"What's this?" Kiwi asked, looking at a table I had set the rest of the Gemini equipment on.
"Biopod, that is where her brain will be installed, and unit charging station. Although almost indistinguishable from a bio-human, the Gemini does need to charge, but it's just a regular high-voltage charger you'd find on any robot, so it isn't special," I said with a smile. I had the biopod in bits already, as I was adding extra functionality which would allow me to more easily continue to treat her for the brain damage she suffered while she was dead for almost half an hour. Also, it was my first time seeing a biopod in person; before I knew it, my power and I had disassembled it in a light fugue. It was very, very interesting but had lots of room for improvement.
I then glanced where Kiwi was looking on the table, at my hatbox, "Oh, and that's Gloria." That caused her hand, which had been reaching out to touch it curiously, to jump back as if she had touched a hot stove, which I found kind of amusing. She spun around and asked me, in tense whispers, "You're just keeping her in a box next to your wrenches?!"
I blinked. Box? I sniffed delicately, offended at her making aspersions onto my hatbox, "It's a hermetically sealed, hazardous environment life support pod. She's perfectly safe in there," I made that up on the spot, as I mentally called it a hatbox, but she didn't need to know that. Mrs Pegpig cooed in agreement from her perch on my shoulder, and I nodded at the pigeon and reached into my pocket to pull out some minced carrots I carried in a ziplock bag and offered the treat to the pigeon, who greedily tore into it.
"You're getting a little more mad sciencey, and I'm not sure that's a good thing, but I guess I am all for it," Kiwi remarked. "I'll find some clothes for Gloria after I work on some of the designs I want for my new tattoos."
I frowned at her. I had removed all of her old ones, which were spiderweb-based and all over her body, and she was talking about getting what seemed to me very similar spider-themed tattoos when we got to Los Angeles. Didn't that defeat the purpose of removing such identifying marks? She said I didn't understand anything, and not only were they not similar, but the act of building up a body of art through multiple tattoos and tattoo artists was an important part of her starting a new identity.
I didn't understand at all, but to be honest, she was a lot more of an expert on the subject than I was, as I still didn't even know what her real name was, and she refused to enlighten me. While I was really attached to my identity as Taylor Hebert, she was the exact opposite. In fact, she never even gave her new identities names until she absolutely had to when she needed to sign up for some governmental service. It wasn't like she worked nine-to-five jobs, after all. Apparently, Kiwi was just what people had started calling her around her scene in Night City after she showed up one day.
Perhaps I could prank her by telling everyone that her name was some other fruit or vegetable in advance, 'Hello, this is my friend Avocado. Friends call her 'Cado.' Mandarin? Ooh, mango? Mangos were delicious!
Mrs Pegpig cooed aggressively, demanding more carrots from my shoulder. She came with us alone, and I thought she would be more upset with me for just grabbing her and absconding, but I had learned that what I had thought was Mr Pegpig was actually like three different birds, and she didn't seem that upset at leaving her royal harem behind. If anything, she seemed to coo some orders to them before we left. She was the weirdest pet.
She had already raised one clutch of little Pegpigs, with them all leaving the nest months ago, so I guess she wasn't that attached to any specific place anymore.
David just cried when I was finally able to show him Gloria's body, which I had shifted over to my biobed after I had finalised the appearance and placed the clothes Kiwi scrounged up on her. "I know you said she'd be okay, but I was so scared," he blubbered, and I patted him on the head as he clung to my leg.
Although I hadn't had time to really Tinker much with the body, I did install my custom paralysation nails on their hands. I had carefully removed the custom-designed implants from my own hands and regenerated my fingernails as I was going to some lengths to make my cybernetics load out divergent from what people, mostly Trauma Team, had records of, and my handy fingernails were one of the more unique implants I had.
There were similar implants on the market, of course, there were dozens of different kinds of slasher and razorclaw type implants, but mine had the appearance of a bespoke item, which they were.
I also totally replaced my slightly damaged customised liver and second heart with two commercial models that served the same purpose. Kiwi called me insane for Kumo-kun and me performing minor surgery on myself, but it wasn't like she didn't watch and find it riveting.
I tabled my custom liver not only for the same reason that it was identifiable but because it was just customised and not something completely novel. I based it on a liver I had taken from Scavs, and I wanted to build something from the ground up. Filtering toxins was an important biological activity, and I felt that most solutions were suboptimal. The human liver was terrible, which meant that while cybernetic options remained highly superior in comparison, they were still objectively sub-par.
"Okay, stand back. I'm going to bring her online, but I'm going to try to bring her back to awareness slowly," I told Kiwi and David. I was concerned she might react violently, considering her last memories, and I had my mental fingers around the override controls to her body.
I was right to be concerned because despite how slowly I tried to bring her back to awareness, she went from motionless to thrashing about, attempting to attack someone that wasn't there, which caused David to grip my pants some more. However, the reaction quickly quieted, and she looked around, shock on her face and tears quickly welling in her eyes. Good, both the tear duct system and facial micro-musculature seemed to be working without even needing to be configured.
As soon as she saw David, she held her hands out for a hug and probably would have jumped out of bed if I hadn't disabled her legs via software. David yelled, "Mom!" and attempted to leap into her arms, but I frowned and caught him as he was flying mid-air, easily plucking the brat out of the air in slow motion, then spinning him around and setting him down well away from her grasp, saying, "Nope, nope, nope. What did I say?"
He sullenly glared up at me, "No hugs until Mom gets used to her new body; otherwise, she might squish me like a ripe tomato." Wow, he read back that verbatim. The kid really is sharp and has a good memory, even if he ignored it completely.
Her indignation at me denying them their reunion turned to just shock as she blinked and looked at her arms and hands, apparently checking herself over as much as she could. She opened her mouth and asked, stutteringly, "N-n-new b-body?" Then she frowned at the stutter she had developed.
I noted it as well and wasn't surprised at all. I expected her to still have a number of neural deficiencies and problems with her speech centre, recollection and hand-eye coordination were all things I was expecting, at least for a little while. Her voice was working correctly, though. She probably didn't notice it, but she didn't make her vocalisations with her larynx, but a digital system was installed in the same location. Once she learned how, she'd be able to talk without exhaling if she wanted to, although, by default, the Gemini's systems were designed to mimic the exhalation process when vocalising.
David had helped me get enough recordings of Gloria speaking to feed into the Gemini, and it used a pretty standard but effective artificial intelligence system to create a digital voice equivalent. Although vids and BDs had Geminis, even if they weren't always named as such, always featured as some sort of spy or impersonator, the truth was their bread and butter business were people exactly like Gloria, who needed a full-body prosthesis due to Trauma.
And anything that reduced the feeling of body dysmorphia when you were jacked into a total body replacement would vastly decrease cybernetic-linked mental instability and cyberpsychosis, so duplicating a previous user's voice was a small but very important feature. I coughed into my hand, "Alright, she's alive. I need to speak to her in private now. Kiwi, please take David into the other room." The warehouse we were staying at had an attached office, which we were using for bedrooms.
"Awww..." David complained but didn't even complain when Kiwi lifted him over her shoulder and carried him off like a sack of potatoes. He waved excitedly at his Mom while being carted off.
I pulled up a chair and sat next to her, and asked, "So, what's the last thing you remember?"
"W-where are we?" she glanced around for a moment before shaking her head and answering me, "A sk... ske.." She frowned, looking angry and slowly and methodologically enunciated each phoneme, "SKETCHY man came into the clinic."
I nodded and said, "Okay, let me explain what happened. This might take a while..."
I told her pretty much everything, even how a misunderstanding in my business caused the "sketchy man" to come and try to kidnap her since I did feel pretty guilty about her situation. Although the only thing she shrieked about was the cost of the body she was currently inhabiting, and she even tried to comfort me by patting me on the shoulder when I told her about Ruslan and Jean's betrayal, it was less of a pat and more of several hard slaps.
We had an in-depth technical discussion about exactly the nature of her injuries, and she was a bit shocked. She shook her head and said, still stuttering every few words, "Don't try to feel guilty for not taking me to the hospital; they would have just called me DoA. You know that NC Med's medical insurance doesn't cover extraordinary measures like this." She made a motion at her body, and I frowned.
It could be I had gotten too used to the extraordinary default measures that were commonplace at work at Trauma Team. Trauma Team even had similar "vampire cuff" technology built into the biobed of the AV-4, although that one depended on the two clinicians installing the bypass on the carotid and jugular manually.
I thought back to what would have happened if Gloria and I had brought a patient back to the hospital that was in the same shape as Gloria had been and frowned. She was right. We would have been written up for not declaring them dead and for wasting the Emergency Department's time. I could see my former boss yelling exasperatedly, "You bring dead bodies to the morgue, not to the ER!"
"Do you have a mirror? I want to see what I look like," Gloria asked quietly. I frowned. Was she expecting I just threw her in a random body?
I looked around and finally found a makeup compact in a box of my toiletries and handed it to her. She snapped the top of the plastic compact off instantly, which caused me to chuckle. She eyed me warily and said, "Thank you for grabbing David before I squeezed him like a tube of toothpaste." That was a pretty gross image, but possibly accurate.
She glanced down at the mirror now and looked shocked, "I look exactly the same!"
Well, not exactly. But quite close. I didn't duplicate the two fashionware vents she had previously installed on her cheek because they seemed not only pointless but a possible avenue of infection.
Finally, after everything, she said, "I think me and David should go with you. Not only am I not exactly firing on all cylinders yet, but the offer to get me admitted to a critical care nursing program is too good to pass up." She was performing some simple neuro self-tests on herself, like touching her thumb rapidly to each fingertip.
This was a pretty common cognitive and coordination test, and she was having some issues with the timing. This might indicate a TBI to her cerebellum, but it just as well might simply be that she hasn't gotten used to the body yet. I told her as much, and she shrugged, "It doesn't really matter either way. I'm either going to need whatever treatments you're doing to continue repairing the hypoxia-related brain damage or, alternately, physical therapy from a total body prosthesis specialist. You say you can provide both."
I winced, "I don't want you to think you're trapped in a decision just because of your medical situation. The hypoxia treatments are going to basically be automatic, and I can find a specialist physiotherapist and pay for it." I didn't say it out loud, but I very much didn't want her to feel forced into abandoning everything she had and then later resent me for it.
"Don't worry about that. Honestly, there isn't a whole lot keeping me in Night City. My mom, I suppose, but she isn't helpless despite her attempts to portray herself like she is." She winced and continued shaking her head, "So long as I can get word to her that I am not dead, I would actually relish a chance to escape from her. She does help me a lot with David, but..." She pursed her lips in distaste, " Mi madre es una loca... She also survives solely on government assistance, stealing and me, which isn't really the example I want David to see at all. Can you really get me into a good nursing program? You haven't said where you planned to go."
"Nothing is certain, but I am pretty confident. We'd have a few months before your packet would need to be in, so you'd have to take the entry tests. But they won't be that hard for you, especially if I help you study for six weeks. Plus, we'd be paying in cash, and that is probably the most important factor for the university, despite their protestations to the contrary," I told her confidently and nodded, "I wasn't going to mention where we were headed if you didn't want to come with me. It isn't that I don't trust you, but..."
She waved a hand, "I know. My entire priority is David, and I am a bit angry that you were a gonk and indirectly put him in danger, but it wasn't your fault, really. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't tried to grab the gold coin you saw flying through the air, but I can't blame anyone for trying to catch it." She flounced back onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling, "No, this is just irrational. It sounds like it was mainly my fault, anyway. I can't remember what I did, but it was probably something stupid. If I had just cooperated, there would have been no way that guy could have forced us both through the whole Megabuilding without the Tyger Claws noticing him and turning him into sashimi. I could have texted someone. Oh, god, I can't believe David saw me get shot like that. Is he okay?"
