I hummed, "Well, let's try to avoid as much as possible some stereotypical meet-up in an abandoned warehouse. I don't believe the men with free candy written on the side of their white-panelled vans, either." I rubbed my chin and thought about it more, "If they demand an in-person exchange, then we can demand a very safe location to conduct it, and we can hire mercenaries to conduct the exchange. I might take part as just part of that team, and they'd see me as only another merc. Do you have any ideas for a very safe place you could suggest the meeting take place if they insist on it?"
She frowned, "They'll suggest Bitechnica Plaza, and I'd suggest somewhere in Japantown, which neither side will agree to. Maybe the Azure Plaza."
I considered that. That was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city and only had been in operation since 2060. Ostensibly, it was an independent hotel and resort, but it was linked to the Arasaka-owned Konpeki Holdings, in style if not in technical owners. There were "Konpeki Plaza" hotels in numerous cities around the world. Still, in North America, there were only two, and they were called Azure Plazas and theoretically owned at least fifty-one per cent by a New United States citizen, with also theoretically no link back to the main Arasaka corporation.
I wasn't sure I bought their separation at all, and I doubted anyone in Night City did either. The large Azure Plaza building started construction in the mid-2050s, as much a protest by the Night City city council to the NUSA government as anything else. The twenty or so years of being duped about the Arasaka headquarters explosion really pissed off a lot of people in Night City.
It would be a good choice, though, the security was insane, and it was an internationally known name for business meetings exactly like the kind we had, where neither party trusted the other. The Azure/Konpeki Plaza employees were always trusted interlocutors between two fractious parties, though. Still, there was one issue, "Don't people already think you're a catspaw for Arasaka?"
She scowled at me. Wakako didn't like Arasaka at all, and she had never really told me the reason why, "Absolutely not. And even if they did, there is no way Arasaka... oh, excuse me, there is no way the totally organic American holding company that operates Azure Plaza would take a risk to ruin their reputation on a deal as small as ours. It would be unthinkable."
I slowly nodded. That did make sense, "Okay, push that, then. We'll need to secure a group of mercs and maybe some extra muscle on top of that. Do you think Kiwi's team might be appropriate?" I liked working with them, and I trusted them, so it would be nice if they were watching my back, especially Kiwi, who could likely see a double cross before it happened with her net support. She wouldn't be able to invade the Azure Plaza's subnet, I doubted, but she could set up for our infiltration and exfiltration.
Wakako looked thoughtful for a moment, "I might not have thought of them first, but if you're comfortable working with them, they could work with you as the exchange team, but we'd probably need a couple of additional people. Ruslan has settled down lately and hasn't been taking as many wild risks, so it might work out."
I nodded. I still saw some worrying signs with both Jean and Rus, but it was true they had settled down significantly. I no longer felt that they were circling the drain, merely treading water. I still felt that they needed therapy and probably psychoactive medication, but I couldn't force either of them to get it.
"Let me handle reaching out to them, but I will do so this week or next. Suppose my guy in Biotechnica nixes either Konpeki Plaza or a couple of the other similar locations in town. In that case, I know they'll plan on double-crossing you, so we'll have to move quickly to the next seller. However, I think they'll go to the meeting there if they demand one. Even if we have to pay ten or twelve thousand eddies to rent a conference room for a few hours, it will be worth it," Wakako said, nodding.
She paused for a moment and then asked, "Is there anything else we need to discuss?"
Yes, if they demanded we meet them in some sketchy location or in the middle of their headquarters in town, there was only really one reason they'd do so. I really hoped we didn't have to go with a number two option, as then we'd really be on a clock. "I don't think so. I think it's just a waiting game for us now."
"Alright then, I'll let you go. But I feel good about this deal, despite these hiccups," Wakako said with an uncharacteristic smile on her face.
Shit, did she just jinx us?
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Civic improvement
I watched the surgical assistant proceed through its self-tests, the four articulating arms stretching out from its housing hanging from the ceiling and going through the full range of motions with a very slight whirring sound. I settled on a design for this first-generation assistant that only had four arms and six tools, three on each of the two special-tool armatures. However, it had two general-purpose manipulators, which resembled a hand with the pinky finger replaced with a second thumb.
I had taken the manipulator design straight from a number of seamstress robots that were in common use. I was probably violating some sort of patent, but I didn't particularly care. The extra thumb allowed it to perform almost invisibly tiny sutures, at least in simulations. Sutures were still a common treatment, especially for people who could not pay for the better surgical-nano glue that held a wound closed and healed it with no scarring at the same time-most of my patients, in other words.
I had a lot of suture techniques in my head, and with my high dexterity and vision options, I could perform almost as well as a robot in surgeries, but that didn't mean that I had muscle memories for every particular surgical technique, especially somewhat archaic ones like surgical sutures. At least, that was before I had gotten a lot of practice. These days, I could practically sew a fly's wings back on if I had a small enough needle and thread, but it didn't mean I enjoyed taking the time to do such things.
I hadn't quite had an opportunity to test the suture mode on an actual person, although it had worked really well on all the physical analogues I had easily accessible. I had shifted the central processing unit into a permanent life support tank, as well, so I theoretically could collect another person's brain if I wanted to. I would need to if I ever intended to finish the arachnid-robot ideas, but my workspace out in my clinic was getting kind of full. In the current design, I had envisioned a robot about the size of a terrier dog which was the smallest form factor for a generalised robot that I could think of, but perhaps I could shift downwards to about the size of a large rat.
They would be less useful tools on each spider, but I could also have many more of the individual bots and specialise them each to a different set of tools and skills. Also, a benefit was if they were smaller, I could keep their home base station in the ceiling in a corner, as they should have no difficulty walking on a ceiling or the walls.
Perhaps fate was favouring me because I heard an urgent-seeming series of doorbells and knocks on my outer door. After checking the cameras, I noticed Hiro and another young man who seemed to be injured. Part of his face was cut, going down his cheek and eye, skipping a portion of his neck and continuing down part of his chest. He had a makeshift bandage covering most of the injury on his face, which occluded his eye.
Despite the bandage, the wounds were bleeding fairly well. I glanced at the surgical assistant and smiled. I may get a chance to test its suture mode today. I buzzed them in, the door unlocking with a clang as Hiro pushed it in, and the two young men hurried into my shop.
By the look of it, the new arrival was a few years older than Hiro, maybe three years or so younger than myself. Hiro came in, swearing, "Miss Taylor, Miss Taylor! Some fucking gonk cut-up Jeremy. Can you help him?"
I motioned him to take a seat at the chair and tilted my head at them both, "Who attacked him?" But then, I focused my attention on the patient, gathering a few things I kept for traumas on hand.
I connected him to my simple cardiac monitor just to be safe. He's tachycardic, which wasn't surprising judging from the wincing he was doing, especially when I removed the makeshift bandage he was using. It was clear he was trying to put up a brave front, but he was in significant pain. His left optic was damaged, as well.
"Some fucking junkie piece of shit tried to rob me on a delivery," the boy told me himself. I nodded and sprayed some contact anaesthetic into all of the open wounds, getting a sigh of relief from the boy as the painkiller started working immediately. Whoever it was, they had gotten him pretty good. I would have to repair some of the muscles in his face if he ever wanted to have a symmetrical smile again.
I glanced at Hiro briefly as I stood up to go get some tools. First, I'd have to debride all of the wounds, dirt and other debris that were present, "I thought you and your minions only delivered to Japantown, Hiro-chan."
He scowled at me for the somewhat feminine diminutive I added to his name but nodded, "Yeah, we do. This fucking happened in Japantown. Don't worry, Miss Taylor; wae've already told the Claws." I wanted to raise my eyebrows but didn't. Why did he think I cared? Did he have the impression I was in the gang or something?
"Kumo-kun, connect," I told the surgical assistant as I brought back a few tools, as well as an IV kit. Although my assistant, only presently, had four "legs", I thought the final version might have eight. Plus, he was kind of a first draft of what I might want my little spiders to be like, so I had been calling it "Kumo-kun."
His two armatures that ended in hands folded down from the ceiling and grabbed the data cable that was connected to the biobed and searched for the young man's interface socket. Apparently, this was a little disconcerting to him as his eyes got wide and he tried to sit up, only for Kumo-kun's other hand to semi-firmly press him back into the chair. It might be better if I reassured him, "Don't worry, that's just an assistant robot that I have been testing out recently. You're in no danger." Probably.
He settled down and let the hands put the data cable into his interface socket, and immediately the rest of the Meditech displays on the biobed started being populated with data. It wasn't anything I hadn't already guessed-he only had a basic operating system and optics, like Hiro had.
I sat on the little rolling stool and rolled back over to the biobed, humming as I palpated his body, not just the parts around his injury. I asked, "Do you want Hiro to leave prior to discussing anything medical-related or receiving care?"
He blinked his good eye at me and shook his head, "Nah, I mean, he's paying for half of this." That caused me to raise my eyebrow. Did Hiro-chan have something like a health insurance plan for his employees if they were wounded on the job? How interesting.
Hiro just shrugged at me, so I nodded, "The lens on your left optic here is damaged irreparably. It'll have to be replaced, but I can have one fabricated locally and delivered within thirty-six hours. For that and the repair of that eye, is one fifty. You have some serious muscle damage to your cheek here; I'll have to repair it as well as your chest. One hundred. You're also very dehydrated, and I can detect you've got the incipient stages of clinically significant Vitamin C deficiency. I'll treat that, ten eddies. But it would be best if you took a multivitamin every day or watched what you ate better."
Hiro shook his head, "I told you that Buck-a-Slice is not food, man."
He scowled at Hiro, or at least one-half of his face did, "They're delicious! How much are multivitamins?" Delicious? I might need to perform a psych consult.
"About ten ennies a day or less, but if you're on any kind of government assistance, they're included for free, but there are only certain brands you can buy and only from a few different stores. Unfortunately, my clinic is not one of them, as I do not have an actual business license. But the pharmacy and quick shop across the street are," I told him as I held his arm out and quickly started an IV before he could realise what was happening and complain about it.
Hiro looked interested, "Really? I never heard of that."
"It's a cost-saving measure, plus I suspect some bribery is going on. It's also not advertised. But you should be able to get them for free, as well, if you live in subsidised housing here. If you don't want the hassle, I sell them as well," I told Hiro as I started a yellow multivitamin-infused bag of saline running on my patient. I said out loud while glancing up, "Kumo-kun, light and suction."
Eagerly, the two other mechanical arms unfolded down; they each had a few tools on them, one of which was a bright light, and the other was what was basically a medical wet-dry vacuum with changeable heads. This current one looked kind of like a straw and was disposable.
Although the brain that made up the intelligence of Kumo-kun definitely didn't have consciousness anymore, not how I would describe it anyway, it still had something like the intelligence of a dog, if a dog had a photographic memory and a bunch of medical procedures programmed into it. It was always eager to please, too, as part of the process to train its neural network included wiring its in-tact reward centre to give a serotonin and dopamine reward if it completed a task successfully.
It held the suction carefully as I irrigated and cleaned the kid's wound. When I was done, I tossed the disposable straw away and replaced it with a new one, and then began the complicated task of repairing the muscle damage to his cheek. I had to use a very tiny set of forceps to reach in and grab the severed muscle and have Kumo-kun hold it in place while I sutured it and the connective tissue back together. Kumo-kun's bright light following the entire operation was quite useful. As I was working on him, the young man suddenly asked me, "Wait, is this where the scar will disappear?"
I glanced at him from behind my surgical mask and safety glasses and almost imperceptibly shook my head, "No, not unless you want to pay an extra seventy-five eddies. It will be a fairly small scar, though." I paused just in case he did want to. I'd have to go get some of the trauma nanoglue if he wanted that. I had made certain assumptions about my patient's financial means, and while I wasn't usually wrong, perhaps I was in this case.
