As horrifying as that was, I didn't think there was a single person that claimed to be a Sovereign Citizen after that.
"What are you doing?" asked one of the grunts, curious, as I stared at the man's fingers, bringing them fairly close up to my eyes.
The app confirmed that this was the guy. I didn't think that Mr Jin would have lied to me, but I couldn't say precisely that he wouldn't, either. I glanced at the muscle, "I was verifying his biometrics. I am only willing to do this because this guy is a monster, and I would have been very upset had you tried to sneak in some random gonk."
"Oh," he said, nodding. It seems it was just curious. As I set up my equipment, connecting him to the cardiac monitor and starting an IV in his arm. Perhaps not surprisingly, this guy was not in very good shape. Something told me that they weren't entirely as surgical as I would have been if I had needed to perform multiple amputations on him. His blood pressure was shit, and he was in V-tach that might, possibly, cause a sudden cardiac arrest at any moment, and I was pretty sure he probably had as much blood out of his body as he had inside of it at the start of this whole thing.
Sighing, I stuck some single-use defibrillator pads on him and connected those to the cardiac monitor as well. The netrunner looked interested and must have recognised the pads, "Oh, nova. Are you going to shock him?" He held his hands up and rubbed them together in the universal motion of lubricating the pads of an ancient-style defibrillation machine. I was surprised he hadn't said, "Clear!" as that was what everybody expected. I was also amazed that this gesture was still in the public consciousness, so much so that on medical shows they often used archaic devices because it was more dramatic.
"We haven't used that kind of defibrillator in a hundred years," I told him, shaking my head, "And no, I am doing what is called a synchronised electrical cardioversion, or rather I will after I get some more fluids into him. It is a little similar, but you use cardioversion if their heart is still beating, but you want to reset it to a standard sinus rhythm." I didn't mind chatting with him because medical topics interested me.
It was like someone who loved trains getting asked a really uninsightful question about the differences in gauge on steam locomotives; they'd probably still be pleased to answer and chat about the subject, even if it was a silly question or comment. I was the same way.
At first, I almost decided to skip giving him any blood products, as it wasn't as though this guy was going to be allowed to get better, but I changed my mind because he did really seem anaemic, and I would have to conduct some surgeries myself, and I had already identified the type of cybernetics he had.
It was a bit of an unusual piece of chrome, and one of the options was to configure it to automatically write zeroes to the storage medium in the event it detected the individual it was installed in died or that it was removed. They were common implants for low-tier data brokers, people who were hired to take data nobody trusted to send over the net and deliver it in person. A type of data courier, in other words.
I supposed it was also common in people who were connected to international human trafficking operations. I started another line, this one a central venous catheter that I would give him two litres of normal saline under a pressure infuser, with his normal IV pushing some synthetic blood products.
I talked to the runner for a while longer, and once his blood pressure started to rise, I hit the preconfigured button on the cardiac monitor and easily converted his heart rate back to a normal rhythm. The runner looked disappointed, and glancing at him sideways, he finally said, "I thought he would rise up off the bed." He arched his back to emphasise what he meant, and I just sighed and shook my head.
I called Jin, and he answered on the second ring. I told him, "Alright, I can take the implant out. It's a ten-year-old data courier model from Zetatech. It's probably configured to delete itself if it is removed, but I am very confident that I can get around that. However, I have to emphasise this if you want me to save the data on this implant, this man is not going to survive the operation. Not on so little notice, anyway. I don't think that is a big deal for you, but I wanted you to know before I started."
He nodded, "So long as you're sure, and yes," he chuckled, "the data is the most important thing here."
I nodded, "Okay, give me about thirty minutes," and with that, I disconnected the call. Truthfully, I probably could save his life, but I couldn't think of any reason that I should. So long as the data is recovered, the only thing I would be saving him for is a long and painful death at the hands of a vengeful father. There was also one other reason, as I wanted to salvage his brain. I had urges to continue the research into hybrid biomechanical robotiforms, such as the arachnid designs I had in my cyberdeck, but it wasn't like I ran across free brains every day.
I had been very irritated that I hadn't had the equipment necessary to stabilise brains when I had to kill all those Wraiths. I brought a number of heads home with me, but their brains were mush and not salvageable by the time I got back. Hypoxia-based brain damage can be reversed through sophisticated nano treatments, but not only did I not have that equipment but the longest someone has ever been revived had been an hour post-death, and it was about two by the time I got back. Their crappy brains weren't worth the candle. This guy's fresh brain, though?
Waste not, want not.
I had been irritated enough that I had built a specialised life-support chamber designed specifically for brains. From the outside, it looked kind of like a matte-black cylindrical hatbox, and it was filled with a nutrient and oxygenation fluid as well as numerous electronics. The idea was to take it with me in my car if I thought I might end up having to kill someone so I could quickly salvage their brain. However, the thing looked rather sinister, and that was before I scooped someone's brain out of their skull like it was Baskin Robins, so I immediately nixed the idea of taking it along with me on a job with Kiwi and the boys.
I didn't want them to get the correct opinion about me. Dr Frankenstein was still remade every few decades in this world, so I could just see Kiwi teasing me by hunching over, yelling, "It's alive, it's alive!"
Now though, it could be useful. I dragged it over onto a nearby table and started getting the rest of the tools I would need for brain surgery, humming the tune of the latest earworm from that Korean pop girl group. They were called Neon Angels, and they had songs in English, Korean and even Japanese. The chorus to this particular song had been stuck in my head for a while. I sung/whispered to myself, off-key, as I gathered my neurological rotary power saw, " We're the Neon Angels, flying high, living fast, never gonna die, in this world of chaos and strife, we're the ones who come alive. " The lyrics were insipid and stupid, and I thought them inaccurate, too, but still, the combination of them and the melody must have been designed by an AI for maximal earworminess.
The chorus of the song was especially terrible, with the lyrics going, "In this city of neon lights, Where the future's always bright, We are the Neon Angels, Living life with all our might."
I changed the lyrics, instead sing-humming as I got everything together, " In this city of utter shit, it's easy to not care a bit. Where it's hard to do what's right, don't worry, I'll saw with all my might ." With the last line, I tested the rotary saw, which was essentially a power tool, getting a high-RPM "vrrrm vrrm vrrrm" sound out of it, similar to a Dremel-style machine, because that was basically what it was.
Satisfied, I turned around, seeing the two Tyger Claw grunts seem a bit uneasy and the netrunner looking a little green. "Uh, you guys can wait outside if you want?" I offered. All three of them shook their heads, and I assumed they were under some sort of obligation to see this through. Whatever it wouldn't take too long.
"Why brain in jar?" the most curious of the two grunts asked when I was finished, looking at the floating organ submerged in the hatbox from above.
I pointed to the small piece of cybernetics that I had been very carefully rewiring that was still attached to the brain. I had to drop into a half-fugue to finish the operation as the implant was a little more complicated than I had initially thought, "This piece of cybernetics is not only configured to erase itself if it senses the brain is excessively damaged as I thought but it is also encrypted."
The runner shook himself out of his reverie, looking upset, "Encrypted? What cypher?"
I finished connecting a standard interface socket directly to the device; I had just salvaged one of the sockets from the man's brain, "It's a standard and robust quantum-resistant cypher with a ridiculous amount of bits for the key... however, Zetatech got a little too cocky with this system." I said the last smugly, walking over to wash my hands.
Turning to glance at the netrunner as I did so, I continued, "The encryption key is derived from a continuous neural map using a complicated mathematical formula I don't precisely understand, but it basically boils down to small changes in the neural structure over a set period of time will result in the same key, allowing decryption. But large changes? Like managing to put the implant in someone else's brain? The valid key cannot be derived."
I glanced at the two grunts, remembering the state of the guy's face, "Large changes could have included the traumatic brain injuries often caused by concussions, too, guys. You were lucky. Oh, and his pain editor was on when your runner locked his implants out, so he didn't feel any of this." I waved my hand at the abused body of the man.
I was pretty sure he had pretended he had, possibly hoping they would give him a concussion or two in their further attempts, which might effectively scramble the encryption key and render the data irretrievable. That was actually a pretty clever idea to effectively self-delete the data, even with locked-out cybernetics. Paradoxically, the fact that they had so little time meant they likely jumped completely past the repeatedly knock-them-around stage of torture, though, which saved the data's encryption key.
I didn't know why this guy had gone to such an extent to protect this human trafficking operation, except perhaps being much more scared of someone else than they had been of the Tyger Claws.
The two guys audibly gulped, and I motioned towards the interface socket, "From a user perspective, it is a very intuitive system, and its security was higher than I thought due to that encryption method. But from the user's perspective, so long as the brain is alive and is the same brain, the data is automatically unencrypted. To the user, it looks unencrypted all the time. You should be able to download it all right now." I didn't tell him that I had already passively downloaded a full image of the drive, just out of curiosity's sake.
He seemed to follow my explanation as what looked like understanding blossomed on his face, and he hurried over to the brain-in-a-jar, connecting quickly. It didn't take him long to say, "This is exactly what we needed. Thank you, Taylor-san. We need to leave quickly."
He turned towards me and briefly bowed formally, the two grunts quickly doing the same. Ugh, I hated social situations like this. I didn't particularly want to reciprocate because I didn't feel like bonding with these people, but it would be awkward if I didn't, so I did, just to get them out of my shop.
As long as they rescued the girl, I would feel as though I had done a good deed, mostly. A lot of clinicians from my previous world would have been aghast, deeming everything I had done a violation of the Hippocratic oath, but firstly, I had never sworn that or any similar oath. And second, I disagreed with it on a fundamental basis. I agreed with the idea that if a doctor said they would heal a patient, then it would be wrong for them to then hurt them, but that's it. I never considered Mr Brain-in-the-Jar, my patient, and I certainly hadn't lied to him about what to expect from me.
All three of them left rapidly after that, almost running, and I sent Mr Jin a text explaining that the procedure had been a success. Then I blinked and growled, "They didn't even take the body with them, though."
previous chapternext chapterchapter list
The meeting of two great entrepreneurs
Opening my eyes from a bizarre dream, I stood up and stretched. Now that I was feeling much more rested, it occurred to me that the man whom I had floating in a hatbox might be in some distress, mentally. Immediately after cleaning up and setting his body aside, I sat back down and resumed my sleep cycle. I didn't even take off my clothes or change back into my pyjamas.
Placing the sleep inducer back into its protective case, I walked into my shop area while considering it, coming to the unusual conclusion that I didn't precisely know. There had been some research into sensory deprivation, of course, in this world. As I assumed, there had been in my last one, but not as much as I would have thought here, considering how easy it would be to reliably induce it in test subjects with modern cybernetics. Doing a few absent net searches, I found that there were a few experiments conducted to see if therapeutic sensory deprivation could be used on cyberpsychosis exemplars, but it invariably made their psychosis worse.
Sensory deprivation had been reported to be relaxing but also to cause hallucinations and even psychedelic-type experiences, but these were all in subjects that knew what to expect. I drew on some of my psychological knowledge and combined that with the knowledge of the events that had occurred and winced a little, stepping a little quicker to walk over to the hatbox that was plugged into mains power, lifting the top and peering down at the liquid bubbling like it was a Beta's fish tank.
From his perspective, he was being tortured and lost consciousness and possibly woke up to nothing, no sensory inputs, no pain, just his own thoughts. Even a rational person, which I didn't really consider this man to be, would not really be faulted if they jumped to the conclusion that they had died and now were trapped in some sort of purgatory-like afterlife.
It would be quite difficult to have a good grasp of how much time had passed even now, and he might be wondering if his personal hell was just unending solitude forever.
