I blinked and thought about it before nodding. "Yeah, I think she would." I started up my car, the CrystalDome activating and rendering the outside onto the bullet-resistant screens inside the cabin before quickly shifting into gear, and I was in third gear by the time I was out of the parking lot.
We finished our call, and I started driving home, but by the time I got back to Japantown, Gloria called me and asked me if I could come over to her place, to which I agreed.
Ringing her doorbell, she answered and seemed to be vibrating in excitement, yelling, "I got the job! Taylor, I got the job I really wanted!"
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Get your ass to Mars
June 2067
Tokyo, Japan
Arasaka Research Centre, Clinic
As I stared at Yuki floating peacefully in the nanomachine vat, I was struck with a thought. Was I fated to always augment my pets? I had added experimental respirocytes to Lord Butterbutt, too. Wait, Yuki wasn't my pet . Also, as an aside, I didn't think it was, strictly speaking, moral to keep human beings as pets, either. But that didn't matter, since he wasn't my pet!
Nodding, I continued. Besides, these weren't experimental anyway, so it couldn't be said that I was experimenting on him like the other pets . I discovered that Yuki had no ongoing biosculpt treatments, although I suspected he had his looks modified recently. He was a bit too pretty for it to be natural, but as far as augmentations were concerned, he only had a pair of fancy optics, a high-end Arasaka operating system and a special high-gain radio with included encryption module and emergency locator beacon.
That wasn't enough, especially if he was going to be around me. Just being in the crossfire of my security teams might cause him to be gibbed, so I insisted that he get at least nanosurgeons, an enhanced immune system and the ballistic skin weave. He flatly refused any type of cybernetics that affected his looks, which I found amusing. But Sakura Hasumi probably wouldn't have liked some pretty boy that had real obvious subdermal armour or cybernetic limbs, I supposed.
She was the type to appreciate the gap moe in a pretty boy being really strong, but only if it didn't affect his prettiness.
I had already performed the surgery to install the nanosurgeon and enhanced immune system organs, and now I was finishing up with the ballistic weave and muscle and bone lace. Yuki wasn't interested in being any stronger himself, but just having much more robust bones would be a huge survival advantage. Someone with muscle and bone lace could jump out of a third-story window and probably not break anything, whereas someone who didn't have it would probably break their everything.
The door behind me opened, and I narrowed my eyes because I had block scheduled this clinic for the next few hours. The door should have been locked. I glanced back to see who the intruder was.
" Those are nice eyes," an amused and familiar voice, apparently approving of my killer instinct. My eyes softened somewhat; at least I knew that this guy was authorised to be here. The voice belonged to my nominal boss, a man named Kimura Koichi, who walked into the room and waited until the door closed before glancing at the floating Yuki and asking, again amused, " Doing some upgrades? "
" Anyone who expects to be near me should be at least shrapnel-resistant, Kimura-san," I replied with a sigh. " If you disagreed, then why do I have to pay so much for security?"
He shrugged, " You're not wrong, probably. I'm in the building for another few hours, so I wanted to touch base with you, and this is as private a room as exists around here. Let's talk about your two ongoing projects. I liked your idea to look through old, abandoned projects, but couldn't you have picked a different one?"
I frowned, " I could have, but I'm fairly optimistic for success with the biometals one. What's wrong?"
" Nothing, I suppose. It's just that this project wasn't involved in our Kiji faction at all, and all the people who backed it are still around. I would have preferred you to pick one of the ones that would make us look better," he sighed.
I snorted. I knew that the factions that had built up around various Arasaka scions weren't that big a deal, but I did know that I was hired under the auspices of Hanako Arasaka's faction, but she was a recluse, so I didn't know what it really meant. I didn't think most people who worked for her did, either.
When he saw that I wouldn't comment further, he nodded, " Now, your next project. I can't say I see the purpose of making quasi-biological robots. They aren't really cyborgs like we'd think of them, and they don't do anything that traditional robotics cannot accomplish."
He didn't? I didn't believe him. This had to be a test. So, I nodded, " That's true, but in small autonomous robots, over thirty per cent of the BOM is the neural network chips and processors. Also, nobody is building new chip fabs right now, except small boutique outfits in space, so the capacity to produce these chips is an issue. That's why we don't normally see small autonomous or semi-autonomous robots for reasonable prices. The economies aren't there. I think we could not only reduce the cost dramatically, causing these robots to be economically viable but do so in a way that wouldn't compete with the limited supply chain for our other larger and more profitable robots." If I had wanted to build one of my spider bots the traditional way, it would have taken the same or at least a similar specialised neural network system-on-a-chip that was used in the Arasaka bipedal combat robots, and supplying these chips was the bottleneck when producing robots.
He grinned, " So you do see the big picture, too. Good. I want you to prioritise this project. I agree with everything you said. But these robots won't go crazy, will they?"
I paused and then gave a Gallic shrug, " They didn't with the prototypes I made in LA, but I mainly sourced the neural tissue from gangsters that tried to attack my clinic or factory, not cloned tissue." That was a lie, actually. I had cloned almost all of it, but I didn't want to admit that I had most of this project already on lock since it involved too much Tinkertech.
He seemed not exactly reassured, but just the possibility that robots might go crazy wasn't a reason that Arasaka would stop a project. He'd probably just donate the first several thousand bots programmed to dispose of trash in some country Arasaka needed a tax break in. Along with an iron-tight release of liability if the robots reclassified toddlers as trash and acted accordingly. But I was sure that wouldn't happen if I was careful with the neural-network training system.
" When did you become an expert in genetics, anyway?" he asked curiously.
Ah. I'd have to step carefully here. Dr Hasumi's PhD involved research to make taste and smell in VR simulations more realistic, so it wouldn't be incorrect to call her specialised in neuroscience, but that didn't explain my broad expertise across all life science.
As such, my development of the sleep inducer wasn't that unusual, as it depended on an advanced knowledge of neuroscience to work. I shrugged, glancing over at the floating Yuki, " I've always had an interest. I took a number of advanced genetics classes at University but decided on a different speciality in the end. But I've always been an autodidact, especially in the life sciences. It was spending almost a year as a prisoner that, surprisingly, gave me a number of unwitting experimental subjects and a new outlook on life. That's how I developed the sleep induction technology, actually. Random seizures were pretty normal, I suppose, for my captors, so they didn't even really notice. My goal was to put them all to sleep simultaneously and then murder them, but I was rescued before I could put the plan into action."
" It's interesting how that then leads you here," he mused, then chuckled, " It's funny you should mention seizures. Intel suggests that Militech has already tried building a prototype based on this technology, and it reportedly causes seizures, so they're not releasing it and staying mum about it. Analysis?"
I shrugged, " Not surprising if they are trying to reverse engineer the system based on how it affects one person's brain and then extrapolating it and expecting it to work the same on other subjects' brains. This would be the logical first step to trying to understand how it works. I bet they're trying this approach while simultaneously working on defeating the DRM as separate independent projects. Absent espionage, I would expect them to have success on the DRM attack surface much sooner. Still, it could be useful as a way of inducing various types of seizures, I suppose."
My boss gaped, " Why would you want a way to induce seizures?"
"For research purposes. Detailed analysis of brain activity while a seizure is happening and during the postictal state is kind of rare. You have to wait for it to happen with a subject known to experience seizures hooked up to all sorts of equipment. Very time-consuming, just waiting, like watching a tea kettle while it boils. A way to safely, or at least mostly safely, induce seizures would speed up research on all seizure-related illnesses," I said mildly, as I turned back to adjust a setting on the vat Yuki was asleep in briefly. He was due to come out in a couple of hours, so I was about done here.
He sighed, got a queer look on his face, and said, " Honestly, you brain doctors kind of scare me. I have a pure engineering background." I heard that a lot, and I didn't understand. The body was just a kind of wet machine, after all. It wasn't magical and operated under the same limitations of physics as other machines. Then he nodded, " Okay. These two projects are good, but after this, I'd appreciate it if you focused at least one project on your primary neuroscience focus. The other can be whatever you want. But that was the main reason you were hired, and I'll receive shit if you don't at least try to expand your expertise in this area."
I raised an eyebrow. That wasn't mentioned in my employment contract, and I specifically had the freedom to research whatever I wanted. I wondered who in our Kiji faction wanted a more specialised neuroscientist. I made a noncommittal noise, " I don't make any promises. But what area of neuroscience are our bosses interested in? It is as vast as any other specialty."
"Well, you've already got some expertise in the senses, and now sleep. Perhaps you could find something that would interest you in the realm of consciousness?" I snorted. This man obviously didn't know much about the brain. That was like suggesting a physicist might be interested in figuring out the unified field theory. He noticed my scepticism and corrected himself, " Or even memory. Or advancing the way skill chips work, perhaps making them less static. It's really up to you, just some ideas."
Memory, eh? I wasn't about to provide technology for Arasaka in the realm of parsing or extracting memory from a brain. I had that technology already privately. As someone with a lot of secrets that I didn't want anyone else to know, I would prefer if nobody else had this tech. Allegedly we had the Soulkiller, but I didn't have the clearance to know anything about it, and the second word was key to that hypothetical tech. It killed you, burning out critical parts of your brain while making a destructive copy. Allegedly. I'd have liked very much to do a pathological examination of someone who had allegedly been "soul killed."
However, if they had some way to copy a brain without it killing someone, then they'd likely immediately use it on all of their important people, including me. And I didn't want any copy of my memories being interrogated or investigated in software. The fact that I wasn't really Sakura Hasumi was the least of my secrets.
The boss didn't stay too long after that. I wasn't too concerned about his attempt to steer my research, either. Really, he was barely a boss. He was closer to the type of managers that idols had, whose main purpose was to handle my needs and keep me out of trouble. I got the impression that he was a talent manager rather than some great businessman. He already mentioned he had three similar people to me under his supervision, although I didn't know what kind of focus these other prodigies had. Still, I would play nice, if I could.
I glanced around and then left too. Yuki still had a while longer to cook. Perhaps I would offer free biosculpt to all my workers, too. It'd be a nice little bennie.
June 2067
Japantown, Night City
Taylor's Clinic
At the same time that my boss was interrupting me in Tokyo, one of the Tyger Claw security managers called me back in Night City.
" Thank you for telling me," I finished in Japanese and disconnected the call. It was the middle of the night, but the Tyger Claws called me as soon as they saw a Borg walk into the building. I was sure that they had identified him as my patient and were calling to confirm that I did expect him to show up in the middle of the night.
It wasn't just the Clouds that made the Tyger Claws money, the entire Megabuilding was a golden goose, but it only continued to be so when it was kept a safe place to live, work and shop. I had the suspicion that the Tyger Claws might even own part of the building as they certainly ran all of the building management, but even if they didn't, you could only provide "protection" services if the extorted party was actually at least somewhat protected. Anytime they saw an obviously dangerous entity come in, they followed them to make sure they didn't go cyberpsycho or something. In this case, they had recognised him but wanted confirmation.
I was breaking the law by treating Gloria's "acquaintances", but I didn't really care these days. I already did the same for a number of Tyger Claws, and they weren't really that great of people-even if I only allowed the less objectionable members in my clinic. Plus, weird secret society members knew to keep their mouths shut.
I put on a white lab coat. I mainly wore them to give people what they expected to see, as expectations were powerful. They saw what they thought should look like a doctor, so they immediately put me in that category mentally. It helped a lot when you ran a quasi-legal clinic. Amusingly enough, I hardly ever wore such things in my day job as an actual doctor . Instead, I just wore scrubs when I was performing surgeries or business casual when I was doing consults. Residents had scrubs of a specific colour in order to be easily identified, though.
I would skip the stethoscope around my neck this time, there were no biological sounds I would need to listen to on this patient, and very few full-body replacement users were stupid. The door gong sounded, and a screen with cameras popped up in my visual field. A generic-looking Alpha-class Borg was standing outside. Nodding, I tested the security systems I had installed and then let him in.
