I absently patted his head once or twice before I focused on my work. I knew he was a honeytrap, the way he shifted from the attempted seduction to more of an open provider of platonic affection, or kind of otōto template. It happened a bit too fast for it to be anything else, but this kind of avenue of attack was actually quite effective on me. If anything, it made me feel bad for poor Yuki.
If I ever had to flee Arasaka as Hasumi, I would try to kidnap him and then Stockholm him over a period of time, I decided. Wait... that was bad, right? No, Taylor! You shouldn't kidnap people! Except, I didn't really have high hopes for his future if I did flee successfully, so it would be kind of like saving him, wouldn't it?
Shaking my head, I focused back on my work. Although I wouldn't have the second series of lifeforms ready for today's meeting, we already had promising enough demonstrations using the first that Arasaka had greenlit a trial plant using the technology in Hokkaido, with the input being mainly recycled materials. Still, I thought we could increase the effectiveness quite a lot.
The way the original researchers designed a type of novel lifeform, even if it was just a bacteria that could break down metals without using some chemical oxidation process, was actually inspired. The entire reason we find metals as a material useful is because it is difficult to cut, mar or damage them. But, they went so far to avoid using any mechanism to avoid corrosion that they forgot that corrosion is very effective, and if harnessed properly, I thought that the system speed could be increased an order of magnitude with the two most common metals, namely alloys of steel and aluminium.
You wouldn't want to use corrosion as a primary process because you would be left with a bunch of metallic-oxide dust that you would have to re-smelt like they were ore which was energy intensive and the opposite of what the project was calling for, but using corrosion as a kind of cutting force only a couple of molecules wide would be very effective at separating out the metals into the end product, which appeared to be a kind of metallic sand.
The few oxides that this process would generate would be discarded, and you'd be left with fairly pure metals that could be used for any number of purposes, although they would likely remelt them into ingots or bars on site, as dealing with very fine metallic powders could be problematic. That type of engineering wasn't my problem, though.
There were as many ways to corrode metals as there were metals, but this project was focused mainly on steel and aluminium recycling, so that made things a lot easier. I was aware of a biological process to create an enzyme that was very corrosive for both metals, infiltrating itself into the metallic crystalline structure and causing rapid exothermic oxidation, so long as there was oxygen present in enough quantities, of course.
My power had suggested this as a possibility to modify myself with flammable acid blood as a defence mechanism, but it could get a little out of hand sometimes, especially since my cardiovascular system, organs and cybernetics wouldn't be immune from its acidity. It didn't see a problem with that; just change those too!
Still, I could sense it in the back of my mind, purring like a cat, pleased that I was using the enzyme for something useful finally, even if I didn't want totally awesome acid blood for some crazy reason.
Adding the special organelle to this bacteria would be simple, and it wasn't that crazy, either. The bacteria they created was already a thousand times larger than average, so there was a lot of space for additions. It bore a lot of resemblance to the genes expressed for a similar purpose in ants, just turbocharged. Although including this multi-cellular function in a single-celled organism was challenging, it wasn't so challenging that they'd think I was a Goddess of Genetics.
Now just to include some way to both generate the acid only on demand and, more importantly, to neutralise the acid in case of apoptosis or accidental death... I only wanted controlled corrosion, and there were so many bacteria that they would often die during the course of their work.
After working for several hours, Yuki shifted and stood up from his spot next to me, stretching like a cat before glancing at me, " If you want to make it on time, we'll have to start getting ready now."
Frowning, as I wasn't at a particularly good stopping point and felt I could work for another couple of hours, but I nodded and saved all my work and closed down all of the apps I was running before getting up and doing a little stretch of my own. In addition to setting my schedule, Yuki was pretty good at managing my actual time and ensuring I stuck to it, and I let him. I could have set alarms and the like, but I liked giving the impression to everyone that I was a bit of a flighty genius, as it helped people underestimate me.
I raised an eyebrow at the outfit that he had laid out for me, as it was my dressiest option and just slightly low cut enough to display a hint of decolletage. We were having a status meeting with not only my titular boss but one of the Arasaka Vice Presidents today, so I suppose it fit, but before I got into it, I took a quick shower.
We met the Intelligence woman who agreed to sublet one of my aerodynes on the way out to the landing pad, our individual security people staring untrusting at their opposites. I had a team of four with me; it was why I needed the AV-8 instead of the smaller AV-4 or even smaller personal aerodynes, whereas she just had two bodyguards, but they both were heavily augmented. She raised an eyebrow at me and asked, amusedly, " It is odd to see you headed to the office in the morning, Hasumi-san ."
I grinned and said, " We have a meeting with one of the VPs today, so I have to pretend to be a professional." I smoothed down my charcoal-grey skirt to emphasise that before glancing at my chronometer again, "But go ahead and take the AV. We've made a lot better time getting ready than I thought we would; we can wait. " I glanced at Yuki to double-check, who nodded. I suppose he felt the meeting was important; he usually didn't pad the time as much as he had this morning.
The executive smiled and said, "Thank you. I appreciate it," and stepped out into the landing pad, which was attached to the side of a building.
" The spare aircraft is already on its way, Hasumi-sama," Yuki said, so we just stood there waiting. The flight was uneventful, and I met my team, who seemed pretty nervous. I asked one of the administrators, " Are the two demonstrations ready? "
He nodded, " Hai. We didn't have enough room for the second demonstration here, but it's ready in a small warehouse out of town, wired for sight and sound."
I nodded and sighed. I was supposed to be the savant-style genius here; why did I have to come on time? It would have been totally on-brand if I were late or even missed this entirely. I started to give Yuki the side eye for making me come here, to find that he was gone. Frowning, I glanced around to find him bringing me a couple of small pastries and another hot chocolate.
He had some sixth sense of when I was upset, and it seemed his first resort was usually to feed me something. I nibbled on one of the pastries, allowing myself to be calmed, and just sat in one of the chairs for a while to wait.
Thankfully, we didn't have to wait that long. My boss came in, following respectfully behind another man. I recognised him as one of the VPs in charge of research. I sat my half-eaten pastry aside and stood up as he walked directly over to me. He said in a no-nonsense way, " Dr Hasumi. We're both busy, so why don't you tell me what you're showing me today? Be succinct."
Succinct? I could answer him in two words, then. I pointed at the demonstration model on the table, " Robotto-desu. " (It's a robot.) When it was clear that was all I was going to say, both my boss and a few of my team members started getting almost red-in-the-face, looking rather nervous. However, the VP suddenly laughed full-throated and said, " Okay, I deserve that. Slightly less succinctly?"
I nodded and, with a couple of my team members' assistance explained the projects, what made it different from traditional robotics, and the expected savings.
The little spider bots were separated into three different sub-projects. There was the neural tissue-based computational organ and its integration into electronics, the way to program them, and finally, the way to clone neural tissue cheaply.
The actual form of the robot, as small spider, was if anything, superfluous, and I had only chosen it originally because my power really wanted small spider bots. We continued with them because they were small and cheap to build, and surprisingly versatile.
"So, from what you have said, the downside to this type of robotic is that they're more difficult to reprogram?" the VP asked.
I nodded, " More time-consuming and using more expensive hardware, rather than more difficult. One of my team members, Yamamoto-san, was instrumental in the development of what he is calling the Dojo system. So, the robots can be programmed in a slightly abridged subset of the normal Axon programming language that electronic neural nets use today." I gave the man credit unstintingly. I had shown him my system of programming the spider bots, which really had been rather involved and difficult, even if it worked in the end.
He took that system and, along with a few others, designed the Dojo or neural network training and programming device, allowing programmers to use a mostly full-featured AI programming language on the little guys. I had been basically programming them by hand, stringing together the neural net equivalent of machine code, and he spent the time to invent a higher-order language. I authorised a rather sizable bonus for him and smaller bonuses for the rest of the team when they showed me what they had accomplished. I was still impressed today.
The VP nodded, " So it needs a special system to be reprogrammed from a specific task, rather than traditional electronics where it can be done on the fly. How much does this system cost?"
I shrugged, " We built the prototype for about two hundred million, but I expect value and process engineers could lower the cost by at least an order of magnitude. Still, it might be only the largest users of these types of robots would buy such a system; the rest might send in the robots for maintenance to us or some central depot, which could handle the reprogramming if they needed to assign them to a new task." I gave the cost in New Yen, so it was actually about two point five million Eurodollars that we spent. I didn't really think most people would need to reprogram them, anyway. If you bought a hundred small robots to pick up trash and clean and mop your floors, you were unlikely to convert them into security bots. In some way, the fact that they couldn't easily be reprogrammed on the fly could be considered a security feature, as at least your mop-bot couldn't be corrupted to try to shove its mop down your throat by a hacker.
After that, we showed him the live stream of the Spiderbots in action. In one case, they were cleaning an outdoor area up from litter; in another, they were waxing and mopping floors; and in the last case, they were guarding a warehouse, where we had simulated cat burglars breaking in.
Watching one of the cat burglars get tased, the VP asked curiously, " How does it differentiate friend and foe?"
"These small models have to be integrated into a building security system, so it is the security system central computer that designates friend or foe. Similar to some of our lowest-end security bots," I told him, who nodded, " It might be possible to design a larger, more sophisticated system that could perform autonomous identification of enemies in any environment, but really the niche for these systems is their affordability, and such a hypothetical product would tend to compete with our own other products in this sector unnecessarily. They do take autonomous action and even coordinate when they do have an enemy designated though, as you can see when they surrounded that burglar."
He looked thoughtful at that and nodded, "That's a good point." He quietly watched the spiders keep a couple of volunteer "burglars" face down on the ground until they were taken away by security forces before nodding, " I will meet with the President today, and I will recommend a full product launch. I think this will fill a niche. But maybe, we make the cleaning bots... not giant terrifying spiders? We'll want to sell this version to housewives, ne? "
I frowned. I thought they were cute. Still, it was a good point. Right now, the ability to have an actually useful domestic robot was what separated the upper middle class from those lower on the totem pole. If they could be made cheaper while still performing useful domestic duties like cleaning, washing clothes and cooking, then they'd be snapped up by the lower middle class like hotcakes, which was a much larger market segment.
A chicken in every pot and a robot to cook it for you?
September 2067
Night City
Night City International Spaceport
David and I sat by the arrivals exit in the terminal, where we were expecting Gloria's flight to land as a surprise. There was no way she could make it by us and still get her bag from baggage claim, at least.
Finally, I nudged David after I saw Gloria in the distance stepping off a moving walkway. I just snickered as he waved his hands and started running towards her. I couldn't help it. Her hair, they had cut most of it off even though she was in a Gemini.
It didn't actually grow back on its own, the company rightfully thinking that people would prefer to have one length of hair and not have to maintain it. That said, I could cause it to rapidly grow back in the next few days, as people did like to change things up occasionally.
David wasn't too old to not still be a momma's boy. In fact, he might never outgrow that, so he didn't think twice before jumping into Gloria's arms, who spun him around like he weighed nothing. Which, to her, was not inaccurate.
After spinning with David a few times, Gloria walked up while still carrying the boy and grinned at me, "It feels so good to be back! Thank you again for watching David while I was gone. Honestly, I felt better leaving him with you than my mom."
I smiled ruefully and wasn't particularly surprised. Gloria spent longer in Seattle than I did, as apparently there was a significant delay between when the basic indoc class ended and when the basic training class begun. She had wanted to return back to Night City, but Trauma Team wasn't about to pay for extra plane tickets, which were three times as expensive these days with the war going on. It might have been different if they had to pay her hotel fees the entire time, but after you finished indoc they put you in on-base housing, which was more or less free for them.
