Perhaps he would have gone along with the plans to stop if it they were feasible, but since that didn't seem possible in the timeline they had, he wondered if he could take credit for it. It was a pretty good idea, but he was going to be absolutely furious if it caused his newly introduced Hawaiian Sea Turtle to go extinct. He had made this version venomous!
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A Great Success!
I, or Hasumi rather, was finally a board-certified cybernetics surgeon. It had taken me a little over a year and a half to finish, which was incredibly quick, and I hardly had to bribe anyone. I did end up bribing a few people, but only so that they would give me a chance to demonstrate my proficiency earlier, not guarantee my certification. Some people were a bit sceptical, and that wasn't surprising since a normal cybersurgical residency lasted between four and five years.
It was a little bit annoying that I would probably have to repeat this process when I took back my Taylor Hebert identity. That was pretty much a done decision, too, as neither I nor Wakako had detected anyone looking for me after a month or so. It was true that there was a possibility I was on a list now, but there was just no way to know. I didn't think it was a risk large enough to completely abandon my identity, though.
I was pulled out of my daydreams by the surgeon I was waiting on entering his office. I started to rise politely, but he waved a hand, so I sat back down, "Dr Hasumi, congratulations, first of all. I heard that you're starting your own practice?"
I nodded, " Hai, I already had a small biosculpt practice and will be expanding it to perform general cybersurgery as well now." I smiled, "Although I was pleased that I will retain admitting privileges here at Cedar-Sinai, that will help a lot."
The older surgeon nodded slightly, "So, what can I help you with today? The note on my calendar said you needed a consult."
"Yes, for myself. I have a slightly customised MoorE Technologies cyberbrain system that I would like installed in myself, and you are probably the best person in the city that I could come to," I said. There was just no way I could perform a surgery where my brain was scooped out and placed in an armoured pod by myself, and I didn't trust Kumo-kun to do it at all.
I was tempted to return back to Night City and visit my old friend Dr Taylor as he had spent decades working at MoorE Technologies, but there was just no way. He would recognise some of the implants he put in me; I was sure of it, as I would have recognised my own work too. Plus, while the modifications I made to the cyberbrain were designed to be very subtle, I wasn't sure that would hold up to someone who may have helped design the systems.
So my best option was Dr Reynolds. He was a surgeon based in Cedar-Sinai that specialised in full-body replacements, so he would be well-versed in what I needed.
My request got him to raise an eyebrow while he sat down in front of me, "That's a bit unusual, but sure... Let me review your medical file briefly, if you don't mind, Doctor."
I nodded and remained silent for several minutes.
"Okay, so your current list of augmentations are... a set of nanosurgeon and enhanced immune system organs, muscle and bone lace, ballistic skin weave, a set of customised Kiroshis-nice, a Biotech Σ cyberdeck and OS, an Arasaka-branded Memory co-processor-don't see too many of that brand these days, a genelocked datastore, some Zetatech personal ICE..." he glanced at me appraisingly, "A Kendachi monowire, really? An Arasaka-branded thermoptical camouflage system... I think this one is illegal to own! And a fucking Kerenzikov, too? That's straight borgware, Dr Hasumi..." He shook his head and stopped reciting the rest of my augmentations at that.
I coughed delicately into my hand, "Ever since I was kidnapped by nomads and forced to work as a surgeon for them, I have been a bit concerned about my safety."
"Clearly," he said mildly. He sighed and said, "We can accommodate you. All cyberbrains come with their own OS, of course, so we'd be taking your existing one out, but you have to realise that this level of augmentation will require mandatory counselling... honestly, you should be having that already. You already have more cybernetics than the average cyberpsycho that is put down, but you're clearly at least in a much better place from a mental health perspective, in spite of any trauma you may have experienced in the past."
I winced slightly. I had known that this would be the cost, but I was running into a chicken and egg problem. I needed this installed so that I could have the brain scanner start copying my brain to the cloned version, but I needed my "clone" to install this into my brain. I just wouldn't be able to do this part myself, was the conclusion I had come to. I could do all the rest of the surgeries, though, including swapping my current Kerenzikov with a duplicate that I had purchased for my other body.
It was important that all the cybernetics be the same between my bodies, so since I couldn't find another type K-02 Kerenzikov from Kang Tao, apparently they didn't manufacture them anymore, I had upgraded.
Kang Tao had recently spun off its higher-end cybernetics development and marketing into a wholly-owned subsidiary that they called QianT. This included their high-end boostware, which I was able to purchase. The sales rep claimed that this model of Kerenzikov was the best in the world. I didn't know that I really believed that, but I thought that it was at least on the same level as the other top brands. Plus, it was no doubt based on the previous Kang Tao Kerenzikov, which I was already very familiar with. Allegedly, it would be a temporal factor of three point four, which was very high for a Kerenzikov. Many Sandys didn't provide that great a boost, after all.
I had bought three units at a wholesale price of twenty thousand Eurodollars a piece, so they weren't cheap at all. It was also a modified QianT Sandevistan that I had installed in Johnny before he left back to Night City, and I had duplicated the same neural tissue biosculpt treatment that Dr Taylor gave me as well so long ago. Johnny would have to practise with his Sandy quite a bit, as at first it was limited to about half boost while he was using it.
I had programmed it to slowly go to full speed after he used it enough, so I somewhat paradoxically prescribed him to use it at least five times a day. Sandys were harder on the body due to some of the adrenal modifications than a Kerenzikov, the latter being harder on the mind, so normally you only used a Sandy when you actually had to, but I felt that acclimatisation was important. Johnny seemed to be accepting the implant fairly well, but I just didn't know without a chance to inspect him on a weekly basis. The basis of his desire to be faster and better was a little suspect-the truth was that you would never be good enough for everything to go right, but I felt his mental hygiene was pretty good when he left my clinic.
Dr Reynolds hummed and finally nodded, "Alright. What time frame do you want for this procedure? So long as you follow all of my post-installation directives and you have no disassociative episodes, we can keep everything in-house, at least."
"As soon as possible. Here are the specs for the cyberbrain, including a slightly modified installation procedure that needs to be followed," I told him, sending him a file, and sat back another five minutes in silence as he reviewed it.
"Looks more or less spec, if a bit more highly integrated... okay, this is fine, I think. Let's plan on next Monday then at nine o'clock in the morning. That will give me a few days to review everything," he said in a considering tone.
I regained consciousness but was blind for a moment, then a spinning MoorE Technologies logo appeared in my view. The logo was a little bit weird, and was a simplified representation of The Wild Hunt, with the huntsman's face dominating the logo, with the other faeries depicted in the background.
The boot up sequence of my new operating system was quite quick, and my vision changed to merely me having my eyes closed. My Kiroshis were still in auto-switch mode, so they quickly switched vision modes until they found one, infrared, which displayed the most detail. I was in a hospital room in medsurge, recovery, as I expected.
I sighed as I saw an absolutely stock and clean operating system. It was too much to ask that all of my apps and configuration options from Biotech would transfer over to the new MoorE system. No Corporation would make it easy to switch away from their product, after all. Thankfully, I had already backed up all of my data and reverted my OS to factory defaults before the operation.
Well, while I was stuck lying here, I may as well start configuring things. I would examine everything for hidden rootkits and the like, as well. I had already done an in-depth, near-forensic examination of the filesystem on the cyberbrain before installation, but there was always the possibility that Dr Reynolds installed something surreptitiously. If he had, he and I would have some words.
I checked the functionality of all of my cybernetics. The Kerenzikov was working perfectly, and my cyberdeck started up after negotiating and handshaking with the new OS. My data storage implant was reporting okay, but the only file on it was an extremely large encrypted file. My entire filesystem, which I encrypted with a large password, just in case Dr Reynolds took the opportunity to try to download all of my files while I was unconscious. He would have had temporary superuser access to my new OS after he installed it, and all the gene-locked implant cared about was that I was allegedly the same person.
It really wasn't that great from a security standpoint, I felt.
From everything I could tell, the surgery went fine, although I had to say I had been quite nervous. It was probably the same feeling a pilot would have while flying in a plane as a passenger. Dr Reynolds was one of the best surgeons on the west coast, and I had certainly paid enough for that much expertise. But I didn't really like trusting other people with my life in their hands, which was something my surgeon-directed therapist would likely find interesting.
I would have to see this quack twice a week for at least six months, then possibly down to once a week for another six months. I think it was kind of a waste of time, especially since I would have to censor myself and pretend to be Dr Hasumi, but it was still kind of fun and interesting thinking about roleplaying all of Dr Hasumi's secrets, which I knew quite a few.
I opened my eyes and glanced around, my eyes shifting back to the normal visual spectrum as I sat up. Tilting my head left and right, I felt what I had to get used to the most was my head massed about half again as it used to, so it felt kind of like I was a baby with a giant, heavy head.
A cheerful-looking female nurse walked into the room, "Dr Hasumi, you're awake." I wanted to roll my eyes. She had my running vital signs, including a stream from my biom, so of course, she would know the second I regained consciousness.
This wasn't like my old world, where after serious brain surgery, I would remain in the hospital for days or weeks. Here, the nurse went through a series of standard tests for post-neural patients, verified that there was no scarring and that the new implant worked properly. After that, I was quickly discharged. I didn't even have to see Dr Reynolds again; I merely talked to him briefly on a vidcall.
As I took a cab back home, I realised how much I missed Delmain cabs. My cabby today was an old man who was both surly and had Moldovan and Romanian folk music playing on the car's speakers at near full blast. The AI driver, Del, was both cheerful as well as quiet.
I could immediately detect when I entered what I considered "my territory." Things were a little cleaner, all of the street lights worked on account that I paid the city services employees under the table to ensure that they fixed them. That wouldn't be enough to get it done, actually, as I also had to protect them from being damaged again. A bribe might get the city services people to replace them the first time, but they wouldn't keep doing so if they all got shot out right away.
I had really missed an opportunity here. I was leasing my building. I should have included an option to buy it, as just my presence here was increasing the value of all of the real estate nearby. I did end up buying one of the empty warehouses that weren't quite in Chinatown. I had, thankfully, secured this deal for ennies before it became known I was having my security drones and, occasionally, people patrol the area. I figured I could easily quadruple that investment, even if I didn't improve the building very much.
David was alone inside my apartment, which meant that Gloria must be either at school or at the hospital working a practicum. She was very good at the practical side of nursing but occasionally struggled with the academic portions until I diagnosed her with a type of learning disability that affected some kinds of rote memorisation. It was easily treated by a similar memory co-processor to mine. Doing neurosurgery on full-borgs was a painless and simple process, too.
After that, she rocketed up to one of the best academic students in the cohort that was admitted at the same time she was. Things like that always made me smile and were one of the reasons, beyond the fact that I was pretty sure my power pushed me along, that I loved cybernetic and biological augmentations to the human body. They could easily solve so many problems a person had.
"Hey, Doctor H," David said as he was playing video games in my living room. He had VR goggles on and haptic feedback gloves on his hands, which were swinging wildly, as if he had a sword in his hand. He preferred playing here as my net connection was a direct fibre optic connection to the local net provider. The net connection at home was slower and had more latency, as the connection went through the normal municipal network service, and not my private provider.
"David," I said as I easily ducked under a swing, watching him slice some imaginary enemy in slow motion as I made my way into my kitchen to make myself a snack. Although it wasn't strictly speaking necessary to fast before general anaesthesia here, it was still a pretty good idea, so I was quite hungry.
He must have gotten to a stopping point after a few minutes as he pulled off the VR goggles and took off the haptic gloves, and grinned, "What's for dinner?"
I groaned and went back to the refrigerator and grabbed some more chicken breasts, "Chicken piccata with pasta." Although, since I didn't have any capers, it was probably better described as lemony-wine-sauteed butterflied chicken breast. But David was an ignorant little boy and wouldn't know any better, so I could call it whatever I wanted!
