At first, I was going to open a biosculpt clinic and pharmacy, as I had the required credentials to open those types of businesses. It was going to be all above board, too, a legitimate business, although I would be paying an extra five per cent tax to the Lotus Tong for protection and had agreed to do some discreet work beyond merely biosculpt for them on the down-low.
I had prioritised getting this one apartment in livable condition, but now the workers were working on the ground floor, and that had to be done to a considerably better standard, but everything should be done shortly. After that, I had an appointment with the local Militech sales rep to get a security system, complete with surveillance, autonomous turrets and hopefully a couple of combat drones, if I could get them or a similar non-Militech system on the used market for cheap enough. I didn't mind spending as much money on this security as I would be ripping it out when and if I left the building.
When your friend was a fairly high-class netrunner and could help you secure your computers, automated defences and security systems looked a lot better than a contract for on-premises security guards, and one of the others would be needed here. The Lotus Tong did not have as strong of a grip on Chinatown as the Tyger Claws had on Japantown, so the protection fee I was paying, while less than what I paid the Tyger Claws, was realistically only protecting me from the Lotus Tong themselves, not the unwashed masses.
"And, of course, you'll be able to work there. However, you'll have to take a primer on biosculpt treatments. It is as much an art as it is medicine, so you might not be entirely suited for it," I told her, frowning, "But even if not, we'll have the pharmacy and similar unofficial clinic, just like I had in Night City. Tell me, what do you know of traditional Chinese medicine?"
"Uhh.. that it doesn't work?" she said in a tone that made it seem like she was asking a question instead of making a statement.
It mostly didn't work, but some of it was quite effective, even if the reason it was effective didn't have anything to do with Pestilential Qi or a yin-yang imbalance. Still, one couldn't criticise too much as they were accidentally right far more than European medicine of the same time period was.
It was just weird that the practices continued in the modern age, I felt. But, given our location and the demographics of everyone around us, I had already had a number of requests, mainly from old Aunties, as to whether we would be providing such services. Some of it, I wouldn't because it was only a placebo or even actually harmful like moxibustion. Others would be difficult to implement because the herbal components that did work were kind of difficult to obtain. They were almost all imported products, and I didn't presently have a source for them. You just couldn't get raw ginseng in North America, for example.
But, there were a limited amount of herbal remedies that I could source that were efficacious, in addition to massage and acupuncture, both of which were very effective. I could teach the latter two to Gloria fairly easily. Full-body replacements often had almost preternatural memory for complex dextrous physical tasks, and her Gemini's on-board machine learning system would help her target the correct places to use in acupuncture in the same way it would help her target the correct places on an enemy to shoot, once it realised what she was trying to do.
"Some of it does, but mostly you're right. I think a lot of our customers might be people who want this type of therapy, though. We might set up a small clinic, separate from the pharmacy and biosculpt clinic, so that they can get prophylactic IVs, vitamins, herbal remedies, acupuncture and massage. I won't turn away customers as long as the services I provide are helpful. I can easily teach all of that to you," I said, grinning.
She looked thoughtful and nodded. She wasn't the type of person to turn down learning a new clinical technique or three if she thought it was actually effective. After that, we all sat down and ate. Gloria's plate was a bit smaller than ours as she didn't exactly need as much food as us. The Gemini was mostly powered by batteries and a small radioisotope thermoelectric generator, after all. She could go a week without a charge, but it did have a fully functional digestive system, and eating and tasting food like a regular person was an excellent way to keep her attached to her humanity.
It was one of the reasons that Gemini's had so few cyberpsychosis events while generic Alpha models had the most. Not only did the entry-level Alpha models not look like a human, merely humanoid, but they couldn't eat, and usually, their voices didn't even sound like the previous organic person.
After I finished dinner, I said mildly, "Oh, also... I might be getting deported." That got the predictable response that I was hoping for, and with a small smile, I explained what I had done today and my meeting with Immigration.
David was cracking up, "I'm sorry, that's so funny, Dr Tay-err Hasumi... hahaha..." I frowned at him because I could tell he had made that slip on purpose. He knew that as long as I looked like this, I was to be Dr Hasumi.
Kiwi, however, looked wistful, "A vacation to Canada sounds nice. It's just a shame none of us can get a passport at the moment." That was true. Gloria and David could, under their old identities, but the fake identity that all of them had was likely not to the point where it would survive the background investigation necessary to get a passport.
I nodded, "I'll be going next week. Can I count on you and Gloria to make sure the workers continue as they have been? I'd appreciate it if one of you spent the night in my apartment here. I have a lot of expensive equipment just sitting around, after all."
Kiwi volunteered right away, "I can do it, no problem. When you get back, do you think you can do some work on some of my new team members?" Somewhat surprising to me, she wasn't letting her betrayal keep her down and had already started searching for a new team of mercenaries. I suppose that was what she knew how to do, after all. However, this time I did notice that she was both taking the leadership role and she was picking people that were quite "new to the game." I suspected that she wanted to train them on her own and in her own image.
Apparently, they had been taking less risky jobs, which made a lot of sense when they were just starting out. She had gone through about eight different people to get her four-person team, discarding and firing people if they didn't meet her standards or, I suspected if they reminded her overly much of Ruslan or Jean.
"A couple of them aren't sure if they want to go with cybernetic limbs eventually. If they don't, we will all want a full course of the biosculpt treatments, to include nanosurgeons," she said simply. "I'm standardising all of the augmentations for my team as a minimum requirement. So, for right now, we will just need three nanosurgeons and three muscle and bone lace treatments. We've been working small jobs for a month or so to afford it, although I am subsidising slash lending them a little bit."
I nodded slowly and thought she was likely subsidising more than a little bit. To get a good deal on the specialised nanosurgeon organs, I had to buy ten at a time, so it would be good to sell some of them. I sold everything to Kiwi at cost, but her new mooks would only get a ten per cent discount, "Yes, that shouldn't be a problem. But, the muscle and bone lace takes about six to eight hours in the tank, as you remember." Kiwi had gotten both the muscle and bone lace as well as the ballistic weave and nanosurgeons.
I really needed to get two or three more biosculpt tanks if I wanted to run a real clinic, but I definitely didn't want to buy them at several hundred thousand dollars a pop. I was thinking I could duplicate the one I had, though. My power would definitely help me with that, and with Kiwi's help, we had already cracked the software of the first tank, so I could use that as a base for the software for my duplicates as long as I bought the same microcontrollers. The software was always my weakest area in the first place, even on medical devices where my power gave me the most assistance.
It was David's turn to do the dishes, and I watched him carefully because he had a habit of not scrubbing enough and leaving spots on the plates as they dried.
I was attacked leaving my building a week later when I was on my way to the airport by a junkie-looking guy with a knife. I really missed carrying pistols and felt I needed them more than ever right now. Still, I saw him coming at me in slow motion after yelling something about giving him my money. I let go of my luggage, stepping backwards and letting out a girly-sounding "Kyaaaa~!"
I then easily dodged him and threw out my hand in what looked like a random, untrained slap from a girl, but it had close to my half-strength behind it, and it struck the assailant on the side of his face, slamming his head against the indestructible DataTerm that would have looked so familiar in Night City. The guy was rendered unconscious instantly, his knife slipping out of his hand and clattering to the ground as he slumped bonelessly to the hard concrete of the sidewalk.
I glanced around left and right, looking to see if anyone saw my performance, but nobody was around, which caused me to sigh. The effort I put towards my fake identity, and nobody even was there to appreciate it. I casually picked up the knife and frowned. It was a cheap blade, not really worth anything. I held it by its handle and flipped it around slasher-stabber style, and used my entire strength to ram it into the concrete sidewalk, causing the blade to penetrate a few centimetres and get stuck.
Nodding at that, I grabbed my luggage and started walking across the street to the temporary parking arrangements for my car. When I got my security setup, I would be parking in my parking lot, of course, but right now, if I did, my car would be gone in the morning. I glanced over my shoulder at the unconscious man, who should survive. He could have his knife back if he pulled it out of the stone like Excalibur.
As I went through security and was pulled aside to get another bracelet, with the average traveller staring at me curiously as I put it on, I decided that I would have to do something about this. I had a few ideas in my head about modifying my monowire to look less like a monowire, but the problem was that scanner technology had, for the moment, exceeded stealth technology.
I was pretty sure I could do it, but I wasn't one hundred per cent confident, and what would happen if someone caught me trying to board an international flight with a hidden cyberweapon system? I was pretty sure that was considered terrorism or something. Maybe if I could get a cheap scanner myself, I could use it to practice and iterate any camouflage system, as I was pretty sure they all worked on similar principles.
I had splurged a little for a business class ticket and was flying direct LAX to Vancouver International on an All Nippon Airways flight. Orbital Air Subsonic had two more flights to Vancouver a day and reputedly had a better reputation for on-time arrivals, but I still felt that Dr Hasumi would rather give her money to ANA.
The flight was a little less than two thousand kilometres, so it would take about two hours on this high-efficiency subsonic jet. My last airline experience had been going to Seattle on a prop plane, but this was something akin to a 747.
I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, although, in truth, I was reading Dr Hasumi's novel. However, about thirty chapters into the flight, I was "awoken" by a quiet but urgent-sounding " Sumimasen." I opened my eyes to the smooth, bare thighs of one of the flight attendants in my face and coughed, and quickly looked up at the woman's face. There were about equal male and female flight attendants on this flight, and they were of all of one type — beautiful, regardless of sex.
This one smiled down at me and said quietly, " Sumimasen, Hasumi-sensei. Records indicate you are a medical doctor; is that correct?" I blinked and nodded. Was this the overused trope where someone became ill on the flight, and I would have to save them?
She brightened and said in Japanese, " You are the only one on the aircraft right now, and for some reason, our telepresence medical assistant is not functioning. I know it is an imposition, but can you come with me to first class? A passenger is ill, and the pilot needs to know if he should divert or continue on to Vancouver."
I was getting a few stares from the other passengers, and the peer pressure was real, so I sighed and nodded, " Of course. Although I'm on vacation and don't actually have any tools or supplies with me." I suppose I could have said I only have a medical doctor's degree and not really the right to treat patients, but now I was curious.
I was in the aisle seat, so I just got up and followed the woman to the much more spacious first-class cabin. So nice! But I couldn't rationalise doubling the cost of my ticket. Business class wasn't bad. Actually, even the economy was a lot superior to what I remembered about airline travel from Brockton Bay.
My patient was obvious, as he was pale, diaphoretic, seated by himself and in the process of vomiting into a prepared emesis bag. He was someone of European descent and was wearing designer but not bespoke clothes. So rich, but not really wealthy, was my take. The wealthy would take an Orbital Air spaceplane to get to Vancouver suborbitally or a private jet.
Luckily, the plane did have a supply of medical supplies, as well as a few devices. I put on some nitrile gloves and quickly connected him to the combination cardiac monitor and automatic defibrillator, humming a little as I kneeled down in the aisle next to him. "Mr..."
The flight attendant behind me supplied his name to me, " Wilson-san ."
I nodded and said, "Mr Wilson, I'm Dr Hasumi. I can see you're not feeling well. Can you tell me anything that isn't immediately obvious? You're sweating, vomiting... when did it start, and is there anything else?"
"Yeah, diarrhoea... That happened first; I about destroyed the first class commode, lemme tell you. It came on a little bit after take-off and has gotten progressively worse," he said but was smiling in a friendly manner.
I made a non-committal noise and nodded, "I assume you have a biom. Can I connect to it using my personal link, sir?" I got a nod from him, and I pulled my personal link cable from behind my neck and plugged it into one of his interface sockets.
Immediately a large amount of his vital information scrolled past my eyes, but I frowned. Everything looked normal, and that wasn't normal. You didn't usually just start expelling material out of your body from both ends while being perfectly normal. How unusual! Maybe this would be interesting.
