"Dr Hebert... I was very excited when you said my body was done. I can't wait to get back in there," the man said as he came in. I nodded. I had already met this man, which was the only reason I was agreeing to meet him alone. I ended up buying two gently used Alpha-class bodies to use as "loaners" when I discovered how much work needed to be done on both the IEC Wingman and the Militech Eclipse. It was an expense of about a hundred thousand Eurodollars, but I figured I would customise them and then sell them later. I expected to make a profit on the purchase, and in the meantime, the opportunity to study in-depth, with no time pressures, how the IEC Wingman and the Militech Eclipse was constructed was priceless.
The latter was still in bits in my back area, which I had converted into a workroom. There just wasn't enough space to run a small pharmacy and clinic in here, as well as have a lot of room to work on electronics and my own personal experiments. I followed Gloria's example and rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on the fortieth floor, although I often slept in a comfortable chair in the back when I didn't want to go back upstairs.
I motioned for him to take a seat and forwarded diagnostic wireless requests, and handed him a small interface cord, saying in mild disapproval, "There were years of accumulated squawks to go through on the maintenance punch list. And your Kerenzikov was starting to break down. Your biopod itself had a number of faults, and I think maybe you would have gone crazy or died soon. Or gone crazy and died."
He chuckled uneasily, approved the diagnostic request and connected the proferred cord to the interface socket on his body's head, "Yeah... I kind of thought something was seriously wrong. My head feels a lot better, too; I'm not snapping at everyone, and I'm not seeing things that aren't there anymore, either... I think. But living this slow is really starting to grate on me..." His optics shifted and zoomed in, staring at the back of my neck where my own Kerenzikov was partially visible on the back of my neck, "You must know what I'm talking about."
I did. I had, a few times, disabled my Kerenzikov in order to perform maintenance in the past. Now, though, I was just using a commercial off-the-shelf QianT version since I felt that I might be unable to perform the weekly maintenance I was forced to do to boost my old Kang Tao system. When you got acclimatised to using a Kerenzikov, especially a higher factor one, you tended to get used to using a lot of the free time when interacting with norms to do other things, so when you found yourself bereft of the boost, you seemed flighty and ditzy, almost as though you had extreme ADHD. I said with some sympathy, "Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. Sorry, I couldn't get a Kerenzikov unit designed for a traditional biopod to loan you on short notice. They're somewhat more controlled than even the regular kind. Despite that, you seem quite a bit more... grounded today. That is good. Any dysmorphia? Hallucinations?"
It wasn't that surprising that an augmentation that would, more than any single other, make Borgs even more dangerous was more controlled. It didn't mean that I couldn't get them, though, but it needed a bit of a lead time, and I had to use my black market connections. I was fortunate that my Kerenzikov worked with my system, as I was, from a legal and technical perspective, classified as a biopodder as well. I had made sure that compatibility existed before I bought them, though. Although a cyberbrain user still had a regular organic body, so it needed a full, normal Kerenzikov, it also had the connections to the brain that had to interface correctly with my "biopod."
I glanced at the readouts of the internal brain monitor that was included on his biopod, which I had repaired during the last session. His brain activity seemed a lot better, but still not what I would call healthy. Judging from the rapid activity shifts based on his sensory cortex input, he still suffered a bit from hypervigilance, even here. But he was a lot better than the borderline psychotic I had treated the last time. With a properly functioning biopod, all of the brain inflammation was gone too. That was probably what had been causing his hallucinations.
He nodded his robot head and said, "No more than I expected, and as for hallucinations... I don't think so. The medication you gave me seemed to have helped a lot, too. Are you sure there are no side effects I should be worried about?"
I shook my head. I had started all of the Borgs I had seen on the same medication I used myself. I called it my antidepressant, but in reality, the method of action was closer to a mood stabiliser. It didn't really prevent you from being depressed; it just stopped your depression from feeding on your depression in an uncontrollable spiral. It worked the same way if you were really paranoid or manic, too. It wasn't a silver bullet, but it had worked so well that I felt really bad at myself for keeping it a secret for years, so I decided to release it into the public domain as soon as I could do so without being tracked down.
Although it wouldn't really attract much attention if I just released it to the world and claimed it was really nice, so I was writing a legitimate scientific paper about its efficacy, along with step-by-step directions to synthesise it. I was pretty sure someone would try to replicate the findings if, just out of boredom, eventually, and discover it wasn't just bullshit. At that point, it would be manufactured for sure, and I hoped the fact that everyone had the details and it would be unpatentable would keep the price reasonable.
It should be unpatentable since I was releasing it into the public domain, but I suspected a number of companies would lie and claim that they had developed it and the release was by a disgruntled employee. But they'd have no proof, and that would just cause other companies to do the same thing, so it wouldn't really matter and should stay relatively cheap.
Patents were an interesting facet of "international law" here, basically because there was no international law. The United Nations didn't survive the DataKrash. Although it didn't survive, some of its tendrils, like NetWatch, which was founded under a UN charter, did. The World Trade Organisation did, theoretically, exist, and they were the ones who were supposed to adjudicate patent disagreements, for example, the one that was occurring between Japan and the NUSA involving my own tech. But in reality, the WTO was almost as toothless as the defunct UN.
In practice, however, it was more a case of détente. Arasaka had taken over legal responsibility to protest the invalidation of my NUSA patents, but that was somewhat hampered by the fact that Arasaka was banned from the continent in the first place. From what I could tell, though, there would eventually be some sort of accommodation. There had to be some sort of settlement in the end because NUSA corporations had too many patents of their own that other nations were already looking at with avarice. You ignored the patent rights of this foreign company, so why shouldn't we do the same for you? This was especially the case of the Europen Community, who had the most patents and therefore the most to gain for keeping the present status quo.
Due to the possibility of Mutually Assured Destruction, intellectual property version, I was advised that some settlement would undoubtedly be made, but perhaps not for a year or two. Arasaka and I would likely get a fair bit of money from it, as the two damaged parties, because if it didn't happen, I'm sure Arasaka would love to start infringing on some NUSA patents, and since that would cause a similar response, the entire patent "system", which operated mainly on the level of gentleman's agreements, would implode.
I elaborated, "There should be no negative side effects. It's a very safe medication. I've included it in the personal pharmacopoeia in your Wingman, taking out most of the harmful drugs, although I refilled the stimulants and depressants as a courtesy; just remember to use them in moderation." Not surprisingly, a body designed for a fighter pilot had a complicated pharmacopoeia that could administer any of about three dozen drugs, but most of them were bad news. Stuff that would heighten aggression, dampen empathy, and others that made one more likely to follow orders and the like.
I suppose that might be necessary if you ordered someone to nuke a city or something, but it wasn't really a good idea if your goal was the mental stability of the individual. The nice thing about existing as mostly only a brain was that psychoactive drugs were very economical! There was no the rest of your body that metabolised them. He would have years and years' worth of my mood stabiliser before he would need to return to get some more, and perhaps he wouldn't need it anymore at that point.
I probably didn't need it anymore, myself, but I kept taking it once a week anyway, just in case, because it had so few side effects.
He grinned, "Did you make the other change to my body we talked about?"
I gave him a side-eye and nodded, "Yes. Although, that, you will have to pay full price for, as we agreed. However, the Mr Studd unit was installed successfully."
He snorted, "Heh-heh... unit..." Ah, yes, the maturity of most males shines through even when you're a Borg. Still, that request was a good sign. The fact that he was interested in sexual activity was good from a psychological perspective. He turned to me and said, "You know... this isn't a hallucination, really... but sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm not and never have been a human, and if all of my memories were just fabrications... or if everything is just some sort of sick simulation."
I raised an eyebrow. That wasn't really a healthy thought, at least the first bit, although I sometimes wondered about the latter myself, whether the world was just some weird simulation. I had gotten more in touch with my power to the point that I could, if I focused all three brains on the matter, even ask it questions. It answered in single words that were much more than words, and I had already made a query about this subject in the past.
It's reply wasn't that comforting, namely:
[SIMULATION]
[POSSIBLE]
It had given me a slight headache as there were tens of thousands of impressions attached to each of those words, and taken in aggregate, it seemed to think that it was possible, but it was also metaphysical and that it was pointless to dwell on so long as we didn't notice obvious inconsistencies in reality-in other words, not that helpful and precisely what I thought about the subject, too. So it didn't know anything more than I did.
"Well, I can assure you that you have a real human brain in there," I told him, tapping the Alpha's body, but made a shrugging gesture at the rest, "The rest is metaphysics, though. It is possible we live in a vast simulation, but if so, so what? From our perspective, there is no distinction between such an existence and so-called true reality." I hummed and said, "If you like, I can scroll a virtu of this surgery; it will include me physically inspecting your grey matter before installing you back in your old body."
He blinked his optics at the offer and then nodded, "You know, that would be kind of interesting. I'd like that if you don't mind."
I shrugged again. I'd have to make sure I didn't have this body look at anything confidential while I did the surgery, but it was no big deal, "Sure. Please shut down all systems in preparation for body transfer."
The surgery could barely be called that, as biopods were mostly plug-and-play, but everything went fine. My patient was very much happy to be back in his original body, although I never pressed him for his story as to why he was in it in the first place. My best guess was he was a fighter pilot for some Corp that went belly-up, but I didn't really know.
I charged him up front for the Mr Studd, but I was allowing him to pay for the repairs and maintenance of his body in instalments. Really, I didn't care for the money, but like a lot of people in his situation, he had a lot of pride.
But now, I was starting to have some ideas about how I could be compensated for all this mostly unpaid work I was doing, and it involved my soon-to-be building in Pacifica. The bank had gotten back to me, and they were keen to unload the building before any more damage could be done. I'd end up paying about five per cent of its nominal value before everything went to shit, or about two and a half million Eurodollars. The fact that I paid cash on the barrelhead sealed the deal quickly.
After that was finalised, I would have to both dispose of or evict the squatters and keep the building somewhat protected from similar people in the future. I wasn't naive enough to think that I could save the entire Pacifica sector, but I thought that I could maybe do similar things that I did in Chinatown in LA. But to do so, I would need a lot of firepower.
It would be difficult to source as many autonomous combat robots as I had in LA, although Kiwi had managed to take nine of them from my warehouse when she fled the city. I bought them back from her at almost full price, which she tried to argue against until I told her that I had already claimed all of them on my insurance and was just paying her the money that my insurance policy paid out to me. The rest of the robots were seized by the city and Militech, and I was sure they were now working for them in some manner.
When she realised that, she stopped trying to talk me out of paying her. That payout divided between all of her men amounted to a nice bonus, I suspected.
I had already tried to purchase some drones from Militech here in Night City, but they didn't have a lot in stock, even for a former member of the Militech family like myself. The sales rep had told me that Militech was not shipping any further stock into either Night City or the Free States "until the current unpleasantness was over."
I had managed to find some similar hardware from Kang Tao, who would ship, but the lead time with the quasi-blockades and worldwide demand for military products was almost six months, so I had purchased them, but it still wouldn't be enough if Pacifica deteriorated as much as I thought it would.
As such, the more I thought about it, the more I was considering starting a venture for subsidised apartments for Borgs, specifically the Borgs I had treated. They would socialise with each other and probably start something equivalent to a gang just out of self-defence and this would also protect my building. I wouldn't need to go to the building too often, either, but would probably do so enough to provide house calls to ensure that my "boys" weren't going off the deep end.
