Dr Anno held a hand out and waffled it slightly, "Nah, even though we fucked up, they won't charge him. But that's only for the basic treatment to get him back to where he used to be. If it necessitates a replacement limb, he'll just be offered a basic model. As you said, they might offer him a number of replacement options. They'll charge him the difference if he takes anything but the basics, minus his company discount, and then put him on a payment plan. No interest, though."
Well, that wasn't as terrible as I thought. I considered staying around for the rest of the shift; there were still about six hours to go. But I had a lot to do and very little time to now accomplish it. "I think I'm going to head out early. Assuming there's nothing wrong with the contract they sent me, they want me to travel to Seattle on Monday. I got a lot to get ready for this weekend. Do you want me to decon the armour before I go?"
Anno shook his head, "Don't worry about it. We have a machine that does most of the work; I'll run it through." How often did they get blood on their armour that they had a dedicated decon machine? Well, I suppose quite often. These weren't 911 calls, after all, and I often got blood on myself even doing those calls.
I nodded, "I assume you all can carry pistols around the building since you work here?" They nodded, "One of you come downstairs, I'll give you that giant revolver, and you can get it to Mr Bandbox while I'm in training."
The giant man hopped up, "Oh. Awesome." He followed me downstairs, and I got all of the guns back and the bracelet on my wrist taken off. I rubbed my left wrist for a moment before handing the giant revolver to Mercy. The thing weighed like five kilos, easy and my fingers weren't even large enough to actuate the trigger comfortably, to say nothing of what it would do to my arm. I didn't think I'd suffer fractures with my bioware, but it wouldn't feel very good.
Mercy handled it like it didn't weigh anything and grinned, "Cool. Not sure if we should put this on a plaque or just hand it to him." He thumped me on the back hard enough that I almost fell forward and said, "You did a good job today."
"Uh, thanks," I told him, and with that, I left. I probably looked a little weird, as I only had one holster, so I was carrying a small arsenal of two additional guns in my arms as I found my car and drove home.
I stopped at a number of places on my way back home and called Gloria, asking her if she could come by my apartment. She'd have to bring little David along, but I okayed that.
As I got back home, I took a quick shower and then started setting up some of the things I bought at the store. Finding a pet store that would sell me automatic bird feeders without demonstrating that I had a pet license took three tries, but eventually, I got one. I leaned precariously outside of my window, using a small electric drill to secure it in place, probably in violation of my rental agreement.
I wasn't sure if I should do this, as it would make my window a prime spot and Mr Pegpig and his wife would have to, in some ways, compete with other pigeons for the food. But I had been testing a number of nanomed treatments on him and his wife. I didn't have a nanovat like a real biosculpt clinic, but I had been lacing their water with nanomachines, hoping to achieve a similar effect as my muscle and bone lace.
I had to make some modifications to myself, just regular maintenance, really, as I was still growing, including new muscle mass, which needed to be included in my existing muscle and bone lace. If I could do it without going to a clinic myself, it would be all for the better. Mr Pegpig didn't mind being my guinea pig, not after the first dozen or so times I grabbed him out of the air, using my superspeed, anyway. Now he just put up with it, like he was a British pigeon with a stiff upper lip.
I hadn't tested them, but they did seem stronger; they could leap into the air much farther, even Mr Pegpig with his one artificial leg. If so, they should be able to defend their nest. Probably. It was all I could do while I was gone. At least they wouldn't be exterminated by some idiot City Councilman.
The doorbell rang, and I glanced at the camera real quick before unlocking it, saying over the intercom, "Come in! I'm in the back!"
Gloria walked in carrying David, who she sat on the floor and who immediately started exploring. She glanced at me, "There's nothing that he can get into around here, is there?"
I thought about that and then shook my head, "No, everything that might be dangerous or poisonous is in the outer area where I set up a workbench."
I told her what had happened, and she was both excited and glum. "I'm so happy for you, but I'm going to miss you. I was hoping we'd at least have the last two months to work together."
"Just because we won't work together doesn't mean we can't still get together on our days off. I certainly want to see the gremlin again!" I told her firmly. "But I am going to be gone for probably, three months." They told me indoc was one week long, and basic training was eight, but I figured there were going to be delays or other things I needed to do after that. I asked her, "Do you think you can check on my apartment from time to time?"
Gloria paused and said, "Of course. Actually... if you're going to be gone, I think I may have a better idea."
I had a curious expression on my face as I said, "Oh? Like what?"
"Well, if you don't mind... I could live here while you were gone. There was an issue with the housing authority, and my mom temporarily lost her apartment. She couldn't get another for six weeks, and she was going to stay at my place. But if you're not going to be here for 3 months? I could just stay here. I mean, if you don't mind," she hurried to add that at the end. "It's fine if not; I can come to check on your place at least once a week."
I thought about that. There was some stuff in my apartment I didn't want anyone to see, but I was going to move all of that stuff to the storage unit before I left anyway. I didn't think, given where I was, that there were going to be any real problems with burglars or vandals, but you never did know. It was almost expected in a lot of places in the city that if you were gone for more than a week, expect your place to be burgled.
I finally nodded, "Yes, actually, that sounds pretty good. What about the gremlin? You don't know anybody here."
"On days I'm not working, he'll stay here, and on days I am working, he'll stay with my mom at my place," Gloria said simply, "It's the least she can do for giving her a place to stay for weeks on end."
I nodded at that. "Okay, that sounds great. Plus, you won't have to sleep with your mom just five feet away. You have a pretty small place, Gloria."
She laughed uneasily, rubbing the back of her head, before nodding, "Yeah, that's a real bonus for me."
The law firm hadn't found anything out of the ordinary with the proposed contract. The only item they highlighted was an overly broad non-compete clause which said I wouldn't be able to compete with them for thirty-six months after I left the company without paying a rather high buy-out fee.
That was pretty common, but the way it was worded was too vague. It would be arguable that I wouldn't be able to work for anyone, possibly even myself, in any medical capacity for three years after I left Trauma Team since Trauma Team's was really a comprehensive medical system.
I sent the contract back to the hiring manager with my complaint, and surprisingly a very quick adjustment was made where the non-compete was changed to specify I wasn't permitted to work for any air ambulance service for thirty-six months, specifically naming "Militech Evac" as an example of the type of service in question.
That contract I had signed, so in very little time, I found myself in economy class on an airliner heading up to Seattle. Air travel was a bit interesting in this dystopia. Almost nobody did it, and it was prohibitively expensive for individuals, so it was mostly all business passengers. So, even though I was in the economy class of service, the seats were somewhat roomy, and it wasn't the cattle car treatment I was expecting from airlines in Earth Bet.
After sitting in a jumpseat on that Platinum scramble flight, I wasn't that nervous at all about flying on an airliner, even if it was a somewhat small one-hundred-seat propellor plane. The sides of the fuselage had integrated active noise cancellation, so you couldn't hear the engines or the propellors at all, which was really cool.
Seattle was an interesting city. It wasn't as dangerous as Night City, however, only by a little bit. Washington State was one of the Free States of North America, specifically in the Pacifica Confederation. They didn't take orders from the federal government in Washington, DC is basically what I thought it meant.
Seattle was one of the only things keeping Washington State afloat, from what little I could tell. The Port of Seattle was the hub of trade on the entire pacific northwest of the continent, even with the hazards of shipping things by sea, which included an AI-directed self-replicating minefield that slowly moved around the pacific and actual swashbuckling pirates.
Even with all of that, trade still moved by sea. It just made it more expensive, with marine captains being almost militarised and ships using the convoy system to get through danger zones.
After landing, I got my luggage and looked around. I was supposed to be met here. Oh, there was a guy in a relatively nice outfit holding up a sign that said "Trauma Team New Hires."
I walked over and said, "Hello there. I'm starting class on Monday."
"Ahh... preem. We should have five. Uh, are you Taylor? I think there was just one female on the list," he said, sounding almost younger than even me, despite clearly being a little older. Sheltered, perhaps?
I blinked at him and nodded, "You work for Corporate?"
"Not really, as that implies I'm being paid; I'm a student at City Centre College here in Seattle, business administration. Internships, mostly unpaid, are pretty common in your third and fourth year in the program. My parents work for Orbital Air, though. Trauma Team is one of the few places nobody minds if you intern at, so the internships are pretty competitive, actually," he said ruefully.
I nodded. It had been an Orbital Air airliner that I had just gotten off from and then I told him, for the purpose of networking and small talk, "My mom and dad were at Militech. Say..." I started to ask him.
"No, I haven't been to the Crystal Palace or space at all yet," he said with an amused grin.
I caught myself blinking, "Does everyone really ask you that?"
He nodded, "Yeah. About as often as, I suspect, people ask you if you're carrying a gun."
Well, the only reason I wasn't was they wouldn't let me on the airliner with one. I had another one of those uncomfortable bracelets, too, that I only recently had taken off after I left the security area of the airport. I did have one in my luggage, though.
I decided to just wait until the rest of the people got here.
The week-long new hire class wasn't very interesting. It was all paperwork, company policies, and the like. It included a full physical, and I got a little raised eyebrows about all of the cybernetics I had, but they hadn't even mentioned the liver. I did decline a couple of offered company implants, one of which would automatically exercise your muscles whenever you were experiencing a BD.
It was a good idea, but it was like a low-tier doll chip, and there was no way I would be putting one of those into my body if I hadn't built it myself.
The "boot camp" was, so far, a lot more interesting. I needed to cut my hair to be within regulations, but thankfully not too short. All of the males were shorn like sheep, almost. It was kind of silly because Trauma Team didn't have any personal grooming standards beyond looking professional, so those men would be free to immediately grow out their hair.
I was doing fairly well, although a lot about it annoyed me, but I was in very good shape and had augmented strength on top of that, which most of my twenty-five-member "platoon" did not. The main issue I was having was I was used to the equivalent of nine hours of sleep a night, and they only let you get about six or seven if they were feeling generous.
The drill sergeants also seemed to like to make you do push-ups, run, or other more annoying exercises just because they had black hearts. During a group 10k run, I had been asked to run and bring the drill sergeant back a pebble. This meant I'd have to sprint out a distance, grab a pebble and sprint back. It was supposed to tire you out, and it was often done to those who were pretty good runners. Now, I'd already seen this trick before. When I brought back the pebble, he was going to say that I brought back the wrong one, that he really meant the one next to this one.
I didn't really like people in authority in the first place, and I wondered why I was even bothering going through this stupid course. It almost seemed like bullying, although I couldn't actually detect any malice in any of the Drill Sergeants. Still, I didn't mind running, and even shooting the guns was fun.
I presented the pebble to the heartless man, who yelled, " Wrong pebble! I meant the one next to it! Try again!"
I was going to regret this, I already knew it, but I opened my other hand to reveal about five other pebbles, "This recruit has anticipated your orders, Drill Sergeant! These are the pebbles on either side of that pebble, so I respectfully posit that the correct pebble must be among them, Drill Sergeant!"
He stared at me, slackjawed, "Get back into position, Hebert! And drop those fucking pebbles!"
I dropped the rocks and found myself back into position with the running platoon, which he immediately halted, "Platoon, HALT! Now, it seems like we got a smart ass here! I know how to fix that... HALF RIGHT, FACE! "
Fuck. I caught a couple of glares from the others but pivoted forty-five degrees to the right in time. "Front-leaning rest position, MOVE. "
I kept a groan inside as we all shifted to the traditional "push-up position."
"In cadence, EXERCISE! "
"You look too happy. You know what? HALF RIGHT! "
"You did too well on that group exercise; if you're not careful, I will get promoted out of my easy job. But I can fix that, HALF RIGHT!"
"Okay, that was just stupid. HALF RIGHT!"
"AM I YOUR FRIEND?! HALF RIGHT!"
"Was that a FART?! Which one of you... no, nevermind, I got this... HALF RIGHT!"
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Muffins
