Still, I didn't think tasers, even the high voltage system that knocked me out, would stop me anymore, though, and that was the main thing. A secondary benefit was that it would be very difficult for an electrical induction cap to work on me, so the standard brain scanning system that I had already lived through wouldn't work.
I wasn't so naive as to expect that there weren't workarounds for that. Insulative skin implants were pretty commonplace after all, and I could already think of a few ways to bypass it, involving changing the probes to slightly penetrative spikes and just shoving them through the top layer of my scalp. So this wasn't a true defence for having to go through another interrogation backed by a brain scan.
I did have an idea for that, as well, though. I didn't know if it was the same solution that spies would use, as I kind of expected many of them might have some kind of automatic suicide implant instead. Spy agencies would likely consider most defences to be merely slowing an attacker down if the attacker already had physical custody of the spy and his or her brain, after all. And I figured secrets were likely much more valued by such agencies than their spies being alive.
Since that wasn't a useful solution for me, I had been thinking of ways to trick such a system but no matter what, I couldn't think of one, at least at present. I had a tingling sensation which gave me the idea that if I proceeded down the path of research of artificial neural tissue like I had begun for my spider-bot designs, eventually I might be able to create a "fake brain" that housed a "fake personality" that could be interviewed instead of me.
Until then, though, I thought that instead of tricking the brain scan, I should instead trick myself. That was a lot easier!
This would be a longer project, possibly as long as a month or more, as it was entirely software related; although it was using many open-source software modules, the idea was pretty simple. It would integrate with my operating system and cyberdeck, and when I turned it on when I realised that I was captured and about to be quizzed, it would use a simple neural network to, in real-time, recognise the question the interrogator asked and dub over the actual question I heard with a different one.
Ideally, the system would ask me a question that would generate a response that would trick the interrogator into thinking everything was working fine on his end, with my secrets being hidden.
For example, if they asked where I was born, instead I would hear where I live right now, which would trigger me to think about Night City instead of Brockton Bay. If they asked who my father was, instead, I might hear the question: "Who was Major Daniel Hebert?"
I would have to preprogram a number of problematic question areas that the system should treat as secrets and possibly how to alter them, as there was no real way for me to digitise my memories or anything for a machine learning system to trawl through to make that decision in real-time.
Although, there were hints of technology on the Dark Web, of AIs that weren't really AIs. The conspiracy theorists called the technology Soulkiller, and it was billed as almost as big a boogeyman of the Net as Rache Bartmoss was.
Supposedly, it killed you and then copied your entire self, all of your memories and a complete brain scan to the owner of the system. I could definitely see how such a thing might be possible, considering the way cyberdecks were deeply interactive with most areas of the brain, so I couldn't deny the possibility, even if I couldn't presently reproduce it.
Could I build something like that eventually, though? Probably. I thought I definitely could, but the brief idea I got from my medical sense was that I should finish learning to walk before trying to run. Although I had already done some preparatory work in researching neural tissue, I would have to continue a fair bit more into researching human brains, memories and consciousness, but I definitely felt that wasn't an out-of-reach goal, although a copy of my memories living on as a pseudo-AI was probably the worst of the ideas I had on the subject if my goal was immortality.
I never had before thought that the idea of immortality was appealing before arriving in Night City, but I thought that was because I subconsciously felt that the world I lived in was circling the drain already. I didn't put it into words, but looking retrospectively, I was pretty confident that a more extended life just meant more suffering back there.
That wasn't even a result of my bullying, either. Although Emma was an utter bitch, she wasn't on the level of Ziz, and everyone knew losing a few cities a year wasn't sustainable, even if nobody ever talked about it. Perhaps I could have lived to old age back there if I dodged being murdered by villains and literal Godzillas, but I didn't think that luck would last me one hundred or more years, so why even think about living longer than that?
Now though? This new world wasn't great. And there were monsters in the Old Net who might or might not want to destroy humanity as a whole, too, just like Endbringers and possibly had a good chance of accomplishing that goal, but at the same time, I definitely thought the society, as fucked up as it was, was metastable. If so, perhaps living a lot longer might be nice.
My understanding of ageing was pretty complete, and even though the rejuvenation drugs and treatments were billed as huge secrets, I didn't think they were all that revolutionary. Evolutionary, like most advances in technology, were, but it wasn't that more advanced than existing biosculpting and genetic treatments already on the market, at least the way I understood how they probably worked.
I reached a stopping point and glanced at the small dark-plastic containers I had been loading fly eggs into. The small little plastic containers cost about fifteen ennies a piece when bought in bulk and were opaque against most light frequencies, including the ultraviolet. I would load up five or six before I left the apartment. When I saw a place I wanted to add some fly coverage, I could just take one out of my pocket, slide the top off and toss it somewhere inconspicuous, like an open dumpster.
I had already made a few trips to plant a little less than a dozen of these containers in and around Japantown. I was very relieved to see that the flies actually worked, as they were already grouped around the now-dry blood in that alley. The attraction instinct on these flies wasn't enough that they were completely clumped together. It would ruin the purpose if they didn't still have some random movements, still. It was on the same level as their existing phototaxis, or attraction to light. So if you had a group of flies around, you could definitely be sure that at least some of them would be clumped together, even if some of them went on their business later.
I stopped and frowned at the fly egg containers. The FlyHive was a lot more complicated a construction, especially since it bypassed the fly's larva and pupa stages than, say, a brain digitiserdigitiser was. Why, then, did my power help me so much in making the FlyHive? I closed my eyes and thought about it. Even though I wasn't sure my power could think, let alone speak, this was the clearest instance of me getting a response that I recalled. The idea I got back was because it, the FlyHive, was "cool."
That didn't really sound like something I would say, even the subconscious part of my brain that supposedly controlled parahuman powers.
I shook my head. I was in the wrong universe if I really wanted to research parahuman powers. As far as I knew, I was the only one with one here.
"Yo, Breaker. What the hell happened?" asked Mr Mercy as I came back to work.
Scowling, I told everybody an abbreviated version of the story of what happened.
"And you don't know why?" he asked.
Shaking my head, I said, "Not really. Although I have some suspicions it might be related to my family, but I don't want to talk about it." The best guess I had was that it was something related to Alt-Dad. It was pretty clear to me now that he was not solely a traditional military man. I had done some research on him, from the things he left behind, and he had worked for several years for the NUSA State Department right after leaving the NUSA Military.
Maybe it was just my overactive imagination, but a "State Department" job seemed like the perfect cover for some covert intelligence operative, especially if he was doing such work abroad. I also remembered the grin he had when he had told Alt-Taylor, "Never be a spy! They shoot spies! Intelligence officers, however, they often trade if captured."
Everyone accepted that, as everyone had secrets they didn't want widely known in this city.
After we finished our morning checks, we got some bad news from Dr Anno, the base lead. We had Alpha-base on a conference vidcall. Not today, but on our next shift the day after tomorrow, we had to decide between Alpha and us who would be posted up at a remote location. Apparently, there was a concert that day in Pacifica. It was that Korean girl group who sang those likely AI-produced ear-worm songs that had been stuck in my head so much that I had even sung along to them a few times.
It was bad news because regardless of which choice would be a shit sandwich. If we posted up in Pacifica, it was very likely that the accommodations they had available to us near enough to the AV would be utter shit, but if we stayed here, we would have to do two rotations on ready-five, which amounted to half the shift.
"That's a dick or balls choice, man," said one of the Alpha-base Security Specialists, shaking his head ruefully.
I blinked and tried to imagine what the hell he meant. I sort of realised from the context it meant a choice that was bad whatever you chose, but I asked, "What is a dick or balls choice?"
Mr Mercy glanced at me and said, "It's a hypothetical situation where someone captures you and says they're going to cut off either your dick or your balls, but you get to choose." What? Do men actually think about these sorts of things? Apparently so, because almost everyone was nodding sagely as if Mercy had said some sort of profound philosophical question that hadn't been solved in thousands of years.
I was the only female currently on shift on either base, although we had another female Senior Med-Techie on Bravo, and there were a couple in Alpha as well, just not working at the same schedule I did. I glanced around and said simply, "Balls are the correct choice."
"What makes you say that?" Mercy asked, intrigued now. I saw that I had the full attention of both bases.
I sighed. I should have kept my mouth shut. I decided to be clinical in my response, "Although it is a commonly held belief, even by non-lay people, that castration would result in a male being unable to have sexual intercourse, this is based on a flawed premise on the data we have about pre-pubescent male castrations in history such as castrati or some ancient Chinese eunuchs, not to mention equivalent endocrinological medical conditions that prevent male puberty from taking place."
I paused for a moment, glancing left and right, and then continued, "For a male that has reached full maturation, although it would be more difficult to achieve an erection, it would still be possible, as would sexual intercourse and orgasm. Especially with hormone replacement therapy if we are following the thought experiment in which cloned testicular replacement therapy is unavailable. Ergo, 'balls'..." I made the air quotes with my hands, "... is the less bad of two bad choices." Plus, some of my co-workers might do well with a reduction of testosterone, I privately thought.
Dr Anno got a thoughtful face for a moment and then nodded, "That makes sense. In that case, Bravo will take the concert posting. Perhaps we will get to see something interesting at the show." There were some objections, but the assignment was first-come-first-served, so they were only perfunctory.
The day proceeded slowly after that. There was a constant debate on whether it was better to have no calls or better to be busy with a lot of calls. The latter involved you working harder, but it really did make the day pass by quicker. Personally, I preferred to have two to three calls a day. That gave me some downtime, as well as some interesting medical cases to treat.
My phone rang, and it was Gloria. I smiled. She hadn't yet started her own "practice" at her Megabuilding, but she planned to in the next six months or so and was slowly accumulating all the equipment and drugs she would need to offer service. In the meantime, she had shifted her schedule on the ground ambulance to be off on the days that I worked, and on my days off, she would work in "my clinic."
I trusted her enough to allow her the full run of the clinic area of my apartment and a limited run of my private area. I kept my bedroom closed but allowed her and the gremlin to relax in my living room and kitchen. At first, I thought she would be turned off by the explosive charge I had carefully installed on my door, but she looked at it thoughtfully and just nodded, getting me to carefully show her how to activate and deactivate it. It was pretty idiot-proof, you couldn't arm it if the door wasn't locked in the first place, so it wasn't as though it could be set off easily.
I shifted to my private bedroom at the base before I answered the call and asked, "Hey, Gloria. What's up?"
"Hey, Taylor. There's a rather large delivery for you outside, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't about to be home invaded before letting them into the clinic," she told me right away.
I hummed and nodded. I had a lot of deliveries pending, some of them large, "Ask them on the intercom for the delivery countersign. I'll tell you if it's valid."
There was a pause before she came back and read off a short alphanumeric code. I checked my spreadsheet of pending deliveries and nodded again, "That's valid. However, I generally meet them at the door with my dad's shotgun, which should be hung on the wall in my living room. I recommend you do the same. The recoil is a bitch, but it will make mince out of pretty much anyone in front of it."
She looked a little unsure on the vidcall. She had begun carrying the pistol I gifted her after several months of training, but she was still a bit unsure as far as other weapons were concerned, "How do I operate it? Where is the safety located?"
I sighed, "There's no external safety on a Militech Crusher. It's already loaded, so it is just point-and-shoot. You could use your own sidearm if you like if you feel more comfortable with that, but it is hard to beat a shotgun in a closed space like an apartment."
