I felt that I could have Tinkered up most of this. Still, I thought that using an off-the-shelf commercial cardiac monitor as the major component, even if it was more expensive, would allow the suit to exist without further "maintenance" from me. Perhaps the customised electronics might need some maintenance, but if they failed, all that would cease would be the output of the vital signs. The suit itself would still work for its intended purpose.
You could buy commercial-grade monitors that included defibrillators for less than a couple thousand eurodollars, and they were smaller than a deck of cards. They were effective and robust, even if they didn't include all of the features a professional model would. I just included that as an expense when I billed my friend.
Altogether, I made over two thousand eurodollars, even after expenses. I included a way to test it by building a small box that could replay any given electrocardiogram. Given my profession, I had gads of these saved and access to even more, so I included some of every type of cardiac arrhythmia, and fibrillation that I knew of that would likely be helped by the defibrillator, with the option to load any random one she wanted as well. For all I knew, there might be a saved EKG of a netrunner being hit with this type of black ICE... if so, she could test it.
My online friend was ecstatic with the device, which she had paid over four thousand eurodollars for. She hadn't thought of the idea of being able to pipe out the data from the EKG safely, but she loved the idea. It was kind of a ghetto, external internal biomonitor, or a way to double-check your own biomonitor with something that was impossible to hack if you already had one.
Over the next couple of months, I had several other customers, and I revised the design to the point where I was using a fully customised electronics package for my additions, using a company that built customised printed circuit boards, which would ship them directly to my door.
It was interesting. Every time I built a copy, I learned a little bit more about the areas that my Tinker power would help me with. When you dealt with cybernetics or modern medical tools, there was a lot of overlap with the field of electronics; for example, building these things let me know and remember more about electronics as a whole, not just electronics dealing with cybernetics.
The customised circuit board still wasn't very complicated; over ninety-five per cent of the complexity of the combined product came from the circuitry in the cardiac monitor, but it was still interesting to learn more just through repetition. It felt almost like a video game where I was gaining experience points every time I built something.
Again, I was pretty confident this wasn't how Tinkering was supposed to work, at least not exactly, but I had long ago decided I didn't care one whit because this was how it worked in this universe, given my one-person sample size.
As such, I had already sent an updated copy of the custom electronics to my first customer, as it was an easy plug-in and replacement compared to the slightly clunky first version, and it would probably last years before needing "maintenance." It really helped a lot if you made your inventions out of actual... electronics instead of a string, a tin can, a leather boot and some springs, I guessed.
After finishing breakfast and a quick shower, I got dressed in my casual to-work clothes and got on the train to head to Heywood. Commuting via the train was getting more and more annoying, I felt. Although I did practice my hacking on the train, I had almost been mugged twice, not counting the time I shot the two scavs.
If I could find a car for sale that wasn't too dear, then I was definitely going to buy it. Gloria had a car herself, even if it was almost fifteen years old.
I helped her negotiate a better deal with her contact on her "found" cybernetics, and he was willing to pay the higher price if they all came in the same great condition that the Projectile Launch System arm had. She had made three thousand and three hundred dollars on that arm, and she made out a lot better even when she shared half of it with me.
I was willing to continue our minor "scav" operation, as I didn't particularly care about stealing from dead criminals. It was either taken from the NCPD evidence room or the Night City Body Lottery, depending on the cop's opinion on whether the dead person was a perpetrator or a victim.
However, we kept things pretty low-key. We'd only take one implant per call, and since we only got these types of mass casualty decedent calls a couple of times a week, we only had the option to get something interesting once every ten days or so. Still, we averaged about a thousand extra dollars a week in tax-free income thus far.
I also contacted her fixer anonymously and asked if he would be interested in purchasing a lot of pre-dosed stimulant tablets. I discovered that there were many similar businesses that offered unattended lockers, similar to the electronics store.
After giving him a few samples through such dead drops, he finally agreed to purchase in some quantity. He wouldn't agree to pre-pay, though, so I thought that I might just lose my first consignment, which he would take and not pay for, but he ended up leaving the money in the subsequent pick-ups.
At first, I was a little concerned he might have someone surveil the dead drops for me when I went and picked up the money, but that might have just been my highly developed paranoia that everyone possible was out to get me. This guy was just a small-time player. Still, I chose different drop locations for every deal and did not pick up the money for at least a couple of weeks after he dropped it off. It cost me a little to pre-pay the lockers for a month at a time, but it was worth it in the end.
I was pricing the tic-tacs very favourably but not so favourably as to make anyone think I could have made the drug myself. Still, I might end up making over forty grand on the deal once my stash was depleted, which would take some time. Already, people on the street in Santo Domingo were commenting favourably about the tic-tacs. It wasn't designed or intended as a recreational drug, but Night City was a city that never slept and a lot of workers survived through the judicious application of stimulants.
Tuition at med school cost about sixty-five thousand a semester, with living expenses being maybe ten. Although you did not need to attend undergraduate school first, that just meant that med school was a bit longer, by a year. Most universities had shifted to a three-semester year, as well, so that meant I needed to have almost a million eurodollars to pay for the entirety of expenses for the four years of medical school.
That was... a lot. I would apply to Trauma Team in another eight months, but even if I got hired, I would have to continue with these quasi-illegal fundraising activities.
After getting dressed in the locker room, I headed out.
"Hey, Taylor..." Gloria greeted me at the vending machine that we used to get narcotics. We both had to sign for them and inventory the contents.
I waved at her, and we both logged in, got our drugs and then headed to get a unit from the motor pool. I had already been noticing the backlog of calls that were already waiting. It was going to be a long day.
I could tell that Gloria was quite tired when I got to work. Apparently, she had worked half a shift yesterday, so she hadn't gotten all that much sleep.
During our lunch break, I brought out the small case I kept my sleep-inducer in and handed it to her. She asked, "What's this?"
"It's a kind of sleep inducer, but generally a lot better than the shitty versions being sold on the net," I told her. I was a little offended when I discovered that there existed a similar technology, but it wasn't nearly as good. It put you to sleep, but the people who made it didn't have a good grasp of the brain's sleep processes.
I thought that from a restful sleep perspective, they gave less restful sleep than if you fell asleep naturally. The only advantage was for people who took a long time to fall asleep or insomniacs who couldn't fall asleep at all.
She seemed uneasy, "I've tried one of those before; it made me really groggy after waking up." To that, I waved her off.
"This one won't. Forty-five minutes under it is equivalent to about three hours of sleep. Put it on; I'll go get us some drive-through while you take a nap," I told her firmly.
She seemed unconvinced, but she nodded and put it on, after which I showed her the activation button. I had already preset it for forty-five minutes. This was my second-generation model, and I had managed to decrease the minimum sleep time to fifteen minutes, which was about equivalent to an hour of rest. You could stop early without any real side effects, but you wouldn't really get many benefits out of it unless you slept for at least fifteen minutes.
Most of Night City ate food from restaurants and take-out rather than buying groceries and cooking themselves. Most of the food people bought to take home was heat-and-eat type things, and I wasn't that much different, although I did buy some vegetables for a high price at a few of the small boutique grocery stores around town.
As such, there were a lot of restaurants in Night City. Quite a few offered a discount to Med-Techs, police or both. The number of really good places offering discounts was much smaller, though. I was heading towards that Fat Burger in Arroyo. It was a small chain that had three different locations in Santo Domingo. It was still just scop, like most restaurants, but they prepared it and seasoned it really well. The buns were actual bread, too, which drove the price up a little bit. Still, it was definitely cheap enough for your average worker, even if it wasn't an everyday thing.
With the thirty per cent discount for being EMTs, it was downright affordable, though.
"I'd like two double-doubles with everything, fries and a large Nicola Classic and a large Cirrus Cola," I told the clown's head before picking up the order. Disgustingly, Gloria loved Nicola, all of its flavours. I couldn't understand it, not at all! Cirrus made a passable Cola, tasting more like Pepsi than Coke, though.
After grabbing the food, I drove back to the location we posted up when we were having a really busy day and sat there, eating my burger. Towards the end of our lunch break, Gloria stirred and then woke up, taking the wreath off her head and handing it to me, "How long was I out?"
I looked at her weirdly, "Just the forty-five minutes. I don't like you well enough to let you sleep while I take all of the calls."
"Woah, I felt like I slept a few hours," she said, causing me to roll my eyes. Hadn't I said that was what it was like? She glanced at me, "Is this some secret Militech thing or something?"
I shook my head, "No. But don't tell anyone about it, either. I made them using mostly similar technology to the crappy ones that are already sold on the market."
She seemed amazed, "Woah! Why wouldn't you want people to know you could make something like this?"
I gave her a stare like she was a very special child, "Because a Corp would either steal it from me, possibly flatlining me in the process or kidnap me and keep me in a gilded cage if they thought it wasn't a one-hit wonder fluke."
I needed to have a frank discussion with her about what Corps actually were and what they were not. She seemed to have a bit of a rose-coloured glasses on the subject, even commenting a number of times that she hoped her son David could rise to the top of the most important corporation in Night City.
From what I can remember, first-generation corporate employees had a rough road. It wasn't impossible for them to do exactly that because there was a slight hint of meritocracy in the way Corps were run at the middle level, anyway, but it almost never happened.
It was best to know what you wanted to achieve when you started an employee relationship with the largest Corporations, and if your goals included ambition in a position in the corp, it was best to understand just what you were getting yourself into. It wasn't uncommon for a Militech middle-tier corporate manager to be murdered, and it rarely was rival corporations who did the deed, but their peers, or rather their competitors.
It kind of took growing up in such an environment to have the capability to smile and be friendly on the one hand but knife your competitor in the back if necessary at the same time. That was the main reason first-generation Corpos rarely rose above line supervisors; they didn't understand that it was almost a different language being spoken, with words as sweet as honey and as sharp as knives.
I was sure Alt-Taylor could have done it, but I wasn't so sure I had the same capability, but at least I could recognise the knives coming if I had to. There was a real asshole kind of middle manager that liked keeping this kind of up-and-coming first-generation employee as an assistant in order to have a ready sacrifice if needed.
I'd talk to her later, but she had to eat her burger fast as we had another call waiting for us. The gang war was heating up, alright.
*bzzzt* "Unit 42, Dispatch, 2122 Ebunike Drive, possible drug overdose, insurance coverage verified, respond."
Gloria was back driving, so I cleared us and hit the lights, replying that we were en route. We weren't that far away, but it was in one of the few bad parts of Watson, with a lot of industrial buildings and warehouses. It wasn't exactly the type of location where you expected to respond to a possible overdose of someone who had enough money to have medical insurance, which was usually their home.
As we pulled up, I spoke, "Uhh... I don't like the looks of this, Gloria." There was no NCPD presence on this call because it was just a regular 911 call; there was no shooting or car accident that they would be responding to that generated it. That also meant we didn't have their protection, either.
Gloria shrugged, "They'll flip their shit if we decline an insured patient without even trying. It's been about nine months since I was last robbed on the job, so maybe I'm due."
I stared at her like she was crazy but then sighed, "Alright. Button up your jacket, though. It should protect against most pistols, anyway."
We hopped out, but I made sure my left sleeve was rolled up a bit so I could access my monowire if I needed to do so. If they were just going to rob us, though, then I would just let them have the drugs we carried with us. Gloria was carrying them right now. Normally the paramedic carried them, but I basically treated her as if she was one, as she was as good as many.
