever those are, have been deducted from my account. I have been thinking about this for a while, but I need to say it out loud, "Toto, I don't think I am in Kansas anymore."
I stare at the picture on the home screen, perplexed. Dad looks pretty good in a military uniform, but I can't even determine which military he is in. I set the phone down and do some breathing exercises that the information in the back of my head is telling me will be helpful for stress, as I have been hyperventilating for over fifteen minutes, and my hands were starting to cramp into useless claws.
My... what is this, even? A medical-based Thinker power? But I diagnosed myself immediately with a carpopedal spasm caused by hyperventilation due to localised hypocalcemia. Treatment was getting my breathing under conscious control, so I started breathing in a slow pattern that was clinically proven to provide anxiolytic benefits.
After a few minutes of just sitting there and relaxing, I grab the phone again, and this time I try unlocking it with my left pinky finger, only to get a stern red icon. Sighing, I use my right thumb, and it unlocks. I was very good with computers, and ultimately this was just an unfamiliar computer interface. But it was one that was clearly designed for ease of use, as the icons made sense and were straightforward.
I navigate through a number of pending notifications and find what seems to be the text messaging app, seeing a lot of texts to this phone that was more or less similar in nature, in that they were all offering condolences or saying that they would miss ... me? They were clearly texting a Taylor Hebert.
There was a different app for e-mails, and there were a couple of pending notifications in that app too, which I pulled up. The first e-mail answered a lot of questions but gave me a lot more besides.
Dear Miss Hebert,
First, let me offer our condolences for the recent loss of your father, MAJOR DANIEL HEBERT, who was killed in the line of duty at [REDACTED] on [REDACTED]. All of Militech owes you a great debt.
However, while Major Hebert was eligible for the Enhanced Combat Survivor's Benefit, it has been determined that the [REDACTED] at [REDACTED] is to be considered a POLICE ACTION, and while Major Hebert was killed in the line of duty, deaths resultant from POLICE ACTIONS are not considered combat deaths, so you are eligible for only the basic survivorship package.
While we understand this isn't the decision you may have hoped for, we hope you understand that only through careful stewardship of the finances entrusted to us can we remain a strong Militech family.
Additionally, as you are the only next of kin and are a minor child, there are some important decisions you must make before SEPTEMBER 1, 2062; otherwise, we are legally obligated to forward your file to the Night City government for foster placement. I am not qualified to advise you on this matter. However, attached to this e-mail is a small 472-page guide about your options. It is recommended that you retain an attorney...
...
...
There were about three more pages of finely worded legalese, but I started hyperventilating again when I read foster placement. I wasn't even from this universe; of that, I was absolutely certain now. Could they really put me in foster care? Oh, and my universe-dad was dead, I guess. Honestly, that wasn't that different from what I was used to. My actual dad was basically just walking dead already, merely acting out the memories of what life once was like a revenant.
That made me think about him. Practically the only emotion he actually felt was worry, and he was going to be out of his mind with it, worried that I never came home from school, and I was worried that I might never see him again. Travel between universes was difficult enough between Aleph and Bet, and it was illegal, in fact, except in highly supervised cases.
But this... this was something very different. There weren't alternate versions of you in Earth Aleph. That wasn't how this worked! I had read about the theorised point of divergence between the two universes, and the accumulated differences over time were enough butterflies to ensure that there was no, for example, Taylor Hebert on Earth Aleph. And there certainly was no Taylor Hebert in 2062.
This wasn't Earth Gimel; this was something very different.
This meant that I probably would never see my dad again and that he would have to deal with a missing daughter on top of losing his wife just a couple of years ago. Oh god, he was barely hanging on as it was!
Unless... hopefully, I just swapped places with this Alternate Taylor? If so, I want to apologise if you find yourself inside a disgusting locker. Although, since it sent me to about five feet above the ground, it probably wasn't going to be one hundred per cent accurate when swapping Alt-Taylor? Hopefully, she'd fall in front of the locker.
Maybe that... would be for the best? Judging from all the text messages, this girl had she had friends, people who seemed to care enough about her to at least offer words of platitude, even if they were only being polite. Her contact list was full of names, and she had been texting to and from people her own age. Some even said that they would miss her since apparently she couldn't stay enrolled at the Militech school after her father passed away. By any metric, I could see she was vastly superior in all respects to me.
I didn't want to inflict my life on my worst enemy, except maybe Sophia, and especially not on an alternate version of myself from a different universe, but surely this Alt-Taylor was smart enough that she could figure out how to get out of my predicament that I had been suffering through since I entered high school. She was, from all appearances, smart both intellectually and socially, unlike me.
The part of my brain full of psychiatry information was warning me that I was approaching seriously unhealthy levels of self-loathing, 'I wish that would just shut up! I'm not asking for advice!'
I stewed there on the couch, which I could see was a fold-out bed as well and built into the side of the wall and tried to use the phone to find out anything I could about where I was.
---xxxxxx---
On the plus side, all these cardboard boxes didn't have guns or grenades in them. Well, most of them didn't. I found several pistols in boxes with the rest of Alt-Dad's effects. I carefully set them aside, not knowing the first thing about either safely handling them or even making sure that they were safe, so I figured the safest thing to do was just not to touch them at all.
The boxes were full of all the stuff Alt-Taylor and Alt-Dad had in their apartment. Apparently, the company evicted you pretty rapidly in the event you left their service, even if it was in case of death. However, they packed everything well, and according to that lady's e-mail, part of the "basic survivorship package" included three months of paid rent at accommodations of their choice that were rated at least GREEN for safety, whatever that meant.
I had figured out how to turn on the television that was integrated into one of the walls, but after it started playing "America's Most Violent Home Videos" and seeing some gang member accidentally blow himself up with a grenade to a laugh track, I turned it off immediately. I thought life was cheap in Brockton Bay, but this goes far beyond what I'm used to. Although, that sort of thing might have been played on Über and Leet's private channel, and it wasn't actually that far off from what I would expect one of the Merchant's to do.
However, at least I managed to find the boxes that contained Alt-Taylor's clothes, so I put on some of her pyjamas so I wouldn't be stuck in a towel for the foreseeable future.
After making sure that the door outside was well and truly locked, I decided the best thing I could do was just cry myself to sleep on the roll-out futon.
---xxxxxx---
My dreams seemed to last years; I dreamt of Alt-Taylor's life. It wasn't as though I relived her entire life, not even close. Nor did I have her full memories at my beck and call when I woke up, but when I woke up, I was a lot less confused about my location and situation.
Alt-Taylor had been expecting the company to screw her over in more or less the manner that they ended up doing. Even if she didn't precisely know how they would fuck her, she knew it was coming. However, instead of my own impression that everyone was out to screw me over, Alt-Taylor's impression was that the corp screwed everyone. The nuance was totally different, there was no personal animus behind it, and Alt-Taylor didn't even seem that upset about it. Alt-Taylor and her dad had even made contingency planning for this exact scenario, as he was apparently under no illusions about how dangerous his job was.
I was more sure that we had swapped places now because the impressions I got from my dreams were of two boats passing in the night, going to opposite places. Or two streams of energy passing through each other as we coiled around a massively giant crystalline entity, which was why I had gotten a few of her memories.
I held my hands up in prayer, devotedly apologising for inflicting my life on the much more well-adjusted girl. Was this a punishment for me? Because I had not managed to help my Dad that I was being tossed into a universe where I had already lost him?
No, that didn't make sense.
I blinked. Normally, I would not have contradicted my self-denigrations like that. I glanced over at the tub of anti-depressant powder that was still on the kitchenette sink. Well, they were supposed to work very fast.
The thing about normalising my neurotransmitters was it wasn't a cure for anything, really. However, if your brain chemistry was so out of wack, your sense of depression and self-loathing would tend to make you avoid or sabotage any kind of treatment, my medical sense told me.
I still had all the same predilections; however, at least my brain wasn't firmly reinforcing my self-loathing anymore. The fact that I could make such a self-diagnosis without angrily denying it seemed to be proof of their effectiveness.
Sighing, I walked over to the couch again. I had all the contingency files on Alt-Taylor's phone. Alt-Dad had set up a complicated flowchart that he assured would give me the maximum out of the Corp.
Glancing at the pistol on the coffee table, I grabbed it, thumbed the magazine release and pulled the pistol's slide out of battery slightly to check to make sure there was no round in the chamber. There wasn't. I sat the empty gun and full magazine back down on the coffee table. While I didn't get anywhere near all of Alt-Taylor's memories, there were a surprising number of memories of Alt-Dad teaching his daughter about firearms and firearms safety.
Well, I suppose that could be useful, even if my first impression of guns was still of deep antipathy. Dad kept a shotgun at home, but Mom was always against anyone having guns, which was a lot different than Alt-Taylor's mom, who also worked for Militech. I suppose it was hard to be Pro Gun Control laws when you lived in a world where the government hardly exists and you work for an arms company.
Sighing, I brought up the private files on Alt-Taylor... no, it's my phone now. It wasn't good to keep such things compartmentalised mentally. Perhaps I could find a way back to my own universe in the future, but if I keep acting mentally like Alt-Taylor and I were two different girls, then I may slip up when interacting with people from this universe. That would lead to either mental institutionalisation or vivisection, depending on if they believed that I was actually from another universe or not. Alt-Taylor had no illusions at all about what those truly in power would do if they thought I might lead them to new, unknown Earths. Complete destructive testing of every molecule in my body if I was lucky.
I brought up my private files and found the contingency document my Dad had made. It was actually a small program that gave me prompts. It confirmed my date of birth and the current date and then asked me about my current grades at school, with a number of drop-down options.
I hummed and managed to find the transcript that was e-mailed to me when I withdrew from the corporate school last week. Wow, that was another thing I would have to apologise to Alt-Taylor for. She had straight A's. If she was waking up in my life, she had a lot of work to do as I was barely passing any of my classes due to not being generally able to turn any homework in.
The flow chart was kind of complicated, and it took me another fifteen minutes to work through all the questions it was asking me. That made me feel kind of warm inside; if he did this much planning for his daughter, then Alt-Dad surely loved her.
The suggestions made my eyebrows raise. They were all explained, too, in ways to get the most out of the Corp without completely antagonising them.
As she was a minor, the Corp was essentially her guardian. So, it was going to be on the hook to pay for foster care, public school, and some amount of maintenance until she turned 18. They would basically be paying off Night Corp, which ran the city.
It was spelt out for her that the only thing a Corp hated to do more than paying out to a person was paying out to another Corp, especially Night Corp, which tended to pretend it was some kind of government as it ran all the organs of Night City governance, like the police and courts.
The flowchart and associated plans recommended that she send an e-mail to the HR drone, a template being provided, offering to apply for emancipation in exchange for some additional benefits. Not only would Militech be on the hook for less than they would have to pay to Night Corp, but they would be paying the daughter of a fallen hero instead. The file made it clear that it wasn't that the corporate workers wanted to screw her over, specifically. It was just that they did not have any discretion and had to attempt to screw over everybody. They almost considered it an IQ test, as a kind of social Darwinism which I found repugnant. However, if given a plausible option where they could award me additional benefits and save the Corp money at the same time, they would definitely go for it.
Was this all just a fever dream as I lay dying inside that locker? 'No,' replied my medical sense. My brain was full of ways to test reality or myself for delusions, and I hadn't failed them when I did many of them this morning.
Sighing, I copied over the e-mail template and filled out the relevant portions before sending it to that Alice Newman lady.
I know I said I only intended to write one chapter a week, but I got caught up writing this chapter after I finished the previous chapter of my other Fallout story. Interestingly enough, writing two stories at once increases my output as it serves as kind of a break or change of pace. After finishing this chapter I feel like going back to write the other story, you see!
---
Taylor didn't realise it, but the fact that she was sleeping when the swap took place meant she got a much more significant chunk of her alternate's memories than the other girl had. She was also unaware of the fact that a giant crystalline computer was inspecting the process of transfer very carefully, which ensured that it settled upon her brain, much as it began to do to her doppelganger before they were transposed.
She fell onto the flat linoleum floor in front of her alternate's locker with a thud. A crappy way to wake up. She had been wallowing in her own despair in her little apartment, wondering what she was going to do and missing her dad, even though he had a tendency to be gone for weeks at a time on missions. Being gone for a little while was a lot different from being gone. It had only been three days since she came to the Corp-provided temporary housing in the Megablock in Japantown.
Why the hell they put a fifteen-year-old girl, a Militech Corpo brat, in the middle of a Megabuilding run lock stock and barrel by the Tyger Claws Yakuza gang, which had ties to Arasaka, was anyone's guess. Although Arasaka was officially banned from North America following the Corporate War, everyone knew that they had covert operations on the continent. Although you didn't hear about it all the time, it wasn't uncommon to hear about a researcher kidnapped in the USA and later showing up in Japan "working" for Arasaka. Everybody did these types of renditions, and everyone claimed they were rescuing the workers, and sometimes that was probably the case. But who did Arasaka's dirty work in Night City? In the past, it was the Tyger Claws. Could they still be responsible for it, a secret conduit to this day? Her dad thought so. Either someone had a grudge against her dad, or more likely, it was probably at least two eddies cheaper than the Megablock downtown.
She didn't think too much about how her alternate had been handling herself, her life or her depression, but then again, she had been starting to circle the drain herself, so she wouldn't throw stones just because her alternate had been doing it longer.
The way she arrived in this world left a lot to be desired, too. Luckily, she didn't sleep in the buff, but she still found herself flat on the floor of a dark school familiar only to memories that weren't hers.
Welp, what did Dad always say? Take stock, plan, adapt and then overcome. Take stock came first. She sat up. She had one Kerry Eurodyne branded duvet-style comforter, one pair of Militech-branded panties, worn, one bra, worn, two socks worn, one Miltech Paraline cyberdeck and operating system, one pair of Kiroshi Mk3 cybernetic eyes, one superpower that seemed to give her ideas about how to enhance her body to be resistant to the cold, and finally one Militech M-37AF compact variable-velocity SmartPistol.
Her dad purchased this pistol for her last year. She had been holding it under her pillow more as a remembrance of him than as a form of self-defence. She doubted she would have been invaded in the Megablock she was in -- it really was pretty safe, Tyger Claws or no Tyger Claws, but if anyone came through her locked door, it would be those selfsame Tyger Claws, and one pistol wouldn't have saved her from them. It was Militech's top-of-the-line in concealable personal defence pistols; although Taylor did have a set of Kiroshi optics, her dad finally allowed her some 'ware, but she didn't have the Smart-Link cyberware that would allow her to designate targets for the homing flechettes to take full advantage of its features. That said, it was still a very nice pistol that she had already switched to three-round burst mode. Her dad always told her that ammo was cheap, but being sure the other fucker was dead was priceless.
She momentarily ejected the cassette to ensure all of the ammunition was there. Yep, sixty rounds of 2mm caseless gyrojet-seeking flechettes. Cheap as though ammo was, she somehow doubted she could go to a vending machine down the street and get more of the specialised 2mm flechettes, so her pistol was of purely limited utility. Plus, the ammunition was distinctive, and even her memories indicated that the BBPD would be able to link any deaths to the single weapon, which would be linked to her if she was ever discovered with it. Unless she surgically removed every single flechette from anyone she had to shoot, which her power was aching to do.
The ammo itself, though? The sense of her "superpower" gave her was that she could build a lot of things, but replacement ammo for a high-tech gun was not one of them unless it was ammo made out of bone shards produced by a specialised organ in her body. Hmm.
Perhaps she could save a few of the flechettes for when she had the resources to hire someone to reverse-engineer and duplicate them, but most likely, she would either discard the gun entirely or keep it as only a memento the first time she had to use it, but first things first.
She stood up and glanced around. It was past twenty-three hundred according to the clock on the wall. Her dad must be worried sick. Honestly, she didn't think much about her alternate's dad's behavior, either. He hadn't handled mom's death as well as she remembered, but perhaps it was just that her actual dad just shoved everything into his work. Or, growing up in Night City, they had both internalised the possibility of not living to ripe old age? Although there were some weird superpowers in play, Brockton Bay seemed très tame compared to Night City. Well, no matter. She would fix him, one way or another. She wasn't about to lose two fathers.
Taylor paused and considered her appearance and compared it with her alternate. She looked... mostly the same. She considered the differences. She didn't use glasses as her alternate had to do, as she had a pair of top-of-the-line Kiroshi cybernetic eyes, and of course, she made a few minor changes in her appearance as well.
She suspected she would have looked identical, but body sculpt clinics were so cheap in Night City, and it only cost a few hundred eddies to increase her bust a little, narrow her waist and adjust her hips and slightly adjust the symmetry in her face. And it wasn't like they checked her ID or required her to be 18 to do it, either. It wasn't like she did anything major. Otherwise, her Dad would totally have noticed, but she did it the last time he was deployed about six months ago and just claimed she had a growth spurt when he got back.
It should be fine; her memories indicate her alternate Dad barely noticed anything, anyway.
She needed to either call him soon or decide to make her way back home on her own. She wasn't sure which was the better decision, tactically. She was leaning towards the latter, as she wanted a clean break with this place and didn't want any phone records tying her father to an outbound call from this location in the middle of the night. However, first, there was something she needed to do.
She searched her memories and couldn't find any hint of surveillance cameras or drones at this school, so she started walking with purpose to the maintenance room, where she knew the janitor had kept some tools. It was locked, and she considered shooting the hinges off but realised the door was installed improperly and managed to just kick it open without too much trouble or even damage to the door itself. The door opened inwards, and the latch was barely keeping the door closed, locked or not.
Nodding, she grabbed a stout prybar and then visited the locker room by the gym. She pried open about a dozen lockers before she found clean clothes that fit her, even if they were gym clothes. Then, thinking about it, she grabbed the rest of the clothes that were either dirty or didn't fit her, along with everything else the girls had in those lockers and threw them in a trash can down the hall. Except for thirty eddies... err dollars, she pocketed that. Waste not, want not, after all.
She didn't want to give anyone a clue that she precisely wanted a clean set of clothes to fit a tall, lanky girl -- that would point directly back to her. She knew many of the fucks at this school were well aware of what happened to her alternate today.
Sighing, she found the janitor's room again and got a lot of cleaning supplies. This part she wasn't looking forward to doing. Nevertheless, she put on plastic gloves and a full-mask respirator and spent two hours cleaning her disgusting locker, bagging all the biohazard waste and everything that was in it.
She didn't want any record of this incident, and there surely would be one if she didn't do this herself. Hell, with the way this school administration tried to cover for those three bitches it was possible they might accuse her of doing it... for some reason.
She had to stop herself from using the cleaning supplies to concoct an odourless contact poison to put on each of the girl's lockers. That would be very obvious, and she'd likely be under PRT investigation within days. Even if she wasn't, eventually, her power would become known, and it would look very suspicious if her three bullies died of a tinkertech poison the day after they put her alternate in that locker.
No, if she was going to take her alternate's dad, then at least she would take revenge on her behalf too, but it had to be smart. Not least because she experienced much of that same locker experience herself in her dream, let them think they have won, and let them think they had driven poor Taylor completely out of school.
She was definitely never returning to this place. Six months when nobody remembered her, and the psychopath Sophia was making some other girl's life hell, well... that girl is the one who the cops will investigate when Sophia Hess, track star, is sniped from a klick and a half away when coming to school. That or the Empire 88. Growing up in a society where almost every part of your body could be malleable and changed, Taylor certainly didn't understand the concept of hate-based purely on skin tone. You could have that changed for two hundred eddies at any biosculpt clinic.
In any case, any hypothetical future death of Sophia Hess wouldn't have anything to do with Taylor Hebert, GED graduate and secret bio-tinker, that's for sure. Even once they figure out that she is a Tinker, what bio-tinker snipes someone, anyway?
Sighing, she carefully peeled off her gloves and threw them with the other biohazard waste, which she would triple bag and toss in the dumpster. Not exactly how you're supposed to deal with biological waste, but what could she do?
Her locker reeked of bleach and other chemicals but was quite clean. She left the janitor's room exactly how she found it, if down a number of supplies. She doubted they would notice.
Now, she just had to go steal some glassware from the chemistry lab and someone's backpack to carry them in. They'd probably think some Merchants broke in and stole it to cook meth, but she needed to make her dad some antidepressants, which she would give to him surreptitiously in some lasagna tomorrow. In fact, she'd probably need some too. As for the lasagna? She'd have to do something to make up for the fact that she had been keeping such bullying a secret from him. If there was one thing her actual dad had made sure she knew, it was you didn't keep secrets from family.
Only if all the facts were known could a proper strategy be devised. She was already going to keep one secret from him, that she wasn't actually his daughter (oh and that she was going to drug him secretly), so she had to tell him everything else. He was going to be upset, but at least he would be alive.
Then she had a number of exciting possibilities to explore with her own body or, instead, modifications to it. She would have to study a little to pass the GED as, no doubt, the curriculum in Shittown, USA circa dinosaur times was different than a Militech school in 2062, but that wouldn't be a problem. It especially wouldn't be a problem when she gave herself a photographic memory and deleted her biological or psychological need to sleep through some judicious auto-brain surgery.
She didn't think cyberpsychosis was a thing here, and even if it was just the throwaway antidepressant that she was about to make for her and her dad was enough to chill out even a full-body Borg, the way it balanced your brain's neurotransmitters. They might still kill you, but it wouldn't be because they were 'zerking.
She could have made a fortune selling it if she was back in Night City, so long as one of the Pharmcorps didn't zero her for inventing it or steal it from her and then zero her on general principles. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. The shit she could make was preem.
She felt bad for the poor girl who took her place. Well, maybe her alternate got the same power she had? If so, she might be able to make a life for herself. She didn't know how any of this was supposed to work; only that even with giant Kaiju and other monsters slowly destroying the world one city at a time a couple of times a year, this place seemed a lot better than Night City.
She wished her alternate the best. She quickly apologised for eating all of the food in the fridge, as she was afraid to go out back then due to the Tyger Claws. Do better than me in Night City, other self! As for herself? She would adapt and overcome.
---xxxxxx---
It was rare for Colin to be impressed with another tinker's miniaturisation efforts, but he had to admit that the six autonomously steerable flechette munitions that were sent to him for examination by the BBPD were impressive.
They featured an altogether unusual microprocessor architecture that he could tell was manufactured with a completely novel photolithographic method. It gave him a lot of ideas about how he could improve the size of the over hundred and eight individual microprocessors that his armour required. Moreover, they didn't actually appear to be tinkertech themselves, as he could completely understand their operating principles.
He immediately discounted it as being preexisting arms technology that he was just unfamiliar with. Although there were some similarities between the devices and existing precision-guided artillery munitions that the military used, the only similarity was that they were all guided munitions. There were just a limited number of ways for a guided munition fired out of a gun to work, and articulating guide fins was the simplest in all cases.
That meant that a Tinker had to be responsible. A Tinker that could produce reproducible technology? Or, perhaps the tinker tech was in the machine that built the ammunition? That wasn't unheard of, but it was pretty rare.
They could be a new Toybox product, but if so, why was their first use killing two no-name gang members in the Docks? Such things were clearly assassin's tools; why waste them on a couple of junkies?
The city coroner had dug them out of two deceased members of the Archer's Bridge merchants several days ago and immediately recognised that the tungsten flechettes were not your regular 9mm rounds and forwarded them to the PRT for examination. Such things, if they were actually unusual, invariably ended up at his desk.
He was on a conference call with Dragon, who had been watching him disassemble them. Already, he had shipped via overnight express three of the devices to Canada for her own examination, "What do you think?" he asked carefully.
Her voice came back, seemingly happy and very interested, "Quite amazing! The actual mechanics of the gyrojet guidance is pretty simple; we could build things like that already. But I'm sure you're asking about the microprocessors, right? These are from a sub-1nm manufacturing process. If these processors got any smaller, electrons would jump from transistor to transistor through quantum tunnelling effects! This might be the smallest, most highly transistor-dense that traditional computing can get."
He nodded. She always knew what he meant, and she picked up on the important points right away. It was why he so enjoyed collaborating with her, "Precisely. It is a bit intimidating seeing the absolute apogee of traditional computing technology staring you in the face, but I had the same opinion. Perhaps we will exceed these using quantum computers or some other hitherto-fore unknown computing technology... but as far as transistors are concerned? This is it. It's amazing, exactly as you said."
"It might be a little difficult to infer the manufacturing technique, and that is really what we want, but I think I know precisely how these were built. What we need to do is..." Dragon continued.
---xxxxxx---
I felt bad for the girl who took my place and hoped that she would help my dad where I had failed him, and perhaps we could be reunited some day in the future. The world I found myself in might be a dystopian future, but at least there weren't giant monsters wrecking the world on a predictable schedule.
I wasn't sure how I was so positive that it had been a swap between the two of us, but it was just something I felt deeply sure about.
I was a bit nervous being in the building I was in. A combination of a few memories from my alternate about the Yakuza and research on my phone revealed that most of Japantown, and especially this Megabuilding was run by a gang called the Tyger Claws. They were a mostly Japanese gang, and my alternate memories were especially concerned about Japanese gangs.
That caused me to come up short. Was... my alternate racist? It didn't seem like it, and there seemed to be some actual legitimate reason that she had been concerned about Japanese gangs. I would have to do a lot more research about Militech, as that seemed to be caught up in that feeling as well. Something in the back of my head told me I definitely shouldn't traipse around the neighbourhood alone wearing any of my Militech-branded swag that filled a lot of these cardboard boxes. Was that it? Did the Japanese gangs dislike the ultra-American corporation? I didn't know.
The Tyger Claws were pretty easy to learn about online, and everything I learned made me a bit nervous too. They were kind of like what the Azn Bad Boys might be like if they were run by competent, not just ruthless, people. They were much bigger, too. Not only were they involved in the same organised crime activities that I would have recognised, such as drugs, protection rackets and prostitution, including a high-class "dollhouse", whatever that meant only a couple dozen floors beneath my feet.
However, they had a lot of darker businesses, too, including organ and cybernetics harvesting of people who nobody would miss. Kind of like a girl with no next of kin living by herself in a small apartment, perhaps. It was why if I ever interacted with any of them, and I would end up doing so just walking to and from my apartment that I would give them the idea that she had a huge family nearby.
Plus, I found online that everyone living in this Megabuilding was expected to pay for their protection, and there was even a guide on how to do so politely, so I would have to go see one of their local middle managers in this building as soon as possible. Today. I wondered why my alternate self had never accomplished it, but perhaps dealing with gangs wasn't what they were taught in corporate school. It wasn't what I was taught either, and it rankled me to have to do it, but the sites I had read were pretty clear on the possible consequences of not doing so.
In fact, it was one of the first things that popped up when I searched for "Things I need to know to live in Japantown."
As gangs went, the Tyger Claws were a medium threat in Night City, according to the guides online. A medium threat in Night City would get Brockton Bay turned into a quarantine zone, I thought, but it wasn't like the police or corps played around, either.
Theoretically, they had something that they called honour and principles, and what I found online indicated that some of the top leaders of the gang might even believe that and act that way, so long as it was convenient. The problem was the bottom tier of the gang, the ones I would likely meet, did not have almost any bottom line.
Moreover, if you defended yourself from the bottom tier, the entire gang would turn on you like a school of piranhas, even if they were doing something "dishonourable" to you against gang rules. It didn't make any sense at all to me, except when I realised that they were just scum and talking about honour was just empty platitudes. A lot of supervillains in her old world were that way too. They talked a good game but then were involved in the worst of activities.
It was like watching pro wrestlers. All an act, performative.
It definitely sounded like Night City could use a hero, but I didn't have powers that were strong like Eidolon or Alexandria. I couldn't tank a nuke, or even a gun. I had a lot of knowledge about medicine and might be able to tinker some useful drugs or maybe even novel cybernetics, but my knowledge of cybernetics left a lot to be desired compared to what was available in this world.
I had the feeling that I would learn very quickly if I studied cybernetics here and had a strong, strong urge to do so, but all that together didn't make a hero that would last more than a couple of days before being killed or worse.
Maybe I couldn't be a hero. Not like Alexandria. At least, not at first and perhaps not ever. But I could still help people. Be a good person.
That caused me to glance down at my phone. The lady from Militech's HR department had gotten back to me really quickly, today on a Sunday, no less.
The woman was very pleased with the proposal. With my alt's grades and the classes she had taken, I already qualified for early graduation from a public school. So, if I applied for emancipation and early graduation, they wouldn't be on the hook for anything.
They were willing to pay me in a lump sum, essentially half of what they would have ended up paying to Night City for my foster care, food and upkeep. They would also be willing to pay and arrange admission for me in a number of either post-high school or vocational school options.
But only up to two-year programs, the same as I would have gotten if I went to public school. So I could get the equivalent of an associate's degree, which might open the door to a crappy entry-level supervisory position very far down the corporate ladder, or I could choose a number of vocational training options, many of which weren't available for your average person on the street.
Based on my supposed educational background and noted interests in school, of course, the corp would track that; she was even polite enough to hilite what her computer suggested I would be the most successful in, namely a two-year Netrunner/Systems Admin course.
That did sound interesting, but it wouldn't mesh well with my ridiculous level of medical knowledge. I was almost certain I was one of the better doctors in the entire world if you only counted pure medicine. For some reason, my power didn't know about this world's cybernetics, perhaps because my power came from my old world.
Another problem with the Sysadmin course was that I didn't have any cybernetics at all. I had the entirety of Alt-Taylor's medical records on my phone, and it listed she had a basic operating system and cyberdeck from Militech, the Paraline, as well as a set of high-end Kiroshi cybernetic eyes.
She also visited a biosculpt clinic and got a few things adjusted. She was a B-cup, whereas I was still languishing in the barely-A realm. Did she hide this from her Dad, I wondered?
It would be important for me to, over the next week, get at least the exact same amount of cybernetics and... other treatments just so that we have identical medical records! Just in case, you know! Not because I agreed with her decision to make any changes to my appearance, but because the choice was taken out of my hands!
That meant I would have to visit a different clinic from where Taylor went in the past, but that wasn't a big deal because she went to an internal Militech cyber clinic that I no longer had access to in the first place.
Just the name "Ripperdoc" didn't inspire a lot of confidence in me at all, but there were a number of well-thought-of cybernetics clinics in the Corpo sector of town, either Downtown or in Corpo Plaza, which wasn't too far from where I lived. I would end up paying probably double what I would pay at one of the local "clinics" on Jig-Jig street, but I would also survive the experience with all of my organs intact.
I nodded, the Sysadmin course sounded very interesting, but I was just learning about computers here. Attending it would make a fool out of myself; I didn't have the years of experience using a cyberdeck that Alt-Taylor did. I had a couple of ideas for making some drugs that would increase my neural plasticity and learning speed, but it wouldn't be enough.
However... I glanced near the bottom of the list of offered courses. A six-month accelerated paramedics course. It was designed for people leaving the Army or who already had a basic EMT rating. It would be an absolute cakewalk for me.
I replied to the woman, selecting that course. She replied in real-time, asking if I was sure, as it was intended for people who already had some medical training and that they would pay for it, but I would only get one shot at it. It was clear that she didn't really care one way or another and was just being polite. I told her I was sure, and she replied in the affirmative.
A few minutes later, a large packet of over three hundred pages of thick legalese that I was expected to sign arrived as an e-mail attachment. I did not sign it.
There were a number of legal firms that did business primarily online. I had all of dad's money from his bank account, so I wasn't poor even before receiving any settlement from the Corp, even a basic one. I might be able to live nine to ten months, even on nothing but his bank account. So I spent a little bit extra to hire one of the better thought firms and spent about fifteen minutes discussing the matter with one of their lawyers on the phone.
Judging from the number of pages, he judged it was a simple matter, and I'd be billed for about four hours of work, which I thought was very reasonable and paid them on the spot, forwarding the document to him. They would even handle Militech themselves, so I never had to interact with that HR lady again.
I got myself dressed, as I had to go out of the safe apartment to get some food -- someone was a bitch and ate all the food in the fridge, in fact, that yoghurt that I used to make drugs was the last thing in there. I had been foraging off chips and crackers for the past day, and that wouldn't do.
I also had to visit the Tyger Claws community office on the tenth floor to make my payment to them for living in their building. It was weird; they had office hours and everything.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked very neutral. Not quite like a corporate brat, but not like trash either. I was wearing clothes that were fashionable two or three seasons ago, judging from my online searches, so I hoped I looked comfortably middle-class. Someone that would be missed if I disappeared and who the police department would investigate if I disappeared.
I almost left the gun on the coffee table, but everything I took away from Alt-Taylor's memories was that I absolutely should not leave home unarmed, so it took me a bit longer to scrounge up a concealed holster for it.
Sighing, I patted myself down and unlocked the door and stepped out.
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The Tyger has Claws but does that make it a pussy cat?
Walking through my floor of the Megabuilding was a bit odd. It was mainly set up with small residences, like my own. However, there were a number of small businesses as well. It was surreal, and I felt like I was living through that old Earth Aleph film Blade Runner. There was even a noodle stand like what I recalled in the film; the only exception was you couldn't sit there in the rain and eat your noodles, obviously.
It was a similar experience purchasing the noodles to what she remembered in the movie, too, as the noodle man didn't speak a word of English. Or if he did, he didn't want to speak it to the lanky anglo girl. However, I did end up with a bowl of noodles and a Nicola, which was apparently America's Favorite Cola. Personally, I doubted that. Perhaps it would be your favourite if you drank Robitussin for enjoyment, as it tasted vaguely like carbonated cough syrup.
I noticed I was dressed a little bit too good to smoothly fit in around there, so I finished my noodles, which were good and tossed the mostly-full can of Nicola Classic into the trash can. The can featured a minimalist line drawing of an Asian lady with a bare bottom. Honestly, the Cola probably would taste about the same if it came from her bottom. Ugh.
Another business was something like a convenience store. Although it was run by an older-looking man that looked like he might own it and live next door, did that mean it was a bodega? I wasn't entirely sure, but I made it my second stop. I'm not sure I'd see an actual grocery store for a long time, but I spent about a hundred and fifty eurodollars on buying a bunch of food that looked good and brought it back to my apartment. That would last me a couple of days.
After unloading the food in my kitchenette, next to my margarine tub of Super-Meth, I got ready to go back outside so I could go to the elevator. Speaking of the Super-Meth, I discovered it wasn't actually supernatural. I had the complete chemical compound structure and three synthesis methods for it in my head. But the interesting thing was, there was no way in hell that I could have made that drug in my kitchen.
All three of the synthesis methods that I knew require, at minimum, a vacuum distillation setup and a number of chemical precursors that are simply not found in kitchen cleaners of any kind as far as I knew.
Now, that wasn't actually that unusual when you considered Tinkertech. I heard of a Tinker that turned a spring from his mattress and two toasters into a perpetual motion device. However, what was unusual was that what she made wasn't tinkertech at all, as far as she could tell. Aside from the yoghurt, they were all actual, real chemicals.
I tried to think back on how I made it in the kitchen, and it was just a fog. That's kind of normal Tinker stuff, right? Then why can I not make it again? Thinking about trying to make it again pulls up the actual chemical compound and synthesis steps in my head, as if I was a chemist and not a Tinker. Shouldn't I just... you know... wham, take weird stuff, and bam, then it does something?
Thinking about the anti-depressants and anti-biotics yielded a similar result. However, I had to stop myself from starting to cook an anti-retroviral medicine in my kitchen when I came home when and thought about one as a test.
So, what does that mean? My power would give me one "freebie" where it would use heebie-jeebies to produce something out of all manners of implausible inputs, using implausible methods and tools. But after that, I had to do it the old-fashioned way?
I thought about it while I unloaded all the food I had bought. Glancing at some of the individual servings of yoghurt, I shook my head. I had the feeling I could create more of that yoghurt medicine, and when I thought about it, the yoghurt stuff didn't seem to be a real, non-Tinkertech, chemical or formulation. That made sense; yoghurt certainly had a lot of beneficial bacteria in it, but not enough and not the varieties to completely replace a person's microfauna thirty minutes after taking some extremely powerful antibiotic.
It felt like my power was being stingy as hell. If I got inspired to create something, and I could do it through traditional chemistry, it would let me have that freebie, but if I wanted more, I had to create it like I was a scientist? That wasn't how Tinkering was supposed to work. It wasn't the first time that I felt that my power was a weird combination of Tinkering and Thinking. And I couldn't tell if I got ripped off by my power or if I won the lottery with it. One of the biggest problems with Tinkertech was that it wasn't reproducible by anybody except perhaps the best Tinkers in the world like Dragon, and it required the Tinker to maintain it.
The fact that some of what I made seemed to be reproducible and congruent with actual science seemed amazing, now that I thought of that. Amazingly awesome or amazingly dangerous, perhaps both. When I got inspired with something, if it was possible to accomplish what I wanted scientifically, then it seemed to default to giving me an actual scientific solution. Sure, it seemed to Tinker-bullshit it the first time, but if I wanted a repeat like if I wanted to make more of that neural stimulant, I had to actually get a chemistry lab. I had all of the academic knowledge of its synthesis, but none of the muscle memory, either.
The neural stimulant was a known drug in this world; I had looked it up by its composition online. It was a patented designer drug made by a European Pharmaceutical company. Patents didn't really mean a lot in this world, so what really gave them the edge was that their production method was a trade secret. It was expensive and was a commonly used drug by corporate executives, military pilots, astronauts and anyone who needed to stay up a long time with minimal side effects and low abuse potential.
It still wasn't great for your brain to use it chronically over a period of years, though, but it was the safest neural stimulant currently on the market and priced accordingly. I didn't know the ins and outs of macroeconomics of the drug trade, but I thought I could probably sell the six hundred grams of what I had for over twenty-five thousand eurodollars. Retail, it would cost over twenty times that.
However, it might not be a great idea to do so. Beyond any moral questions, the Pharmacorp sold this drug in distinctive, hard-to-counterfeit tablets. The shape, colour and texture of the tablets were trademarked, too and part of their marketing strategy. Similar to Pfizer marketing viagra as "the little blue pill." I doubted I could create such a similar tablet, especially since they were designed to be hard to counterfeit in the first place, so you knew people weren't tricking you with biker meth if you saw one of their pills.
If the Corp ever found out someone sold a whole bunch of their premiere moneymaker in powdered base form, they would either think someone diverted it from their manufacturing centre, they'd probably consider this most likely, or that someone had discovered their synthesis method. Both would trigger an investigation that I didn't want to be anywhere near.
I decided I wouldn't flush it after all, but I was definitely not interested in getting into the drug manufacturing business. Especially manufacturing a product that was supposed to be a firmly held trade secret by a Pharmacorp. Compared to other similarly sold drugs, it was practically good for you so, so I might have been able to rationalise selling it if I really needed the money someday, but the risks were too great to do so.
The other two drugs I could find no mention of. I got a little nervous after searching for the exact chemical composition of the first drug and instead decided to not do that for the last two. Chemicals were similar to other chemicals, though.
So, I browsed a chemistry encyclopedia online for nearby similar analogues, finding nothing. This told me either my power didn't only restrict me to chemicals that were already known in this world or that these two chemicals were even deeper secrets than the first one. The antibiotic was very useful but had a pretty big downside, but it was one that could definitely be mitigated if administered in a hospital setting.
The anti-depressant was the most magical of the bunch in that it worked very rapidly, seemed to have no side effects that her power warned her about and only had to be taken once a week. One of the biggest problems with anti-depressants was compliance in the patient taking them every day. It turned out that when you were suffering from severe enough depression, you didn't want to do anything, even if it was as simple as swallowing a pill that you knew would help you.
You were depressed, so you needed to take a pill, but your depression made you not want to take it. A kind of a Catch-22. The Tinker part of her was suggesting, mildly, a implanted personal pharmacopoeia inside a patient's body, that would administer appropriate drugs on an appropriate schedule. Something like that had to already exist in this world, as I thought they were working in that direction in my old world for insulin.
It kind of made me feel bad to keep such a wonder drug to myself, but I definitely didn't want to lose what little freedom I had in this world. Perhaps it would come to that, and I might end up in someone's gilded cage. Definitely, worse things could happen, but who would choose that first? I might be able to release the synthesis procedures anonymously online, but then again, there wasn't a lot of anonymity to be had. I definitely wasn't a good enough "hacker," or a hacker at all, to ensure anything wouldn't be traced back to me.
While walking from my apartment towards the elevator at the centre of the block I suddenly had the feeling that I was being watched and perhaps followed. It was a feeling that I had honed over the years, and I trusted my instincts in this manner. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to dodge Sophia and the Trio as often as I did. Rather than accelerate and try to lose them, I stayed with a group of about ten others who were also headed towards one of the elevators. This strategy of hiding with the herd would have been folly back in Winslow, as I had already been excommunicated from the herd, and nobody would have protected me.
Here, though, it seemed to work. In the corner of my eye, I saw the man, no wait... it was a boy, younger than me even, that was trailing me. Thankfully, the boy didn't look too dangerous, but thirteen-year-olds could do some ultraviolence in this world, so I wouldn't make any assumptions.
I only had two things of value on me, my phone, which I could absolutely not lose and my pistol, which I didn't want to lose either, mostly because I read people who take your gun often shoot you with it first thing. A lot of others on the elevator were going to the tenth floor also, as there was a built-in NCART station to get on the maglev on that floor, and it was one of the larger commercial floors, with very few residential housing available. It was like a large mall, so I supposed it made sense to have the Tyger Claws office on the same floor.
I could either confront the kid following me, implying that I had a gun by having my hand near it or just try to avoid whatever he was trying to do until I got to the Tyger Claws. I was never one for confrontation, and honestly, I was surprised that I even gave myself that option. This couldn't be entirely the result of the anti-depressants. Were the here-and-there memories of Alt-Taylor playing a role? She would have confronted the kid right away.
Questions like that had the potential to spiral into existential questions that didn't do me any good to even consider, so I ignored them and just tried to keep the kid in sight as I stepped off the elevator.
The Tyger Claws site said their office was just in front of the train terminal, and I found that very quickly. I managed to stay with a herd of a few people the entire way, but instead of following them through the NCART pylons, I darted away and walked straight with a purpose to the Tyger Claw office. I saw the kid notice me change directions, and he moved to follow me again until he saw where I was headed, and I think I saw a look of panic on his face before he made a quick ninety-degree turn to the left and walked off, perpendicular to the direction I was going, fast.
The Tyger Claws "community office" was pretty small, at least the public front area. It kind of reminded me of a post office or a bank, but there was just one "clerk" behind the counter. He was in his thirties, and although he was covered with tattoos, he seemed to have a mild temperament. He smiled at me in a friendly manner and asked, in perfect English, "Hello, there, little lady. I am called Jin, by some. How can the Tyger Claws help you today?"
What good customer service for a murderous booster gang. He just out and out admitted it, like I walked through the door at Fugly Bobs. It threw me for a loop for a moment but then I came to my senses. I decided not to try to use Japanese honorifics in English. Mainly because I once heard that Lung set a person on fire who did that, and figured that maybe it was offensive?
"Ah, Mr Jin?" I asked, and he nodded with a friendly smile, "It is a pleasure to meet you, my name is Taylor Hebert, and I recently moved into the Megablock. This is my first time away from home, so I was not sure of the correct procedures but all of my Uncles told me that it would be in my best interests to pay for some services your organisation provides to the tenants here."
That caused him to smile widely and even in a more friendly matter. I could briefly see his eyes change colours slightly, and I didn't realise what was happening until he said, "Ah, of course. Miss Hebert, of apartment 29-221. I'd like to offer my condolences about the recent passing of your father. Your Uncles? You must mean all of his comrades-in-arms in the NUSA or Militech's military? They have given you good advice; I wish more people had people they trust to tell them this."
Oh. He must have some optics cyberware and pulled my file. Well, so much for keeping my connection to Militech a secret from them. He didn't seem to care, though. I bowed my head a little bit, "Thank you for that, Mr Jin. It has been hard for me the last few days. Otherwise, I would have been in sooner."
He waved a hand affably, "It's not a problem. Our housing block is often one of the ones selected by corporations; Militech especially often sends their children here for the first time when they are leaving the nest.... oh, that shocked you?" He did an actual belly laugh and waved his hand again, "You no doubt learned about Militech and Arasaka growing up and think perhaps us mere Tyger Claws, a Japanese benevolence organisation, are Arasaka's catspaw?"
He shrugged but didn't deny it. But he chuckled again, "Even if that was the case, things would have to get much worse indeed for either side to target the fledglings of the other side indiscriminately. You're of the age where you will likely start working soon; not only is this housing block safe for the most part, but it is a way for you to see a different side of the world. That's why I think Militech often send their youngsters to live here, anyway. I've had this conversation a few times." He then grinned, "Of course, maybe it is because the rent is, on average, one hundred and three eurodollars cheaper than the block Downtown."
I nodded firmly at that, which caused him to laugh again, "Yeah, maybe you're right."
He explained which levels of service I could purchase, like I was buying car insurance; there were two. I could buy protection inside the Megablock, or I could also buy protection anywhere in Japantown. He was open that most Corpos only go for the first option, as the NCART could take them straight downtown without stepping foot in Japantown.
They wouldn't guarantee my protection in Japantown, there weren't enough eurodollars in the entire Megablock to absolutely guarantee anyone's protection if they walked around unescorted in Jig-Jig street looking like a corpo, but it wouldn't be the Tyger Claws themselves that started things first. However, in the Megablock they would offer some guarantees about my safety inside my apartment, in fact they had a number to call if anyone tried to break in.
"Did you know that the NCPD is probably moving to a fee-for-service to make 911 calls? I think it is going to be five eddies a minute. Us, on the other hand? We will pay you if you report such crimes on the premises," he said emphatically. I didn't think I wanted to know what they would do to people they "arrested."
I wanted to tell him that the NCPD already did charge ten eurodollars if he ever decided to hang up when calling Emergency Services; it was listed as a fine, presumably for wasting their time, on my transaction history. But I didn't want to tell him I had tried to call 911.
The costs were reasonable, too. Ten per cent of your rent if you only stayed in the Megablock, and fifteen per cent for all of Japantown. The location where the paramedics' school was was technically Downtown, but it was quite close to Japantown, only a block away. I asked him, "Mr Jin, please give me your advice. I will be attending a school for six months at..." I gave the address, ". That is Downtown, I guess. But it is very close. Do you think I should pay for your extra tier of service?"
I had already decided to buy the extra level. I was just being respectful, in asking his opinion. Nobody working at Fugly Bobs would tell her: 'No, maybe you shouldn't Fugly-size it.'
He got a thoughtful look on his face and rolled his fingers along his desk. "Normally, Miss Hebert, I would say it is probably not necessary. However, in the past six months, the closest NCART station to that address has closed for several weeks twice. That leaves you either going for the one past it, which would be over a two-kilometre walk back, or you could stop in the last Japantown station for only a few blocks walk." He shrugged and said, "Even if you do not get the full package, it is not like that means you can't go to Japantown. It just means we won't have your back. It'd probably be fine. However, I do promise that if you do have the full service and you go missing, we will at least look for you a lot more than the cops will. The only people who will look for you more is Trauma Team, and they charge a lot more. It is up to you. It'd probably be fine either way, though."
Wow, he didn't try to upsell me... Actually, I think he did. He was just a lot subtler about it. "Ah, thank you for your advice Mr Jin. I take my personal safety very seriously, so I think I would like to pay for the full level of service you provide just to be safe."
He nodded, smiling. "You are very wise for someone your age. That school, are you going to be studying medicine? That is a medical campus."
I blinked. I didn't realise they did anything but paramedic classes. I raise my hand and make a waffling gesture, "I'll be studying to be a paramedic. I'd love to be a doctor some day, but this is all I could get paid for, as of now."
Mr Jin nodded and said, "You are modest. It's the best paramedic course in the city. You must be truly gifted to have gotten admitted without even a basic EMT certificate."
I think he is just being polite because it seemed like I was being polite. I think modesty is a big part of a lot of Asian cultures, but I didn't know. I decide to go with, "There are many much more gifted than I, but I thank you." I honestly didn't believe that though. I was going to be the best.
After a few more back and forths, he finalises the price I am expected to pay. I look a little nervous and ask, "Do you need me to pay in cash?"
Mr Jin looked a little surprised but then suddenly affected a stern expression and said solemnly, "Yes, in small, non-sequential bills..."
Fuck! Where was I going to find that?
"...and then you will have to come and have sake with the oyabun..."
Wait, what? I'm not joining your gang!
"...and I warn you that any disrespect and you'll be expected to commit seppuku..."
I suddenly narrow my eyes at him. He's screwing with me. That causes him to crack up and roar with laughter, slapping the counter several times. "Oh, oh... you should have seen yourself. Oh, I am going to tell all my friends, thank you for that. Little lady, I think you have been watching too many old movies. Do we need cash? Of course not!"
I laugh a little, haltingly. Okay, maybe it was a little bit funny. I bring out my phone and send an electronic payment, and he grinned even wider, "Want to set up Autopay?"
He's still making fun of me. My face must be beet red. But I nodded; I did want to set up autopay. It sounded very convenient.
"Okay, we already have your biometrics, so all of our members will know that you're paid up. Take one of these stickers and place it on your door, too, if you don't mind," he brought a number of tiger themed stickers out from behind the counter. Most were similar to the tattoos, an Asian inspired tiger, sometimes clawing with flame around its paws.
However, one of them...
I looked at it. He nodded with a smile. I sighed and grabbed it, which caused him to laugh again, "I knew it! I knew it! Don't worry, that one has been very popular with girls your age. My daughter put one on our door, and we don't even need these!"
I sighed and put the sticker of a cute cat girl with tiger stripes in my pocket. She had her hand/paw raised like one of those money cats, and a speech bubble proclaimed, "Nya!"
I would not underestimate this gang. This guy was incredibly personable and charming, but that was exactly why he was working the job he was doing. Still, it sounded like things weren't as dire as I was anticipating them to be.
Before I left, I asked him, "In the next day or so I am going to be getting a little work done, will that be a problem with the biometrics you've taken? Should I come back to the office?" I actually already had set up an appointment for one of Downtown's best biosculpt clinics tomorrow. I knew exactly what to ask them to do, as I had a complete report of the work Alt-Taylor received.
He got a peculiar look, almost disapproving, on his face and asked, "Divergence factor?"
I searched my memories for what that meant and finally realised it was a percentage based on how different you would look from your baseline after treatment. "Less than five per cent."
That caused him to smile in his friendly manner again, "Oh, no. That's no problem. I'm so glad to hear that, too many people your age change your entire bodies, try to look like stars." He shook his head, "It's not really respectful to your parents! I certainly wouldn't let my daughter do anything like that."
Ah, he had been disapproving at first. I smiled, "I would never betray the memory of my father or mother. I am their daughter even if neither of them is around anymore, so I could never make radical changes like that. I like that I can see them in myself when I look in the mirror." That last part was a lie, but it sounded good. I didn't intend to, but I could imagine any number of situations where I would do so... being on the run, for example.
He nodded slowly, "You are a filial girl, Miss Hebert. It's rare to see these days. Come by the office, or call me if you need anything." He forwarded my phone his contact information, and I nodded, seeing that as a clear dismissal.
I departed and walked directly back to the elevator. Well, I liked that guy a lot more than Mr Gladly. However, I didn't trust him at all. I mean, I sort of believed what he had said, but I only figured that mattered when it was convenient.
That said, the fact that a member of a murderous street gang made me feel better than my teachers had in two years made me laugh. Was I always that good at talking? I didn't think so. I was just so scared that I said whatever came out of my mouth. I think I did well.
I thought about it as I headed back to my apartment. Finally, I realised a big reason was that he saw me as a completely different Taylor Hebert. So, my self-esteem still wasn't the best, I guess. But here, I could pretend to be this other girl every day, and nobody would ever know. Was that healthy?
My medical sense seemed to think it depended on a lot of other factors, but no, not generally. Oh well.
---xxxxxx---
After I got back to my apartment, I spent the day further looking at things online and forging a version of my medical records that didn't have any of the biosculpt or cyberware that Alt-Taylor had, so I could give to the clinic tomorrow.
Shortly before I was heading to bed, I got an alert on my phone from Militech and one from the law firm simultaneously. Everything had gone through correctly. Or so I had thought.
The law firm told me that they had spotted a few problems with the contract, especially the fact that my compensation should be a bit different, i.e. more, since I was attending only a six month course compared to a normal two-year course that they had been offering.
That one change paid for their fees six times over, so I felt good about using their services. One perk that they got for me was one I didn't realise I should have asked for. Namely, they got Militech to let me keep my Militech dependent's net address until I turned 20. Although, I'd have to surrender it if I got a job at a major corporate competitor, like Kang Tao or Arasaka, or a number of others. The law firm emphasised how nice of a benefit this was, and I considered why they thought that was the case for a while.
Finally, I nodded. I could see what they meant. Any time I applied for a job, I could send the application through this address. It was almost like a recommendation from Militech. Perhaps I couldn't get a job overseas with Arasaka or any Corp that Militech was on the outs with, but it told the hiring managers if I wanted a corporate job that I wasn't some mook of the street. Even if that was exactly what I was.
I had already realised that my status, tenuous as it was, had value. Alt-Taylor was a third-generation Corpo, and that was almost a caste in this dystopian world. I was sure I got treated better by that Tyger Claw guy because of it.
And I'm sure there were tons of things about it that were big negatives, too. I'm sure there were lots of places in Night City that I couldn't walk around without getting jumped, for example. And I already knew that working for most corporations was similar to working as an Imperial Official in old Chinese dynasties. You were as often killed by your colleagues as your enemies.
Still, it wasn't something I should throw away. It might not have been a big deal if I was Alt-Taylor, as she still had the culture of growing up in that caste, so it would show through with whoever she was dealing with, but I didn't have that advantage at all.
The e-mail from Militech did seem correct at first blush. However, there was a mistake. It had the class I was attending as the Sysadmin class, complete with links to download all course materials included.
I blinked and rapidly clicked the link before they realised the error. The Sysadmin class wasn't a class that they let just anybody into. I didn't think that there would be some of the mythical "black ICE" that I had been reading about online in any of the course materials, but it should still be good stuff that I could study in my own time.
I managed to grab the first year's materials, all books and included software, including three large scripted software packages designed to be run on a cyberdeck, labelled Ping, Reboot Optics and C. Malfunction. I didn't know what any of those did beyond what they said on the tin, but I managed to download and save them to a data shard on my phone.
Militech realised their mistake before I could get the second year's materials, but I still felt I got a nice unasked-for bonus. To make it look less suspicious, I downloaded all of the Paramedic class courseware too, as if that was what I was after all along. Some of them were BDs, so I would have to get a wreath somewhere. I had a memory that my dad didn't permit Alt-Taylor to have one. Probably because, by far, the most common braindances were porn-related.
I never figured myself as one of the girls in my school to take off her clothes for a man more than two times her age; I just thought that was more something Emma might do, considering she was both a model and a psychopath. Although, to be honest, I was wearing a robe and completely covered, presently, when the clinic's tech arrived for my consultation. I didn't think he was considered a doctor, per se, but he seemed a lot more knowledgeable about biology than anyone called a clinic technician in Brockton Bay would have been.
That just made it worse, actually. I had to strip to get a full body scan, so he technically wasn't looking at my body in the buff. Just the full three-dimensional ultra high definition scan of it, being displayed on a holographic display that was built into the table between us. Watching him pinch the image to zoom in to identify whether or not it was a freckle or birthmark on my butt was mortifying.
Having anyone, especially a man, look at my stick-thin body, and chubby tummy was anxiety-inducing. However, he had a clinical, dispassionate disposition that at least put me a little bit at ease. Still, it was disquieting to watch him examine my images as though I were a puzzle he was solving.
Finally, he looked over at me and said, smiling, "Ah, Miss Hebert. Welcome. The receptionist said you already had an idea of what you wanted to do with your body's canvas."
Oh, he was one of those types. Pretentious. I didn't like the idea of someone calling my body a canvas. However, I nodded and fished a data shard out of my robe's pocket, sliding it over on the countertop of the table that was between us. He arched an eyebrow, clearly unused to taking data through such a pedestrian means, but I couldn't do anything about that until my visit to the cybernetics clinic tomorrow.
However, he took it and slotted it into a port on his neck. That looked pretty cool and gross at the same time. I had to make a couple of adjustments to Alt-Taylor's medical records, although it wasn't difficult. For example, even before she got her cybernetic eyes, she had her vision fixed.
The man tsked his tongue, sounding exasperated. "I thought you were wearing those glasses as a fashion statement. It looked pretty retro; totally nova. But do you really have myopia? Was this some kind of bet you lost, or did you grow up in a weird religious cult?" he asked, some of his professionalism disappearing in his curiosity.
I was worried about that. But there wasn't really anything I could do about it. I could have gone to the cybernetics clinic first, I supposed, but that left some similar problems. And since I was planning on spending a lot more money there, I wanted to reduce their suspicion, or rather curiosity, by at least arriving there looking like my Militech medical files said I should, in case anyone ever did some digging later.
I chuckled nervously and lied, "More of the former, rather than the latter. I have an appointment day after tomorrow at the Skyline clinic to get my chrome chipped back in." I tried using some slang that I had read and heard online, but the unsure way I had said it made it obvious I was a poseur.
Rather than make him suspicious, my failure there helped the impression I was trying to convey because I saw him roll his eyes and mutter quietly, "Corpo kids will do anything for thrills, I guess." He then composed himself, and his friendly, if detached, bedside manner returned, "So, I suppose that is why you did not include fixing the eyes in the spec sheet? Other than that, it's pretty comprehensive. Let's take a look."
He waved his hand, and the holographic image of me naked shrunk, and a second version appeared right next to it. On the new hologram, my bust increased a little bit, as did my hips, and my waist shrunk slightly. I couldn't really tell the difference in my face unless I glanced back and forth between the two, but at the same time, the new version definitely gave the impression of being slightly more pretty.
"Nice, subtle work, this. We couldn't do better ourselves. In fact, this might give me a couple ideas about suggestions to girls your age who want something done without their parents finding out," he said knowingly. That had been exactly what Alt-Taylor had been going for, actually. Did no businesses really care what age you were in this dystopia? I hadn't tried buying beer because it sounded gross, but I didn't think I would be refused.
He tilted his head, "Want to keep this subtle look or go for something more pronounced?"
I shook my head, "No, just this, please."
He nodded, "Only two recommendations, then. First, while we're in there, we may as well tighten your abdominal muscles. You're not chubby by any means..." I actually thought I was, "...but I think this treatment plan was made when you were in a little better shape."
Alt-Taylor had exercised some, that was true. I meant to start running, but... "I was going to just start running; there is a gym in my housing block."
That caused him to nod, "Then maybe a slight adjustment to your core muscles and glutes, too. Cardiovascular exercise is recommended, but all we'd do is get your body to the point so your future exercise can maintain it. Save you six weeks of running on a treadmill for virtually no extra cost."
Hm, that did sound fine, actually. "Okay, nothing ridiculous, though."
"Sure," he replied and used a bunch of arcane-looking gestures to edit the second image, causing my chubby tummy to firm up slightly. I couldn't notice any changes to my legs, though, "How's that?" I just nodded at him. "Second... the hair..." he said the last diplomatically.
It was true; naturally, curly hair wasn't very much in style in Night City, but I firmly shook my head, "No. I am keeping my hair." Would I even still be Taylor Hebert if I straightened my hair? Besides, my trove of psychiatric data in my head said people generally like interesting quirks like that in people, and that would probably especially be the case in this future, where you could change everything about your body for less than five hundred dollars.
He sighed, sounding very much like a put-upon artist, "Very well. You can't win them all, as they say."
---xxxxxx---
I managed to arrive safely back at my apartment. Travelling on the NCART train was a bit scary; I had never been on a similar public transit system in my life. The closest thing was maybe the city bus. I would have been nervous just getting on a subway in New York in my old world, to say nothing about this version.
It was a magnetic levitation train, so it moved incredibly fast. I almost fell off my feet when I didn't brace myself correctly as the train left the station the first time I took it going to the clinic earlier, causing a number of people to stare at me with highly amused expressions.
I had to make a conscious effort to stop looking like a "gonk"; otherwise, someone might "flatline" me. See, I could fit in!
Shaking my head, I pushed my beet-red face into my pillows. That sounded so terrible, even in my head!
---xxxxxx---
I spent the rest of the day recovering and intended to spend the next day relaxing and studying. However, I got sudden inspiration and spent most of that day Tinkering instead.
The process of biosculpting was fascinating, involving me floating in a vat of liquids with tiny nanomachines suspended in them. Normally they anaesthetised you for the procedure, but I was so fascinated that I asked to not be put out. I wasn't sure why I said that, and it sounded like something I would never have said or wanted, actually.
That was kind of a mistake because I discovered I had a bit of claustrophobia, I think, from the locker. However, I managed to hold it together while breathing through a tube. My medical sense seemed very interested in everything, but I didn't really know why, as it wasn't like I could actually sense what was happening to my body in more than a general way. But something in the back of my mind really wanted me to be awake for this procedure.
The procedure wasn't painful at first, and in fact, only after I was out of the vat did a dull ache come on, which I figured was an inflammation response. Sure enough, they gave me some anti-inflammatories, made sure my payment went through and sent me on my way. The changes made to my body were minor enough that they were all mostly done that day.
Before returning to my apartment yesterday, I meandered around a Downtown shopping centre and purchased a braindance wreath and a few other items. I had actually found an older version wreath with some of my alternate dad's things, but I did not want to use his wreath or see a list of what BDs he has scrolled or experienced any more than I wanted to look under my dad's bed for his Playboys back in Brockton Bay.
I probably would have just buckled down and reset it to factory defaults, as wreaths were a little expensive, but I couldn't actually use it anymore because I had disassembled it a couple of days ago when I wasn't paying attention. I was pretty sure I could still use it for Tinkering. Still, I had ideas about it that didn't have anything to do with brain dances but everything to do with brains by themselves, in fact, I was still itching to rebuild it when I left for the biosculpt clinic, so since I still needed one to watch a lot of the BDs for my class a new one was needed. I wanted to go through the entirety of the course material before the first day of class on September 4th, close to a month away.
I had a ton of medical knowledge in my head, but I have already discovered that there were a lot of things I didn't know about how medicine was practised in this world, but I was learning rapidly even now. All clinicians in this world, from doctors to basic EMTs, were equal parts medical professionals and equal parts technicians. Not only were cybernetics ubiquitous, and if you responded to a trauma, you had to be able to help not only regular people but highly augmented ones as well. Also, the level of technology in the medical field far exceeded what I was used to.
For example, in my last life, an EMT might connect a patient's body to a cardiac monitor, pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff to monitor their vital signs. Maybe a CO2 sensor, as well, if they were really sick. Of course, all that equipment still existed, although much more miniaturised, but it was equally likely a basic EMT in Night City would connect their own cybernetic operating system to a patient to read off that patient's vital signs and diagnosis from the patient's internal bio-monitor if they had one.
It was one reason that the word tech was emphasised in what they were called, which was usually Med-Techs. If I wanted to use slang, which I had realised probably wasn't a good idea with my current unfamiliarity with any of the local "lingo", they were called Techies, even, although more of a subtype of that broad classification.
It kind of reminded me about how some professions in my past world changed radically with the advent of technology a few decades ago. Like, I remembered reading that architects sat at desks with pencils. Today, an architect in Brockton Bay would need to be very proficient with computer systems that made their job possible.
I glanced down at my kitchen table to see the two things I had built. One was already broken, but it had done what I wanted it to do, but the other looked rather slick, not clunky at all.
There were way too many boxes in my little apartment, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I honestly needed a larger apartment to store everything that had been in our home or move a bunch of things to storage, or get rid of them, but the nearest self-storage centre with any vacancies wasn't even in Japantown. I didn't think riding on the metro into Watson with dozens of cardboard Militech boxes was a good idea. If I had a car or had access to one, it would be easy, but I didn't even know how to drive.
Shaking my head, I picked up the first small item I had built. I didn't realise that this type of thing would be in my Tinker "speciality", but then again, medical imagers were very important in medicine. It had been a small can, with wires appearing out of every inch of it. It was a type of electromagnetic scanner similar to an MRI. You'd place a biological sample; in this case, I had placed a drop of my blood, and it would be held in suspension, levitated while the scanner bombarded it with crazy amounts of electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields to get an image of everything inside.
Using it had tripped the circuit breaker for my apartment and burned the invention out; I couldn't build something like this to last with just the stuff sitting around my apartment. However, it did get an image transferred over to my laptop, which I had found in one of the boxes. It was a 3-D image of my blood cells as well as anything that was travelling in my blood, including a number of small nanomachines that were still in my body from the biosculpt treatment the other day.
The resolution on the scan was pretty good. At least as good as what you'd get with an electron microscope, and without the need to coat the entire sample with a small layer of gold before you scanned them, as was necessary with electron microscopy.
I have been very interested in nanomachines ever since I discovered they were widely used in medical practice here in this world. I had searched on the net, but the publicly available information was very sparse. I could tell you who invented the first commercially available medical nanomachines back in the early 2000s, and I could even see some images of this first-generation model but nothing about how they were produced, controlled or programmed.
It seemed that some information, despite the fact that it was very old, was by default not freely accessible. Although both the first-generation nanomachine, which I could see a grainy picture of online and the ones in my blood, looked something like a tiny crab, the dimensions were utterly different. The ones in my blood were two orders of magnitude smaller, and examining different individuals revealed that there were over twelve different versions or types, each looking slightly different or having a different tool. Clearly, the state of the art had followed the path of specialisation, then, rather than the first generation, which, according to the encyclopedia, were intended to be generalised tools.
It was very fascinating to me, but I didn't know how much use this first experiment of mine would be. The scanning process fried the nanites, so I wouldn't have been able to recover their programming or command and control; I just got 3-D images of them. Still, it let me infer a lot about how they were used in medicine, things I wouldn't learn just from a Paramedics course. Paramedics might use nanomeds, although they were still kind of pricey, but they were only taught how the medicine was supposed to be administered, any contraindications, and similar end-user information. I would have to just keep studying, finding information where I could.
The second device I made looked like a retro braindance wreath. I had made it from most of the parts of my dad's old wreath. Although there were wires sticking out of this device, they were carefully insulated and affixed into place. I got the impression I might need to perform regular maintenance on this device in order to keep it operable, like what I had expected from all of my Tinker inventions.
I was calling it a sleep inducer, but it did more than that. You wore it, and then when triggered, it would rapidly induce you into the most restful sleep state possible. By default, this lasted three hours and would provide all the rest that your body and mind needed a day. You could use a dial to select shorter rest periods in thirty-minute increments, with the minimum being thirty minutes. That would give you a "nap" that was equivalent to a few hours of sleep. That was amazing in and of itself. However, the main benefit was that this sleep would be especially beneficial for your learning process.
Using this device to get sleep would have a beneficial effect on your brain's neuroplasticity, and you would tend to retain the information you learned in the previous day much better.
I had a lot to learn. Not only were there actually a lot of details that I needed to become familiar with, mainly technology and how it was used, to pass my Paramedics course, but I wanted to learn a lot more than just that!
Any way that I could minimise the amount of sleep I took every night in a healthy way was something I needed to do. I think my power agreed with me, which was why one of the first things I created was a stimulant drug. That wasn't a long-term solution for me, though. This, though, might be.
I had to admit that I was still kind of nervous and scared to be here in this world, and any time I was sleeping, I was also potentially vulnerable. Well, more vulnerable. Theoretically, the device shouldn't induce a very deep sleep that was impossible to be woken from; at least, I didn't think that was how it should work, so it should be safe to use all of the time.
Before testing it, I gathered up all of my dad's tools that I had scavenged for in the cardboard boxes, made sure the soldering iron was cool and put them all back away where I wouldn't lose them.
Then I gathered the sleep inducer, and sat in what was my alt-dad's recliner, put it on my head and triggered it for a three-hour sleep. I had stayed awake a bit too long building the sensor can, and I would be hurting tomorrow if this thing didn't work.
---xxxxxx---
It worked beautifully! Instead of the usual fog of memories of my previous day, I could recollect most things I did pretty well. The device both helped to transfer data from short to long-term memory but also should optimise the storage of neural information in a person's long-term memory. It wasn't a big boost, but you'd be less likely to lose things or misplace them.
Humming happily, I took a shower and picked my most expensive-looking clothes for my trip to the Skyline cybernetics clinic today. Every corpo kid whose parents were at least middle managers had, no matter their age, at least one outfit that wouldn't be out of place in a corporate board room. According to some of my memories, it started, at first, as kind of costumes -- people might remark, 'Oh, how cute!' However, as one got older, it became more serious, as children were often invited to company parties, and the way you were perceived, combined with your grades at school, could open or close many doors for your future.
It was a bit of a shame that Alt-Taylor's taste in clothing was in some ways different from my own. We both liked dark colours, but Alt-Taylor showed a lot more skin than I was ever comfortable with. Her version of "Sunday school" clothes was a dark grey skirt-suit, with the skirt reaching barely past my mid-thigh.
Pantyhose wasn't really in style at the moment, from what I could tell online, but I didn't care. There were lines I wasn't presently willing to cross, and showing everyone my bare thighs was one of them. So, I wore a dark pair with the skirt; besides, I thought they complemented the shiny black dress shoes.
Glancing at myself in the mirror, I nodded. These would be the clothes Alt-Taylor would have worn if she ever went on a job interview or similar social situation. I was planning on spending a lot of money today, so I wanted to give an initial social impression that would be congruent with that.
The hardest part about this morning would be avoiding getting pickpocketed on the metro.
---xxxxxx---
There was nowhere to really conceal a pistol on this outfit, so I had to carry it in my small black purse, along with my phone, so I absolutely made sure it never left my sight the entire trip on the train. Of course, a lot of people looked at me with disdain, but I noticed all of the better-dressed corporate workers who took the train to work gave me small nods of respect.
I think that in their eyes, I was dressed a cut above their everyday fair, so I was either going to a job interview or a similar event, in which case they were wishing me luck, or I was of a higher station than them, so they were paying respects.
I got off deep into the downtown station where security and police presence were high. They were starting to call this area Corpo plaza, even if it did include the burned-out crater that used to be the Arasaka building. Decades ago, it was totally destroyed using a small nuclear bomb, of all things.
For a long time, people blamed Arasaka themselves for the destruction, but in the 2040s, a now-famous journalist named Trace Santiago published an explosive expose revealing Militech's involvement in the disaster. I had read all about that, a bit shocked. Needless to say, that didn't do a lot of good for Militech's PR in Night City, and although Arasaka was still technically banned from operating in the country, a lot of their subsidiaries did business in town, and it seemed like Night City was slowly shifting towards Arasaka's orbit.
Well, it didn't really matter to me too much. Militech was one of the last options that I would agree to work for. They had too much data about Alt-Taylor. Too much data about her preferences and her study habits and interests, none of which was medicine. The potential for too many questions that I didn't have any good way to answer.
It probably would have been fine, I mean, children often discover an intense interest and aptitude in their teenage years, but it was just something I didn't see a need to risk. I'd rather not work for an Arms Manufacturer in the first place, although that might have been kind of naive as most Megacorps were extremely diversified and many of them manufactured arms. None of them, as far as I could tell, were what I would call "good guys." This world seemed to have an extreme dearth of "good guys."
A group of two Night City police officers paused in their beating up of a homeless-looking man with batons to give me a slight nod, which caused my heart to hurt a little. But what was I going to do? Even my alt-dad didn't have the power to stop things like that. It made me feel like shit to just walk on by while that happened in front of my face, though. I wanted to be a good person, but first, I needed to get the skills, abilities and power to make a difference. Would that ever happen? Or was that just a pretty little lie I was telling myself?
I suppose that man could have been a criminal, but it didn't look like anything but the cops giving him the bum rush out of the good part of town.
Sighing, I decided to put it aside for the moment but promised myself that even if I couldn't stop things like that, I would at least try to avoid perpetuating them. The cyberclinic had a street-level office, so I found it easily enough, the large crystal doors sliding inwards for me as I approached them.
I was greeted immediately by a woman in a nice outfit, and once it was determined I had an appointment and wasn't a walk-up customer, I was ushered into a small conference room to meet with a "customer sales specialist."
Another woman arrived, and she was, if anything, a walking billboard for their products here as she had cybernetic arms and obvious neural cyberware at the base of her neck. I started to rise politely, but she waved me off.
The woman said in a friendly manner, "Miss Hebert, stay seated, stay seated. The notes on your appointment were a bit vague, so perhaps I should just ask you how we can help you today?"
I plastered a fake smile on my face and said, "Of course. I need a full operating system; I'd like to get a cyberdeck as well, also a pair of optics. Lastly, I was considering something that could perhaps help my memory or retention of information; I will be starting at Night City Health Science centre next month."
I didn't lie, but I intentionally gave the impression that I was attending a more prestigious course than I was. The HSC was mainly a traditional medical school, although they had two-year courses for nurses as well.
That caused the woman to smile at first, but then look at me in confusion, "Wait... you don't have... anything?"
I thought a lot about how to handle this question and decided to go with a somewhat brusque answer. I was trying to perhaps imply that I had been a victim of an attack by Scavengers that have a tendency to kidnap people and rip out their cybernetics. Normally people don't survive that, but it has been known to happen. The survivors would generally spend a fair while being put back together by the Trauma Team medical centre, using medical nanotechnology. So I said, with a bit of an affected shiver, "Yes. It's complicated. I'd really rather not discuss it."
I'm not sure if I succeeded in my attempt, but she became much more polite, "Of course, of course. Let's look through your options. Then, once payment clears, we'll have a quick physical examination and can schedule surgery before lunch!"
Originally I had planned on buying exactly what Alt-Taylor had, which was a 2062 version of the Militech Paraline cyberdeck, but the sales lady said politely, three different ways, that it was a piece of shit, just not in those words.
That made sense; it wasn't that expensive. But my problem was I was beyond a novice. I didn't need nor want an extremely complicated cyberdeck. It would take me a long time just to learn how to use it properly.
For not too much more money, I was looking at two options. One was from an American company called Biotech Sigma. They had been in operation for about six years, and every year they would produce an updated version of about ten different models of cyberdecks.
The 2062 model of their "mark one" entry-level cyberdeck was about twice the cost of the Paraline, but it was much, much better. It would cost about six thousand eurodollars, about the same as what I was paying for my cybernetic eyes.
The other option cost about the same, and it was from a brand-new corporation in Korea. They had rave reviews as being especially easy to use, but it was the first year and first model that they had released. I was a little worried, so I decided to go with the Biotech Sigma product. They were close to equivalent in specifications, in any case.
As for my optics, Kiroshi was a market leader. They also refined their product every year, with this year's model featuring, in addition to several zoom levels, a fully integrated datalink and facial recognition software. Included by default was a free subscription to the NCPD database, so I could see more or less the rap sheet of anyone I saw. That was both very interesting and absolutely dystopian.
The last thing I wanted was relatively cheap, only a few thousand eurodollars. It was a memory co-processor that would integrate seamlessly into my frontal cortex, and the marketing material for it claimed that it would grant "close to a photographic memory."
I thought that there probably was a lot of work being done by "close to" in that sentence, especially considering I saw a very small asterisk, but the sales rep reassured me that the memory boost was very large and noticeable and that they had no complaints about anyone who bought it.
Lastly, she tried to upsell me an internal medical biomonitor, and I was very tempted, but with each of the cybernetics I was purchasing, with clinician fees, I was going to be out close to twenty thousand eurodollars today. That was a third of what my alt-dad had in his bank account. It was true that I would be receiving a settlement of about the same amount from Militech, but it hadn't arrived yet, and I didn't feel comfortable spending half of all the money I had in the world right now. Even if that was exactly the sort of thing that I would like very much to have. It would have to wait. I needed to be more sure of my position in the world. Perhaps I could splurge in six months if I could get gainfully employed with my new Paramedic's credentials.
She didn't seem upset; I was sure she was already going to receive a healthy commission on the sales I was making today. One interesting thing was they didn't even ask me for my medical records. It turned out that if you were a new patient or hadn't been there in a while, they would do a complete full physical on you as a matter of course, not trusting the word of other doctors.
I wasn't stupid enough to ask to forgo the anaesthesia this time, even if I was incredibly interested in the process.
The physical, consult by the actual doctor, surgery, post-surgical calibration, and in-patient recovery took most of the day, but I was out of their clinic towards the end of the afternoon. That was an absolutely amazing turnaround for elective brain surgery; even my medical sense was very impressed.
I made small talk with the doctor during the processes when I wasn't anesthetised, and he told me a fair bit about his perspective on cybernetics. He was a chatty old man, and I had the impression that he liked to talk, and maybe most of his clients never bothered. I also learned that nanomachines were also widely used in the cybernetics field as well, and it made a lot of sense. Nanomachines were used to completely integrate the bio-active elements in the machine with individual nerve fibres and filaments; most implants were connected to the brain or central nervous system, after all. And those that weren't were often connected to the cardiovascular system, so it was a similar thing there.
Even after using nanomachines during the implantation process of my eyes, they still had to be carefully calibrated. To work correctly, they had to integrate almost perfectly with my optic nerves. My medical knowledge told me that individuals often had wildly divergent optic nerves, where stimulating the same fibre in one person would produce an altogether different image in the brain if stimulated in a different person.
After the installation of the optics, I was woken up and could see very well! But while the default assumptions and simple machine learning-based error correction Kiroshi made was good, perhaps ninety per cent correct out of the box, after about fifteen minutes while I was waiting for the tech to arrive to begin the calibration, I could detect the slightest amount of artefacts and a very small intermittent headache.
Even with the artefacts, my vision was better than it had ever been before, but I could see how I might have even ignored the occasional twinge of a headache if I had purchased these cybernetics from a less reputable dealer who did not go through as thorough a post-installation calibration process.
I may have put it down to postoperative pain, ignored it, and then later got used to it. But the surgeon was very clear; in his opinion, any properly installed piece of prosthetic-style cybernetics, for example, my replacement eyes or a replacement arm, should feel significantly better than the original. If you merely settled for "feels the same as", then your doctor had failed, to say nothing of many people who he claimed thought glitches, twinges, and pain was normal and just something they had to live with.
I felt that this was a pretty good philosophy to have if you were to sell cybernetics and strove to remember it, which I could already tell I was doing better with as well, even before they calibrated my memory co-processor.
The doctor was a kindly-looking old man of indeterminate age who claimed he retired from a long career at MoorE technologies to open his own practice a decade ago. MoorE was a Swedish company that specialised in radical alterations; for example, customised full-body replacements were what they were famous for. He claimed that he had never once had a patient that had followed his medical advice have any incidence of cyberpsychosis.
I wasn't sure if he was telling the complete truth, but there was some ring of truth in it. I had seen videos of cyberpsychos online; thankfully, most of them were censored on the sites I visited. On the other hand, I had seen many people, some in person and others online, that were as augmented or even more so, who seemed perfectly sane, lucid and rational.
I had begun researching the topic off and on since I learned of the condition shortly after I arrived, especially since I knew I would be getting implants myself. I thought insanity was everyone's secret fear, especially the type of insanity where you didn't realise it was happening until it was too late. However, the publically available literature was... well, I hesitated to call it literature, even. Of course, there was a variety of opinions, but most official-looking documents reminded me of a cross between Reefer Madness, abstinence-only sex education and the Salem Witch trials. "Has your neighbour been acting odd after getting chrome? See something? Say something!"
The possibility of cyberpsychosis afflicted people going on rampages had always been somewhat present from my study of the history of the last half-century, but it was approaching the level of a moral panic, today. And yet, they hardly knew much more about it now than they did back in the 2020s! Or if they did they kept it secret.
A lot of what was said was completely contradictory, too. There wasn't a lot I could learn, but my vast trove of knowledge of violent anti-social spectrum disorders made me suspicious about all of it. Although it was true that people afflicted with psychosis were more likely to be violent than the average person, much more, the truth was the vast, vast majority of people experiencing psychotic breaks never became violent at all. Why, then, were cyberpsychos almost always, eventually, violent?
Or were they? Perhaps there were a vast majority of non-violent "cyberpsychos" that just lived with it? That sounded very dystopian. I didn't know and wasn't in any position to begin some kind of large sample-sized psychological study of the most violently deadly demographic on the planet, either. It was something I would have to just keep watching, but it certainly appeared that my fears about myself succumbing to the disease were not, at least now, likely.
One of the major "symptoms" I had read about was that a burgeoning cyberpsycho began seeing themselves as superhuman and as an average person as an ant, kind of like what was common in the narcissistic personality disorders I was familiar with. If so, I wondered if my low self-esteem would give me a lot more leeway!
I was scanning everyone and everything interesting with my optics as I walked back to the metro station. I was very specifically not using my cyberdeck until I got home; besides the fact that the augmented reality interface took some getting used to and made me not pay attention to my surroundings, which was dangerous, I was a little bit worried about the software running on it.
Honestly, I was a little worried about the software running on my Kiroshis and my operating system, as well. I didn't think I could presently do much about hardware hacks or software-based backdoors placed in the equipment by the OEM, but many people were worried about what malware a clinic might put into their cybernetics. It kind of reminded me of the bloatware that Verizon or AT&T would include in their phones; in some ways, it made the phone easier to operate, but mostly it was just bloatware with unknown permissions doing unknown things.
My OS seemed clean, but both my eyes and my deck had a number of pre-installed software packages. When I got home, I would use my laptop and interface plugs to go through each software package one by one. Once I found which packages I was going to keep, I would note them and then download the most recent firmware from Biotech Sigma and reflash my deck. Then for each software package, I could download the official, most recent, cryptographically signed version from each manufacturer.
There would still be some trust involved, but there was not a lot I could do about that at the moment without becoming a peerless expert at programming, getting copies of all that software source code and then inspecting it line by line. I wasn't some famous hacker; I just was pretty good with computers! Maybe someday I'd have that skill, but it surely wasn't today.
Although I had a tingling in the back of my head of ideas that indicated that my power might help some with software development, it only seemed to be the case if it was the base firmware for a medical implant or medical device. It wouldn't at all help me reprogram the phone app on my Kiroshis, so I knew I wasn't being spied on, for example.
Still, that was something to keep in mind as a possibility in the future. It was obvious, but I noticed my Tinkering worked a lot better on things I was already very knowledgeable about. That was why I could make a techno-tiara that put you to sleep. It was because I was already very familiar with the brain's processes of sleep, rest and healing.
Stepping onto the train, I carefully guarded my purse and sat on one of the open seats. Although NCART was always somewhat busy, I had missed the real rush hour an hour and a half ago. The sun was already starting to set, setting a stark dichotomy, looking like a beautiful ink on canvas amidst the trashiness of the cityscape in front of it.
Going back to my thoughts, I was sure I needed to expand my horizons and learn more about both programming and electronics than I ever learned in Mrs Knott's class. So, although I was very proud, actually I was ridiculously proud, of my sleep inducer, I felt if I knew more about the way, electronically, braindance wreaths interfaced with a person's brain, I could have made a device that did a lot more than just help you sleep and remember.
After two stops, the train filled up again, and I offered my seat to an older gentleman who looked like he was barely making it through to the end of the day. He looked shocked and then suspicious but, after a moment, gave me a genuine smile and told me, "Thanks, lady."
I was a lady now, huh? I liked the way that sounded. First lady, then QUEEN, then GODDESS. Oh, no, they were right about the Cyberpsychosis all along! I giggled at my internal monologue, then coughed when people stared at me and quietly tried to hide behind a mass of people, wanting the floor to swallow me up.
I calmed down after the next stop and resumed my thoughts about my power. It felt like there was a limited amount of secret sauce, and everything that I could build traditionally with science would allow that secret sauce to be spread to areas of my invention that were totally irreproducible with science instead of making up for what I didn't know, which was almost everything in some fields right now. I didn't know if this was normally how Tinkers worked, but I thought that maybe it was as it would explain reasons why Armsmaster went to graduate school for engineering and could produce marvels and Squealer could produce only trashy monster trucks.
I just felt that my jar of secret sauce was a lot smaller than theirs, but that might be just envy from someone newly starting out. But Squealer? I had seen one of her cars driving a hundred and fifty miles an hour down the highway with square wheels on the news once. She not only got the jar of sauce but the whole sauce factory!
Still, I had still learned a little bit more about electrode-based brain interfaces when I made my sleep inducer, building it wasn't a complete fog. It kind of felt like I was working my way up the tech tree in Civilisation, one of the few games our computer at home could still run. Building this one device gave me ideas for other devices using similar but slightly more advanced principles.
In the same way, I had been considering ways to mitigate the effects of the antibiotic I had made before. It was absolute death on bacteria. Such that I couldn't think of any ideas about how to make it selectively leave your microfauna alone.
But when I looked back at the over dozen different shapes of medical nanomachines in my blood gave me the initial sketches of a new type of potential nanomachine, whose tool would be a tiny controllable and coilable filament, twice the length of the nanite itself. A hunter-killer nanomachine that could kill bacteria or even any other type of eukaryotic cell very easily. It was a completely different area of medical science as to the antibiotic, which chemically weakened the plasma cell membrane of bacteria. However, it was still in the same general area of "things that kill single cellular organisms."
However, although I got a good idea of the shape of the machine and even some hints on how its little filament whip would work in identifying and then destroying eukaryotes, I currently didn't have any ideas of how to build the nanites themselves. There was clearly some wiggle room with my power, but building nanites with my alt dad's hand tools wasn't going to cut it.
At the next stop, a boy about my age slapped my ass, laughed uproariously and ran off the train before I could smack him. Had I just been... chikaned? You heard stories about subway gropers in big cities, but this was only my second day riding the damn train! The little shit had a good arm on him, too. I rubbed my butt, mortified. The other passengers ranged from sympathetic to amused, with the latter being the plurality. I got that little booger's face, though, and remembered his stop.
Wait...
Oh, god. With my recently enhanced memory, I thought back to when the asshole got on the train; he was carrying a greasy Buck-A-Slice pizza, which I didn't think was even literally considered food. They either had an asterisk calling their product food in their marketing materials, or they should have. My skirt was dry-cleaning only! I would get even if I saw him again.
I spent the next few days reading guides online and watching videos. I was still very much getting resources from what would be considered the normal part of the net, but I was inching towards sites and channels that were considered... well I didn't know. In my last life I would have called them preppers.
People who stored a lot of food and gun at their house for when the zombies came. Like, some people were professional paranoids, but this segment of people took it as a hobby instead. They were usually corporate workers or professionals that both distrusted and relied on cybernetics heavily.
It wasn't "hacker resources" that I was consuming, but it shared some commonalities, in that they were big on open-source software... or at least software where the source code could be examined or had been examined by other people besides the Corporation releasing it. Their other interests were security and privacy, in as much as the latter could be found on the net or in the world at all.
If I had been as savvy as Alt-Taylor, it probably wouldn't have taken me more than a couple of hours to inspect every software package installed on my operating system, eyes and cyberdeck, reflash and reinstall everything. In fact, this was probably the bare minimum of what savvy people did. The memory co-processor didn't have customisable software at all, and I already checked that it was running the most up-to-date firmware, so I would just have to trust it for now.
However, I wasn't Alt-Taylor. I took several days to accomplish the same thing, although I was learning a lot at the same time. I was notably a little leery about wiping and then reinstalling the software on what I used to see unless I was absolutely sure it would work. I didn't even know what I would do if I just suddenly blinded myself, and I couldn't fix it. I suppose I'd have to call emergency services and get an ambulance ride to the Skyline clinic or invent some sort of echolocation to see in the dark. To say nothing about the cyberdeck, which was even more integrated into my brain.
I found a number of extraneous software packages on both my Kiroshis and my deck that didn't correlate to what either manufacturer considered their factory defaults. Seven or eight in total on each device. Most of them seemed to be bloatware, but I didn't really know for sure.
They were cryptographically signed by a couple of software companies that sounded legitimate, but who knows what they were hired to actually produce and for whom. They had replaced the phone, messenger, moving map, and a couple of other apps. I was pretty sure one of the bloatware apps was designed to run continuously and broadcast my identity to nearby devices for advertising purposes rather than any nefarious purposes. Although a lot of advertising in this world really was nefarious.
Two of the installed apps looked very suspicious. Their permissions granted were extraordinarily broad; they had strange non-descriptive alphanumeric names and were signed by unknown entities. However, one of the apps was cross-signed by a public key that I had linked to the city of Night City by searching online. That was interesting. Some kind of police LoJak or backdoor? It was signed by a different certificate than the software that NCPD provided that ran people's faces in their records. That software looked pretty normal, and I would keep it. The permissions were mild, too; it couldn't get everything I saw at any time, just specific stills when I triggered the app.
I already knew that the government took a special interest in people who bought a lot of cybernetics, so perhaps one of those suspicious apps was how they monitored them.
Both of the suspicious software packages broke all of the rules of security the default devices had installed. If I had tried to install either of the packages by myself, neither system would have permitted it without me going deep into the settings. The cryptographic certificates these two programs were signed with had been specifically added to each device's trusted list, which bypassed the normal security checks. Normally only Kiroshi or Biotech Sigma's own software had that level of trust.
I found that all very interesting, and it made me certain that I wanted to reflash each of the implants as soon as possible.
I did my cyberdeck first, as if I made a mistake, at least I wouldn't be blind. Although, one of the things I learned from Dr Travis was that almost regardless of what your cybernetic system was, it was generally a bad idea for it to be rendered inert or bricked. Theoretically, it was impossible to actually brick modern cyberware like I was worrying about, but I never underestimated the way I could screw something up by the numbers if I tried really hard on it.
But... it actually proceeded without a hitch. I then downloaded the replacement software packages directly from the OEM's net site and verified that I wasn't being phished with an imposter site several times. It had only been a handful of years since the actual world wide web became worldwide again. Even just fifteen years ago, each part of the net was fragmented into regional, local private networks after the greatest hacker in history destroyed the old net.
I was, perhaps, being paranoid because each of the implants did its own security check on the update, too, before allowing it to be reflashed. Still, I was a belt and suspenders type of girl when it came to software running in devices connected directly to my brain.
After both devices were cleared, my interfaces became quite a bit more clunky. I didn't have the link to the NCPD on people anymore or much of anything else except for optical zoom.
After an hour and a half of carefully installing all of the apps I had approved onto both devices, it felt like using a freshly formatted Windows XP system before any cruft managed to get grafted on. Nice, in other words.
A feeling of pride suffused me, and I realised I was being ridiculous. I felt like a Boomer, being proud of operating some new-fangled device when a kid my age could have done the same thing in fifteen minutes. Still, it was progress.
Over the next week, I started going to the gym on the tenth floor of my building, building up until I was staying almost an hour a day by the end of my first week. It didn't cost very much, and there were not many people interested in using it, except a Megablock boxing club, but they immediately discounted me on sight, especially after I ignored the free weights every day and just ran on a treadmill and elliptical machine.
Alt-Taylor's gym clothes were a pair of shorts that were way too short and a short-sleeved T-shirt, which I nixed immediately after seeing and replaced with baggy dark grey long-sleeve sweats and sweatpants.
I got pretty good at using my deck to navigate the regular net while running, and I didn't need to carry my phone anywhere at all anymore, so I left it at home.
This morning while running, I received a call. At first, I didn't recognise the name, but I finally remembered them as one of Alt-Taylor's friends, although not incredibly close. I wasn't sure if I should answer it. My personality and Alt-Taylor's were widely divergent, although I could try to just play it off as I had changed my personality after the life-altering trauma of losing my father.
Sighing, I picked up on the fifth ring. Instantly in the corner of my vision, a small window of a teenage girl around my age appeared, wearing a brightly coloured, sort of kitsch style of clothes that I thought looked good on a lot of people but would look terrible on me. Her skin was the colour of a latte with a triple shot of milk, a light to medium caramel, and she had almost had even more unruly hair than I had. It was one of the things that attracted us to each other when we became friends at school.
She didn't wait for me to say hello, "Tay! How have you been? Wait, that's scorched; I didn't mean that; of course, you've not been good... I just meant, hello."
"Yeah, things have been hard, but I have had a pretty good break. Rather than totally screwing me, the Corp is helping me out. How's everyone back in school?" I asked after chuckling a little bit in spite of myself. I didn't have a lot of memories of this girl, but most of the memories I did have featured her talking at this same super speed.
She spent about ten minutes explaining in detail specifically who was dating who and who had broken up with who in the time I had been gone. Surely there hadn't been that much activity? I mean, how often did they change who they were dating? Even my past memories indicated my alternate self wasn't interested in this kind of gossip, either.
She asked, after kind of wincing, "So... how is.. ugh... public school?"
"I don't know! That's the break I was talking about. I graduated early; I'm enrolling in a college course starting next month. Militech is paying for it, as part of my survivorship package," I told her. It wasn't like any of this was private information, although I specifically didn't state where and implied the course was more than it actually was.
The girl gasped, "Woah! That's nova, Tay! I knew you wouldn't let this keep you down. Say, did you want to hang out with a few friends on Friday?"
I considered that. I really didn't. Not only did I intend to make a clean break with my Militech school friends, but my memories indicated that her type of parties was not something either version of me was interested in. They weren't precisely chaste. Although Alt-Taylor wasn't, as far as I could tell, sexually active yet, she did date boys, but she wasn't interested in going to parties where the main thing going on was fooling around. Jessica had been purely an in-school friend.
"Sorry, Jess. You know, that's not really my thing, plus I only have a couple of weeks until I need to start on a class I didn't think I was qualified to take until recently," that last part was the definitely, one hundred per cent truth.
Still, Jessica was an ultra gossip. Perhaps it would have been better if everyone in my alternate life just thought I had faded away, but at the same time, part of my memories of her didn't want that to happen. Having them find out that I was possibly thriving through gossip was a good compromise. Half wouldn't believe it, and there were no real details to verify for those who did.
The girl shrugged and said, "Yeah, I figured, but I wanted to be friendly, yaknow? Besides, Vicki said you had become a yono whore in Japantown, and I couldn't let that bitch get away with sayin' that." I didn't know what yono was, but a quick parallel net search indicated it was a Korean word popularised into the slang, and it meant trashy. I was interested in how this Vicki person deduced I lived in Japantown, though. Could it have been a guess? There were probably a limited number of places Militech would place someone like me.
Considering what she had said, I figured it was more likely that Jessica wanted to verify whether it was true or not and if it was, she would have spread the news far and wide herself. That was just kind of the girl she was, from what I could remember. I did not really like swearing, but my memories indicated it was what she was expecting, "Vicki's a stupid fucking cunt."
We talked more back and forth about how much of a bitch Vicki was, which was funny because I couldn't remember her from Adam before she eventually hung up. That was surreal. I think I will maybe avoid those kinds of conversations in the future.
I pant as I jump out of my rig, running through the holographic police line and past a couple of Night City's finest shitheads. They were keeping the looky-loos away, such that we couldn't even bring the rig all the way up. My partner was following me with the gurney, but reports from the patient's biom were that their blood pressure was dropping to the crapper. They'd code soon if I didn't hurry. Or maybe even if I did hurry. Trauma Team had already been here and gone, but this guy obviously wasn't a subscriber.
It was already somewhat of a miracle that there was even this survivor from a cyberpsycho MCI. I tried to avoid glancing at the imposing figures of MaxTac, still standing around the chromed-up booster's body.
I cut all of the guy's clothes off with my shears, identifying three gunshot wounds while setting up my kit to get to work. I had a quickset tourniquet around the man's left leg instantly, the simple medical device self-tightening. My partner rushes up, panting, "Oh shit, he's fucked."
My grizzled voice sounded like I was a perpetual smoker, which I was, "Maybe. Two GSW lower left quadrant, one in the left thigh. Come help. His airway's still good, still breathing. Start an I.V., pressure infuse NS with TXA. Blood pressure is shit, so we'll keep dumping fluids into him and prep the two units of blood we got with us." I ordered the younger med-tech sternly as I started to apply automated pressure bandages to the two wounds in his abdomen.
I'd give this guy a fifty per cent chance.
After the braindance finished playing, I pulled the wreath I had customised off of my head and considered what I had experienced. These BDs were edited, and some of them were almost complete fabrications for educational purposes. They weren't virtus that were scrolled by the EMT and not edited at all. That would have been a lot more intense, but they still had a bit of the emotion track, and you could get a muted sense of what the scroller was thinking, probably intentionally so you could follow their medical decision.
This was a long one that started out in the field and took the patient all the way to the trauma centre in Watson. It seemed somewhat real, at least more so than the obvious fakes. The purpose of the exercise was to identify both what the EMTs did correctly and what they did incorrectly using the current patient care guidelines.
In answering the questions, I had to be very careful to also only use answers that a Paramedic of average skill could accomplish while also following the sample PCGs. For example, I could not write down, "He should have noticed specifically which artery was lacerated by sight and shoved a pair of hemostats into the wound to clamp the bleeding."
If I tried to turn that answer in, they'd kick me out of the program, even if that was what I actually would have done in his shoes.
I intended to ace this class, but it was going to be difficult to keep my skills on the plausible prodigy level and not the "what the fuck" level. Paramedics had a limited "scope of practice" which was to say that legally they were only allowed to do a certain number of things.
I couldn't start talking about surgery too often because there was only a limited number of surgical procedures that paramedics were authorised to do in the field. They were all of the types that were necessary for immediate first aid, for example, chest tubes, tracheotomies, field amputations and occasionally wild things like a C-section if the mother was already deceased.
In practice in the field, if I got a job as a paramedic, I felt that it would be the results that spoke for themself, but to graduate, I definitely had to toe the line.
I glanced down at my customised wreath. I made a promise that I wouldn't disassemble the brand-new braindance wreath that I bought, but I lied to myself. Although I didn't completely disassemble it, but I ended up using parts from my dad's old phone.
You see, I started to feel a bit anxious using it when I began learning more and more about how they worked and about how much access the system had to your brain. I was very sure that it was possible to create subliminal tracks on a BD or to even create a malicious braindance to adjust the thought track to cause terror, extreme depression and temporary neurosis. The reaction would depend on the person viewing it, but it might be so extreme as to cause an actual physical brain injury.
It was this part of living in this world that I hated and detested the most. Not being able to trust anything. So I had used the processor in one of his old phones; he had an entire drawer full of old models to create what I was calling a firewall.
It was wired in the middle, between the braindance wreath's output and the actual electrodes. The ways a BD could be messed with, at least the ones I had thought up, were detectible when examining the output. There were easily identifiable spikes targeting certain areas of the brain and consistent and identifiable electrical waveforms. In effect, the firewall played BDs on a slight fifty-millisecond delay, and if it detected a malicious BD, it would stop it before it ever got to my brain. In theory.
Still, it made me feel a lot better about using them, and I had to watch them all.
The school sent me an e-mail asking me to come to campus to register a student ID, and those newly enrolled students were permitted to use the campus facilities, like the student union and library, up to a month before enrollment and up to a month after they matriculated, so long as they were still in good standing.
That was something I wish I had known. I imagine that the library of an actual medical school would have a lot of information that I just couldn't get on the public net.
So, for the last two weeks, before I started class, I left my apartment in the morning and came back in the evening; right before, I felt a bit too scared to be on the streets by myself, even in the safety of Downtown.
Today, on the train ride back, that same ass-slapping boy came onto the metro, and I narrowed my eyes. He saw me, too and grinned. I had his number this time, though, at least if he tried the same thing.
I reached into my purse and brought out a small transparent piece of plastic. Moving surreptitiously, I very carefully peeled back one layer to expose an adhesive layer underneath and reached behind myself and casually stuck it to my rear. Then, even more carefully, I peeled back the last film layer on top and made extremely sure I didn't actually touch my skin with that second layer of film. I casually put it in a small empty section of my purse that I would have to carefully clean when I got home.
Was immediately escalating to chemical weapons an appropriate response to having your ass slapped on a train? I wondered. Well, it wasn't like it was actually a weapon, per se. Legally speaking, it wasn't. He wouldn't die or even become sick. I had made very sure of the safety of the chemical, which was rapidly absorbed by skin contact. I even tested it on myself, although I at least had the benefit of doing so in the shower.
Well, if he just got off on his stop and didn't make a second attempt, nothing would happen, and I will have to go and carefully take this off my pants.
The train rolled into the station, and I saw him go for it, and I didn't move an inch to stop him. He laughs uproariously, slaps my ass and yells, "See ya, suit bitch!" and then runs off the train. I specifically do not rub my butt this time.
I wonder if I will get to see it. It had a very rapid onset even if an extremity like the hand was exposed, but at the same time, these stops didn't last long at all, and he was already running, trying to escape two train cops. They might have seen him slap me on the butt on the surveillance systems. Realistically, you could only get away with an activity like that on the train once or twice. A lot of corporate workers used the train, so the security was actually really good.
Oh! There it goes, the look of shock and horror on his face as he is in mid-flight. I think I would have a similar expression if I was unknowingly exposed to a chemical that induced rapid, temporary urinary incontinence. Keep going! Don't let a pissed pair of pants stop you, asshole boy!
The train left the station while I smirked to myself. He should be thankful. I had to specifically use Tinkering to make the drug only induce urinary and not also faecal incontinence. But that, surely, would have been a weapon of ass destruction, and I have some lines.
I had settled on the treadmill after trying the other cardio machines, even though the elliptical machine was both better for your joints and theoretically more efficient in providing a workout. There was something simple and pure about just running that was very primal and struck a chord with me.
The treadmill made the ones I had seen in gyms back in Brockton Bay look like child's toys. Although it didn't have the advanced holographic systems that I knew were available, it did have what was, to me, a very fancy-looking wrap-around display that simulated any number of programs you could run through.
"Give me the downtown Paris program, please," I told the treadmill after getting on. The display switched to a photorealistic rendering of a first-person view of the Rue de Rivoli; this program circled the Louvre and then went southwest across the river Seine and continued down the Rue de Solferino some ways before stopping.
That wasn't the main reason I tended to select this program, though. Also rendered was an attractive man of European descent, wearing tight shorts and a shirt with no sleeves. He had a runner's build, and he was what the computer used to set the pace. You could make it a race using the variable speed mode, or he would run alongside or in front of you.
I made sure to set his speed so that he stayed in front of me at my normal long-range pace, as it was a pleasant distraction to look at him run away from me for the whole workout. I would either enjoy the view or read or watch media on the net, using my cyberdeck. I had begun reading some of the well-known books on the net, but most of the ones that really talked about hacking and weren't complete bullshit were a bit outdated, such as Rache Bartmoss's guide to the net. Another legendary hacker named Spider Murphy's biography on the dead legend was quite good, too. For a while, she wrote updated and edited versions of Bartmoss' famous guide every year, noting if anything changed significantly, so I was merely twenty-five years behind most newbies instead of forty-plus.
It was interesting reading the original version Bartmoss wrote and then the updates every year. In those days, and thanks to Bartmoss, the net was fragmented. A lot of the information Spider Murphy added was interesting ways to get physical access to various regional subnets, VPNs and company intranets, and how to prevent yourself from being murdered by crazy AIs, which mostly broke down into "stay away from the old net if you know what's good for you." The last version was written a year after NetWatch created the Blackwall, and the various regional nets had barely begun the process of reconnection, so even the last version of the guide wasn't that useful, even if it was very interesting. Ms Spider Murphy's updates tended to have information that was local to Night City that still might be a little bit useful today, such as how Night City's regional net was structured.
Today was my first day of class, but I made sure not to disrupt my routine too much. Since I didn't sleep very much since inventing my sleep inducer, I intended to maintain my workout schedule as much as possible, even while going to school and then when working.
The attractive-looking computer man looked back at me with a pleasantly expectant look on his face. I got ready and then nodded at him. That's all it took for him to start running and the treadmill to come to life as I followed behind, letting my mind drift while thinking about my future.
It might be a bit more difficult to keep working out every day like this while working. Working hours were longer here, which made sense since there wasn't any kind of wage or hour regulations. A normal workday in Night City varied somewhat but averaged about ten hours a day, not including your lunch. Twelve-hour days weren't uncommon, at all, either.
The workdays for paramedics were a bit different. Most ambulance services had a one-day on, one-day off schedule. Theoretically, on your twenty-four-hour shift, you were expected to get rest as you could while waiting between calls. R.E.O. Meatwagon had a twelve-hour shift schedule, but not only did that company have a very poor reputation, but they were floundering, with the expectation that they may go out of business any time.
Allegedly R.E.O. Meatwagon had a habit of physically interdicting their competition with force, generally other ground ambulances, in order to secure paying patients. It wasn't surprising, but in Night City, the 911 EMS service was privatised, although there were certain standardisation requirements.
Whether or not that was true or not, what was definitely true, as far as I could tell, was a group of private ambulance services banded together and hired a team of mercenaries to riddle the CEO of R.E.O. full of bullets when he was coming home from work. And then, for good measure, they ran the R.E.O Meatwagon ambulance that responded to try to save his life off the road.
Although it was listed as an unsolved crime, even the tamest sites she read on the net had nothing but schadenfreude for the plight of that man and his company.
The final payment from Militech cleared into my account a couple of days ago, and my balance sheet was sitting at a very healthy one hundred-and-twenty-two thousand eurodollars and some change. That sounded like a lot, and for many in the city, it was. My dad, as a Major in the Militech armed forces, made a little more than one hundred thousand a year, which was well on the upper middle class realm in this city.
However, one semester of actual medical school in the NCU Health Science Centre costs sixty-seven thousand dollars, not including room and board. Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself, but I definitely wanted to get actual's doctors' credentials.
In many ways, the mostly complete destruction of the system of colleges and Universities was very bad for the average citizen. At one point, Academia was almost totally beholden to funding from the government, and the government here in the world of Night City was barely functional. They weren't funding research, not at colleges anyway, nor did they provide guaranteed student loans to anyone.
In one way, it was kind of beneficial for me, though. The new, more corporate structure of higher education got rid of a lot of extraneous frivolities. You didn't need a four-year degree to attend medical school, for example. So long as you could find one to admit you, all you needed was a high-school diploma, or in her case, an equivalent. The payment was at least one year in advance and non-refundable if you flunked out, though.
The thought of going to med school under my own power, not having to sign a long-term loyalty contract to any specific corporation, appealed a lot to me, but I wasn't sure how it might be possible. Even if I lucked out and got a job at Trauma Team straight out of school, I definitely wouldn't make enough to save over three hundred thousand eurodollars in any reasonable time frame. I would have to moonlight, somehow, or accept having a corporation pay my way.
The program was only about a twenty-five-minute run and it came to an end with a short cool-down period, after which I hopped off the treadmill, being careful to wipe it off carefully. I didn't really sweat very much, especially when I was using a treadmill, but it was polite.
Although this gym wasn't very high-end, in some respects, anyone coming to it was slightly better off than average. The actual poor of the city didn't have enough money or time to care about their health, certainly not enough to spend time in a gym. Gyms were for people who didn't get exercise through the labour of their bodies, and even with the advent of automated production technologies, much labour, especially the less compensated, in the world was still very physical.
The classes I took in Militech called it "The Formula", and it was pretty cold-hearted. If you could replace a worker with a machine, you only did so if the total cost of the machine, including financing and maintenance, divided by the machine's expected service life, was less than the total compensation of the worker.
You'd think that this would drive tons of workers out of jobs, and in some cases, it did, but the truth was that a lot of times, a human worker was cheaper than a high-tech articulating robotic manipulator controlled by machine learning, so really there were a lot of low-end jobs that entailed strenuous physical labour.
The woman who was grinning at me, waiting to use the machine, was someone who looked like she had never really seen any of that herself. She was of partial European and partial Chinese descent, very pretty in the way models were, and I didn't know her name, much less anything about her. She tended to work out at around the same time I did, early in the morning, and we had become something like gym buddies. She also preferred the treadmill and elliptical machines.
"I see you chose the Paris program again. I have to admit, that guy does have a perfect ass," she said with a slight Chinese accent. It was so slight, just enough to give a hint of exoticness to her tone that I suspected that she could probably speak with no accent at all if she wanted to.
I lied furiously, "That isn't why I picked that program! It's because of the Louvre!"
"Yeah, his ass should be in there. It's a work of art, alright," she said as she hopped up onto the machine. She glanced at me, "You know, everyone can see you're strapped when you run in here in those sweats. Why do you carry a piece to the gym?" Her gym outfit exposed a lot more skin than mine, but I seemed to be a bit of the odd one out there.
I considered that question. Something from a series of Earth Aleph books that my mom liked before she died came to mind, and I quoted, "Because the night is dark and full of terrors. I'm surprised that you don't too. I'd expect you to get hassled a lot more than me." Because she was so pretty and I was just a string bean, I left unsaid.
That caused her to laugh as she began the exact same Paris program, waggling her eyes at me as she chose it, "That's funny, kid. I might consider it if I was leaving the building, but... there's not a single person who would give me a hard time in this building. I figured you knew, but I work upstairs at Clouds."
I raised my eyebrows at that and gave her another inspection, then blushed a bit as I realised what she meant. She was a doll, which was a type of prostitute. They used special cybernetics, allowing their entire body to be taken over by computer-controlled expert systems that would act out a client's fantasy perfectly, with the doll themselves not remembering a thing about what happened.
At first, when I heard about Clouds, I was aghast. I expected the grossest and most weird fetishes imaginable to be the only reason such a system existed. And considering I had tons of psychiatric data at my beck and call, including detailed information on almost every paraphilia known, I was expecting the worst. Maybe that was the case in some places that used doll hardware, but the Clouds net site emphasised and seemed to market itself to a high-end clientele, especially those with crippling social anxiety, and it was priced accordingly.
In any case, it definitely explained why the woman felt safe in this building. The Clouds was owned, lock stock and barrel, by the Tyger Claws. I didn't think anyone who messed with their "talent" had a very long life expectancy.
The woman, seeing me blush, laughed even harder, "I thought that was obvious, that you couldn't tell either means you were extra sheltered or my attempt to seem classy worked."
Well, maybe a little bit of both. She did seem classy, but she did have that sort of aura you'd expect from an expensive courtesan or geisha, now that I thought about it.
I didn't stick around much longer, we would usually make small-talk if we were both in the two treadmills, but I wasn't going to stick around just to watch her run just to be sociable. I didn't use the showers in the gym, either, which I felt a little bad about considering I had to go up nineteen floors in an elevator, although I wiped myself with towels so I wasn't incredibly sweaty or stinky before going back upstairs and using my own shower, where I couldn't easily be snuck up on.
I hadn't seen the ass-slapper since my revenge a couple of weeks ago, but my schedule was a bit different, too. Even before today, I spent most of my day on campus.
I had had to get off on the NCART stop in Japantown for the past week, just like what Mr Jin had warned me about. Thankfully, it wasn't a long walk to campus, but I had been coming over an hour early.
However, this time I almost got shot for my trouble. I knew something was a little wrong immediately after I stepped on the street because a large group of Tyger Claws were looming, looking simultaneously dangerous and anxious.
A man that looked to be their leader, wearing a jacket with a stylised Asian dragon printed on it, said as I carefully navigated past them, "...the kids are almost here; when they get here fucking shoot them if you have a gun, chop their fucking heads off if you don't."
He spoke in Japanese, but my implants included an auto-translate function, rendering subtitles in English either in front of me or in front of the speaker, depending on how many people were talking.
Were they going to kill kids?
I started to wonder what I could do, which I already knew was absolutely nothing. I couldn't fight a half dozen, obviously heavily cybernetically augmented, gang members, that was for sure. Especially not ones that controlled the building I lived in, the selfish part of my brain added.
I started walking faster, hoping to perhaps warn these kids to take another street. All of the Tyger Claws seemed to be staring down the street, expecting their prey to arrive from that direction, which was coincidentally also the same direction I wanted to go, towards Downtown.
However, instead of a bunch of kids, a large white-panelled van roared from a side street, fishtailing after taking a ninety-degree turn at high speed. The side door was open, revealing a bunch of definite adults levelling automatic weapons in the direction of the Tyger Claws... which was also incidentally also my direction.
Great. I'm going to be turned into swiss cheese by the crossfire, I thought and leapt aside, hitting the deck, rolling and hiding behind a Data Term. I felt good about my cover, Data Term net terminals were ubiquitous, and all of them were bulletproof, as some gangs in parts of the city, especially Pacifica, used them as target practice, just for fun. Alt-Taylor's memories suggested you'd need an anti-material rifle to have a hope of doing more than scratching them.
The two belligerents opened fire almost simultaneously, and the Tyger Claws seemed to have a better aim, but the van had the benefit of being a moving target shooting at a stationary one. I heard a couple of stray rounds ping off the Data Term shielding me. The sound was a cacophony, and I watched as the van came to a stop, crashing into a parked car as the driver was shot. A bunch of combatants leapt out of the disabled vehicle to be met by the Tyger Claw forces.
The Tyger Claws were outnumbered by two to one, it must have been a clown car in that van, but the fight was going more or less evenly and getting a lot closer to my position of concealment, with one Tyger Claw fighter taking a knife wound and slumping right next to me. That was, up until a bright red motorcycle took the same turn at the van, also at high speed. Instead of fishtailing, however, the rider did some ridiculous spinning manoeuvre and came to a stop, leaping off the bike before the machine even came to a complete stop, doing a front flip before landing in the middle of the melee with a katana.
Brave, but I think he would have been better served by hanging back and picking off the highly cybered enemy gang members at long range. Or at least I thought that until I just saw him vanish, and then right after, the heads of the six remaining men departed their bodies, blood flying everywhere.
I gagged and threw up, aiming away from the downed Tyger Claw as a sign of respect. I was already a bit queasy seeing people get shot more or less right in front of me, but watching six people get decapitated by some fucking speedster was the straw that broke the camel's back.
The downed Tyger Claw next to me saw me throw up, specifically saw me move out of my way so I wouldn't hit him with any of it and gave me a rueful nod of appreciation. He glanced down at his chest, winced and was about to yank the small little knife that was sticking out of it, but I suddenly found myself saying firmly, moving my hand to intercept his, "Stop!"
He looked more confused than upset, but that crazily dangerous man with the sword that must have some kind of high-end reflex boostware was suddenly looming over the both of us and asked both menacingly and curiously, "What are you doing, girl?"
Should I not have said anything? I didn't know, but I was already in this mess, so I decided to say confidently, "Saving his life, I guess. That knife knicked his aorta, but it's currently blocking the bleeding like a cork; if he pulls it out or moves around a lot like he is doing now, he will die very quickly."
That caused the downed Tyger Claw to freeze. The man looked down at his compatriot as if gauging the accuracy of my words from his vast experience of stabbing people in the chest. In fact, that seemed to be exactly what he was doing, and he probably did have enough experience. Finally, the man nodded and shrugged, "Does look a little close. Are you a med-tech or doctor, girl? Yuki, you better lay back down on your back and be very still till we get some help for you." The latter, he said in Japanese to the man, who nodded rapidly and did as he was told.
I grimaced, "This is supposed to be my first day in class at the HSC Paramedic course."
That caused him to grin, "Well, apologies about the unpleasantness in your commute. We have a few med-techs coming, but they're five minutes away. Mind taking a look at my men?"
He worded it as a request, but it didn't sound optional at all. Actually, it made me feel somewhat better about him. Perhaps it was the influence of Alt-Taylor's memories, but a man doing whatever he had to save the lives of the men under his command felt like a virtue.
I nodded and stood up, and he walked with me about ten metres to where a few of the Tyger Claws were laid out on the ground. He casually kicked one of the dead enemies who were in our way, causing the dead man to roll over. When that happened, I saw on the back of the dead man's leather jacket text that read "NIGHTKIDS," along with a stylised representation of a cartoon Dracula.
That made me want to do a comically cinematic face-slap. These were the "kids" that one man was talking about, I guess. God, I was so fucking stupid sometimes. The Tyger Claws may be a murderous street gang, but why had I thought they'd mow down a bunch of girl scouts out selling cookies? I should have done an about-face and gone straight back into the NCART terminal.
Two of the Tyger Claws were shot in the head, and the man said rather sadly, "I guess these two are a lost cause."
Well, that was definitely true for one of them. He was dead as dead could be.
The other, though, although it looked bad, was a lot more minor and a different story. The world was so violent that they had a very accurate way of predicting the survivability of a penetrating wound to the brain, and I stopped to do a quick assessment, which surprised my escort.
"He stands a good chance of surviving if you can get him to a trauma centre in less than an hour," I said, sighing. "But I don't know what kind of deficiencies he might have after recovering." I actually did, he would have trouble with his long-term memory and speech, but both of those could be mitigated with speciality implants designed to help those with traumatic brain injuries. I definitely didn't want to seem like I could detect that just by a quick, mostly visual inspection, though.
My proclamation caused the leader to raise his eyebrows in surprise and possibly suspicion, "Are you sure? People don't often survive getting shot in the head like that."
Actually, the truth was that they survived that all the time. Even people trying to kill themselves often survive shooting themselves in the head, but I didn't out and out correct the man with a katana and super speed and no compunctions about killing people in job lots, but I did qualify, "Over ninety per cent sure, yes."
He nodded, smiling a little, "That's good. His wife is pregnant." I thought that was a rough break; he might be recovering for some time. He said in Japanese to one of his men, "Sanjuro and Yuki are priority one, take them together, straight to Watson, don't stop for anything when Monotori arrives."
The rest of the Tyger Claws were only minorly injured, although I could detect one had taken shrapnel from an exploding high-velocity flechette ricocheting off something in his neck.
"It isn't a cut; it is an entry would of a small piece of metal. It might be fine, or you might get a neck massage and suddenly die someday. Or you might keel over dead in an hour if you keep rubbing at it. I'd recommend you get an x-ray at a hospital," I told him churlishly after he said he was fine.
"Really? That could happen?" asked the decapitator.
I sighed, "Most wounds I have read about similar to this actually never progress to that stage, but I can't tell exactly where the piece of shrapnel is." I could, of course, and it was true he wasn't actually in any real danger. But saying get a pair of tweezers to get it out seemed wrong.
The last man he had me look at was one of the "kids." The only survivor. His left leg was shredded beyond any saving, absent immediate nanomedical intervention. I frown, "I'd rather not help you, even indirectly, torture this man." I finally say quietly. There was probably only one reason they wanted him to survive, and it didn't bode very well for him.
I wasn't that sympathetic to him, as he and his friends almost killed me, but I had some morals, at least. Besides, they had already done the correct thing in applying a tourniquet, anyway.
That caused the man to grin at me and say, "I'm not really used to having people tell me no, you know. How refreshing! You know what, Taylor, I like you. My name is Yukimura. Yukimura Kato. People I like can call me Kato."
Because, of course, he knew my name. Well, I suppose that was why I was paying fifteen per cent of my rent in protection money so that I was easily identifiable to them.
Was this some kind of weird samurai thing? I like you; then he was going to stab me? You have the heart of a samurai, so die!
"Well, Kato, it is nice to meet you, I guess..." I said, lying through my teeth.
Kato laughed at me, "You know, you're not a great liar, Taylor. Go on; I won't keep you anymore."
I just nodded and proceeded with prudent haste towards downtown. That entire battle, including the first aid on the Tyger Claws, had only taken ten minutes, and although my hands were covered in blood, I managed to keep most of it off my outfit.
I duck into the first public bathroom on campus and use a liberal amount of hot water and soap to clean off my hands. Things could have gone better, but surviving my first small-scale gang battle when I was directly in between the two groups fighting was something to be proud of.
Should I have kept my big mouth shut and let that guy Yuki yank a knife out of his chest like a "gonk"? Probably not. It felt like the wrong thing to do. Besides, I didn't really demonstrate much skill beyond what any med-tech could do, after all. Even diagnosing the man with the GSW to the head wasn't that unusual. Gunshots to the head were so common that even basic med-techs generally knew, or at least had on their implants, the penetrating brain injury survival score test. The injuries in this battle were remarkably fatal; beyond the one guy with the knife in his chest, I didn't actually have to do anything.
After I finished washing my hands, I went into one of the stalls and threw up again.
I got to campus on time and not looking like I had stepped through an abattoir. I already had my schedule, and the first class was an orientation in the same building as the library, which was a little bit weird judging from my other classes. The campus was shaped like a circle with an outer area that had some buildings like the library, student union, recreational building and administrative building, along with a few others. By contrast, the inner circle area had the buildings classes were taught in.
Both areas had a security perimeter, but the information in my student packet told me I wouldn't be permitted into the inner area except on days when I was actually scheduled for classes. I had to admit I was curious about what was inside.
Well, I supposed I would find out today. I was already very familiar with the library building, and I had even peeked in the few classroom-style buildings that I was headed to for orientation, thinking they were large conference rooms.
The library was an interesting building. While there were some physical books, mostly there were areas set up for private reviewing of books and media electronically, as well as more communal study nooks if you had friends. You could use your implants to check out anything, or if you either didn't have one or did not want to, they offered tablets to rent.
I spent most of my days sitting in one of the cushy chairs they had in a study nook, browsing the list of titles of books I could borrow for free. I didn't have complete access to their library, which I wasn't surprised about, but I did have access to more things than I probably would ever read in my life, even if I dedicated my entire life to only reading books.
I had decided to dress up a little bit today, but not as much as I had to get my cybernetics put in. At the same time, what I was wearing was very conservative, dark black and grey colours. In Brockton Bay, I suppose they would call it "power dressing," although updated somewhat in style. It's a domineering aesthetic, and although I had two outfits in this style, this was the only outfit that I owned that was an actual dress. It was a black dress, but not a little black dress. The skirt reached almost my ankles, and the neckline was high-cut if anything. My Alt-Dad had bought it for me and said it made me look like some of the most terrifying people in the world, an auditor.
I wasn't sure what to expect at this school, so I wanted to set a good impression, at least on the first day.
Finding the classroom with a good ten minutes to spare, I walked in to see that at least half of the class was already there before me, including the instructor, who was standing by the door inside, greeting everyone who walked in. He smiled at me and said, "There should be a little tent with your name on it; take a seat there."
Assigned seating, huh? I nodded at him and looked around. Rather than individual desks, there were even rows that faced the podium where the instructor would stand, going nearly the length of the room. Sure enough, in front of each chair was a small piece of paper folded into a triangle with people's names printed in bold font on the front and back. I finally found my tag in the middle of the lower right quadrant of seats, which I felt was pretty good. Not too close, not the very last row, either.
I sat down next to a man in his mid to late twenties who was wearing a suit in a similar colour to my dress, except that he skipped the tie to give him a casual flair. He smiled at me in a friendly manner after I got settled and introduced himself, "I guess we're desk buddies. Hi, I'm Antonio Thurston."
I gave him a closer inspection as I smiled and reciprocated, "I guess so. I'm Taylor Hebert; nice to meet you." Now that I was looking at him closer, he featured a lot of cybernetics, much of it was combat-related. His left arm had been completely replaced, and I was pretty sure it could deploy into a mantis blade, and the coat he was wearing was tight enough to reveal the outline of boosterware on his back, probably a Sandevistan, as most of the others didn't really protrude too much out of the spine. My Alt-Dad had very similar cybernetics, except he had both arms replaced.
Well, they did say this was a common course for people that had been in the Army, I supposed. He nodded, "Likewise. Militech, too, huh?"
I blinked at him, "Eh?"
He chuckled, "I've been told they generally place people who have the same sponsor close together in clusters in this orientation class," he hooked a thumb and indicated the lower right of the room. Sure enough, most of the others were similar to him, clearly all hard men and women.
I gave him an astonished look, "I don't exactly fit in with your intrepid group. I think you could bench-press me one-handed."
"True! But you look exactly like the suits that hired me," he gestured to my dress, "I mean, I haven't seen anyone in that dress... but the colour, the cut... does Militech have a swag shop where you can just buy clothes in that style? Because I only got hired last month. Had to have help finding this suit, actually."
Ohhh. Yes. Actually, while the style of my outfit wasn't officially a "Militech style", it was definitely one in all but name. Well, shit. I didn't intend to give that impression, but that was most of the nice clothes I had. Plus, it generally went with my own preferences for dark colours and not showing a lot of skin.
"Ah, yes. I suppose you are right. I don't work for the Corp like you do, though. I'm a dependent; they're paying my way through school," I said with a smile.
His eyebrows rose up, "They do that for children of employees? Like, if me and my wife, hypothetically, had a kid on the way?"
I bit my tongue, not wanting to lie to the man. "Yes, but not in all circumstances. My father was a Major in the Militech military division, which I assume you got hired into too. I admit that officers and their kids do get treated a little bit better, but your child will be schooled by the Corp, so long as you're not a short-timer. For me, they are paying for me to attend because my dad recently was killed in action, and it is part of my survivorship package."
That caused him to wince and say quieter, "I'm sorry to hear about your loss. What do you mean by short-timer?"
"Thank you. And by short-timer, I mean you right now. You're on your first contract. I believe that dependent education benefits only kick in after two or three years of service, but I'm not entirely sure," I said quietly. I made a mental note if we spoke much more to try to remind him to read his employment and compensation agreement carefully. If it was one thing that was exactly the same between my old world and this one, it was those in authority generally screwed over those that weren't.
More conversation was halted by the instructor closing the door and walking over to the podium. "Welcome to the Night City University Health Science Centre, fall semester 2062. I am Dr Steven Grayling, a professor in anatomy, and I'll be conducting your new student orientation today. This is a combined class, with both new and transferee students, as well as our new cohort in our Paramedic certification course starting today."
Oh, that is why it is an actual Doctor. A lot of these people were actual med school students. Interesting.
Only a few people have physical note-taking equipment, like a pen and paper, with them. Antonio and a number of the Militech grunts being most of them, and I saw a couple of the better dressed, no doubt med students, start taking notes as well. I suspected they were doing it for retro-pretentious reasons.
As for myself, I had a note-taking app recording and converting to text everything that was said, and I was scrolling a BD that I could review later, and I intended to do the same for all of my classes. Not every cyberdeck included tech for making your own braindances, but it wasn't that uncommon, either.
The instructor spent thirty minutes talking about the campus, and then he paused, "One thing that we have, historically, needed to make clear is that there are no firearms permitted inside the inner radius, where classes are taught."
I raised my eyebrows because I didn't actually remember that in the information I received. Although, it was almost all about the outer area, which presumably had no such restrictions on account of how I had a pistol strapped to my leg right now and the security at the front didn't give me a hard time about it.
"There is a check service at the security checkpoint, however since we are all about to take a tour, it has been best we have found for our students that are armed to temporarily surrender their arms now, a staffer will provide you with a receipt that you can use to reclaim the weapon at the end of our class at lunch," he said, smiling.
I noticed every one of the Militech new hires grumbling a little and reaching into their coats or pants to produce a pistol. Antonio plops his on the table and then looks at me with expectant eyes. I sigh and stand up. On the side of my dress is what looks like a pocket, but it is actually just a slit, as a pocket would ruin the lines of the dress, apparently. I reach inside it and pull out the exact same pistol he had and plop mine onto the table as well, then sit back down. In fact, it was the exact same pistol all of the Militech people had.
I apparently was deeply amusing to the Militech contingent, who chuckled. I guess I did fit in with them a little bit. I glanced at our pistols. They all were M-10C Lexingtons. It was the compact version of the iconic and famous Militech pistol, whose design was thirty years old and still popular. It was basically the same pistol with a slightly shorter barrel, and instead of twenty-one rounds, the magazine only had fifteen, and instead of a full-auto firing mode, it fired in a three-round burst to conserve what little ammo you had.
One of the preppy-looking med students looked at eight people, all with identical pistols, and asked, astonished, "Do they give those things out at the company Christmas party as stocking stuffers or something?"
I waited a moment to see if anyone would comment, and thankfully Antonio, next to me, chuckled ruefully, "Actually, they hand them out to all new hires along with their company ID on the first day of basic indoc."
I nodded and added a nugget from some of Alt-Taylor's memories, "I got mine from the Corp when I turned thirteen as a birthday present." That wasn't the first firearm Alt-Taylor had; her dad had been having her shoot almost since she could hold a weapon in her hands. But this pistol had been gifted to Alt-Taylor by her dad's boss on her thirteenth birthday. Although it wasn't like her dad just let her carry it whenever she wanted, she was still supervised with it.
That caused both the Militech contingent and another heavily armed contingent I couldn't identify to guffaw briefly. One of the staffers took my weapon and handed me a small red card, kind of sized as a hotel or credit card. I put it carefully in my purse.
The tour of the campus was fascinating; the amount of high-tech medical simulation technology they had was boggling. We ended up in the student union for lunch. I was part of the gun-toting clique, apparently, as we all sat together. There were three Corps sending people to this course, Militech, Trauma Team and Kang Tao. All of the independents, who came to the course on their own dime, were also part of the gun-toting clique, as they were Night City natives and weren't stupid. In fact, most of the people in our Paramedic course were in this clique, and those that didn't come armed claimed it was because they already knew guns weren't allowed.
Only a fraction of the Corp-sponsored students were staying in Night City after they graduated; it turned out that this was just a very convenient and reasonably priced course, and many of them were headed to various cities in North America or the Free States. The only two of the Militech hires that were staying were my desk buddy Antonio and a red-headed and freckled woman in her mid-twenties named Fiona Doyle, who took a liking to me for some reason.
I had to stop myself from distrusting any of this out of hand. My instincts were telling me that Emma had gotten someone else to try to pretend to be my friend again just in order to do something terrible to me when I trusted them, but Emma wasn't there. If anything, I should distrust this because this is Night City, and I shouldn't really trust anyone, but they weren't asking me to do anything more than be friendly with them and perhaps study after class.
Most students had the choice of which class they wanted to take, but the Paramedic course was scheduled for us, with all forty of us in every class, which I actually liked as it would have made creating study groups very simple. I didn't think I really needed to study too much, but I would try to be sociable, even if my first instinct at being in a school again was to hide in the bathroom.
About half of the class agreed to stay after the last class briefly in one of the large library student areas, where they could ask questions about things they didn't understand to the group, and others could do the same. I stayed for thirty minutes, answered some questions and asked two just to be polite, and excused myself afterwards.
Back at my apartment, I was taking a break from studying to watch television. Most of the shows I didn't really appreciate, but I liked hearing the news, even knowing it was all or mostly propaganda.
The TV droned on, "...in other news, the flooding of the Laguna Bend resevoir has commenced today, with police having to drag out and arrest one stubborn protestor that refused to leave his former home, which had been condemned after NC Dam Limited purchased the entirety of the town of Laguna Bend..."
So they just flooded their entire town? What assholes.
My doorbell rang, which startled me. I pulled up the door cam to see a man in a similar outfit that I would expect from UPS with a clipboard in hand, an obvious deliveryman or an obvious trap. I recognised the uniform, and I didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to do that in this building, especially after seeing my tiger girl sticker on the door, but...
I grabbed Alt-Dad's shotgun, an old Militech Crusher that had been passed down to him by his dad circa 2020, and made sure there was a shell in the chamber. I trigger the intercom, "Yes?"
"Delivery for one Taylor Hebert, I am with Revere Courier Service," said the man, in a chipper tone.
While I wasn't expecting a delivery, that was a legitimate courier service and one that people would be wise not to impersonate. I had used them in the past to deliver a custom-printed plastic housing for my modified BD wreath, so it didn't look so ghetto. They would ship anything, anywhere. From a super-tanker of CHOO2 across the world to a bag of chips to your friend's house, and they treated each package as sacred, so they said anyway. I asked him through the door, "Identification?"
He holds up a company badge to the camera. Hmm. I decide to send Mr Jin a text message, just telling him that I am answering the door for an RCS courier on an unexpected delivery and to avenge me if he finds me murdered later. He replies with a thumbs-up emoji.
I trigger the door opening from several feet away so I am not in immediate grabbing distance. I don't point the gun at him but hold it ready so that I can raise it before he can rush me. Probably.
The courier doesn't seem upset about it, "Are you Taylor Hebert?" I nod. "Alright, chica, you either have to sign for this or send a digital signature." He held out a digital clipboard, which immediately offered to let me view and sign a file. I raised an eyebrow. In the previous delivery, the guy just tossed it in the door. No signature was required. Nobody was stupid enough to leave a package at a housing block door and still expect it to still be there in five minutes, so virtually all deliveries to a Megabuilding address were in person.
Well, of those choices, I knew which one I would not do. So I opened the digitally proferred file and raised my eyebrows again, which I had just lowered again a second ago! The sender was Daniel Hebert. I signed the thing electronically, and he held out a small package, the kind that could hold some sheets of paper without folding it and not much else. I said, "You can toss it into the apartment."
He shrugged and did so, to which I replied, "Thank you," and sent him a twenty eurodollar tip digitally.
"Niiice, chica. Thanks," he grinned and tipped a non-existent hat at me before I closed the door in his face. I watched him turn around and amble off. I send a text message to Mr Jin:
[Taylor: I guess he wasn't a ninja assassin after all.]
[🤠 : Mr Jin]
What was that? A cowboy emoji? I didn't even know what cultural references I was supposed to know where a cowboy hat emoji would make any sense. And why did that man talk only in emojis in texts when you almost couldn't get him to shut up in person?
I sat the shotgun down and walked to the kitchen, and got some nitrile gloves. It was still possible its contents were laced with contact poison, or as soon as I opened it, a cloud of nerve toxin would puff into my face. That sounded implausible, but at least wearing gloves seemed a simple enough precaution.
Humming, I opened the envelope with one of Alt-Dad's combat knives and dumped its contents out on the coffee table. A sheet of paper and a data shard. I definitely didn't reach over and immediately plug that data shard into my neck like a gonk. Instead, I read the paper. It was in my dad's handwriting, and I mean that literally. Alt-Dad had the exact same handwriting as my dad back in Brockton Bay; it was surreal.
Little Owl,
If you're reading this, I'm afraid I couldn't make it back to you as I promised. We all knew this was a possibility, and I hope everything is going as well for you as possible.
I had a contract with a third party to deliver this to you, wherever you happened to be in North America, thirty days after confirmation of my death.
I know I never really talked about the specifics of the work I did, and I won't start now. It would be unprofessional, and also it would endanger you. But, in my line of work, it was sometimes possible to pick up things on missions as souvenirs. The Corp didn't really mind this behaviour so long as it wasn't extravagant. It was kind of expected in our field, even.
I have stored most of my souvenirs in a storage unit in Watson. Rent was pre-paid until 1 FEB 2068. Enclosed is a digital key to the storage unit, as well as its address and unit number.
Although the majority of the items are of only sentimental value, some of them have significant monetary value or are not available for purchase at all. I will not include a manifest of items with this letter, but there is one next to the light switch in the storage unit, along with a list of names and contact information for people I trust would not take advantage of you if you wanted to sell some of the things.
This is the last thing that I can do for you, and I am not even sure it will be of any help.
Your mother and I will always love you.
Be strong,
Dad
P.S. Burn this letter.
That made me tear up, and he wasn't even my father, really. It was always my mom that called me Little Owl, and I wondered if Alt-Dad started calling Alt-Taylor that after her mom died or if he always had. My memories were inconclusive on the matter. Alt-Taylor was a lot luckier that her dad was emotionally a lot more able to handle the loss of mom, even if he was... some kind of... secret agent? Spy? Black ops commando?
What other kind of job allowed you to acquire valuable souvenirs as you travelled the world on missions? And add postscripts to burn letters you arrange to be sent a month after your death? It seemed like something out of a noir detective or spy novel. But, maybe I was thinking too much about it.
I pulled out my laptop and used every way I could to scan the data shard for any malicious code, but there either wasn't, or it was way past my ability to detect. I finally shrugged; it was in my dad's handwriting, and it could have been a nerve agent instead of a data shard. It was probably safe.
I slotted it into the socket behind my ear. A lot of people chose ports on their necks that were really obvious, but I selected a design for my OS to put one port behind each ear. My tiny interface plug was at the base of my skull, hidden by my hair. I wasn't comfortable enough in this world to use cybernetics augmentation as a style.
Sure enough, it was a digital key and text file giving the address and unit number. I copy the files to my internal system, delete the data on the shard, eject it and, for good measure, break it into a few dozen pieces on the floor with Alt-Dad's ball peen hammer.
I'm interested in what was in this storage unit, sure. But I didn't expect to rush over there any time soon. Beyond the fact that the part of Watson the storage facility was in was scary, I wondered why my dad included a thirty-day delay before having this delivered. Why hadn't he just left it with all of our things at home?
I sat down and considered why that might be. Perhaps Militech didn't care about this, but if it was a well-known practice for people with the same job as my dad did to collect souvenirs, some of which may be valuable, perhaps a single actor acting without knowledge of the Corp might search the household things of a deceased employee? Or maybe even surveil the only surviving daughter of such a person, just in case I immediately went to empty out some sort of storage unit after his death?
What would such an actor do if he or she did see that activity? Murdering the girl and stealing all of her dad's stuff seemed the obvious answer.
That seemed like spy movie stuff, too. But I couldn't say it wasn't impossible, so I didn't see any need to go see what was in it now beyond my raging curiosity. But if it was a panty collection from all the bond girls he banged before meeting mom, I was going to flush his ashes down the toilet.
Realistically, thirty days would probably have been enough; nobody would privately surveil someone that long on a hunch. That said, it wasn't like I needed anything right now. If I was destitute, I would have different opinions, but money, as it always did, gave me options.
It was a shame I neither had a car or license nor knew how to drive. I searched around the kitchen for a lighter.
I had an appointment at the Skyline clinic after class on Friday, so I skipped the study group for the first time. The first week was going faster than I thought. I noticed a lot of the students were caught off-guard by the rapid pace of it, but if you were going to squeeze two years of material into six months, you couldn't waste even a day. I had gotten the reputation as one of the smartest in the class, and all of the Militech people joined our unofficial study group, along with the Trauma Team people and a few of the Night City natives.
Ever since I almost got shot on Monday, I realised I needed more protection than what I had. Not only was I going to buy that internal biomonitor that I had wanted, but I was also getting two types of bioware. The Skyline clinic wasn't only a cybernetics shop, but they also did biosculpt and most types of bioware as well. I didn't want to go there to get my appearance changed, though, since I was a bit paranoid back then.
The first bioware I was going to get was a ballistic skin weave, which was the bioware equivalent of subdermal armour. It would provide protection equivalent to kevlar body armour, so it would stop most pistols and some submachine guns, at least. It wasn't as effective as subdermal armour, but it also wasn't obvious you had it. Your skin still felt like skin when people touched you, and it was very hard to detect that you had it absent some manner of sensors or sophisticated optics.
Not that I had any plans for anyone to touch me, but I felt better about keeping the looks I had. In addition to that, I was getting muscle and bone lace. This was a nano-process that threaded microscopic artificial fibres through muscle and bone tissue, increasing your strength and, more importantly, significantly reducing the damage done to your bones and vastly reducing the chances of a fracture.
In many cases, a bone fracture was immediately disabling, making further fight or flight impossible. Not only were these expensive procedures, but they took a very long time to propagate. I would walk out of the clinic today with the implant, but I would have to come to the clinic every day for an hour and receive treatment for over two weeks.
The trip on the train wasn't crowded. Going downtown in the evening was always easier than leaving it.
I was met by the same customer sales specialist as last time, who smiled widely and offered me refreshments. I guess the commission she got on my sales made her think well of me. I accepted some water and told her what had happened on Monday.
"That's terrible! But at least you're okay. What can we help you with to put your mind more at ease?" she asked, oozing professional politeness and an eagerness to serve.
I nodded and said firmly, "I would like that bio-monitor you tried to sell me the other day, as well as two bioware treatments. I would like the skin weave and muscle and bone lace."
She raised her eyebrows, "You're not thinking about a career as a mercenary, are you?"
I snorted, "If I was, I would have asked for the subdermal armour and projectile launch system, and maybe those arm blades." I wave my arms around wildly to demonstrate.
She laughed a soft and pleasant windchime sound. That laugh had to be something she practised a lot, that or it was a cybernetic augmentation in itself, "Well, the subdermal armour would be fine, but mantis blades and the PLS are incompatible, not to mention restricted from purchase."
"Really? They aren't illegal items," I said curiously. Although I actually thought the Projectile Launch System had to be illegal. Or at least, it ought to be. It was basically a missile launcher on your arm.
She nodded, "That's true, but we receive significant pressure not to sell such items to citizens that don't have a valid job interest as a security professional. That said... if you were to bring in such an item yourself, well, in that case, it wouldn't be us selling it to you, would it? But it would still have to pass our inspections. We don't install non-functional or barely functional cybernetics at Skyline."
I wondered who provided that pressure, and I noted she didn't say. Still, she was quite pleased with my purchases, and I was almost thirty thousand eurodollars poorer.
Dr Travis was just as chatty as last time, which I quite enjoyed. The affable old man had a good bedside manner.
Since it was already past dark by the time I was done, I spent an extra forty eurodollars calling a cab to take me back to my building; it was the first time I actually entered it from the ground floor.
It was an interesting cab, completely AI-operated. Apparently, the company, Delamain, recently began replacing all of their human drivers with this system. The AI tried to make small talk, but it had a bit of a way to go before it seemed alive and interested if that was the company's goal.
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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Arcane Japanese Gang Culture
My three months of free rent, as paid for by the generosity of Militech, was coming to an end. I had about three weeks left, but I wanted to shift into a larger apartment. I just didn't have enough space here; most everything was still boxed up and stacked box on box.
So I went to the first floor of the Megabuilding, to its rental office, and inquired about the availability of a two-bedroom apartment. There were three main types of apartments in this building, the simple studio apartment of varying sizes, a two-bedroom apartment and then, on the very top floors, there were many custom luxury apartments far beyond my price range.
"Yes, we have a number of two-bedroom units vacant, and if you're willing to move quickly, you can likely shift your belongings with a week to spare. So, if you can do that, I'd be willing to refund one-half of that last week of rent on your current unit," the office manager told me, which caused me to narrow my eyes suspiciously.
I had read the rental agreement, or at least most of it. There was no section where they were obligated to do that, so why were they? "Why?" I asked, simply and bluntly. Suspiciously.
That caused the man to chuckle, "Ah, self-interest, I assure you. I can turn around your current unit in just a few days, and I have a list of people waiting for a single unit. You see, the two-bedroom units are not eligible for most governmental rental assistance. They consider walls a luxury, I guess." The last sentence was said with a truckload of amusement.
Ah. That made a lot of sense, then. He'd probably have someone in and paying rent before the month was up, whereas if I had stuck to the terms of the contract, he would lose out on a week of rent, probably. Now, he was just losing out on the half.
"Okay, I'd like to plan for that then. Send me a message when you have a few units for me to choose from," I said and departed to head back upstairs. However, as I was heading up the elevator, I got a call from Mr Jin. Waving a hand to accept it, I said, "Hello, Mr Jin. I wasn't expecting your call."
In the corner of my vision, the well-dressed man's face appeared, smiling, "Of course! I was going to call you later, but a little bird told me that you were interested in moving into a slightly larger apartment. Can you meet me on the twelfth floor? I have both something I'd like to show you and a couple of people who wanted to pay their respects."
I wanted to raise my eyebrows, but since this was a vidcall, I didn't want to alert him to my surprise. I didn't think there was any good that would come to me if I declined his invitation, so I said, "Okay. I suppose I have enough time. Where on the twelfth?"
"Two units down from Clouds," the man said, giving a thumbs up and disconnecting the call.
Well, this was a little unusual. I had been trying very hard to avoid any contact with the Tyger Claws ever since my first day in class, where I made met Mr Slice-N-Dice. I half expected them to send me some kind of reward, but I thought it was just going to be money.
Sighing, I tapped the twelfth-floor button. I'd have to wait until the elevator went all the way to the twenty-ninth and then back down.
Walking out of the elevator, I glanced around. I had never actually been on this floor, and it was in a half-residential and half-commercial setup that was pretty interesting. The dollhouse Clouds took pride of place in the centre of the floor, so I found that easily enough; then, looking to either side of it, I found Mr Jin and two other men standing next to a doorway.
Walking over to him, I look at the people who apparently want to "pay me respects" with a bit of suspicion. However, my memory easily placed the two. It was Mr Yuki and Mr Sanjuro from a couple of months ago. Relieved it wasn't some sort of gang boss here to give me an offer I couldn't refuse, capiche, I inspected the man named Sanjuro. He clearly had some neural cyberware installed that he didn't previously have.
I couldn't place it, but there were a lot of speciality products whose only actual use was medical, to correct a disability whether it was inborn or acquired through illness or trauma, and it definitely appeared to be one of these types. Fully half of the side of his head by his temple was replaced by a neat-looking carbon-fibre plate, including your normal interface sockets.
Honestly, I had half expected Mr Sanjuro to be taken directly to a dumpster and discarded. Although his condition was survivable, it wouldn't have been inexpensive for the trauma surgeon to save his life or the speciality neuralware or physical therapy that he no doubt was continuing even now. I didn't expect your average gang to actually take care of their members injured in the line of duty. Maelstrom might have, but only because the treatment was more cyberware.
"Mr Jin! It's nice to see you again," I told him as I neared, causing him to smile widely.
He nodded, "Likewise! And these two, I don't suppose you recognise them, do you?"
I chuckled ruefully, "Yuki, knife to the aorta. Sanjuro, GSW to the head. It's nice to see you both seemingly doing well."
Jin grinned and glanced around, then nodded at the two of them, "Go ahead."
The two glanced at each other and nodded, then quickly, before I could stop them, they got on their knees and bent over, almost touching the ground with their foreheads, saying in unison, "Thank you for saving our lives!"
Fuck! What was that called? Kowtowing? I glanced left and right, incredibly embarrassed. I also didn't want people, of which there was a number, looking at me with shock and slack jaws as two members of the gang that ran this building kowtowed to me like I was some kind of Yakuza princess.
I waved wildly and spoke rapidly, "That's not necessary, you two. Please, please raise your head. Get up." I barely did anything for either of them. It was the doctors at the hospital that really saved their lives.
I just wanted people to stop staring at us, but apparently, that was the correct thing to say from their cultural perspective as well because they quickly stood up and both smiled widely at me. Look, guys. I don't know anything about Japanese or Asian culture, so I was just trying to make sure nobody involved got embarrassed, mainly so that I wouldn't have to be the centre of attention anymore.
Mr Jin chuckled and smiled as well, "Thank you for that." For what?! Fuck, I had to see if there was a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Arcane Japanese Gang Culture at the library.
One interesting thing about my biomonitor was how entirely it monitored my body. That is to say, it easily detected the rise in temperature on my face as I blushed furiously and reported that to me as an anomaly. Thanks, biom! I wouldn't ever have known!
I didn't know what to say, so I simply nodded. Mr Jin nodded to the two, and they both shook my hand before departing. He grinned at me, "I could tell you were deeply uncomfortable with that, but I appreciate that you handled it so well. It was important to them." He paused and then glanced at the door in front of us, which opened up, "Let me show you this place."
I didn't know what he was talking about, "Uhh... why?"
"You didn't expect the Tyger Claws' generosity to extend merely to a firm handshake and thanks for saving two of our members' lives, did you?" Mr Jin asked with a rueful tone. He shook his head, "No way. People know what happened, so if we didn't reward you, it would be a big deal to us and to everyone who knows about it. You want to move into a larger apartment -- well, this is one. It's not as well appointed as the luxury units on the top five floors, but it is almost as large because it used to be a dual commercial/residential property. I believe it was a convenience store. Come, now. I assure you you're safe in my presence."
Well, normally, I would not go into an isolated room alone with a man twice my age, even back in Brockton Bay, to say nothing about this world with the added fact that he was a member of a dangerous street gang. But I didn't think he was lying.
Sighing and nodding, I followed him inside.
The place was a bit weird, with a large front open section that I suspected was the previous corner store. He waved his hands, "There's nothing much in this section, but it is good for storage or the front area if you ever did want to open up a store, maybe sell burritos?" He laughed at that and then continued to the back, where there was another security door, which he opened.
The area inside was nice. It was easily the size of a two-bedroom apartment that I was planning on renting, but instead of two bedrooms of similar size, there was one large bedroom and then a much smaller room set up as an office.
It was quite nice; it was even furnished. The only furniture in my old apartment was the futon thing that was built into the wall and a couple of tables, both of which belonged to me and not the apartment. This place had a proper queen-sized bed. Altogether, it was over twice the square metres of the two-bedroom apartments that were on the Megablock's net site and of much better quality. There was even one window in the bedroom to the exterior of the building, with an actual view of Japantown. That generally added a multiple of one point five onto the rents charged just for the view, not that it was altogether a great view.
I eyed Jin suspiciously, which he immediately picked up on, holding his hands up placatingly, "How much?" I finally asked him.
"Peace, peace. The same as you'd pay for that entry-level two-bedroom," Mr Jin said, continuing to hold his hands out in front of himself in the universal peaceful gesture.
That didn't make me any less suspicious, "And how long can I expect to keep this introductory teaser price?"
"Hahaha... you really did grow up in a Corp, didn't you, as long as you live here. If the price of two bedrooms goes up, your rent here will go up. But never more than what they're charging for a basic two-bedroom unit," he said, blatantly laughing at me.
I rub the back of my head, "Mr Jin, I'm not familiar with your culture's customs. Is this the type of gift I am supposed to politely refuse or the type that I would give offence if I refused?"
There was no delay at all in his response, "The latter, definitely. The former is more like small things like if I were to invite you for drinks, I might offer to pay your tab. Refusing at least twice then, unless we're really good mates, is the polite thing to do."
Yeah, I figured it was like that. I sighed and nodded, "Alright then. It is a good deal. I'd be a fool not to accept. Provisionally, assuming there is nothing untoward in the rental agreement, I accept. Thanks for your consideration. It wasn't necessary, though. I really did not do much for anyone but Mr Yuki."
The twelfth floor was a lot safer than the twenty-ninth, too, which was nice.
Mr Jin clapped his hands together, "Great!" He immediately forwarded me the digital key for the doors, which caused me to give him a questioning look. He waved it off, "You can go sign the rental agreement at the office downstairs tomorrow; I assure you there will be nothing unusual about it."
I nodded, "Alright. I'll still try to get my stuff out of my old apartment, though, so he can rent it out again before the end of the month." That seemed polite. It would be a lot of boxes to move, though.
Jin made a humming noise, "I'm sure you have some things you'd prefer to move yourself, but after that, just send me a message, and I'll have some of the boys move everything else; they'll just put it in the empty outer room."
That implied that the Tyger Claws could open any of the doors in the building, but I already pretty much knew that. Still, I wouldn't turn down free labour, "Yes, I do have a few things that I'd feel more comfortable carrying myself. My dad's ashes..." and all the drugs I made.
"Great, just let me know when," he said, and then he wished me well and left the apartment.
I sat on the train on my way to class. It had been a month since I had moved into my new apartment. In a couple of days, our class would be incorporating days of practicum at the Night City Medical Centre, which was about ten blocks further into downtown. For the last three months, we would alternate one day at the school and one day at the hospital.
However, the workload wasn't actually reduced, so you were still expected to perform all of the bookwork you would normally have done, even on the days when you were at the hospital. I tried not to show off in the class, but I was still at the top of the class academically, and I didn't expect my practical skills to be an issue either.
At the moment, I was scanning people going to work, using my deck to scan their OS for open ports and vulnerabilities and then launching a Ping quickhack at them. It took practice to scan, identify, select, configure the malware, launch and then simultaneously monitor the upload. I had been reading and watching more net material the past two months, and everyone argued that the only way you got better was by practising over and over, preferably on varied targets.
Everyone recommended going somewhere with a lot of people and doing exactly what I was doing, utilising the Ping hack. Either on people or randomly connected equipment like soda machines, cameras or Data terms. It was listed as being harmless and "practically legal," with the only people who could detect what you were doing were other people with a deck or specialised security cyberware. Even if it was strictly speaking against the law, there was consensus that even if a NetWatch agent saw you do it, they wouldn't even hassle you too much.
I wasn't sure about all that, so I made sure to scan everyone on the same train I was in and wouldn't practice if there was anyone who either had a deck or whom I couldn't determine their cyberware list with a port scan. That latter demographic was, surprisingly, very small. I would also only choose targets that looked poor, thinking it was unlikely that they had any custom ICE in their cybernetics.
I was also getting to the point where I could pick out pieces of cyberware installed on a person even if they had their system locked down or even if they had a spoofer installed, just from looking at their bodies, in a similar way that I could diagnose people going to work with probable early congestive heart failure just by the way they sighed when they sat down.
I was not especially fast in any of the steps in deploying this quick hack, but I was slowly improving. The skills were similar when utilising other hacks, like the one I had to reboot any cybernetic eyes someone had or one to sleaze and temporarily freeze any installed cybernetics. That last one could be the most useful, and it was on the borderline of being dangerous. Having your cybernetics suddenly freeze up, while not generally life-threatening, was not conducive to your health, especially if you had a liver or kidney. It could be life-threatening if you had a replacement cybernetic heart, depending on how the implant handled errors.
I was slowly learning how to edit the software packages and intended to put cyber hearts on a whitelist to ignore, but I either needed to get a list of all manufacturer IDs or some other way to identify them. Maybe just make a string comparison on the model name, and skip it if it included "heart" or "cardio" or similar? A regular expression, then? That would be a lot simpler.
*ding*
I noticed the hack was completed, and two local devices that my target was connected to started flashing in my augmented reality display. It was only a phone in his pocket and the train itself, though, and that was normal and generally what I expected to see.
I've been having a lot of urges to tinker with cybernetics recently, but it wasn't like I could either build something I would be proud of from scratch with what I had in my apartment or perform surgery on myself to make tweaks to myself. Well, actually, I felt that I definitely could do the latter; I just thought it was insane.
I knew that urges to build things were one of the main symptoms and drawbacks of having a Tinker power, and I was just grateful that while my urges were definitely there, they seemed at least not ready to take over my life. At least, not yet.
I did, though, perform surgery on a pigeon the other day. It had a missing leg and fell into my apartment through my open window, so I created for it a fully articulating replacement. It wasn't a very good one, and the pigeon didn't have individual control of that leg, but every time the pigeon would grip with its other little talon, the small replacement that I had made out of a plastic bottle and some wires as far as I could tell, would grip as well. It was enough to give the bird back total mobility; at least it could once again hang out on power lines like the rest of its friends.
I was pretty sure the bird was one hundred per cent sure I was going to eat it and seemed perplexed that I had not. I don't think it liked me, exactly, but it was hanging out around the window at my new apartment, and I occasionally gave it a scrap of food, which it would grab in its little beak and fly away with, refusing to eat it near me.
The day proceeded pretty much as I expected. I had honestly expected a number of the people in my class to have dropped out by now. It was an accelerated class, after all, and there were a few that were struggling the first month and a half, but they managed to get their heads out of their asses and got their academic grades back up.
I didn't know what would happen if you got hired at a Corp and you washed out of training, but it couldn't have been very good for your long-term career prospects, to say nothing of the people who must have saved for years to afford the class themselves.
I met the afterschool study session at the library. It consisted of the core group of a few of the Militech guys, most of the Trauma Team, two of the Kang Tao guys and about half of the independents. Others came and went; usually, when they were struggling with a particular element, they may stay after class for assistance. I had a very, very good reputation with the core group of study buddies, such that they all said they would recommend me to each of their corps.
Sitting down, one of the Trauma Team medics named Lilia said, "Hey, Taylor. I spoke with one of the Night City hiring managers, and unfortunately, they don't generally hire rescue medics unless you've had three years of experience in critical care, 911 ambulance, or similar. Definitely not with no history of employment at all, no matter how shit hot you are at everything."
I hummed and nodded, neutrally. However, she continued, "Buuut... they were impressed with your grades and everything we've said about you. He'd probably be willing to offer you a job at the Watson Trauma centre, and three years later, it would be a straight transfer. Alternately, he suggests you get a job with one of the 911 companies and would be willing to stretch the requirement if you have at least one year of 911 experience in a place like Night City. That's worth at least three years in most other metros, he says."
I nodded again. I kind of expected all that. Fiona and Antonio look embarrassed, "We asked Militech Night City, also. Basically the same story if you wanted a job at Militech Evac..." that was Militech's competitor to Trauma Team, "...but given your dad, if you wanted to enlist then so long as you had your Paramedic's cert, you'd start off as a Tech-Spec, instead of a private."
I raised my eyebrow, amused. I actually knew a fair bit about Militech ranks. They were the exact same as NUSA's unified rank structure, and a Tech Specialist was the fourth enlisted rank. It was the same grade as a Corporal, but Corporals were expected to have a leadership role and went to non-commissioned officer school, while Tech-Specs did not. "Well, that is an option, I suppose." Although it wasn't one that I was willing to do unless I was starving.
I didn't have any illusions about what the life of a newly enlisted soldier in Militech or the NUSA military would be like. Alt-Dad talked about it enough, but usually in the context of things like, "These fucking idiot recruits ..." Extremely structured. I definitely wouldn't be able to indulge in any Tinkering projects on the side, so enlisting might actually drive me insane if I didn't have any outlet for the urges.
Xiao Ling, the most sociable of the Kang Tao study buddies, crowed loudly, "That's shit! It is I, Xiao Ling, that have gotten you the best offer! My boss was very impressed, especially with what you have accomplished, given your age. He feels you might be a prodigy and is willing to invest in you! Taylor, if you finish first in our class, Kang Tao would be willing to pay for your immediate enrollment in medical school." He also had a habit of talking like that. Whenever he answered the phone, he said, "Hello, it is I, Xiao Ling!" I liked him.
Well, that's nice. But Kang Tao was like Chinese Militech; there was no way it was that easy. I gave him gimlet eyes and ask, amused, "Oh? What's the fine print?"
He coughed a little bit, looking a bit down, "Well... you would have to sign a thirty-year loyalty contract, which would only commence after you finished med school, become fluent in Mandarin before enrolling in med school, and spend at least five years working in Taipei before returning to Night City..." He trailed off, "... honestly, probably they'd choose a Chinese medical school too. That's the only reason I can think of for the fluency requirement." That caused everyone to chuckle, but honestly, it wasn't that bad of a deal, as deals with corps went.
He actually blushed but then added, "But you would get to pick your own speciality, and all Kang Tao physicians are eligible for Gold tier Trauma Team contracts." That caused the Trauma Team contingent to wolf whistle.
I nodded at everyone, "Thanks for going out on a limb for me, everyone." I then chuckled, "Does anyone know the best company that handles 911 calls here in Night City?"
Getting my driver's license was one thing I didn't realise I would have to do. However, I found out that the required credentials for applying to an ambulance company included a driver's license and EVOC, which was an emergency vehicle operator's course.
It was similar to a driver's course but covered the additional things needed to know for anyone who drove a vehicle with red and blue flashing lights, namely ambulances and police vehicles. I discovered this when I was getting ready to apply to NC Med Ambulance, which was a medium-sized ambulance company in the city and one with a pretty good reputation for not being total dicks to either their workers or patients.
I had arranged for both classes at night about three months into my Paramedic course so that I would have everything completed in time to send my application for a job shortly before I graduated.
"Let's get on the highway, and we'll drive a few kilometres before returning to the office, where you can demonstrate parking. Then you can swap out with uhh..." he paused and glanced back behind him to the man in the back seat, who gave his name, "Jacob... and then sit in the back while he drives," said the man from the Night City motor vehicle division, seemingly bored.
Holding the car's wheel with a death grip at ten and two, I gritted my teeth and nodded. While unsure whether I believed it or not, I told myself, 'It's not that driving a car is scary; it's just that driving a car in this city is scary.'
I was surprised actual in-person vehicle training was still mandatory, even if it was only just for the test. I had done most of my "training" in braindances provided by the school remotely. In spite of that, I admit that they did a pretty good job of teaching me how to drive.
I didn't think my passing was in any doubt, as recommended by essentially everyone in my Paramedic course, I had already discreetly provided the requisite baksheesh, unasked, so I was pretty sure I was going to get my license so long as I didn't get us killed on the way back.
"Aahhhhhhh!" I cried from the passenger seat as the instructor demonstrated the latest in a long line of implausible and dangerous manoeuvres.
What the fuck was this? Fast and the Furious, Night City Drift?! I gripped the armrest of the car like I was an eighty-year-old lady as he pulled the vehicle in turn so tight two wheels seemingly came off the ground, briefly, before swinging it around the other way, one hand on the wheel, the other on the e-brake to slide the car almost sideways into a parking space, back in front of the office of the driving school.
In order to avoid being taken on another death race, I opened the door and jumped out when the car came to a complete stop. Despite my noodle legs, I patted myself down to ensure that I still had my pistol because I was considering shooting this man.
"Hey, what the fuck was that?" I yelled at him after he got out.
He chuckled and rubbed the back of his head, closing the car door and walking around the front of the car before saying, "Well, the course syllabus requires at least forty-five minutes of demonstrated manoeuvres at the instructor's discretion. It used to have a lot of specified things we had to go over, but all that got taken out except for operating the emergency lights, which I had you do in the beginning. See, this is a lot more fun, right?"
"No," I said firmly, shaking my head for emphasis.
He continued chuckling, as if that wasn't the first time he had heard that response, "But you'll remember it, I bet!" He then pulled out an actual honest to god paper business card. I hadn't seen one of those very often in Night City, and he handed it to me in the two-handed Japanese style.
Pissed as though I was, I accepted it two-handed as well and spent a moment inspecting it. It was a simple white card with the name "Yoshiaki Takeda (武田 義光)." There was a net address, and then below that, it said simply and in bold, "I drive the shit out of it."
Well, that was certainly true. On the flip side of the card was his hourly or daily rates. What kind of job needed an insane driver by the hour? Bank robberies? I placed the business card in a compartment in my purse politely before giving him a stare and telling him, "I'm not exactly looking for getaway drivers for my next caper."
That caused him to grin, and he shrugged, "You never know. Not that I would ever do anything illegal, of course. Ha ha ha ha."
I didn't believe that last bit for a second, but you know what? There was no harm in keeping the card.
He continued, "Now let's go inside; there is actually a fair bit of material we need to go over, as well as a number of tech mockups that they didn't actually put in the car because they're cheap bastards."
There were a fair bit of regulations, but what was emphasised the most was the unwritten rules. Ambulances, even privately owned ones, had the same scanning equipment as NCPD patrol cars; they just didn't include the machine-gun turrets. Why? Well, it was important because certain vehicles, mostly corporate convoys, had the right to open fire immediately on other vehicles if they were "startled." So it was important to run all the plates and registrations of any nearby car before you hit the lights and sirens for your own sake.
In most cases, passing a convoy with lights and sirens wasn't a big deal because they could see you coming. But just turning them on when you were right behind them? He highly recommended I never do it.
I hated this city sometimes.
I stayed a little while longer than I usually did to help Fiona with some things for our upcoming tests. She was doing well on the big cardiology issues but needed a little help with pulmonology and endocrinology, which medics often see.
All of the Militech medics had some issues with these areas because they all were previous medtechs either in the NUSA Army or Militech itself, and they had a laser focus on trauma, pharmacology, cardiology, and neurology. And to some extent, that made sense, but they still had to pass the final exam, and all of the stuff they probably never will use again or need to know will be on it.
"Thanks, Taylor. That helps a lot," the older woman told me, and I nodded and gathered my things, getting ready to leave. I helped her with simple mnemonic devices and flash cards. It seemed like flashcards as a learning aid had gone out of style in the past seventy or eighty years. I wasn't sure if it was because the paper was expensive for a time, but I reintroduced the concept to the crew, even writing a very simple flashcard app for any Kiroshi-compatible cybereye system, which almost everyone had, even if they didn't have genuine Kiroshis.
Shockingly, the optics software toolkit they used was an open standard, which allowed competitors to use it. It wasn't clear to me why I thought open standards wouldn't exist in this world, but they most certainly did. In particular, expensive products seemed to play well with competitors' tech.
I would round a few existing corners on the simple app and maybe place the source code on my net site. I had started an anonymous one, Little_Owl's Roost. Although I wasn't sure exactly how anonymous it was, I paid for it a year in advance and used multiple proxies and strong encryption whenever I accessed it. Because NetWatch had backdoors in all public networks due to the Blackwall, they could probably trace me more or less in real-time, but it would be a nontrivial problem for others to do so, at least over a short period. I thought.
I said goodbye to the others that were still in the library and left campus, getting on the train at the nearby station. However, instead of getting off at my usual stop after the train travelled east into Japantown, I stayed on as it continued into Watson, past the medical district in what they were starting to call Kabuki due to its high percentage of Japanese businesses and into the industrial area to the north.
It was already the beginning of the new year, and thinking about the holidays made me think about my dad back in Brockton Bay. I caught myself feeling more or less happy about my life so far the other day. Well, if not happy, then at least optimistic. That realisation caused me to descend into a spiral of self-loathing as I felt I had just abandoned my actual dad.
The fact that there was no way to actually go back, and no one in this world even knew about the existence of alternate universes, didn't help my illogical feelings. It was clear, however, that my life was much better than what I was experiencing in Brockton Bay. Only the very strong feeling that I had swapped places with Night City's version of me kept me from breaking down.
I often had fantasies of just vanishing when I was in Brockton Bay, being taken by the Sidhe into a faerie ring, and then maybe coming back out a hundred years later when all of my tormentors were dead. However, the only thing that kept those fantasies from being irresistible was how my disappearance would have crushed my father's spirit. He was barely hanging on after Mom died, and sure he hadn't been that great of a father for the past couple of years, but I hadn't been that great of a daughter, either.
However, if the faeries had indeed taken me, then they had replaced me with a changeling like in the stories, and I couldn't help but think that this was the best solution for all of those involved. But it still made me feel incredibly guilty at feeling such relief.
So, last night I resolved to check the storage unit Alt-Dad had left for me in Watson. I didn't know if it was because I was starting to bleed the feelings I had for my actual dad with Alt-Dad, or if I was just curious and felt that seeing what was in there would distract me, but I decided to check it out after school.
Watson was, for the most part, a pretty safe area. There was a lot of business activity and a lot of money in the district, mostly from Japanese corporations that had taken advantage of the fact that one of their biggest 800-pound gorillas of a competitor, Arasaka, could not come into Night City or the continent of North America at all.
It was actually, overall, much safer than Japantown, where I lived. I would have much preferred to have been given an apartment in one of the few Megabuildings in Watson, actually. However, I've gotten used to living in Japantown now.
Although it was mainly safe, it was a highly industrial area, especially the north part of town where the self-storage unit was located, as well as the waterfront docks area, and those types of places always had a larger amount of crime than pure residential or retail areas of a city.
Getting off the train, I walked down the street, following well-lit areas. I still had an hour before the sun would set, but I didn't know precisely how long I would be inside the storage unit. In the event that it was dark when I was leaving, I would probably call the friendly robotic taxi Delamain for assistance. From my perspective, he was much safer than human drivers in this city as far as taxis went. He was cheaper, too.
My destination was about a hundred metres ahead and to the right, but I spotted a food truck sitting next to the corner and glanced at its wares. Food was one of the few things that were not better than Brockton Bay, although, in the 2060s, the food was a lot better than it was forty or sixty years ago when over seventy per cent of all produced food was kibble, made by actual dog food companies.
That still existed, and if you were poor, it was the main source of calories you would receive if you were on welfare, but cloned fruits and even cereal crops were getting much more common, even though since all fuels seemed to be a sort of biodiesel that every calorie had to be weighed against the insatiable desire of more energy. There was only so much arable land in the world, after all.
I wasn't entirely sure what this food truck was selling, it was noodles of some kind, but it smelled quite good, so I ordered an extra large with shrimp. I doubted they were shrimp at all. Most meats were scop, or single-celled organic protein, a kind of meat substitute, but honestly, they had over fifty years to perfect it, and it didn't really taste that bad.
I hadn't tried the shrimp flavour, though, but the beef flavour did taste like beef, even if the consistency was a little bit off.
I took my food to-go and walked to the well-lit Secur-Stor-It building across the street. I had already looked up this location on the net before I decided to come. If it was an outside storage unit, then I wouldn't have come so close to sunset and would have had to schedule it for Sunday, which was one of the only days I had any time off at all.
The door into their lobby wouldn't open until I physically keyed in the twenty-four-digit pass key that I had gotten from Alt-Dad, after which the lobby opened, and an automated voice welcomed me and asked if I needed any assistance.
"No, thank you," I told the chatbot politely. The unit my Alt-Dad had left me was on the ground floor, but it was all the way in the back, next to a side door to leave the facility. I found it without too much trouble and carefully keyed in the password again. This caused a loud clicking sound as the slide-up door was magnetically unlocked. I rolled the door up just enough to duck my head under it and closed it behind myself, tapping a locked padlock glyph on the wall to reengage the locking systems.
"Now... what do we have here?" I asked as I found the light switch, along with several sheets of paper taped inside a plastic bag next to it, just like the letter said.
As the lights flickered on, my fingers fumbled, and the plastic bag with the inventory of the things in the room slipped from my fingers to fall to the floor as my jaw hit the floor at what I saw. Was that a small mech or a large set of Tinker power armour?!
I just blinked several times, looking at it, then moved closer to inspect it. I could see that it was clearly damaged; there was a small entry hole of some kind of incredible armour-piercing weapon going through the entirety of the torso of the armour. What weapon would have that much penetration on an obviously armoured suit like this? A crew-served railgun, perhaps?
I shook my head, walked over and grabbed the plastic bag off the ground, pulling the papers out. There was no additional message like I was wondering or hoping for, but it did have the items listed in a rough order of rarity. Next to each item was a code word that I couldn't decipher as well as a date. The date acquired, perhaps?
The top of the list was "Scorpion-22 | IEC Dragoon borg, damaged (irreparable), 2030 model, Value unknown or zero | 21 FEB 2059."
Ah. It wasn't a mech or an armour suit. It was a full-body conversion. You could have your entire body replaced with cybernetics, and this was one of the military models. I was suddenly very curious about where Alt-Danny was located towards the end of February 2059.
I walked back over to the Dragoon and very curiously looked in the back. There should be an access panel around... There! I found it and heaved a sigh of relief. When they converted you to a full body borg, they put your brain and part of your spinal column inside what was called a biopod, and they'd just slot this biopod into whatever body you happened to be "wearing."
I was a little worried Alt-Danny hadn't removed the former... occupant from this thing, and if so, it would have been less a statue and more of a corpse.
I glanced down at the list of items stored in the unit, raising my eyebrows again. There were a number of pieces of cybernetics, but most of the things here were... obvious souvenirs? The item listed with the most possible value was a signed Kerry Eurodyne guitar that he supposedly used in a show in Europe after he went solo when Johnny Silverhand died. It was marked "stolen", though, so perhaps I couldn't just put it on The Mad Closet auction net site.
Alt-Dad had always loved Kerry Eurodyne! The weirdest item was a broken wooden baseball bat, and I thought I could see some blood stains on it.
I was kind of sarcastic before when I thought Alt-Dad had been some kind of spy or on some black ops team, but it really looked like he had been. All of the cybernetics, a good half of which looked damaged or non-functional, were of the military variety that wouldn't be that useful to me at all. Were these taken from downed enemies?
I found one of the items I was interested in. It was a kerenzikov reflex boostware unit, listed in the manifest as "Kang Tao Kerenzikov, manufacture date 2057, value 5,000 to 10,000 eb." It was in a carefully packaged clear plastic bag. Not exactly what they were normally shipped in from the manufacturer at all.
I put on some nitrile gloves I kept in my purse, pulled the implant out of the plastic and inspected it close to my eyes.
I had finally Tinkered with some of the cybernetics in my body. My eyes, anyway. I realised I could take them out of my head one at a time, work on them and put them back. I wouldn't have to risk total blindness to adjust or add features to them, and I had been acquiring a lot more tools since I moved into the new apartment next to Clouds.
I had ventured into the black markets of Jig Jig street during the day to buy a set of somewhat sophisticated microwaldo tools and magnification equipment that were intended to be used to repair electronics. Not exactly intended for use in cybernetics, but ultimately cybernetics were electronics, too, and my Tinkering power let me cut a lot of corners that way.
Using these new tools and my good eye, I added additional features to my Kiroshis one eye at a time. They now had a low light vision mode, but more importantly, for my present purposes, they had a microscopic vision mode. I adjusted the zoom mechanism to also allow microscopic binocular vision, so long as what I was focusing on was somewhat near my eyes. I needed that to do the fine work necessary to replace the pigeon's cybernetic leg with a better one. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to see what I was doing at all during the surgery!
I inspected the kerenzikov closely and nodded. Definitely used. I could even detect the almost microscopic scarring of the unit when it was extracted from its previous owner. The idea that a lot of these cybernetics was from downed enemies my father met during his missions made sense. I didn't precisely know how I felt about that, though. I mean, both Alt-Taylor and I knew intellectually that Alt-Dad had to have killed people, but it was different from thinking that and staring at something he or one of his men extracted out of the spine of a fallen foe.
Placing the implant carefully back into its protective anti-static bag, I sat it down.
As I sighed, I realised that my noodles would become cold very soon. I needed to prioritise that first; it would also give me time to think.
Living in Japantown, I learned how to eat with chopsticks pretty quickly. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to eat in half of the restaurants or stalls in my Megabuilding.
These noodles were quite good. A lot better than the noodles I had during my first excursion out of my old apartment.
Not everything here could have been acquired during missions. There was just too much, for one thing, and second, there was just too much that was eclectic. There was what looked like a Polynesian war club. Tongan? There was a thirty or forty-year-old, fried cyberdeck that was affixed to a faux-wooden plaque as if it was a trophy. The Dragoon... maybe Alt-Danny killed it in a mission with a railgun, as I thought. But it was an old, 32-year-old model. I was pretty sure they didn't just change the exterior appearance every year like many of the car companies.
If it was a current-year model in operable condition... well, its worth would be inestimable. IEC did not really sell a lot of these things. Certainly, you couldn't buy them with something as pedestrian as money. But it made sense for old versions to find themselves in less aristocratic hands over the years. Perhaps you bought this unit new but eventually decided to upgrade to the newer version? Did you care who you sold the old and obsolescent versions to?
Perhaps even criminals might have access to these decades-old models. My impression was that the value of this particular example was mostly sentimental unless it could be repaired since it looked pretty well wrecked.
Repaired? I hummed, stood up and walked around it. I often had ideas on how to repair or improve cybernetics. I had no desire at all to use any kind of full-conversion cyberware, but I let my power consider how it might fix this Dragoon suit.
I stood there for over a minute and got nothing, nothing at all. I nodded slowly. My power wasn't considering this to have anything to do with a person's biology at all. I got the weak impression that it thought of it as a vehicle rather than as a piece of cybernetics that integrated with your body.
I bet I would have had ideas about the biopod that stored the operator's brain, though.
I grabbed a different item off a shelf after recognising the brand name on the black carbon fibre case. It read "Kendachi," and I had already identified it as one of the higher-valued items on the manifest and apparently one of the few pieces of cybernetics that hadn't come out of some poor sod's body.
It was listed as "2 x Kendachi monowire, manufactured 2055, value 10,000 - 15,000ea." I opened the case and raised an eyebrow. I was wondering why the case looked so large, there were two small boxes inside, but there was room for four more that were empty.
If he had to share some of his souvenirs with the men he worked with, then that would explain the absence. Maybe if he was the CO, he could claim two. Rank hath privileges, sometimes.
Kendachi was a famous Japanese company that produced all manner of monofilament blades, knives and swords, and of course, this monofilament wire implant served as an incredibly deadly built-in weapons system. You could sometimes see these on television and BDs, as it was very cinematic. It was depicted as more often the weapon of a femme fatale agent or faceless ninja assassin in media, who would be able to slice and dice mooks left and right with preternatural skill.
Alt-Dad had built-in weapons himself; he preferred a mantis blade in each arm. I had wanted something like that myself, but I didn't really want to replace my entire limbs with cybernetic limbs. Not only had I already paid twenty thousand dollars to get advanced bioware that relied on me keeping my meaty bits, but I wasn't sure I was ready to take those steps yet or possibly at all.
Something like this monowire would work... except it was incredibly hazardous to use! I could see myself whipping it around and accidentally decapitating myself if I just installed it and went to town. I had gotten a bit better with my pistol, I went to an indoor pistol range at least once a week, but I wasn't some kind of... ninja.
Still, I took one of the boxes out of the larger box and opened it. All the parts to install the device were there, including the special monoresistant ceramic components you needed to install on your hands and fingers. And a... data shard?
I blinked and found the documentation. It was a VR training scenario that Kendachi guaranteed was over 99.5% congruent with reality for operators to practice.
I got an interested look on my face. How many months would it take before I could not decapitate myself if I practised with this thing every day? A year? Years? The documents said that an experienced operator could be proficient in as few as fifty hours of practice using the VR simulator. Perhaps I should treble that estimate, or more, for myself. No, definitely more. I didn't know how long it would take me to feel comfortable not decapitating myself.
I didn't know, but I was going to find out. I carefully packed a few things I was taking back home with me. The kerenzikov, one of the monowires, an assortment of broken cybernetics, a fancy-looking Kang Tao submachine gun and an antique and fried-looking cyberdeck. I kind of wanted to take Kerry Eurodyne's guitar, but I didn't have a guitar case, and I didn't want to damage it, so it could stay there on its guitar rack for now.
I called Delamain and carefully locked up behind myself. Sitting in the back of the cab, I considered what I had found. There were a lot more things in there than I thought, but a lot of them were completely worthless.
I supposed they could be broken down into four categories, worthless things like the baseball bat, easily salable things, things I would have to sell on the black market and then things I couldn't sell no matter what, which might as well make them worthless. That last category was mainly the Dragoon full-body conversion, even if it was broken. Its weapon systems were intact, and surely there was some salvage value, but how would I sell any of it without being murdered?
I could maybe get thirty or forty thousand eurodollars if I sold all of the easily salable things. That would get me back up to the amount of money I had after I received Militech's settlement. Almost. As for the black market items? The absolute value was a lot higher, but.... That would be more difficult. My takeaway altogether might get me only maybe half again as much as the normal items because I doubted I would get even a fraction of the value for any of it. I didn't have those kinds of connections, and I was sure some of the names on the list my dad left would charge a fee.
The stuff was worth a lot of money, but it seemed like a big pain to liquidate it. Honestly, I was hoping there would be vast wealth in there. Maybe giant bags full of blood diamonds, or the original Mona Lisa painting or something.
I wasn't going to look at an entire storage unit full of free items worth tens of thousands of eurodollars askance, but in my fantastical heart, I was hoping I would have found something that would have solved my money problems entirely, allowing me to enrol in four years of medical school and live happily ever after.
Sadly, that wasn't the case. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I shouldn't even bother to sell the black market items unless I got desperate, even if they were to names Alt-Dad left behind. At least a third were military cybernetics that I would find interesting to study, like the boostware I was bringing home. The rest were just dangerous things neither the government nor the corps wanted people to have, like half of a Soviet-manufactured man-portable surface-to-air missile launcher.
I nodded. I'd get rid of the easily salable stuff quietly over the next few months and keep the rest in the storage unit for now, perhaps indefinitely. The unit was paid up till 2068, after all. There was no rush.
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I wake up in the morning and piss excellence, I go really fast
I inspected every centimetre of the Kerenzikov over the next couple of days, using all the magnification equipment I had available to me. It would have been nice to have an example of a Sandevistan as well, but I didn't. Still, I knew the theories behind both of their operations from reading journal articles in the library at school.
They were similar implants for similar purposes, but the way they went about them was different. Both systems were a combination nervous system and brain implant. However, the kerenzikov went about increasing your reflexes by mostly replacing a large portion of the efferent neurons and spinal interneurons with electrical replacements. It would then provide an electrical interface between its systems, the medulla oblongata and the motor neurons in your limbs.
Its philosophy was that not only was the transmission synapse speed between neurons slow but the reflex arcs of a human's somatic nervous system were not optimised and wasted a lot of time.
Their philosophy was a pretty good one, as evolution very rarely optimised anything, I felt. As soon as it arrived at the point where it was "good enough", evolution would stop unless some additional survival adaptation pressure could be found.
The philosophy of the Sandevistan, which was designed after Kerenzikovs was introduced, was that overall, the spine and central nervous system was a pretty well-designed system and that permanent alterations to it should be avoided as they tended to have negative side effects. And certainly, they appeared to be right in a lot of cases. The first-generation kerenzikov boostware had a horrible reputation for inducing psychosis. Even the current generation had a bad reputation, but it was terrible decades ago.
The designers of the Sandy system also felt that they could get much higher, if momentary, boosts of speed if they didn't have to design in all of the factors for a person to withstand a continuous operation. As such, a Sandevistan kept the patient's normal motor and somatic nervous system, but when activated, it would be bypassed to connect the brain almost directly to the nerve cluster closest to the desired movement.
Some versions of Sandys included connections all through the patient's arms and legs in order to even further reduce the latency during activations. Both systems included hardware to be installed in the patient's brain that regulated the subjective experience of time; however, the Sandevistan also included linkages to the amygdala and limbic systems, which would be activated at the same time to give an incredible adrenaline response for a short period.
Altogether, a Sandevistan of the same quality could increase a person's reflexes and sense of time almost double that of a similar Kerenzikov, which was one reason they had become so popular. People, most of the time, were right when they thought that they would have enough time to trigger their boostware, and if so, the Sandy would always be superior.
Also, getting used to operating at effectively super speed all of the time, twenty-four-seven, was an incredible mental stressor for a lot of people. I wondered if I would have the same problem. I definitely preferred the always-on nature of the Kerenzikov system. My fears were always being ambushed, and if so, I didn't know that I would have time to actively trigger an implant, although it was kind of moot since I didn't have an example of a Sandy to potentially install in my body in any case.
I had been making adjustments to the Kerenzikov for the past day. I tried to keep my changes small because I didn't want to have to maintain a piece of cybernetics that was installed in my spine on the regular. However, I had a number of ideas to integrate the system more closely with my internal biomonitor and to make it less hard on my brain and connected neurons.
The main physical sequelae to either system of boostware were inflammation of both the nervous system, especially at the interface points and the brain, as well as connective tissue damage from having reflexes and speed that the mechanical parts of your body just couldn't keep up with. Tendon damage and repetitive stress injuries similar to tennis elbow were prevalent.
I wouldn't have so much of the latter problem, as the muscle and bone lace treatment had made all of my connective tissue and bones incredibly strong. I could bench press almost five hundred pounds... err, two hundred and twenty-five kilograms. I had to get used to the metric system, too. And I could do that doing reps, even if not very fast, which was pretty good for a lanky girl who barely weighed over sixty kilos.
I wasn't sure if that was enough to consider me the lowest of low-tiered Brutes, but probably, especially when you considered my skin was bullet resistant, depending on the type of bullet and gun. A 9mm to my chest would give me a bruise, but a 2mm hypervelocity flechette with a tungsten penetrator would likely go through me and out the other side. Both were things that could be fired from handgun-sized firearms, so I couldn't even really say I was proof against pistols.
The nervous system was a problem, though. I could think of a number of ways to treat inflammation of the nervous system and the brain, but the best option was not to get it at all, so I was connecting the Kerenzikov with my internal biomonitor. As soon as my biomonitor detected signs of inflammation, then my operating system would ratchet down my boost level.
This seemed like an obvious solution, and it was, but the issue was getting boostware to provide anything, but the full performance wasn't a simple problem. If all you wanted to degrade performance, it would be pretty simple but doing so in a way that didn't screw up the reactions and proprioception of the user was an extremely complicated issue and one that hadn't been successfully accomplished yet.
I suspected it hadn't actually been researched too hard, either. This was military equipment, and that was all about the bleeding edge of performance. Actively degrading performance, even if only slightly, for the long-term health of the user might not be considered optimal. Alt-Dad said something like that, even. Ruefully, he once said, "Soldiers are cheap, Little Owl, but defeat costs more than coin."
Before I knew it, I was reassembling the Kerenzikov. To unlock the variable boost mode, I would have to practise with it on a number of speed modes. From full boost at first, then degrading the performance by about five per cent each go. After it got a baseline of my performance in each of the twenty-speed speed settings, then it would use that data to help jumpstart my brain's processing as soon as it switched between one of the settings. A sudden increase or decrease in my boost level wouldn't shock me; it should be as smooth as silk in transition.
The psychological issues, though, would still be mine to solve. I could definitely program a switch for it to function in a similar manner to a Sandevistan now, keeping me at a degraded performance mode until I activated it. However, there was a reason if I had the choice between the two, I would have picked the Kerenzikov.
Maybe I was being arrogant, but I felt that I should just get used to it. I think I could devise some neural plasticity treatments to help me, too, if it were too much for me. That might be a good idea, in any case, as it would definitely lessen the time it took to get up to speed, pun intended. Just ensuring I used the sleep inducer every night, which had a small element of a neural plasticity treatment, might be sufficient.
Dr Taylor, the kindly old man, sat in front of me in the empty conference room, "Miss Hebert, is there any way I can talk you out of this? I highly discourage the use of these types of reflex-enhancing augmentations. Kerenzikovs, especially, have a very high incidence of causing mental instability."
He wasn't done and continued, "The biggest symptom of cyberpsychosis is disassociation and disconnection. Having much higher reflexes and living as though everyone else is in slow motion is almost definitionally mentally disconnecting yourself from humanity as a whole."
I nodded at what he was saying because I had already thought about all that, and he wasn't entirely wrong, "I'm aware of all that, and I'm certainly willing to take your advice as far as any harm mitigation strategies you might suggest, but I don't think you realise how much anxiety I live with about possibly being randomly shot in this city. If someone starts to point a gun at me, I want to be able to move out of the way of their aim point before they can pull the trigger. Plus, I intend to try and get a job as a Med-Tech with Trauma Team in the next eighteen months, and while their security specialists certainly protect their clinicians, I do not want to be a burden."
That caused him to raise his brows in surprise, "You're a paramedic?"
"Well, provided I pass my final exam and practical next month, yes. The local Trauma Team hiring manager was impressed by my grades and suggested I work for a local ground ambulance company for at least a year," I told him, carefully knocking on the absurdly expensive, seemingly real wood table in the conference room, which caused him to chuckle.
He leaned back for a moment, thinking, "Okay, here is what I'll do. If you agree to a few biosculpt adjustments as a mitigating factor for some of the physical hazards that a Kerenzikov entails when you're still mostly organic, and if you agree to come to see us at least once a week for six weeks, I'll do the surgery. Over ninety per cent of cases where people have issues with reflex-enhancing boostware are discovered within the first month. We'll just call these follow-on physical therapy appointments so as not to raise any red flags with the city's psycho squad. At your level of augmentation, I do not have to forward anything to the city about what precisely you have installed, but I would if I called them post-implantation psychological evaluations. I am very committed to doing everything possible to protect my patient's privacy."
That was one of the downsides to utilising a law-abiding doctor. I doubted I could add much more cybernetics to myself without getting on the city's radar. I could maybe add one or two small things, but that would probably be it before I got on the radar of the NCPD. They liked to have files on people long before they got to the point where they might go wackadoo. It was kind of pointless, as from what I could tell over ninety per cent of cyberpsychos originated in back alley Ripperdocs, who didn't tell anyone shit.
I nodded at him, "That sounds fine, before I ask what kind of biosculpt you want me to get... has it ever occurred to you that the idea of 'cyberpsychosis' seems a little ridiculous? I have read tons of publically available papers on it, and we have hardly learned more about it than we knew forty years ago."
That caused him to suddenly laugh as if he wasn't expecting to find what I said humorously. He nodded, though, "I spent thirty years working at a company that specialises in custom-made full-body replacements, so yeah, I think both the popular public opinion and even the mainstream academic opinion on the subject leaves a lot to be desired." He paused and then looked at me critically, "But it is easy to be a critic; when I was a Professor at the University of Bern, I would have asked you what is your opinion of the cause, then. So?"
I blinked and considered the totality of what I had been thinking on the subject, "I think it is caused by a multitude of factors, all separate but with a common end result that has been misidentified by some as a monolithic single mental disease. Pre-existing anti-social spectrum disorders combined with either poorly built, installed, configured or maintained implants that, over time, cause a traumatic brain injury is my best guess as to the largest single cause. Similar to the way that long-time boxers or football players are susceptible to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which not only causes mental deficiencies but also changes in behaviour. I'd be very interested to see if anyone has conducted a post-mortem pathological brain evaluation on multiple cyberpsycho exemplars."
"Wow, okay, I was trying to put you in your place, but I apologise. That was a well-reasoned and logical answer. As far as your analogy to CTE, I think that might be a brilliant comparison in many instances of cyberpsychosis, but it doesn't explain all of them. There has been no shortage of theories there, social contagion like the last century had with school shootings that died down over the years? But I tend to agree with you, though. And, as far I know, no such paper has been written, even in confidential journals that you wouldn't have access to. A problem with the premise of that research is that the brains of cyberpsychos put down by MaxTac or other similar units across the nation are almost never intact to permit a truly standardised pathological examination. It is standard procedure to destroy the head of a downed cyberpsycho, even if they appear to be dead. You never know what kind of redundant life support system they may have installed," said the old man, taking a sip from a glass of water that he had brought in.
He then shrugged, "As far as what bioware treatment I want you to receive, well, it doesn't have a name. I've made it up myself based on a number of papers I've read, but basically, it will increase the density and, therefore, the bandwidth capacity of the nerves in all of your extremities. I expect this will drastically reduce the amount of neural inflammation you should expect to see due to the Kerenzikov pumping over twice the amount of signals your motor neurons are used to receiving on a continuous basis. I've used it before with multiple Sandevistan installs to the point where I will probably write a paper on it now that I can include a Kerenzikov example. You'll be anonymised, of course."
"Of course," I murmured while thinking about his idea. It was a good one and one I should have thought of myself. It wouldn't make the changes I made to the implant redundant, but it would tend to allow me to move at higher speeds longer before inflammation and then automatic performance degradation kicked in. It would let me work out and train a lot longer at a higher speed, which would be very helpful.
I nodded, "Okay. I agree to all of those conditions. I was going to do a self-assessment weekly, anyway. I don't think I will experience problems that I won't be able to overcome, though." At least not with an implant installed in my body, anyway. I felt pretty confident about that. Everything else in my life that wasn't connected to my or another person's body was another question entirely, though.
"Alright. We can get everything done today if you don't have anything in your schedule. It'll be four hours in the tank and then maybe another two for the implantation," Doctor Taylor told me as he stood up, carefully smoothing down some wrinkles in his pants.
It was Saturday morning, and one of the few Saturdays where we didn't have to spend at the hospital, so I didn't have anything too pressing I needed to do. I had already blocked out this day to get used to the difference in speed before I went to school on Monday, so I nodded, "That sounds good."
Fuck, that was the third time I hit myself in the face when I went to scratch my nose. I could see how someone could go crazy with this. It would make a lot more sense, from a not hitting myself in the face sort of way, to start training the system at a five per cent boost, but not only would that ultimately take a lot longer, but it would also stretch out the time until I had effective super reflexes. I wanted that as soon as possible, so I would just have to cope.
The TV was tuned to the news, "Noooowwwww whaaat's neeeexxxxxt ohhhnnn Nettttwoooorrkk Fiiiiffftyyy Fooouurr Neeeewws. Aaaaree Biiiirds Killlleeerrrrs? Fiiinnnd oouuutt..."
For fucks sake! I turned the TV off, sighing. I could see how this might be a problem if I couldn't get used to it. I had already used sped-up video clips playing on my implants to determine that I experienced time almost exactly three times faster than my previous baseline.
Well, I clicked the news back on. There was no point in getting pissed off at it, even if it was kind of irritating. I would adapt. I heard that people could adapt to listening to books on tape at double or triple speed, and that was basically just what I needed to do, except in reverse, and for my entire life. It'd be fine.
It was not fine! It was not fine at all! I had given up my plans to start at the maximum level of boost and work my way down and instead switched over to starting at about half and working my way up. It only took an hour of watching television in slow motion before I realised it just wouldn't work.
I felt it wouldn't cost that much more time as I wouldn't, at first, need to work through the lower settings. Realistically I didn't need to get acclimated to the very low settings, possibly at all, but definitely not at first. I suspected that the biomonitor would only drop the Kerenzikov up to fifteen per cent even if there were signs of neural inflammation. The idea was to keep it from happening at all, after all.
When the kerenzikov was working at its half setting, it was similar to experiencing everything at twice the normal speed, which wasn't as bad as almost three times. A three times kereznikov seemed like a pretty sophisticated version, even if it was several years old, so it was clearly one of Kang Tao's military models and one they didn't, probably, sell to the general public.
I glanced at Mr Pegpig, the pigeon, and wondered. The news seemed to indicate that several Night City politicians were campaigning on a law to eradicate all birds in the city. That seemed... short-sighted. Both my medical sense and my knowledge of history were telling me this. Hadn't Chairman Mao done the same thing in China in the 1950s? And it resulted in millions of deaths due to the fact that insect and locust populations soared?
I laid back on my couch and triggered a deep dive connection to the net. Normally netrunners would only do "deep dives" via a wired interface socket connection, but it was definitely possible to do so wirelessly, and I wasn't intending on hacking anything, so the slightly degraded performance was fine. If the way netrunners normally used their decks was similar to Augmented Reality, then a deep dive was Virtual Reality.
I had already chosen and carefully built my ICON, my virtual avatar. It was a white, snowy owl. I flapped my wings and flew off in the direction of downtown. Over forty years ago, the discovery and implementation of the Ihara-Grub Transformation Algorithms transformed the net and made such things possible. They allowed the Net to be rendered as an analogue to the real world. They extrapolated distances and bearings to look similar to real space. So, since I wanted to connect to the school library's intranet, I navigated west, towards, that direction on the Net.
Flapping to a stop, I entered the library's system, and my surroundings shifted to an almost perfect reproduction of the library's foyer, except there was an access control system that took the form of a stylised police officer, in this case, it was a reproduction of Sgt Joe Friday from the TV show Dragnet, which I remembered from Brockton Bay. Surprisingly, it was also present here, even if the actor looked slightly different.
"How are you doing, Sergeant?" I asked the ICE.
It replied, "I'll be doing better when you give me your login credentials. Just the facts, ma'am."
It would only ever reply in something along these lines, worse than even a chatbot. I sighed, which came out of my ICON as a long, annoyed hoot, but I complied and triggered my credential management system to forward my login info to the ICE. The library didn't even pay extra for the seamless login module, where the ICE would let me through, and I would step inside the library. Instead, the world shifted, and I was inside the library instantly.
I couldn't access everything I could while in person from this net address. Many of the academic journals had licensing restrictions that permitted freely reading their journals only if you were physically present, but I could read quite a bit of their books, especially ones nobody thought too much about, like histories.
Doing a quick search caused a number of books to fly off their shelves and collect around the table I was using as a roost, and I bobbed my owl head in satisfaction. History of China in the 20th Century, The Great Leap Forward and its Consequences, The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, and a number of others.
Simultaneously, I triggered a word processor and began to peck out words with my talons and beak. Although in actuality, I was using my fingers, I had spent a long time on this ICON, and it had animations mapped for a number of different humanoid-only actions. Seeing myself rapidly tapping translucent keys with my beak and talons was enough to set me giggling for a moment, which came out as a rapid 'hoot-hoot-hoot.'
Honestly, I didn't expect these letters to do anything at all. But maybe I could send it to one of the professors at school. There was an epidemiologist and pathological expert there. I got the impression they might either not know about this proposal from the politicians, or they didn't really care because, honestly, the effects on Night City wouldn't be too severe. All of the locally grown food was grown in greenhouses, after all, and rich people wouldn't need to worry about the uptick in bloodborne pathogens that the increased insect population would engender.
Still, if I could present it to them as a no-work-needed thing, perhaps they would use their contacts in the city to do something, especially if I let them take all or most of the credit.
I bobbed my little owl head again and got to work writing a well-researched letter.
I got to the gym pretty early on Sunday and realised that my normal workout time might have to be adjusted. I was running two times as much in the same amount of time, and I was quickly working myself to exhaustion. That was... good, though, I supposed. Although, I raised a few eyebrows at the people watching me.
The combination of my muscle and bone lace and the kerenzikov had me running at what appeared to them to be a flat-out sprint for a long time. Little did they know I could run at least twice as fast as that and even more if I switched to full boost. Having good athleticism and an in-shape body was absolutely a prerequisite for these types of installed reflex enhancements. Installing a high-end Sandy in someone that wasn't in good shape might cause them to have a cardiac arrest if their resting heart rate wasn't already low, or possibly a brain aneurysm if their intracranial blood pressure was exceptionally high.
I saw my running buddy appear from the locker room as I was getting off the treadmill, but something caused me to pause and then take another look at her.
She wasn't looking too good. She was diaphoretic and appeared to have difficulty walking steadily. There was no way I was going to let her get on a fucking treadmill; that was for certain. I walked up to her and took her arm to steady her, "Woah, woah." It was then that I realised that I had never introduced myself to her or knew her name even though we had been running together for months now.
I used my Kiroshis to scan her face, getting an NCPD report that her name was Himiko Masuda, with no real rap sheet to speak of beyond civil infractions. I carefully enunciated each tone, talking especially slowly so that I hoped it would come out at a normal speed and not like I was auctioneering, "Nope, nope, Himiko. We're going right back to the locker room. You don't look so good. How are you feeling?"
"Uhh.. not too great, now that you mention it," said the woman, and I walked her back into the locker room and had her sit down while I peered at her. I had taken her pulse manually, using a chronometer on my implant, as I held her wrist and shoulder, and she was in tachycardia with a pulse rate of over one thirty.
"How long have you been feeling poorly?" I asked her as I gently palpated her body, my focus shifting to her head and neck. The lymph nodes in her neck were swollen, and the area around her operating system installation was slightly red and inflamed.
She coughed out a laugh and shrugged, "Well, I've been getting headaches ever since I got this upgraded doll implant a couple of months ago. There were issues with my old one integrating into Clouds systems, and this was a newer version."
I stared at her, aghast, "Months?!" I doubted very much she went to a reputable clinic, either. "Alright, Himiko. You definitely have a problem with your implant. I think it's best that you come back with me to my place briefly. I'm not a ripperdoc, obviously, but I am a med-tech. I can use some of my equipment to diagnose what's wrong properly." I paused, "Would you like to call a friend to come with you? I know we don't really know each other that well, so I wouldn't trust myself if I was you."
She laughed and said, "Yeah, if you don't mind. Where do you live? She can meet us there."
"I live right next to Clouds, in what used to be that old convenience store," I tell her.
She glanced up, "Well, that's convenient. I was always sad when they closed up a year ago because they had pretty good burritos there. Let me get my clothes out of my locker."
I let her get her clothes and shoes and offered to carry them for her as we left the gym and walked slowly back to my apartment. It seemed like we were not even moving we were moving so slowly, but I realised that was mainly the kerenzikov combined with the fact that she was actually moving quite slowly on top of that.
After a short elevator ride and a walk back to my place saw a young woman, a girl really, possibly my age, rushed over to us and askEd, worriedly, "Himiko, are you alright?! You look awful? Who is this? That suit you run with every morning? She's a MedTech?"
Wow, good thing I had a kerenzikov to keep up with motor mouth here. I was trying, especially hard, not to think about Clouds employing fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls, as I had detected similar doll hardware on this new girl. Was that just me being hypocritical? Wasn't I doing the same thing, except just my line of work wasn't sexualised, so I felt better about it? I wasn't going to criticise anyone doing what they had to do to survive in this fucked up city.
"Yes, my name is Taylor Hebert. I'm a MedTech. Let's get Himiko inside, and then you can introduce yourself too," I told the motor mouth, who nodded while helping her friend walk inside my apartment.
The convenience store area had a lot of boxes in it, as I mainly used it for storage, but I had managed to acquire some furniture here and there around the Megabuilding as people moved out and, for one reason or another, couldn't take anything with them. I always carefully cleaned and disinfected everything I took, though, as god knows what depravity people in this future did to a loveseat.
I motioned to the aforementioned clean and disinfected loveseat, "Have a seat there. I need to go get some equipment." And with that, I disappeared briefly into the private area of my apartment. I didn't have anything as useful as a combined vital monitor defibrillator system that any ambulance might have, but I did have some old-school blood pressure cuffs and a firewall for myself if I was going to be directly connecting to her OS to diagnose any irregularities with her system.
Firewalls were, strictly speaking, not one hundred per cent legal equipment, although I wasn't sure why and they were readily available for sale in most electronic stores. They looked similar to a wreath, but they wrapped around your neck, and you would connect your system to it while connecting the firewall, inline, to some system that you suspected might be dangerous of having malware. They worked almost identically to the braindance firewall I made myself.
Finally, I brought a pitcher of clean water, a few glasses and a number of pills that I kept in my medical supplies.
Carrying everything out into the next room, I sat things down on a table near them. "Okay, I am pretty sure I know what is wrong with you already, but I will need to connect directly to your system, place it in diagnostic mode, and run a few tests to be sure." I poured myself a small glass of water and drank it right in front of them, both because I was thirsty and to show them it wasn't drugged.
Himiko nodded, and the girl my age bobbed her head and said, "Oh. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Evelyn. Nice to meet you. Thank you for helping Himiko; she has been uhh... I guess a mentor to me."
I nodded at the girl and walked over to sit on the floor next to the loveseat. I pulled an interface cord from my firewall and plugged it into the interface socket on the back of Himiko's neck as information started scrolling through my vision. I glanced at the girl and couldn't contain myself anymore, "Uhh... is it legal for you to be working at Clouds? I'm not judging or anything, but..." I trailed off, unsure of what to say.
That caused her to laugh, "Ah, yes. I'm seventeen, which is an adult as far as sex work is concerned in Night City. This is only a temporary gig for me; I'm planning on becoming an actress!" Oh, so she was over a year older than me. Certainly didn't look it.
I nodded and told Himiko, "Okay, I'm going to put your doll chip into diagnostic mode." This caused her to blink, "Oh, so I will not remember the rest?"
I shook my head, "That isn't a function of how doll chips work; it is just considered a feature. In diagnostic mode, it shouldn't be enabled; you will be aware but not really able to move or do anything for a brief moment." That caused Evelyn to look interested, "Really? How do they remove the memories of when you were plugged in, then?"
I triggered the diagnostic mode and started to say, "Well, the simplest method is to disconnect your short-term and long-term mem---" but instead of the placid diagnostic mode I was expecting, Himiko turned to me and stared down at me imperiously.
She said haughtily, "It is good that you are on your knees before me, slut, but why are you still wearing clothes?!"
I coughed, almost choking in surprise as Evelyn started laughing uproariously, and I quickly disabled the diagnostic mode, confused. Himiko immediately blushed and said, "I'm sorry!"
I waved her away, "That's not a problem, but that isn't how these chips are supposed to work. Nothing is supposed to be kept between sessions." I started zeroing into the problem and sighed when I realised what the issue was.
I finally say, "I don't think much about whatever Ripperdoc you used, Himiko. Let me explain the problems, and then we can talk about the solutions."
She nodded, so I carefully disconnected from her interface socket and said, "First of all, the interface between your central nervous system, brain and cybernetics isn't great. The doctor that put this in probably isn't even a real doctor; second, it hasn't been properly calibrated. Third, in order to save fifty eddies, the doctor didn't download and install the genuine firmware for this model of doll chip. He half-jailbroke it, running it in what amounted to diagnostic mode every time you used it. That's not good for a number of reasons. You probably experienced some personality bleed over, even."
She looked incensed, "To save fifty eddies?!" I nodded. Evelyn shook her head, "We make almost five hundred eddies a day, usually. Even if we only have two clients."
Wow. That indicated that Clouds probably charged a couple thousand eurodollars, or more, to their customers per "session." They make more than her dad did!
I grabbed a bottle of pills and shook two out, and handed them to her, "These are neural anti-inflammatories." I grabbed another bottle and shook out two more, "These are normal systemic NSAID anti-inflammatories, just regular naproxen you can get over the counter for pain anywhere in the city."
I poured her a glass of water, and she glanced at them for a moment before shrugging and swallowing them with the water. I nod at her and stand up, and sit in a chair near the loveseat, "So, here is what I recommend. I can download and install the genuine firmware for your doll chip; I'll charge you just the fifty eddies it costs me and five to install it. You also have malware, a trojan, installed on your OS. I will clear that for free. To calibrate all of your implants will take about an hour, so that's one hundred eddies."
I didn't actually have permission to charge for medical services rendered, but I felt that these women would be more suspicious if I didn't charge them anything. I would be if I were them.
I finish, "I can't really do anything about the interface problems with your cyberware. You need some nanomeds, additional surgery or both, which I don't have and can't provide. I will give you a prescription of which type of nanomed you need and how you should take them, but you'll have to buy them yourself. You should be able to get them at most pharmacies downtown, but they're over seven hundred eddies for a one-month supply, and you'll need to be on them for at least sixty to ninety days. Ideally, you shouldn't ever go back to any of the rippers on Jig-Jig street. You guys make enough money to actually go to a reputable place, and I implore you to do so."
Himiko looked rather furious, "I see. I went to the doctor that the management at Clouds recommended. I don't think I will take their recommendations in the future as far as that is concerned. Please, do everything you can." With that, I received a digital transfer of funds and nodded.
Evelyn perked up, "Uh... can you check me next? I don't really have issues with my 'ware, but now I'm kind of nervous."
I nodded at her, "Sure," while internally, I logged into the net site for Cyberdyne Systems... wait, didn't they make Terminators?! That Earth Aleph movie flashed into my mind. Well, here they made doll chips, amongst other things, and paid them fifty eurodollars for a genuine copy of their latest firmware. But before I did, I did verify that there was no associated SkyNet product line, just to be safe.
