I grabbed her luggage so she could hold David's hand while we walked out to a van I had borrowed from Kiwi. Both of our cars were only coupes, and David was a bit old for the old sitting in your lap routine. As I pulled out of the airport grounds, I asked, "How did you like seeing a new city though?" Gloria had lived in Night City almost her entire life.
"It was pretty nova, actually. Although, I kept getting nervous about being away from my home charging station," she admitted. I guess that was something that would be more of a worry for her or anyone that was a Borg. You wouldn't die if you ran out of power, but you would be trapped alone in a mostly black void with only minimal life support and sensors running. I had wireless induction charging ports in the headrests of most of my chairs, but I was still mostly biologically powered. My cyberbrain didn't use much electricity, and the standard low-voltage wireless charging was fine for it. I didn't need a dedicated high voltage, high amperage charging system like Gloria did.
Still, I raised an eyebrow, "There wasn't a Borg charging port in your room?"
She shook her head, "No. Yes. Well, not at first. In the hotel they got me at indoc, there wasn't. The training centre had a couple that I could use during breaks, and I can go a few days without charging, so it wasn't a big deal. The room at base housing did have one, and of course, there was one during basic."
After that, she related all she had done during her "break" and how she acted like a tourist around Seattle, seeing the sights and spending the company-provided per diem. We both oohed and ahhhed at appropriate parts of the story, and looked over some pictures and videos she had taken.
Suddenly, and in conjunction with a burst of automatic weapons fire, the van was bumped and jostled from an impact to the left rear. I quickly disconnected the auto-drive and prepared to take defensive driving manoeuvres while Gloria grabbed my short barreled carbine that was leaning behind my seat, shoving David's head down with her free hand briefly as she worked the charging handle to verify that it was loaded.
However, as I hit the brakes, the car that hit us overtook us on the left-hand side, and Gloria was about to lean outside the window to give them what for, but then we both realised that they weren't actually shooting at us. The car was full of obvious Animals gang members, and they were shooting at a car that also quickly overtook us on the opposite side. We just happened to be in the middle of their street battle in the middle of the interstate.
Frowning but not displeased that I wasn't being attacked, I slowed way down, moving over two lanes; I glanced at Gloria, who seemed a bit confused as well. I grinned at her and said, "Good reflexes, Gloria."
By now, David popped his face out and wanted to see what was happening, but Gloria pushed him down again, saying, "There could be some stray shots, stay down."
This caused him to protest that he was a big boy now, and Gloria immediately agreed that he was "her big boy", and she started pinching him, causing him to squeal and flail away, laughing as his mom tickled him. The Animals had succeeded in running their foes off the road but ended up colliding with the safety divider that separated the median and opposite lanes of traffic.
If I was alone and in my car, I would have been tempted to grab one of the grenades I kept in the glove compartment and gently lob one or two out the passenger window as I passed, but not only did I not have any here, but that could be very dangerous. This van was much less bullet-resistant than my Type 66, and David was here. Instead, I took the exit right before their crash and gave their incipient dismounted street battle a wide berth.
I had thought that someone had been after us at first, but no, it was just a normal day in Night City. Gloria didn't have to report to work until Monday, but today she was going to do all sorts of Mom and Son things, like go shopping and see a film, so I wasn't planning on being a third wheel, but I couldn't help but add while we got close to her Megabuilding, "Oh... and David has a little girlfriend."
Gloria looked shocked but slightly amused, but David looked inconsolable, yelling, "Auntie Taylor, noooo! She isn't my girlfriend! She is my ally!"
It felt good being called "Auntie Taylor", so I just sat there pleased as he explained that this person was just a girl who happened to be a friend and ally at school. They worked together to prevent the kids in the grades ahead from stealing their desserts at lunch and to have a chance to play with the cool toys at recess.
Gloria was furious that older kids were "bullying" David, and I would be too, except I had already discussed anti-bullying tactics with David. He glanced at his mom and rapidly shook his head when she threatened to go down to the school to complain and turned to me with desperation in his eyes, saying, "Explain to her, please!"
I looked at David with some sympathy, and I could see both sides of the coin here. Frankly, it was bullying and more than that; it was bullying that was sanctioned by the school itself. That was my personal bugbear, so I should be incensed. But I also had a lot of NC-Taylor's memories and my own reading of pediatric psychology and pedagogy and knew it wasn't so simple as that. Moreover, I knew that if Gloria followed through on her threat, things would go poorly.
I finally opened my mouth and tried to explain, "Every inch of his school is under constant audio-visual surveillance. The teachers already know about it and intentionally don't do anything, so long as it doesn't reach a certain point." David nodded rapidly again, but that seemed to only infuriate Gloria more.
She asked, "What do you mean? Why would the teachers do that? Let bullying stand?!"
"It's a socialisation training strategy, Gloria. And it is also sort of a personality filtering test. If they wanted, they could stamp out any bullying instantly, but they don't because the stakes right now are low . A stolen cupcake? Small stakes. It's designed to teach Corpo children coping strategies and teamwork when there is not much to lose," I explained, although it felt sort of wrong to be defending the practice. But it was totally different from Winslow. In that case, it was negligence, combined with a desire to cover up the actions of a child soldier, probably for financial reasons.
The worst part was my psychology knowledge was telling me that it was actually somewhat effective, and I continued, "You don't learn some lessons in complete safety."
She didn't look entirely mollified, "And other children can just get away with bullying because it is useful?"
"Yes... no," I said, then corrected myself, glancing at David, and said, "To answer this question fully will reveal some of what they don't want students to know, I think it is okay to tell David, but it is your decision."
David looked suddenly super interested. After all, what young boy wouldn't be interested in secrets?!
Gloria was quiet before glancing at David and then nodding.
"The answer is that they do not. Their behaviour is carefully logged. Many career paths are not compatible with a tendency for anti-social behaviour, so this might tend to limit their career prospects later," I said carefully.
"Well, that's almost as bad. They could have stopped these bully kids, too, before they ruined their futures. What a waste," Gloria grouched.
I frowned again, "They're not wasted. There are career paths where this type of psychology can be channelled usefully, for example... Security, police, soldiering, and a few others. Types with high discipline and a strict hierarchy." Although I personally didn't agree that bullies had any business being police or anything close to them, that wasn't the prevailing sentiment.
David frowned, "But I thought I might want to be a soldier or something someday. Does that mean I should be bullying kids?" He didn't like that idea, but Gloria especially didn't like his idea for a career, either.
I shook my head just as rapidly as David had, "David, this is important. You should never practice what you don't want to become. If you don't want to become a bad person, then don't do things that bad people would do, regardless of the reason. And by security or soldiering, I meant grunts with little hope for advancement. You'd want to display teamwork, choose team-based sports and be well-socialised with competitiveness in something that involves tactics, and these are some of the traits they look for in leaders of those types of people." David listened intently and nodded.
"Don't encourage him!" Gloria chastised me.
I shrugged my shoulders. All of my psychology data suggested that the more she wanted to control a child, the less likely it would work. So it was better to set them up for success either way. Plus, David was young, and there was a good chance he didn't have any idea what he really wanted to do. To say that it was common for prepubescent boys to want to be soldiers was an understatement. Most didn't end up as one, though.
I left unstated that while just bullying kids and strong-arm robbing them of their desserts was considered mostly a negative finding at school, doing the same thing sneakily was considered a positive one. NC-Taylor had a small gang of pudding thieves when she was in elementary school, but they always managed to get other kids blamed for their antics. I was sure that the Militech teachers knew who was responsible, but sneakiness was rewarded. It was something of a game at that stage, and nobody minded too much if their pudding or cake disappeared so long as they weren't treated like a video game character with some strong kid holding them by their ankles, shaking all their gold coins out of their pockets.
"Circling back, you can't complain because that would cause David to become a social pariah. He'd be shunned from all of his social circles, and nobody would work with him. It would be bad, so please don't," I said intently. Not even the most important kids would be immune from this kind of childish back and forth. Everyone got their pudding stolen, and the key was to get even, not call your parents in to save you. "Getting even" might not be the best message to teach children, but there was no way either of them could change an entire culture. This was one of those things that I warned her that David would be exposed to in Corpo schools.
"Besides, David's social situation will be much better next semester when he's had some time to integrate with the rest of the Trauma Team brats. We enrolled him as an independent, and that won't change overnight. But one of the older Trauma Team boys will likely approach him soon," I finished as we rolled into her building's parking garage. David looked interested in making more friends, or at least allies.
"Why will it be one of the boys?" David asked curiously, and I froze a little, trying to think of an answer.
Finally, I just shrugged, "I don't know. I just know that's how it is going to go." It was an interesting insight into one of the little bits of culture and etiquette that existed which I had no idea why they existed. There was no rule that an older girl couldn't take a new boy under her wing. It was just something that would never happen.
It reminded me of bits of Japanese culture that I had been picking up here, and there that had no real rhyme or reason why, like for example, if you were visiting someone's house in Kyoto and were offered a certain rice dish, it was code for get the fuck out, you aren't welcome. The reason there could be down to simple politeness and passive aggression, but it was similar in the sense that you had to almost grow up in it to identify such coded signals. Being a Corpo was very similar to that.
I dropped them off and proceeded directly to Pacifica. I had managed to arrange a couple of days off in all of my bodies, which was a bit difficult to do, but I have had the itch to create something for weeks now, and I have a feeling that it might result in a fugue state that went across all of my bodies.
Inside the subbasement was everything I needed, including the repaired Dragoon. Or, mostly repaired Dragoon. I hadn't managed to secure the supermaterial-based hydrogen storage vessel, so I was using a replacement made out of titanium and carbon fibre. It meant that if the Dragoon had to fight, it would only be able to do so for about fifteen minutes, instead of the several hours it should be able to by spec. But that was enough for now.
The "biopod" I had constructed entirely from scratch, merely using a standard biopod's shell. Although, I didn't actually have any intention of putting one of my brain's into it.
I had considered it, of course. But I intended my fourth body to be special. Originally, it was going to be pretty simple, though. It would live in a biopod and connect to robots remotely via a Haywire comm pair as a telepresence unit. That was what was in the Dragoon's "biopod." Merely an interface device and Haywire com pair.
Then it could be hidden somewhere, say this basement, and use robots to clone myself replacement bodies even if Taylor died. That was the reason that I didn't intend to actually police Pacifica like I had Chinatown in LA. I thought about doing so, as I could make a lot of money in real estate if I was successful, but this was more important than money.
I wanted Pacifica to become relatively lawless, where nobody sane went. Just so long as my little slice of it was safe from the crazies, that would be perfect. I was hoping people would see on the surface a building that was the home to a number of dangerous Borgs, including one really dangerous Dragoon-Borg, and just assume we were a more low-key version of Maelstrom and stay very far away. Speaking of, I needed to get Gloria to contact some of her acquaintances to see if they were interested in cheap or free housing here.
But the more I thought about my original plans, the more I realised they wouldn't be special enough. I had a full scan of my brain, so I was leaning towards buying a huge computing cluster and emulating my brain in software and having that "AI Taylor" be my next body. It would be difficult because I would have to artificially lower the software Taylor's clock speed or frame rate, for lack of a better term.
We'd all still be linked the same way, so one part of me couldn't be allowed to think much faster than the rest of me. It would cause issues of synchronicity. But even with such present limitations, it still sounded like a thrilling addition to myself.
I didn't expect my power to provide me much assistance with the plan, aside from the brain scanning system, but I was so very wrong! My power was incredibly enthusiastic, wildly wanting to help, and giving me ideas that I didn't even understand.
