Ano... what is the opposite of "hiatus"?
When I woke up, I half expected my meeting Alt-Taylor to be nothing more than a dream. I paused. Perhaps now that I met her, I shouldn't call her Alt-Taylor, because wouldn't that also describe me from her perspective? Night City Taylor, then. That would be the most equitably reciprocal label, given she had called me Brockton-Taylor.
It wasn't a dream, or instead, it wasn't solely a dream, as there were about ten terabytes of new files on my filesystem. Frowning, I checked my operating system's log, referencing my automatic radio direction finders. According to the logs, my OS triangulated the wireless transmissions when I received her files to a few centimetres in front of my head.
This was the first time I had some confirmation that my power could affect the real world like some other powers could. Did it open a small wormhole into the Brockton Bay universe? Could actual matter come through, then? Or did it use some sort of Shaker power to create light radiation in the radio spectrum, acting as a relay through some unknown intermultiversal communication method? I didn't know, but it was very interesting.
Especially since I didn't know why it had done so and I had the firmest evidence that my power was something external to myself, as I was pretty sure I felt sentiments that were almost like words from it unless I was just at the stage where part of my brain was talking to itself, which wasn't impossible.
I had sent more than fifty times as much data on a pure bit-for-bit basis, but that wasn't too surprising as the world of Night City was a world of big data. Data storage was cheap. My inherited data storage implant had a capacity of fifteen hundred petabytes, but even a baseline Militech Paraline deck like NC-Taylor had would still have three or four petabytes of storage available. So, not only was storage cheap, but the modern wireless communication standards and data encoding schemes allowed very fast communication.
I had paid for a fibre-optic internet connection at my building which had a speed of twenty terabits per second. This was considered faster than residential net access but pretty slow when compared to the fastest backbone connections, which were hundreds of terabits per second. Direct wireless communications could transfer data at a burst throughput of about a tenth of that, so it was still only a matter of minutes before both of our transmissions were completed.
The files were organised in a very similar way that I organised my own files, which I didn't find as annoying as I thought I would have. On a bit basis, the vast majority of the data was Taylor's own research. She, like me, took conspicuous notes and recorded each of her experiments as either video or an unedited scrolled BD, a virtu. I did the same thing, and the latter would be very useful in understanding her thinking during each of her experiments.
"Uhh... there is no other way to describe this but a weapon of mass destruction," I said after reviewing some of the research notes in the "virology" section of her files. No wonder she almost got a kill order. Honestly, I bet she did have one, a pre-signed one that they would execute if they ever could prove she produced any of this.
Before I lost myself in some interesting things I saw in her "Applied Genetics" directory, I switched over to the one labelled "Professor Haywire." I only knew a bit about the famous villain. He was a household name, of course, having created the portal to Earth Aleph and proving definitively the existence of alternate dimensions, but he had been dead for a couple of years before I came to Night City.
The data here was comprehensive, and I quickly found out that it wasn't merely his own research data but also data from other Tinkers examining his technology, including Hero himself. Plus Dragon and even Armsmaster. How in the hell did Night City Taylor's secret friends get this all? Any of Hero's research was probably considered highly classified and only released to incredibly trusted Protectorate heroes, like Armsmaster, who was Hero's former mentee. And Dragon was the best Tinker in the world now that he was gone. I had both of their thoughts on the same subject.
I had been a bit dismissive about how leery she had been about talking about them, but maybe she had a point. Were they some sort of secret conspiracy of Protectorate heroes? Kind of controlling the United States from the shadows, kind of exactly the sort of thing the PRT was made to prevent? I supposed it didn't matter, and I honestly didn't have as much of an objection if this were the case. Plus, I never intended to return to that universe. Certainly not while Ziz was around. I opened some of the files, seemingly at random. I didn't have the education to guide my perusal, unlike Taylor's trove of research data.
"What does this symbol even mean? Is this really mathematics?" I asked myself after fifteen minutes. Switching between Professor Haywire's own files and Hero's discussion of them didn't help at all. If anything, Hero's attempt to explain the principles of the Portal technology confused me more than Professor Haywire's files did. Words that I barely recognised, much less understood, like Planck's constant and de Broglie wavelength, peppered his text, and I couldn't even parse the mathematics he was using. I was getting a headache. It was like trying to read French when all you knew was English. You'd recognise some of the words here and there, thanks to those dastardly Normans conquering England at Hastings, but not enough to say with any confidence what anything meant.
"Is this still Science, or has it reached the arcane stage?" I asked myself rhetorically with a sigh. Clearly, I wouldn't be building portals to other Earths any time soon. Nor would I be building bullets that teleported people to alternate dimensions. That had been one of Professor Haywire's signature weapons. Sometimes the people he shot came back; sometimes, they didn't!
I supposed the Isekai Bullet was the perfect weapon for someone who was too soft to actually kill people themselves and preferred random environments to do so for him. I paused after thinking that as I realised how foreign my point of view would have been if I was still in Brockton Bay...
How amusing. By now, it seemed I had deeply internalised the advice of Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, namely, "Never do an enemy a small injury." If you found out that I was going to injure you, it was likely going to be a fatal injury; that way, you didn't have the opportunity to get overly angry at me and come back at me later for revenge. The superhero and supervillain scene I remembered in Brockton Bay seemed like a never-ending series of small injuries. As always, I found it perplexing.
Was there anything here that didn't look like the scribblings of an insane man that was either touched by divine providence or madness? I spent a few minutes reviewing each of the files and frowned. The only thing that I got a large twinge of interest from my power was a few of the communications and tracking devices. Professor Haywire had implanted a tracking and comms device in his body, which could communicate with a paired device in his laboratory. It was his lifeline and allowed him to always come back to Earth Bet if one of his experiments threw him into some random dimension. That was the idea, anyway. At the minimum, it let him know where Earth Bet was relative to his current dimension while also communicating with his equipment there in real-time.
It was just a point-to-point communicator as it could only communicate with a specifically built entangled twin, but that was a limitation that was easy to ignore when you considered that it was instantaneous across distance, including working in other dimensions, undetectable without similar dimension-based technology and unblockable as far as I could tell. Interdimmensional FTL comms get!
Just a small, implantable communication device that was unjammable would be an incredible advantage, especially if I was ever kidnapped in the future... although that seemed to be only taking advantage of the obvious, surface applications. I sat there silently for a moment as this capability filtered through a number of plans I had, changing a few of them.
Nodding, I smiled. Just this alone would have been worth everything I had given Night City Taylor. Properly utilised, it should make me significantly more survivable.
Night City Taylor had been especially interested in the possibility of creating her own biosculpt and cloning tanks on a large scale. The former, she intended to sell as a service. If she offered both muscle and bone lace and ballistic weave treatments, that was at least a Brute 1 rating, I felt. And one without any real downsides like many other Trumps had, and it was something that she would eventually not even have to be involved with to do. Who wouldn't want to buy that? Reproducible "Tinkertech" was a holy grail over there, even if it was not Tinkertech, so much as borrowed technology from an alien universe.
NC-Taylor would have to source the nanites herself, somehow, though. Although I had designs for a number of the general purpose nanomachines, including one specialised version I had designed on my own as a replacement for the body's natural leukocytes as an immune system, I didn't have any designs of the large industrial machines that built them in the quadrillions every batch. Those were incredibly guarded trade secrets. European corporations produced most of these types of industrial machines, and they were heavily locked down with anti-reverse engineering technology. Reportedly, they wouldn't work if they couldn't phone home or even if you moved them a metre away from their listed installation site without getting prior approval.
Self-replicating nanomachines, at least inorganic ones, were still science fiction in this world, and I kind of felt that was a good thing.
As for cloning, NC-Taylor thought it might be possible to clone parahumans, power and all. She had mentioned that there was a Rogue Tinker whose speciality was memory technology when we talked about this. Could she copy someone's memory and then implant that memory in a clone of them? That would be a kind of immortality, I supposed, but I think I preferred the simple alternative of never dying in the first place.
I mean, if I died, it would be nice if there was another person that sprung up that thought exactly how I did to continue my life's work, but I didn't think that would be me precisely. All I could say of that approach was: it was better than nothing.
I stretched like a cat before getting out of bed. Although I had only been in basic training for a little while, my instincts were still strong enough that I quickly made my bed before putting on some clothes. Today was a rare day off from work at the hospital, meaning I would work downstairs at my clinic for part of the day while working on my projects for the rest.
A biotinker was a lot like a chef, at least in the sense that you were often dealing with processes that couldn't be sped up past a certain point, so you were just left while things "cooked." This described my experiments with the algae pretty well, as I could make a change to the next samples and then come back the next day to see the effect of the new generation. That meant that I actually could do a fairly decent amount of work even with my busy schedule, as I was often waiting for cultures to grow, or if I was working on cybernetics, most of my work was done on my cyberdeck in three-point-five times speed, which I could even do while working at the hospital during down periods.
Mostly though, I had been acting less like a biotinker and more like just a regular doctor in my time in this world, even if a world-class doctor. Partly because I didn't want to stand out, that I couldn't hide my creations sufficiently and finally, partly because I didn't have enough resources to start down that research path, absent a few things here and there. But now, I was pretty well set for all three of those obstacles.
Several weeks later
My elfin receptionist led another young woman, around her age, into my office. It was one of my days off from the hospital, again, as few as they were, so I was spending some time downstairs. The techs I hired were fairly capable of handling most routine requests. Really, people weren't that imaginative when talking about mostly cosmetic procedures that they desired.
For the ladies, it usually amounted to a smaller waist, bigger bust, more symmetrical face and metabolic tweaks sufficient to keep all of those things. Men, generally, wanted to look and be stronger, fitter, and taller with similar metabolism tweaks and occasionally also predictable modifications to their primary sexual characteristic.
There were outliers in both genders, of course, but I had designed software that took a person's complete three-dimensional scan and offered a number of options as a starting point. Then the techs or I could work from that starting point and create something that they wanted. It saved a lot of time, and I was rather proud of it, actually, especially since software development was one of my weaknesses.
However, I still needed to be called in for exceptional modifications and things that required artistry that was a cut above, which did happen from time to time. My receptionist smiled and introduced her friend, "Dr Hasumi, this is my roommate, Sarah." She paused and said, "She has been asking where I got my biosculpt done and finally agreed to come to see you."
I glanced at the well-dressed young woman and frowned. Her outfit cost more than the rent I knew my receptionist paid in six months. She clearly didn't need a roommate. I hadn't done any background investigations on her roommates, though, as why would I bother?
"Why are you living with a roommate when you clearly don't need one?" I asked curiously, with my eyes darting to the designer clutch handbag she was carrying. She was the first woman I'd seen carrying a purse in recent memory.
My receptionist looked a little confused, but this Sarah blinked and tilted her head to the side, smiling. "Does that matter?"
It was inappropriate for me to ask in the first place, so I didn't push it. I was a little protective of my employees, though. I shook my head, "I don't suppose so. Come, have a seat," I motioned and then glanced up at my receptionist and dismissed her politely, "Thank you."
After we were alone, I pulled up her patient record. She had already had her full-body scan, so she was at least a little serious. She had a minimal amount of augmentations, but those that she had were high-class. I didn't have any cheesy lines to say to her, like the first biosculpt clinic I went to said to me so long ago, so I just asked, "So, what can we help you with?"
"Well, I'm not sure you can. I've gone to numerous clinics in town, and they could either help me with part or couldn't help me at all. I'd like to get everything handled at the same clinic. I'm very interested in similar modifications as Elise has, but I also want to be one hundred and eighty centimetres," she said brightly.
I blinked. She was short. I glanced internally at her patient record. Did she want to go from one hundred and fifty-five cems to one-eighty? That was a twenty-five-centimetre increase in height, which was quite a lot to ask of biosculpt treatments. I had been rather lucky, and Dr Hasumi was only about seven centimetres shorter than I was. It was no wonder many clinics refused her service.
There were plenty of biosculpt clinics that would specialise in radical exotic-like alterations like she was seeking, but mostly they didn't offer heavy-duty biosculpt at the same time.
"We can do that, but you have to understand you'd be spending quite a lot of time in one of our tanks every day for one month, yes?" I asked her, doing some mental calculations. This could have been a single-day affair if it wasn't for the height requirement.
She nodded and said, "Yes, that is absolutely no problem. I also want to receive some additional services as well, over and above the cosmetic treatments." She listed off a litany of practical biosculpt, including muscle and bone lace, ballistic skin weave, as well as the nanosurgeon and enhanced immune system installation. Almost the whole nine yards.
I clucked my tongue. A big spender, she was, "We can do all of that. I've recently received approval to classify this location as an outpatient surgical centre as well, but I don't presently have the approval to conduct the last two surgeries, namely the nanosurgeon and immune system enhancements."
She looked disappointed, but I held up a hand, "I had been thinking about getting a locum, though, until I am. I know a number of gifted surgeons who would be willing to work on a PRN basis for me, so we should be able to accommodate you, assuming you're satisfied with the end result."
She brightened then but asked, confused, "A locum? PRN?"
I winced internally. It had finally happened. I had become the trope of the doctor that threw out random Latin and Greek words as if everyone knew what I was talking about. Locum tenens was a Latin word that directly translated into lieutenant. In a medical context, it meant someone hired to perform a doctor's services when the primary doctor, for example, myself, was unavailable. And PRN was an abbreviation for pro re nata, which most people may recognise if they read their prescriptions before getting them filed at the pharmacy and means "as needed."
I thought it was a little pedantic, but honestly, it was one of the reasons I was sitting here in Dr Hasumi's skin. I didn't need an education in medicine so much as in medical culture. Technical jargon, I understood, but there was a lot of arcane phraseology in medicine that wasn't strictly speaking technical, and that was only the start.
A new resident that needed to be taught how to use the almost industry-standard patient charting software in a hospital? That is expected; you did learn several versions of it in medical school, but who would remember it? But if I planned on basically buying Taylor Hebert a medical degree, I wanted to leave as few clues to such a thing as possible.
"A substitute surgeon," I replied simply and then said, "Well, let's see if I can satisfy you with a suitable metamorphosis."
After that, I pulled up her nude three-dimensional scan on the holographic display on my desk. She wasn't shy at all and inched closer on the edge of her seat to see. As she told me what she wanted, I quickly got an idea. Rather than Elise, who wanted the petite, almost fey look, Sarah wanted a more traditional, elfin one. Tall, slender, and supernaturally beautiful. Like Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings novels or the film adaptation from Earth Aleph that we all had watched before Mom passed away.
She told me that this sort of exotic template had become popular based on the fashion of the richest people in the European Community last year. It was kind of like when an actress would wear a stunning designer dress to a party, get photographed and then a few months later; you'd see knock-off versions of that dress on the rack at certain stores.
Her present face had fairly round features, and as I kept making adjustments to her requests—literally painting on my desk-display with a special stylus in quick economic motions. Finally, I said, "You know, you will barely resemble yourself..."
I pulled up a closeup of her face now and what she had me design next to each other on the holo display for her to look at. There was very little overlap, but she seemed to love the angular, high cheekbones, to say nothing about the exaggeratedly long ears. She grinned, looking excited, "I know, it's going to be so cool!"
I shrugged and continued working. It took about an hour for her to be satisfied, which wasn't that long on an exotic consult like this. Finally, I shifted to clothes mode, which was very simple. I could pick a number of preset clothing options, or I could paint a simple outline of a dress, and the machine-learning system churned on that for a moment before populating her body in a similar dress as I outlined.
Somewhat similar, anyway. My power didn't help me overly much in drawing clothes.
She vibrated with excitement at the end result, but I was humming, not quite satisfied. I made a few small adjustments to the hair and then tilted my head to the side. Why wasn't I satisfied? She looked quite elfin, but she didn't look quite like a magical elf lady, and that was my mental image.
Nodding to myself, I opened up the internals of the projection and made a few adjustments. The holograph blinked and shifted and was replaced by the same woman, except her hair almost glowed and glittered in the light, exhibiting the ethereal and magical quality I was looking for.
Sarah gasped and said, "Yes, yes, yes! How did you do that? Can hair do that?"
I shook my head, "No, but techhair can. Let me see if I can show you." Internally, I was programming a simple routine on my own techhair to mimic it. It didn't come with this "magic elf hair" preset, obviously, but it was programmable.
After a moment, my hair shifted to pale, almost platinum blonde and then began glittering in a manner similar to the projection. "Techhair is a cybernetic installation, of course, but we can perform that here." I couldn't, legally; although I had installed a number of similar implants at the hospital, I would make sure my locum could.
That sold her, and she even agreed to pay for everything up-front, too. She would be able to do most of the work today, enough that she would leave looking like a petite elf girl, and she would gain about a centimetre of height a day after that. I'd have her surgeries scheduled for a week or two out, as I had to call a couple of people to see if they were interested.
My surgical Attending might want some extra income; he had been a little shocked that I already owned my own practice, such as it was, anyway. NC-Taylor's memories were telling me that it was always good to kiss up to your boss, especially when that kissing up included either tangible benefits or free booze.
While the girl was escorted to one of our tanks, where she would spend the entire day, I opened up her file and finalised the treatment plan that the techs would use. It had to be chopped into segments over the next month, which I could then send to her as digital calendar appointments.
My post-treatment prescription today would include some physical therapy exercises for the next week; it always took a while for someone to get used to augmented strength, even if the muscle lace didn't provide as much benefit as a cybernetic prosthesis.
It had been my experience, thus far, that people rarely followed this advice. I couldn't really throw stones because I hadn't either when I got the same treatment years ago.
I nodded after a moment of contemplation. As long as she doesn't immediately try to give her boyfriend a handie, it should be fine.
I laid my hands in my lap, behind my large desk, as I regarded the Meditech suit that requested an appointment with me. I was careful not to let anything show on my face, but I was a little concerned about his arrival today.
You see, all of our biosculpt tanks were either stolen entirely or partly-reversed engineered versions of the stolen Meditech model that Wakako had stolen from a Biotechnica clinic and sold to me. I was a little concerned that they had been tipped off, and this was a threat that I either had to come to Jesus and pay what I owed them or else. Large corporations were notoriously rough with small companies that infringed on their intellectual property, even if many parts of the Meditech product were, in fact, copied from its competitors as well.
And a small company? I didn't even have the arrogance to claim that. I was tiny. If I was some back alley Ripper or semi-illegal biosculpt clinic, they'd never bother, but I was a mostly legitimate clinic on track to have an EBITDA of over a million Eurodollars this fiscal year, assuming things stayed on track for the latter two quarters. So I was probably worth shaking down to them.
For a young woman that was allegedly only twenty-nine going it on her own, that was amazing, to say nothing of the actual younger woman that wasn't even twenty, yet, that I actually was. Most businesses failed, and I went into my clinic with the idea that it would probably, fail. If it did, I had a couple of other ideas, anyway.
Being forced to buy legitimate hardware would put us into the red, but if I had to, I could buy or finance a number of tanks. I would just quietly sell my bootleg copies to less scrupulous clinics for half or two-thirds off MSRP to recoup some of the costs.
"Thank you for seeing me, Dr Hasumi," he said with a smile, which I reciprocated politely.
I nodded, "Of course. Meditech is one of our largest suppliers of nanomachines, which are of the highest quality." That was true, too. Although, I wasted a lot less than most clinics. Since Meditech not only made the tanks but produced the nanies, they didn't have a huge incentive to make their products very efficient. After all, everyone knew that it was better to have a reoccurring revenue stream than simply sell something once.
As such, many of the nanites were, by default, wasted when a patient left a tank. I created a proprietary filtering system which filtered out and then reflashed neutral programming on most of the nanites that were in a tank when it drained, which caused our nanite usage to drop by over eighty per cent. I had also begun reselling some nanomachines to some of the other less-legal clinics in Chinatown at cost, more or less, just so that our order numbers with Meditech didn't precipitously fall, which might have been noticed.
He smiled, "We really appreciate that. The Cherry Blossom clinic is our most valued client in this neighbourhood." It was probably their only client in this neighbourhood, so this was like telling your only child they were your favourite. None of the other clinics in Chinatown was legit, but that might mean they did value me even more, hoping my four blocks of relative civilisation might rub off on the rest of the neighbourhood.
He paused and then continued, "However, I'm here on business of a more personal nature." I blinked at him. Was he coming on to me? I glanced at his body briefly, somewhat dismissive. He wasn't exactly my type, and this was a bit sudden. Proper romance should be taken slow, and definitely didn't include making an appointment.
However, then he continued, saying simply, "We'd like to buy out any intellectual property interest you have in the Magical Fairy haircode."
Huh? I sat there, still. I thought, 'Enhanced memory, don't fail me now.'
Oh... the magical elf hair mode for that girl a couple of months ago. Meditech was the manufacturer of the techhair we installed in her, and I did program that custom module. I had the same techhair, myself, too. It was a good product.
I eyed him suspiciously. Although, I was immensely gratified that this wasn't about our pirate equipment in the back. But I needed clarification. I was almost one hundred per cent sure that Meditech had some clause in the techhair EULA that gave them some sort of perpetual, non-revocable license to any software mods created. It was pretty standard, "What's this about? I remember I made a custom mod for a client a couple of months ago, but..."
He blinked and then nodded. "Ah, you don't know. I guess you don't really follow popular teen culture? And you look so young." I smiled perfunctorily at the compliment before he continued, "Your client is a moderately famous net celebrity. She streams a show most evenings with a viewer count of over five thousand people watching even on a slow day. It's a general variety show, with her reactions to videos and monologues about current events and the like. Sometimes she plays games or watches shows or BDs. She's considered a Europhile show, although she does sometimes consume retro Japanese culture as well."
Was Sarah a Media? I had thought she was a trust fund kid. That was one way to pay for University! How interesting, especially since I had very heavily changed her facial features. That must have been the reason why she was so adamant that no change could affect her voice, though. Had to keep at least one thing recognisable; otherwise, your audience might think a switcheroo happened.
I pinched my glabella and said softly, "That must be why our clinic has done over a dozen elf-type exotics a month lately. I was about to rename the clinic to Rivendell." They all had mentioned being referred to by Sarah, to the point where I had given her a small percentage as a referral fee for the business. I just thought that she was building up an elvish LARP group or terrorist cell.
He looked confused for a moment before recognition reached his face and said appreciatively, "Wow, Dr Hasumi, that's a deep cut. Have you read The Lord of the Rings?"
The novels by Tolkien existed in all three dimensions I was aware of. Earth Aleph, Bet and this world. But the film was only adapted on Aleph. I had expected an adaptation here and was really interested in watching it to see the differences, but it never existed. I nodded, some of my real personality coming to the surface instead of the mask of Dr Hasumi, "Of course, Tolkien is awesome." I had to stop myself from saying, 'My mom was an English professor, after all.'
This man's presence started to make a little bit more sense, "I'm surprised you're here in person to sever any ownership interest I have. It sounds like my client is kind of small-time."
He shrugged, "That is the case. But you see, you were the first person to make an active, animated mod for any techhair. We liked that idea very much and are going to be shipping several dozen DLCs for all models of techhair that support this technology. Honestly, I have no idea why we didn't think of this before ourselves; it is kind of an own-goal."
Ah. Although I was sure they did have a solid legal ground to claim a perpetual license to what I created for their hair, I suspected this was to prevent me from selling the same thing to other companies that manufacture techhair. It would be a Meditech exclusive... for a couple of months. But a couple of months was long enough to secure a lot of profit.
The idea of refusing was untenable, as not only did I not want their scrutiny on my clinic, but they could drown me in litigation or just drop a bomb on me. But that didn't mean I needed to bend over completely. I could negotiate a price, and they'd be happy to pay it so long as it was less than what it would cost to crush me.
"Alright, let's talk price, then," I said with a cunning lilt to my tone, steepling my fingers together in anticipation.
"Performing surgery on yourself sure is easy if you have a Kumo-kun," I said happily while watching my robotic assistant use trauma nanoglue to close the surgical site incision on my upper chest near my shoulder.
He seemed to take this as a compliment as he made a gentle humming noise out of his speakers. He could understand English, sort of, but he couldn't really talk.
Kumo-kun's hum caused Mrs Pegpig to coo curiously. She often followed me into my lab, although I didn't know why because it was an entirely closed-off environment and didn't have any windows outside, which she liked. She seemed to like watching me work, though.
I had just installed the third prototype of the Haywire-based FTL entangled comms unit in my chest. Unfortunately, this version was a little bit too big for installation directly in my operating system as a miniature expansion card as planned, but Haywire's versions were only a few times larger than a grain of rice, so I was hoping I could reduce the size over time.
My version used a lot more power too. Professor Haywire's were powered by some sort of bullshit involving the collapsing quantum waveform of a human's bioelectricity. It sounded like bullshit technobabble to me, no matter how many times I looked at it. My power helped absolutely not at all with it, so I figured it was some Tinkertech that was totally beyond my specialisation, so mine used miniature graphene-based supercapacitors—the best I could find. However, there was a lot of current draw during transmission, such that I would have to charge them every other day if I used the system a lot.
I knew that this was a failure on my part. The comms shouldn't be wasting so much energy. The theory, at least what I could understand of it, suggested that it should only require negligible energy to transmit in the first place. I wasn't there yet, but with every prototype I built, I learned just a little bit more about how they were supposed to work, and I finally felt this prototype was sufficient to install in my body. Just that they did work was already an incredible accomplishment.
I rebooted my operating system. This not only caused my vision to go black briefly, but my Kerenzikov cut out for a couple of seconds which was almost intolerable. Being slow was terrible. As soon as everything rebooted, I immediately disabled all wireless transmissions and activated the custom communications module.
The twin to my module was installed in my computing cluster a few metres from me in the corner, which would act as a router to both my local clinic subnet and the net as a whole. I tried accessing a random cat video online and grinned as it worked.
This was awesome. Just this very initial application would allow me to have uninterruptible, unjammable communications with my clinic and, through it, the rest of the net while also emitting nothing on any spectrum. If I ever started doing Edgerunner jobs again, I could browse social media while running on heightened EMCON status with my stealth field engaged.
I could also never be completely isolated again unless they took this implant out. I tried to make it look like anything but a comms module, too, and my next versions would be smaller and smaller until I could hide it as an ambiguous and extraneous circuit inside my operating system, hopefully.
And that was before Project Synchronicity, which needed very small versions of this implanted device and was still in the planning stages. That was going to be the game-changer.
Speaking of revolutionary change, I glanced over at my workbench. Sat in the middle was something that looked almost exactly like a magnetically adhesive naval limpet mine. Three of them, in fact, stacked on top of each other like legos.
It wasn't surprising that the delivery system was done before the actual thing to be delivered, considering the genome of the current generation algae hardly resembled algae anymore. It was getting more and more complicated, but it was necessary. Both for the complicated organic chemistry the bacteria would do, as well as for safety, robustness and genetic safeguards to prevent tampering.
I'd have to conduct tests somewhere with a special variant that was designed to experience apoptosis after a while to verify that the safeguards I had included worked. Otherwise, I risked releasing something that could spread across the entire ocean and destroy most of the shallow water ocean biome in a few years, which would cascade to the entire ocean. The sun was pretty necessary, after all, and this alga was designed to reproduce aggressively and would block out the sun almost completely.
I was almost one hundred per cent sure my version would only grow within approximately five kilometres from shore, but I wouldn't proceed with the plan until I was certain. It was kind of funny that the first thing I would do to change the world for the better was mainly coming to fruition out of spite, but that was just the kind of girl I was.
Sighing, I made a decision I had been putting off for a while. It turned out that I had over fifty unpublished chapters of Dr Hasumi's novel, as she had continued to write it during her durance vile amongst the Maelstrom gang. Quite commendable, to be honest, and she didn't even write spitefully and kill off all of her characters, either.
I had finished the novel months ago, but now I logged into the site she published the work on using her credentials.
I mentally typed, "Sorry for the long time since my last update, but I was kidnapped and held against my will by human traffickers for the past year or so. But as an apology, here is a double release today! Enjoy! ^_^" I then posted the next two chapters.
Dr Hasumi posted two to three times a week historically, so I had a few months to start writing new chapters. It would be something to do, and besides, I was invested in this story now. A mod on the site had added a HIATUS tag to the story, which I carefully deleted.
Less than a second after I posted the first update, FantasticDragon replied, "first www".
It wasn't a dream, or instead, it wasn't solely a dream, as there were about ten terabytes of new files on my filesystem. Frowning, I checked my operating system's log, referencing my automatic radio direction finders. According to the logs, my OS triangulated the wireless transmissions when I received her files to a few centimetres in front of my head.
This was the first time I had some confirmation that my power could affect the real world like some other powers could. Did it open a small wormhole into the Brockton Bay universe? Could actual matter come through, then? Or did it use some sort of Shaker power to create light radiation in the radio spectrum, acting as a relay through some unknown intermultiversal communication method? I didn't know, but it was very interesting.
Especially since I didn't know why it had done so and I had the firmest evidence that my power was something external to myself, as I was pretty sure I felt sentiments that were almost like words from it unless I was just at the stage where part of my brain was talking to itself, which wasn't impossible.
I had sent more than fifty times as much data on a pure bit-for-bit basis, but that wasn't too surprising as the world of Night City was a world of big data. Data storage was cheap. My inherited data storage implant had a capacity of fifteen hundred petabytes, but even a baseline Militech Paraline deck like NC-Taylor had would still have three or four petabytes of storage available. So, not only was storage cheap, but the modern wireless communication standards and data encoding schemes allowed very fast communication.
I had paid for a fibre-optic internet connection at my building which had a speed of twenty terabits per second. This was considered faster than residential net access but pretty slow when compared to the fastest backbone connections, which were hundreds of terabits per second. Direct wireless communications could transfer data at a burst throughput of about a tenth of that, so it was still only a matter of minutes before both of our transmissions were completed.
The files were organised in a very similar way that I organised my own files, which I didn't find as annoying as I thought I would have. On a bit basis, the vast majority of the data was Taylor's own research. She, like me, took conspicuous notes and recorded each of her experiments as either video or an unedited scrolled BD, a virtu. I did the same thing, and the latter would be very useful in understanding her thinking during each of her experiments.
"Uhh... there is no other way to describe this but a weapon of mass destruction," I said after reviewing some of the research notes in the "virology" section of her files. No wonder she almost got a kill order. Honestly, I bet she did have one, a pre-signed one that they would execute if they ever could prove she produced any of this.
Before I lost myself in some interesting things I saw in her "Applied Genetics" directory, I switched over to the one labelled "Professor Haywire." I only knew a bit about the famous villain. He was a household name, of course, having created the portal to Earth Aleph and proving definitively the existence of alternate dimensions, but he had been dead for a couple of years before I came to Night City.
The data here was comprehensive, and I quickly found out that it wasn't merely his own research data but also data from other Tinkers examining his technology, including Hero himself. Plus Dragon and even Armsmaster. How in the hell did Night City Taylor's secret friends get this all? Any of Hero's research was probably considered highly classified and only released to incredibly trusted Protectorate heroes, like Armsmaster, who was Hero's former mentee. And Dragon was the best Tinker in the world now that he was gone. I had both of their thoughts on the same subject.
I had been a bit dismissive about how leery she had been about talking about them, but maybe she had a point. Were they some sort of secret conspiracy of Protectorate heroes? Kind of controlling the United States from the shadows, kind of exactly the sort of thing the PRT was made to prevent? I supposed it didn't matter, and I honestly didn't have as much of an objection if this were the case. Plus, I never intended to return to that universe. Certainly not while Ziz was around. I opened some of the files, seemingly at random. I didn't have the education to guide my perusal, unlike Taylor's trove of research data.
"What does this symbol even mean? Is this really mathematics?" I asked myself after fifteen minutes. Switching between Professor Haywire's own files and Hero's discussion of them didn't help at all. If anything, Hero's attempt to explain the principles of the Portal technology confused me more than Professor Haywire's files did. Words that I barely recognised, much less understood, like Planck's constant and de Broglie wavelength, peppered his text, and I couldn't even parse the mathematics he was using. I was getting a headache. It was like trying to read French when all you knew was English. You'd recognise some of the words here and there, thanks to those dastardly Normans conquering England at Hastings, but not enough to say with any confidence what anything meant.
"Is this still Science, or has it reached the arcane stage?" I asked myself rhetorically with a sigh. Clearly, I wouldn't be building portals to other Earths any time soon. Nor would I be building bullets that teleported people to alternate dimensions. That had been one of Professor Haywire's signature weapons. Sometimes the people he shot came back; sometimes, they didn't!
I supposed the Isekai Bullet was the perfect weapon for someone who was too soft to actually kill people themselves and preferred random environments to do so for him. I paused after thinking that as I realised how foreign my point of view would have been if I was still in Brockton Bay...
How amusing. By now, it seemed I had deeply internalised the advice of Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, namely, "Never do an enemy a small injury." If you found out that I was going to injure you, it was likely going to be a fatal injury; that way, you didn't have the opportunity to get overly angry at me and come back at me later for revenge. The superhero and supervillain scene I remembered in Brockton Bay seemed like a never-ending series of small injuries. As always, I found it perplexing.
Was there anything here that didn't look like the scribblings of an insane man that was either touched by divine providence or madness? I spent a few minutes reviewing each of the files and frowned. The only thing that I got a large twinge of interest from my power was a few of the communications and tracking devices. Professor Haywire had implanted a tracking and comms device in his body, which could communicate with a paired device in his laboratory. It was his lifeline and allowed him to always come back to Earth Bet if one of his experiments threw him into some random dimension. That was the idea, anyway. At the minimum, it let him know where Earth Bet was relative to his current dimension while also communicating with his equipment there in real-time.
It was just a point-to-point communicator as it could only communicate with a specifically built entangled twin, but that was a limitation that was easy to ignore when you considered that it was instantaneous across distance, including working in other dimensions, undetectable without similar dimension-based technology and unblockable as far as I could tell. Interdimmensional FTL comms get!
Just a small, implantable communication device that was unjammable would be an incredible advantage, especially if I was ever kidnapped in the future... although that seemed to be only taking advantage of the obvious, surface applications. I sat there silently for a moment as this capability filtered through a number of plans I had, changing a few of them.
Nodding, I smiled. Just this alone would have been worth everything I had given Night City Taylor. Properly utilised, it should make me significantly more survivable.
Night City Taylor had been especially interested in the possibility of creating her own biosculpt and cloning tanks on a large scale. The former, she intended to sell as a service. If she offered both muscle and bone lace and ballistic weave treatments, that was at least a Brute 1 rating, I felt. And one without any real downsides like many other Trumps had, and it was something that she would eventually not even have to be involved with to do. Who wouldn't want to buy that? Reproducible "Tinkertech" was a holy grail over there, even if it was not Tinkertech, so much as borrowed technology from an alien universe.
NC-Taylor would have to source the nanites herself, somehow, though. Although I had designs for a number of the general purpose nanomachines, including one specialised version I had designed on my own as a replacement for the body's natural leukocytes as an immune system, I didn't have any designs of the large industrial machines that built them in the quadrillions every batch. Those were incredibly guarded trade secrets. European corporations produced most of these types of industrial machines, and they were heavily locked down with anti-reverse engineering technology. Reportedly, they wouldn't work if they couldn't phone home or even if you moved them a metre away from their listed installation site without getting prior approval.
Self-replicating nanomachines, at least inorganic ones, were still science fiction in this world, and I kind of felt that was a good thing.
As for cloning, NC-Taylor thought it might be possible to clone parahumans, power and all. She had mentioned that there was a Rogue Tinker whose speciality was memory technology when we talked about this. Could she copy someone's memory and then implant that memory in a clone of them? That would be a kind of immortality, I supposed, but I think I preferred the simple alternative of never dying in the first place.
I mean, if I died, it would be nice if there was another person that sprung up that thought exactly how I did to continue my life's work, but I didn't think that would be me precisely. All I could say of that approach was: it was better than nothing.
I stretched like a cat before getting out of bed. Although I had only been in basic training for a little while, my instincts were still strong enough that I quickly made my bed before putting on some clothes. Today was a rare day off from work at the hospital, meaning I would work downstairs at my clinic for part of the day while working on my projects for the rest.
A biotinker was a lot like a chef, at least in the sense that you were often dealing with processes that couldn't be sped up past a certain point, so you were just left while things "cooked." This described my experiments with the algae pretty well, as I could make a change to the next samples and then come back the next day to see the effect of the new generation. That meant that I actually could do a fairly decent amount of work even with my busy schedule, as I was often waiting for cultures to grow, or if I was working on cybernetics, most of my work was done on my cyberdeck in three-point-five times speed, which I could even do while working at the hospital during down periods.
Mostly though, I had been acting less like a biotinker and more like just a regular doctor in my time in this world, even if a world-class doctor. Partly because I didn't want to stand out, that I couldn't hide my creations sufficiently and finally, partly because I didn't have enough resources to start down that research path, absent a few things here and there. But now, I was pretty well set for all three of those obstacles.
Several weeks later
My elfin receptionist led another young woman, around her age, into my office. It was one of my days off from the hospital, again, as few as they were, so I was spending some time downstairs. The techs I hired were fairly capable of handling most routine requests. Really, people weren't that imaginative when talking about mostly cosmetic procedures that they desired.
For the ladies, it usually amounted to a smaller waist, bigger bust, more symmetrical face and metabolic tweaks sufficient to keep all of those things. Men, generally, wanted to look and be stronger, fitter, and taller with similar metabolism tweaks and occasionally also predictable modifications to their primary sexual characteristic.
There were outliers in both genders, of course, but I had designed software that took a person's complete three-dimensional scan and offered a number of options as a starting point. Then the techs or I could work from that starting point and create something that they wanted. It saved a lot of time, and I was rather proud of it, actually, especially since software development was one of my weaknesses.
However, I still needed to be called in for exceptional modifications and things that required artistry that was a cut above, which did happen from time to time. My receptionist smiled and introduced her friend, "Dr Hasumi, this is my roommate, Sarah." She paused and said, "She has been asking where I got my biosculpt done and finally agreed to come to see you."
I glanced at the well-dressed young woman and frowned. Her outfit cost more than the rent I knew my receptionist paid in six months. She clearly didn't need a roommate. I hadn't done any background investigations on her roommates, though, as why would I bother?
"Why are you living with a roommate when you clearly don't need one?" I asked curiously, with my eyes darting to the designer clutch handbag she was carrying. She was the first woman I'd seen carrying a purse in recent memory.
My receptionist looked a little confused, but this Sarah blinked and tilted her head to the side, smiling. "Does that matter?"
It was inappropriate for me to ask in the first place, so I didn't push it. I was a little protective of my employees, though. I shook my head, "I don't suppose so. Come, have a seat," I motioned and then glanced up at my receptionist and dismissed her politely, "Thank you."
After we were alone, I pulled up her patient record. She had already had her full-body scan, so she was at least a little serious. She had a minimal amount of augmentations, but those that she had were high-class. I didn't have any cheesy lines to say to her, like the first biosculpt clinic I went to said to me so long ago, so I just asked, "So, what can we help you with?"
"Well, I'm not sure you can. I've gone to numerous clinics in town, and they could either help me with part or couldn't help me at all. I'd like to get everything handled at the same clinic. I'm very interested in similar modifications as Elise has, but I also want to be one hundred and eighty centimetres," she said brightly.
I blinked. She was short. I glanced internally at her patient record. Did she want to go from one hundred and fifty-five cems to one-eighty? That was a twenty-five-centimetre increase in height, which was quite a lot to ask of biosculpt treatments. I had been rather lucky, and Dr Hasumi was only about seven centimetres shorter than I was. It was no wonder many clinics refused her service.
There were plenty of biosculpt clinics that would specialise in radical exotic-like alterations like she was seeking, but mostly they didn't offer heavy-duty biosculpt at the same time.
"We can do that, but you have to understand you'd be spending quite a lot of time in one of our tanks every day for one month, yes?" I asked her, doing some mental calculations. This could have been a single-day affair if it wasn't for the height requirement.
She nodded and said, "Yes, that is absolutely no problem. I also want to receive some additional services as well, over and above the cosmetic treatments." She listed off a litany of practical biosculpt, including muscle and bone lace, ballistic skin weave, as well as the nanosurgeon and enhanced immune system installation. Almost the whole nine yards.
I clucked my tongue. A big spender, she was, "We can do all of that. I've recently received approval to classify this location as an outpatient surgical centre as well, but I don't presently have the approval to conduct the last two surgeries, namely the nanosurgeon and immune system enhancements."
She looked disappointed, but I held up a hand, "I had been thinking about getting a locum, though, until I am. I know a number of gifted surgeons who would be willing to work on a PRN basis for me, so we should be able to accommodate you, assuming you're satisfied with the end result."
She brightened then but asked, confused, "A locum? PRN?"
I winced internally. It had finally happened. I had become the trope of the doctor that threw out random Latin and Greek words as if everyone knew what I was talking about. Locum tenens was a Latin word that directly translated into lieutenant. In a medical context, it meant someone hired to perform a doctor's services when the primary doctor, for example, myself, was unavailable. And PRN was an abbreviation for pro re nata, which most people may recognise if they read their prescriptions before getting them filed at the pharmacy and means "as needed."
I thought it was a little pedantic, but honestly, it was one of the reasons I was sitting here in Dr Hasumi's skin. I didn't need an education in medicine so much as in medical culture. Technical jargon, I understood, but there was a lot of arcane phraseology in medicine that wasn't strictly speaking technical, and that was only the start.
A new resident that needed to be taught how to use the almost industry-standard patient charting software in a hospital? That is expected; you did learn several versions of it in medical school, but who would remember it? But if I planned on basically buying Taylor Hebert a medical degree, I wanted to leave as few clues to such a thing as possible.
"A substitute surgeon," I replied simply and then said, "Well, let's see if I can satisfy you with a suitable metamorphosis."
After that, I pulled up her nude three-dimensional scan on the holographic display on my desk. She wasn't shy at all and inched closer on the edge of her seat to see. As she told me what she wanted, I quickly got an idea. Rather than Elise, who wanted the petite, almost fey look, Sarah wanted a more traditional, elfin one. Tall, slender, and supernaturally beautiful. Like Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings novels or the film adaptation from Earth Aleph that we all had watched before Mom passed away.
She told me that this sort of exotic template had become popular based on the fashion of the richest people in the European Community last year. It was kind of like when an actress would wear a stunning designer dress to a party, get photographed and then a few months later; you'd see knock-off versions of that dress on the rack at certain stores.
Her present face had fairly round features, and as I kept making adjustments to her requests—literally painting on my desk-display with a special stylus in quick economic motions. Finally, I said, "You know, you will barely resemble yourself..."
I pulled up a closeup of her face now and what she had me design next to each other on the holo display for her to look at. There was very little overlap, but she seemed to love the angular, high cheekbones, to say nothing about the exaggeratedly long ears. She grinned, looking excited, "I know, it's going to be so cool!"
I shrugged and continued working. It took about an hour for her to be satisfied, which wasn't that long on an exotic consult like this. Finally, I shifted to clothes mode, which was very simple. I could pick a number of preset clothing options, or I could paint a simple outline of a dress, and the machine-learning system churned on that for a moment before populating her body in a similar dress as I outlined.
Somewhat similar, anyway. My power didn't help me overly much in drawing clothes.
She vibrated with excitement at the end result, but I was humming, not quite satisfied. I made a few small adjustments to the hair and then tilted my head to the side. Why wasn't I satisfied? She looked quite elfin, but she didn't look quite like a magical elf lady, and that was my mental image.
Nodding to myself, I opened up the internals of the projection and made a few adjustments. The holograph blinked and shifted and was replaced by the same woman, except her hair almost glowed and glittered in the light, exhibiting the ethereal and magical quality I was looking for.
Sarah gasped and said, "Yes, yes, yes! How did you do that? Can hair do that?"
I shook my head, "No, but techhair can. Let me see if I can show you." Internally, I was programming a simple routine on my own techhair to mimic it. It didn't come with this "magic elf hair" preset, obviously, but it was programmable.
After a moment, my hair shifted to pale, almost platinum blonde and then began glittering in a manner similar to the projection. "Techhair is a cybernetic installation, of course, but we can perform that here." I couldn't, legally; although I had installed a number of similar implants at the hospital, I would make sure my locum could.
That sold her, and she even agreed to pay for everything up-front, too. She would be able to do most of the work today, enough that she would leave looking like a petite elf girl, and she would gain about a centimetre of height a day after that. I'd have her surgeries scheduled for a week or two out, as I had to call a couple of people to see if they were interested.
My surgical Attending might want some extra income; he had been a little shocked that I already owned my own practice, such as it was, anyway. NC-Taylor's memories were telling me that it was always good to kiss up to your boss, especially when that kissing up included either tangible benefits or free booze.
While the girl was escorted to one of our tanks, where she would spend the entire day, I opened up her file and finalised the treatment plan that the techs would use. It had to be chopped into segments over the next month, which I could then send to her as digital calendar appointments.
My post-treatment prescription today would include some physical therapy exercises for the next week; it always took a while for someone to get used to augmented strength, even if the muscle lace didn't provide as much benefit as a cybernetic prosthesis.
It had been my experience, thus far, that people rarely followed this advice. I couldn't really throw stones because I hadn't either when I got the same treatment years ago.
I nodded after a moment of contemplation. As long as she doesn't immediately try to give her boyfriend a handie, it should be fine.
I laid my hands in my lap, behind my large desk, as I regarded the Meditech suit that requested an appointment with me. I was careful not to let anything show on my face, but I was a little concerned about his arrival today.
You see, all of our biosculpt tanks were either stolen entirely or partly-reversed engineered versions of the stolen Meditech model that Wakako had stolen from a Biotechnica clinic and sold to me. I was a little concerned that they had been tipped off, and this was a threat that I either had to come to Jesus and pay what I owed them or else. Large corporations were notoriously rough with small companies that infringed on their intellectual property, even if many parts of the Meditech product were, in fact, copied from its competitors as well.
And a small company? I didn't even have the arrogance to claim that. I was tiny. If I was some back alley Ripper or semi-illegal biosculpt clinic, they'd never bother, but I was a mostly legitimate clinic on track to have an EBITDA of over a million Eurodollars this fiscal year, assuming things stayed on track for the latter two quarters. So I was probably worth shaking down to them.
For a young woman that was allegedly only twenty-nine going it on her own, that was amazing, to say nothing of the actual younger woman that wasn't even twenty, yet, that I actually was. Most businesses failed, and I went into my clinic with the idea that it would probably, fail. If it did, I had a couple of other ideas, anyway.
Being forced to buy legitimate hardware would put us into the red, but if I had to, I could buy or finance a number of tanks. I would just quietly sell my bootleg copies to less scrupulous clinics for half or two-thirds off MSRP to recoup some of the costs.
"Thank you for seeing me, Dr Hasumi," he said with a smile, which I reciprocated politely.
I nodded, "Of course. Meditech is one of our largest suppliers of nanomachines, which are of the highest quality." That was true, too. Although, I wasted a lot less than most clinics. Since Meditech not only made the tanks but produced the nanies, they didn't have a huge incentive to make their products very efficient. After all, everyone knew that it was better to have a reoccurring revenue stream than simply sell something once.
As such, many of the nanites were, by default, wasted when a patient left a tank. I created a proprietary filtering system which filtered out and then reflashed neutral programming on most of the nanites that were in a tank when it drained, which caused our nanite usage to drop by over eighty per cent. I had also begun reselling some nanomachines to some of the other less-legal clinics in Chinatown at cost, more or less, just so that our order numbers with Meditech didn't precipitously fall, which might have been noticed.
He smiled, "We really appreciate that. The Cherry Blossom clinic is our most valued client in this neighbourhood." It was probably their only client in this neighbourhood, so this was like telling your only child they were your favourite. None of the other clinics in Chinatown was legit, but that might mean they did value me even more, hoping my four blocks of relative civilisation might rub off on the rest of the neighbourhood.
He paused and then continued, "However, I'm here on business of a more personal nature." I blinked at him. Was he coming on to me? I glanced at his body briefly, somewhat dismissive. He wasn't exactly my type, and this was a bit sudden. Proper romance should be taken slow, and definitely didn't include making an appointment.
However, then he continued, saying simply, "We'd like to buy out any intellectual property interest you have in the Magical Fairy haircode."
Huh? I sat there, still. I thought, 'Enhanced memory, don't fail me now.'
Oh... the magical elf hair mode for that girl a couple of months ago. Meditech was the manufacturer of the techhair we installed in her, and I did program that custom module. I had the same techhair, myself, too. It was a good product.
I eyed him suspiciously. Although, I was immensely gratified that this wasn't about our pirate equipment in the back. But I needed clarification. I was almost one hundred per cent sure that Meditech had some clause in the techhair EULA that gave them some sort of perpetual, non-revocable license to any software mods created. It was pretty standard, "What's this about? I remember I made a custom mod for a client a couple of months ago, but..."
He blinked and then nodded. "Ah, you don't know. I guess you don't really follow popular teen culture? And you look so young." I smiled perfunctorily at the compliment before he continued, "Your client is a moderately famous net celebrity. She streams a show most evenings with a viewer count of over five thousand people watching even on a slow day. It's a general variety show, with her reactions to videos and monologues about current events and the like. Sometimes she plays games or watches shows or BDs. She's considered a Europhile show, although she does sometimes consume retro Japanese culture as well."
Was Sarah a Media? I had thought she was a trust fund kid. That was one way to pay for University! How interesting, especially since I had very heavily changed her facial features. That must have been the reason why she was so adamant that no change could affect her voice, though. Had to keep at least one thing recognisable; otherwise, your audience might think a switcheroo happened.
I pinched my glabella and said softly, "That must be why our clinic has done over a dozen elf-type exotics a month lately. I was about to rename the clinic to Rivendell." They all had mentioned being referred to by Sarah, to the point where I had given her a small percentage as a referral fee for the business. I just thought that she was building up an elvish LARP group or terrorist cell.
He looked confused for a moment before recognition reached his face and said appreciatively, "Wow, Dr Hasumi, that's a deep cut. Have you read The Lord of the Rings?"
The novels by Tolkien existed in all three dimensions I was aware of. Earth Aleph, Bet and this world. But the film was only adapted on Aleph. I had expected an adaptation here and was really interested in watching it to see the differences, but it never existed. I nodded, some of my real personality coming to the surface instead of the mask of Dr Hasumi, "Of course, Tolkien is awesome." I had to stop myself from saying, 'My mom was an English professor, after all.'
This man's presence started to make a little bit more sense, "I'm surprised you're here in person to sever any ownership interest I have. It sounds like my client is kind of small-time."
He shrugged, "That is the case. But you see, you were the first person to make an active, animated mod for any techhair. We liked that idea very much and are going to be shipping several dozen DLCs for all models of techhair that support this technology. Honestly, I have no idea why we didn't think of this before ourselves; it is kind of an own-goal."
Ah. Although I was sure they did have a solid legal ground to claim a perpetual license to what I created for their hair, I suspected this was to prevent me from selling the same thing to other companies that manufacture techhair. It would be a Meditech exclusive... for a couple of months. But a couple of months was long enough to secure a lot of profit.
The idea of refusing was untenable, as not only did I not want their scrutiny on my clinic, but they could drown me in litigation or just drop a bomb on me. But that didn't mean I needed to bend over completely. I could negotiate a price, and they'd be happy to pay it so long as it was less than what it would cost to crush me.
"Alright, let's talk price, then," I said with a cunning lilt to my tone, steepling my fingers together in anticipation.
"Performing surgery on yourself sure is easy if you have a Kumo-kun," I said happily while watching my robotic assistant use trauma nanoglue to close the surgical site incision on my upper chest near my shoulder.
He seemed to take this as a compliment as he made a gentle humming noise out of his speakers. He could understand English, sort of, but he couldn't really talk.
Kumo-kun's hum caused Mrs Pegpig to coo curiously. She often followed me into my lab, although I didn't know why because it was an entirely closed-off environment and didn't have any windows outside, which she liked. She seemed to like watching me work, though.
I had just installed the third prototype of the Haywire-based FTL entangled comms unit in my chest. Unfortunately, this version was a little bit too big for installation directly in my operating system as a miniature expansion card as planned, but Haywire's versions were only a few times larger than a grain of rice, so I was hoping I could reduce the size over time.
My version used a lot more power too. Professor Haywire's were powered by some sort of bullshit involving the collapsing quantum waveform of a human's bioelectricity. It sounded like bullshit technobabble to me, no matter how many times I looked at it. My power helped absolutely not at all with it, so I figured it was some Tinkertech that was totally beyond my specialisation, so mine used miniature graphene-based supercapacitors—the best I could find. However, there was a lot of current draw during transmission, such that I would have to charge them every other day if I used the system a lot.
I knew that this was a failure on my part. The comms shouldn't be wasting so much energy. The theory, at least what I could understand of it, suggested that it should only require negligible energy to transmit in the first place. I wasn't there yet, but with every prototype I built, I learned just a little bit more about how they were supposed to work, and I finally felt this prototype was sufficient to install in my body. Just that they did work was already an incredible accomplishment.
I rebooted my operating system. This not only caused my vision to go black briefly, but my Kerenzikov cut out for a couple of seconds which was almost intolerable. Being slow was terrible. As soon as everything rebooted, I immediately disabled all wireless transmissions and activated the custom communications module.
The twin to my module was installed in my computing cluster a few metres from me in the corner, which would act as a router to both my local clinic subnet and the net as a whole. I tried accessing a random cat video online and grinned as it worked.
This was awesome. Just this very initial application would allow me to have uninterruptible, unjammable communications with my clinic and, through it, the rest of the net while also emitting nothing on any spectrum. If I ever started doing Edgerunner jobs again, I could browse social media while running on heightened EMCON status with my stealth field engaged.
I could also never be completely isolated again unless they took this implant out. I tried to make it look like anything but a comms module, too, and my next versions would be smaller and smaller until I could hide it as an ambiguous and extraneous circuit inside my operating system, hopefully.
And that was before Project Synchronicity, which needed very small versions of this implanted device and was still in the planning stages. That was going to be the game-changer.
Speaking of revolutionary change, I glanced over at my workbench. Sat in the middle was something that looked almost exactly like a magnetically adhesive naval limpet mine. Three of them, in fact, stacked on top of each other like legos.
It wasn't surprising that the delivery system was done before the actual thing to be delivered, considering the genome of the current generation algae hardly resembled algae anymore. It was getting more and more complicated, but it was necessary. Both for the complicated organic chemistry the bacteria would do, as well as for safety, robustness and genetic safeguards to prevent tampering.
I'd have to conduct tests somewhere with a special variant that was designed to experience apoptosis after a while to verify that the safeguards I had included worked. Otherwise, I risked releasing something that could spread across the entire ocean and destroy most of the shallow water ocean biome in a few years, which would cascade to the entire ocean. The sun was pretty necessary, after all, and this alga was designed to reproduce aggressively and would block out the sun almost completely.
I was almost one hundred per cent sure my version would only grow within approximately five kilometres from shore, but I wouldn't proceed with the plan until I was certain. It was kind of funny that the first thing I would do to change the world for the better was mainly coming to fruition out of spite, but that was just the kind of girl I was.
Sighing, I made a decision I had been putting off for a while. It turned out that I had over fifty unpublished chapters of Dr Hasumi's novel, as she had continued to write it during her durance vile amongst the Maelstrom gang. Quite commendable, to be honest, and she didn't even write spitefully and kill off all of her characters, either.
I had finished the novel months ago, but now I logged into the site she published the work on using her credentials.
I mentally typed, "Sorry for the long time since my last update, but I was kidnapped and held against my will by human traffickers for the past year or so. But as an apology, here is a double release today! Enjoy! ^_^" I then posted the next two chapters.
Dr Hasumi posted two to three times a week historically, so I had a few months to start writing new chapters. It would be something to do, and besides, I was invested in this story now. A mod on the site had added a HIATUS tag to the story, which I carefully deleted.
Less than a second after I posted the first update, FantasticDragon replied, "first www".
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