When it came time for the actual meal of the flight, I had picked a clam chowder and lobster a week ago when I bought my ticket. Being a native Brocktonite, I would be pretty suspicious of this meal choice anywhere but the East Coast, even in my old world when I was pretty sure the meat would be actual clam and lobster. Here, it was much more questionable, although there was still considerable fishing activity in the world.
With the drop in population and many wars, the ocean biome was one of the few that was actually doing well. Even the hammerhead shark, which was almost extinct in my old world, had a resurgence here.
I sniffed snobbily at the lobster and clam chowder. The lobster was a real lobster, which surprised me. I figured they would have given faux-lobster meat already "deshelled." My seat buddy eyed my meal suspiciously. He had a simple steak that must have been close to five hundred grams, as well as mashed potatoes. I was sure the steak was cloned and vat-grown, but the potatoes might have been real. He said, "This is going to sound weird, but I've never eaten a real lobster. It looks difficult to eat."
"Nah," I said, my accent chip protesting my casual use of language, "It's pretty simple." Then, I expertly twisted off the tail and showed him how easy it was. Only the claws were a little bit tricky, but even then... even with Leviathan imperilling the sea now and then, any girl growing up in Brockton Bay would know how to eat the tastiest of all arthropods! Well, shrimps were really delicious, too.
Back in my old world, the famous Ward Ladybug had been based in New York City, along with Legend, and there were rumours that she owned and operated an entire lobster farm in Staten Island as a hobby. Apparently, her "bug control" extended into all arthropods, not just insects, so she could get a bunch of lobsters to be pleased as punch doing nothing but procreating and getting along with one another.
It was already well-known that she had a huge farm of Australian Darwin's bark spiders and black widows that she used to create very effective, armoured costumes for any Ward that asked, as well as a lot of the Protectorate, too. What a good girl she was.
The clam chowder had been "acceptable" but not good, but I systemically disassembled that lobster in record time. Eating him made me feel quite nostalgic. I sat for the rest of the flight, thinking of home and of Dad.
After we deplaned in Paris, Mr Stewart stopped me from walking off.
"You're headed to London, right? If you like, you can hitch a ride on our private jet. We're leaving as soon as I get there; you won't have to wait hours for the connecting flight," Mr Stewart offered, which I raised an eyebrow at. I guess it wasn't too surprising to fly back on a public supersonic and then have a business jet meet you there so that you didn't have to wait four hours for the next flight.
I'm not sure why he was so polite to me. I considered it but then shook my head, "No. I'm afraid I'll have to decline. As a foreign national and an American citizen, my visa is only valid if I enter the port of entry that I declared in advance. It'd be too much of a hassle to change it, and it would inconvenience you to wait to have customs meet your aircraft on the tarmac when we landed."
He snorted and tapped the side of his nose in a gesture I didn't recognise, "Right, right, Miss Taylor . I hope you enjoy your visit to our humble and rainy island."
My stomach growled a little bit which caused me to blush, "Besides, that lobster was hours ago, and I never had breakfast. I'm going to hit the airport lounge for a more substantial meal." The lobster was quite good but had been a little bit on the small side. It had merely whetted my appetite without actually satiating it.
That caused him to chuckle and nod, "That makes more sense. Well, till next time." Like last time, he walked away humming the melody to Land of Hope and Glory. What an odd man. We had exchanged net addresses this time, though, so I wondered if he would ever contact me. Or I could be the one to call him if I ever needed a Challenger hoverpanzer someday.
An especially bouncy girl in an airport uniform and a shiny bus driver or military-style cap met me as I deplaned and offered to show me around. A couple of other first-class passengers had personalised service like this, as well. I frowned when it appeared that each assistant had not been picked randomly. One of the older ladies had a muscley-looking and very attractive male assistant, while I and the three others had attractive females.
I would have been satisfied with the muscley guy or even no eye candy at all. This wasn't a VR, so it wasn't like they could generate an actual interpersonal ideal for me or anyone else, but people's ideas of attractiveness had incredible amounts of overlap, so just employing a few slightly different attractive people and you could have someone on hand for almost everybody. Taylor Hebert was my real identity, after all, and god knows how much of a profile they had on me from years of watching advertisements and buying products.
Just as you watched an ad in public, so did it also observe you. Eye-tracking systems would notice where you looked and where you didn't, streams would notice what you watched and what you skipped over, purchase history and preference for BDs and films, and all media could be combined with sophisticated psychological models to generate a profile that could be bought by anyone who had a little money. It wasn't even expensive, although I had never bought my own profile because I despaired at what they would claim I did like and did not like.
I let her show me where the airport lounge was but then dismissed her with a large gratuity, watching her walk away. Shaking my head, I walked into the lounge. As I waited for a seat, I heard a gasp, and a girl yelling, "Tay! Holy shit is that you?!"
Blinking, I glanced at the disturbance and saw a girl that was my age, along with what was obviously her parents. She seemed familiar, and I used all of my brainpower to identify her. Jessica Johnson. Jess or JJ, as she liked being called. She was one of my friends at the Militech school in Night City and one of only two people who had actually called me to see how I was doing after Alt-Danny passed away.
She had the appearance and personality of a kind of ditzy, promiscuous girl. She was definitely the latter, but not the former. She was intelligent, perhaps the highest scorer academically in the entire school, and had kept a keen social network, including even NC-Taylor, and people underestimated her at their own peril. NC-Taylor definitely thought that Jess had been more intelligent than herself, although that had been before getting our power.
NC-Taylor didn't go to her parties too often because they were a bit risqué sometimes, but she had been to a couple, and I even had memories of NC-Taylor almost getting to second base with a boy at one of them. NC-Taylor had been a lot more socially subdued, though, after Alt-Mom had passed away and stopped doing many of the expected teenage things.
She had also been the only one to call me more than once. She called me a few times over the years, maybe once a quarter, just to be nice, and we'd talk each time for five minutes or so.
I smiled, turning off my accent chip and waved, "Jess, is that you? What are you doing here?"
She checked with her parents real quick before ushering me over to sit with her so I didn't have to wait for a free table.
"Girl, you are looking good! I thought you had died! You disappeared for years!" she said and then raised an eyebrow as my adaptive firewall stopped a casual hardware probe attempt dead in its tracks. She gave me two thumbs up, grinning, "Nice ICE." NC-Taylor and her had both been "sisters" on the same technical track at school, so this kind of behaviour that I would consider disrespectful from others was tolerated and even expected. I reciprocated and got hardly any more information than she did before she also shut down the scan before it finished.
I did detect that she had upgraded her deck since NC-Taylor had last seen her. She had a Biotech Σ, the same brand that I had bought when I first arrived in this world, but her version was a step up from their entry level. It was a ten thousand Eurodollar deck, which was quite nice for a college student.
NC-Taylor had been training to be a netrunner, while Jessica was training to be more of an engineer, although there was a lot of overlap there. Her parents were rich and higher ranked than Alt-Danny had been, but both were about the same rank as Alt-Mom, both at the Regional Director level for different departments.
She reintroduced me to her parents since it had been a number of years since I met them, and I smiled, deciding to be honest, "I'm here to finalise my education and graduate from University."
Jessica went wide-eyed, and her dad raised an eyebrow, "You're receiving a degree from a European University? Impressive. Which one?"
"Oxford. There were no direct flights from Night City, so I had about a four-hour layover here before I could hop over to Heathrow," I said without bragging, merely stating facts.
"Fucking nova, Tay! Totally preem! Talk about a change from an apartment in Japantown!" Jess said, getting scolded by her mom for her language.
I chuckled, "I still live there, actually, although in a nicer part of the Megabuilding. Are you on vacation?"
Jessica nodded, " Aff . We're headed back to the States now. I was the female Honor Cadet in my class at OCS. I also got admitted to the UCLA engineering program last year. So my mom and dad gave me a trip to Paris as a gift!" That explained her shortened hair. She used to have hair down to her butt, but this was much more in-line with Militech's military regulations for female grooming standards.
Every Militech executive had a reserve commission in their armed forces. So, the fact that she was admitted to OCS prior to even graduating college meant that the Corporation had plans for her. It likely meant she was on a fast track. That she was the Honour Cadet, or highest achieving female cadet, was also a nice feather in her cap.
I raised an eyebrow, "OCS before graduating? Honour Cadet? Wow, Jess, you're killing it. Or should I say, Lieutenant Johnson, eh?"
"Aww, Tay, don't!" she said, although her non-verbal cues were clearly saying, 'Yes, praise me, continue praising me.' Both her parents looked quite proud too, which made me jealous that she had both of them still alive, but I repressed that.
I ate a nice lunch with them and promised that we would catch up together when I got back to the States, although with her in LA and "Taylor" in Night City, it might take a little bit before that could be in person. Still, I thought that I would.
In the past, I had been a victim of imposter syndrome, terrified to interact more than superficially with any of Taylor's old friends, most of which were only fair-weather friends anyway. Jess might still be that, just smarter about it, but even so, that described most people in this world, so I couldn't hold it against her. Besides, it would be useful to have more contacts with Militech, especially ones that were on a fast-track promotion schedule.
We parted as they left to board their flight back to the States, and I waited patiently for my own flight. The trip over was quick, and the only surprise was when I was clearing customs.
"Everything looks to be in order, and I have a digital copy of your weapons permit here if you want me to get that bracelet off your wrist," the customs man said in a friendly tone.
I blinked. Weapons permit? Europe didn't have the second amendment, obviously. Weapons were a lot more restricted over here. I had been a little concerned that they would make me remove my monowire altogether, not accepting me wearing a restriction bracelet that I might hack or remove.
Well, I knew who to thank for that. I'd have to send Gram a Christmas card. I quickly shoved my wrist at him, and he chuckled as he undid the device. I spent a good minute rubbing my wrist. Wearing the bracelets didn't hurt, but still, it was the freedom of now being able to decapitate most people I saw that I appreciated. But if I knew I would have a weapons permit, I would have brought a pistol.
Perhaps there were gun stores in the UK? Probably something like 'John Blasters and Sons, Armourers since 1012 AD' or something.
It was an hour and a half drive to the address Gram's secretary had given me, and by the time I got into the house with all my luggage, I was tired. Not sleepy, exactly, just tired. I slumped into a chair in the living room and just sat there for some time.
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Magna Cum Laude
November 2066
Los Angeles
As I just continued relaxing in a comfortable chair in England, I was still working in Los Angeles. I was tired all over, though, so I was doing some low-intensity managerial work, the kind I usually hated to do, but it was mostly mindless.
However, I was frowning at the data I was reading off a few spreadsheets and a couple of graphs. When I created my factory, I included some automated systems that tracked the efficiency and speed of my manufacturing workers. I didn't have a traditional assembly line; it was more like many cubicle-like stations where workers would perform an operation and then move on. For simplicity's sake and for covering shifts when I had call-outs, all workers were trained on all stages of the assembly, even if they didn't often work every station.
Simple commercial machine-learning systems attached to cameras in the factory could track how long it took for each worker to perform each operation. I had been auditing some business classes on the net, which I found incredibly boring, but in the classes, these metrics were called KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators.
It was basically a way to find slackers and weed them out over time. They used a lot of different and more fancy words to describe it, but that's what the crux of the matter was. This was data that the workers' direct supervisors mainly used, as I didn't generally involve myself in managing any employees except my direct reports, which I kept to an absolute minimum.
However, what I was looking at wasn't individual performance like my supervisors concerned themselves with, but trends of everyone together. Regardless of the individual, performance started to go down the longer the shift lasted. I mean, that made sense, especially if you stretched it out to the absurd. Someone's productivity would be zero or negative if you made them work fifty hours in a row, for example. That was obvious, but what wasn't obvious was how quickly this started happening.
