He put his thinking cap on and sent a message back. The team captain was to send one team member on an overnight stay at the resort, and his team should expect the exchange to happen sometime tomorrow or perhaps the next day. They would know when they saw a Biotechnica convoy head towards Konpeki.
He also took a moment to reconfirm their standard orders per his principal's instruction. They were to observe the exchange as much as possible and only intervene if it seemed like Annette's daughter was in immediate danger of death. If all they were going to do was kidnap her, then they should not intervene.
Privately he disagreed with these orders, but he always had a soft spot for Annette.
previous chapternext chapterchapter list
will go wrong
AN: I admit to stealing the pessimist joke from The Dresden Files. :P
When I sat down alone for dinner, I had already done some research on the United Kingdom while in the bath, in between reading a fantasy novel, so when I was given a menu which I had already reviewed on their net site, I already had a few ideas of some of the dishes I could order which would be suitably English.
However, the more I read about cuisine in England, the more I was sure that most of the upper crust probably ate French, Italian or international cuisine instead, as most of the results I got were for things that did not seem appetising at all or were very peasanty, although, in the modern day, things like meat pies were considered a lot more high-class, depending on the type of protein that was used. That said, while soaking in the tub and reviewing the menu for the restaurant downstairs, I saw something on the menu that I thought might suit me.
Speaking of my tub, I had only gotten out of it when all my toes became unreasonably pruney. That said, I already had an idea to fix that issue later, so the next time I had the chance for this luxury, I could soak as much as I wanted. Pruney fingers weren't, actually, a result of water being absorbed into the skin as most people thought but a function of the sympathetic nervous system ordering your blood vessels to constrict. The reason for this evolutionary adaptation was debated, and even I did not precisely know for sure, but I felt that it might be to increase the finger's gripping friction while in the water, lest a useful tool or weapon slipped out of your hand.
Still, it was simple to treat either pharmacologically or in other ways, such as intercepting or blocking the signals from the brain and spinal cord. I hadn't yet finalised a design for my first internal pharmacopoeia, in fact, it was barely at the stage of an idea or back-of-napkin sketch, but I already knew that a supply of vasodilators would be included in the medications inside.
There were already similar implants in the world, but they loaded the chemicals into them as a consumable. I wanted something that would generate the chemicals, either on demand or to keep a supply stocked. So while I was calling it an implant, my ideas were really on the scope of a complicated, artificial organ.
Shaking my head from the digression, I glanced across the bar to the tender who was waiting for me to order. He was smiling and tapping his fingers in slow motion on the bar top, waiting for me. That was one nice thing about living in slow motion; I had more time to daydream without looking like an idiot.
I had decided to sit at the bar for dinner, as well, because the main reason I was there was to be seen. Coughing gently into my hand, I said, "I'll take the Beef Wellington, rare, and the scalloped potatoes with a Cirrus cola," I said, smiling, and continued, trying to sound cool, "Also, two fingers of the fifteen-year Glenfiddich. Neat, just pour it into a glass."
I had only drunk alcohol on a couple of occasions, and I didn't really like it. I especially didn't think it was worth a hundred eurodollars for a small glass of it, so I didn't try to order any fancy cocktail because I figured it would just ruin the taste of the other parts of the drink. It was better to think of it as medicine or something, so I asked for it by itself. I had looked up the terminology, and "neat" referred to liquor just by itself, without even ice.
Glenfiddich wasn't a super high-tier brand of whisky, but it was in the mid to upper range these days, especially in the NUSA as an imported product given the state of the global logistics supply chain, and it was still made the same way it always had been, at least if you believed their PR materials.
The bartender brought me my drinks immediately, sliding over a tall glass of cola and an empty lowball glass. He poured what I considered to be about fifty ccs of the amber liquid into the glass and placed it in front of me. I inclined my head and gave him a quiet thank you before taking a sip of the nasty stuff. I had already schooled my face to be expressionless.
It was gross, like a burning alcohol taste combined with an oaky, caramel-type flavour that was, in my opinion, a terrible combination. However, my face hid my displeasure, but it was all I could do to avoid spitting it back into the glass. A man's voice surprised me, and I glanced at him in mid-sentence, "It's nice to see someone, especially a young lass like yourself, not ruin good whisky by contaminating it with ice, much less..." he paused to add a dramatic shudder, "... try to make a cocktail out of it."
The man looked like he was in his early forties, although my trained eyes zoomed in on several tell-tale signs of life-extension therapies, so I guessed he was maybe half again that. He had a course of treatment that was strictly designed to extend his life and wasn't maximised for looking as young as possible. His hair, including a full, well-trimmed beard, had gone to salt and pepper, and my professional gaze identified that the dermis on one of his hands appeared a lot newer than the other, so I suspected he had his hand regrown as it didn't seem to be a cybernetic replacement.
That told me he had money, but the fact that he had gotten the treatment within the last twenty years told me he hadn't always had it, which was a little unusual but not unheard of. Those with real wealth would be treated with genetic therapies when they were in vitro and throughout childhood. Genetic therapies of all kinds were usually much more expensive than biosculpt. However, these days they were somewhat blurring along the edges as some biosculpt treatments included a genetic factor.
My nanosurgeons, for example, included a small genetic change that prevented my body from rejecting the artificial organ that produced the organic nanomachines. The distinction was that genetic therapies usually had to be tailored to the person being treated. When a genetic treatment became so well understood that an average doctor of middling skills could perform it, then these types of treatments filtered their way into the realm of biosculpt unless, like life extension, they were kept artificially scarce for economic or political reasons.
In almost no case, however, would any genetic therapy or biosculpt treatment be designed to alter the genome of your gametes, though. Not only did that make breeding complicated, but more importantly, it made sure the Corporations that offered these services could sell the same services to your children. There was no money to be made in Eugenics unless each subsequent generation had to pay, too, after all.
Personally, I thought that was sad. Despite how dangerous the world was, it wasn't on the same level of danger that could cause evolutionary pressure. So, it would be nice if the human organism, which had been lifted out of the dreary world of natural selection through our ingenuity, could be improved instead by that same artifice.
The way he spoke immediately brought to mind a famous Scottish actor, and I smiled, "Well, I am not a total barbarian, despite what my mum used to say." I raised a single eyebrow, which was a lot harder an expression to practice than one might think, and asked, "You sound a bit far from home."
He chortled and raised a thick mug of beer and said, "Aye. My name's Richard Stewart; I'm a sales executive for British Aerospace, in town to hawk the wares. You sound like you'd be more at home in a cold and rainy place, too."
I blinked once. I still got a lot of news based on Alt-Taylor and Alt-Danny's interests, so I had, by chance, heard that BAE was trying to sell some surplus surveillance drone systems to the Night City government. That the city would even entertain not buying the equivalent Militech product was a shock to the very Militech-focused publication. I tried to parse the last part of what he said while he waited in slow motion and finally considered that he was, as I suspected, referring to England, which, even today, was a very rainy and cloudy place.
I grinned. I found the fact that everyone always included what Corp they worked for amusing. I obviously couldn't reciprocate, but I thought I could tease the older man a little with my reply, "You're quite right. Forgive my manners for not introducing myself sooner; I am Emma Barnes, a member of no particular organisation, and I'm in town for some personal business. Don't tell me you boys are still trying to off-load those Demon Eyes, eh?"
The Demon Eye surveillance system was originally a potent, fully-integrated autonomous military surveillance drone system used to gather real-time intelligence in an entire local theatre of operations. It was one of the first such products released after the world mostly recovered from the DataKrash in the early '40s, so it was in almost all ways inferior to products that had been utilised in the 2020s, which had been lost or suborned by the wild AIs. So much technology had been lost in that incident that we still hadn't recovered from it.
Still, it was a system that was getting a bit long in the tooth today for a front-line European nation, and trying to get some money out of it by selling it for police use was not surprising, especially to what they probably considered to be a second-rate city-state like Night City.
His eyes widened for some reason, and I saw his eyes briefly dart to the obviously not solely decorative charm bracelet on my left arm, then to the barely visible cyberdeck at the base of my skull, and finally a little lower to see the beginnings of my Kerenzikov that were visible in the dress I was wearing. He chuckled a bit, a sly look now on his face, "Maybe. I could get you a good price if you're interested."
"Not me, no. But I wouldn't be surprised if the local city government was very interested in such a system," I said absently, thinking about how an integrated surveillance system like that could improve NCPD response times, which were dreadful for even very violent crimes-a year of working on a ground ambulance made it clear that something had to give. The Demon Eye had a simple machine learning algorithm that categorised possible combatants, including a confidence level of impending violence and could be used to potentially stop some types of crimes before they happened.
That caused him to grin, and he said, "Really? That's very interesting." He took a large swig of beer and watched as the bartender brought out my plate, raising an eyebrow, asking, "Do you suppose that's a real filet?"
I glanced at him sideways as I took in the plate. It smelled really good, "If by real you mean it comes from a real cow, then definitely not." The price wasn't high enough for it to be real, that way, at least. "But it's definitely some kind of vat-grown beef, so in that sense, it is real beef, if not really from a cow. I personally cannot taste the difference, and I doubt anyone who says they can."
I didn't think that industrialised animal husbandry should continue now that we could cheaply grow meat without the intrinsic suffering of that industry when it was done on an industrial scale, but that wasn't something I would comment on because it would make me seem very odd. Almost nobody cared about things like animal rights here.
"I always wondered how they make that stuff," he said absently, finishing his mug. The tender walked over and asked him if he'd like another, and he shook his head, "No, my good man. I think I'll be heading back up shortly."
I glanced at him while cutting a portion and said, "It's the same technology that they used to regrow your hand, but on an industrial scale."
He glanced down at his hand and frowned, rubbing his right wrist with his left hand, "That kind of makes it sound very unappetising. It's no wonder they don't really include that in the marketing material." He chuckled and stood up, "Well, I better go. I really appreciate your intelligence. Thank you, Miss Barnes . Rule Britannia, and all that."
Intelligence? What was he talking about? I raised an eyebrow as I watched him walk away, humming the melody to Land of Hope and Glory.
Whatever, I shifted focus back to my meal. It looked really delicious.
Mr Stewart had called him and all three of the others to an emergency meeting at his suite, which was kind of impacting his nightlife. He had a date planned tonight with a girl of loose morals.
He arrived at his boss' suite, thankfully not the last to get there, and they waited a few more minutes for everyone to arrive. Once everyone was there, the tall Scottish man grinned and said, "Lads, ladies. I meet someone very interesting downstairs at the bar."
He made a gesture, and a still image of a side profile of a pretty young blonde woman sitting at a bar was projected on the room's SmartWall. She had blonde hair that reached her shoulders and was wearing a black dress, although it wasn't quite a little black dress, as it seemed more modest than that with a hemline that went close to her knees, and from what he could tell from this angle, a conservative chest that showed hardly any skin.
The image was obviously captured from Mr Stewart's optics. He frowned but kept his mouth shut. One of the others didn't and asked, "She seems a bit young for you, boss, but congrats on catching a classy bird like her, eh?"
"Go screw yourself, Wilson. She is younger than my daughter," grumbled Mr Stewart. The younger executive wisely kept his mouth shut as that fact rarely stopped anybody when they got to Mr Stewart's level. He continued, "She introduced herself as Emma Barnes, a member of no particular organisation ." He emphasised the last three words a little.
No particular organisation? Wait... NPO? The younger executive blinked and opened his mouth for the first time, "Wait, do you mean..." He tapped his right index finger on the side of the nose twice.
The National Photography Office might have had an unassuming name, but it had a storied reputation of over a hundred and fifty years over a number of different names, from the Directorate of Military Intelligence to later the Secret Intelligence Service to the now more ambiguous National Photography Office. The name was almost a joke, as in the past fifteen years, Britain claimed not to have any foreign intelligence agency. Nobody believed that for a second, not even the Liberal party proles back home.
