60 Patience, little crystal

AN: Work has been really busy, but if I had to admit it has really been Baldur's Gate 3 that has slowed this release. It is a good game! Speaking of game releases, I will be working some of Phantom Liberty's lore into this story, specifically about Dogtown and the Pacifica combat zone.

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July 2067

Watson, Night City

Fuggedaboutit Storage

"How the fuck did you even get this thing?" asked Kiwi, staring at the Dragoon as she rolled in a somewhat large wheeled hoist into the storage locker. She took a moment to look at the giant Dragoon chassis from all directions, both to admire it and to try to figure out how to properly pick it up with the hoist, which I thought was the same kind used for taking the engine out of your car.

I shrugged, "I inherited it. Long story short, Dad was kind of a badass, and he took trophies. See, there is an ambiguously bloody baseball bat and one of Kerry Eurodyne's signed guitars."

I was pretty curious about what the story was behind the baseball bat, but I might never know. However... perhaps I could take scrapings from the dried blood? It was kind of difficult to get reliable DNA samples after all of this time, but it might tell me something. After a moment, I shook my head. I didn't particularly care. There was nothing for me to gain from it, and at worst, I could entangle myself in problems just searching for the genome if it was someone especially important.

Kiwi's eyes went wide at the mention of Kerry Eurodyne's guitar, which I had actually bought a nice glass case for. She ran over to it and hissed, "Oh, fucking preem. This is the axe he used on the Second Conflict tour in Barcelona! How the fuck did your dad get this? Second Conflict was one of his weaker-selling albums... but only at first! It was a new sound, very narrative, and people didn't respond well in the first month or two after release, but it became one of his masterpieces. It's without a doubt one of the most critically acclaimed albums, especially looking back. Classic Eurodyne."

I blinked at her. I hadn't expected her to be such a fan. Then, I grinned. I had some of NC-Taylor's memories, enough to know that NC-Dad was a pretty big fan, also. "I assume my dad stole it in one of his escapades. It's listed as stolen anyway on the manifest of stuff my dad left me. I considered selling it, but if it is so well known, it is probably more trouble than it's worth to go about it. I have no idea how to fence stolen ... uhh.. memorabilia."

Kiwi let out a sigh of appreciation and glanced back and forth between me and the guitar before finally asking, "Say, can I have this?" She paused and then added, "I mean, I'll buy it! But it's just rotting away in here."

The edges of my mouth were twitching upwards. It was true. I wasn't any kind of Kerry Eurodyne or even SAMURAI fan. To be honest, I found their music pretentious and preachy. I felt the entire idea of so-called Rockerboys dreadfully self-unaware. The Corps still made money on SAMURAI albums to this day. Great job, Johnny. You really showed them in the end!

And I just felt Kerry Eurodyne's solo career was even worse. It was the music of someone who once, perhaps incorrectly, thought he was fighting the system but now knew he was just selling out to it. It had no soul, which at least Johnny Silverhand had put into SAMURAI, even as deluded as he had been. But that was just my opinion, and I certainly didn't have much room to throw stones from my glass house. Still, at least I had already changed the world. We'd see if it was for the better or the worse, though.

Years and years ago, when I first came into this storage locker, I had wanted to keep it as a sort of memento to NC-Dad, but I already had his photograph and military medals in a small butsudan-style cabinet-altar back at home. Neither he nor NC-Taylor were Buddhist or Shinto, obviously, but I felt that the Japanese style of remembering deceased close relatives was a nice one. Plus, this was a custom that actually had gotten fairly popular in Night City regardless of your ethnicity, so it was common and widely recognised. Even David would occasionally place his hands together and say something solemn when he was visiting. That was cute.

Finally, I nodded, "Sure. You don't have to pay anything, either. Consider it a birthday present, although I don't even know your birthday or even how old you are." I squinted at her, zooming in on some of her organic parts. Over thirty is all I could narrow it down to, as she has had significant alterations and biosculpt at least a couple of times.

Kiwi tried to look coy and said coquettishly, "A lady likes to keep some mysteries." I thought she ruined the effect she was going for by grabbing the guitar case and swinging it around like a five-year-old, though. She even paused to take the guitar case out to the large white-panelled truck we had arrived in and stowed it in the cab before returning.

We figured we better put a tarp over the thing just in case, although Kiwi claimed she had infiltrated the building's subnet and put all the cameras on a loop. Considering even I could hack this building, even years ago, I didn't doubt her. Thinking about that, I felt that NC-Danny probably searched around for a storage unit in that was clean but featured terribly cybersecurity as a feature, as how had the got most of this stuff in here, anyway?

Getting the damaged body into the truck was awkward but, in the end, not difficult. I was really strong, after all, and the hoist was basically designed for tasks like this. On the drive back, Kiwi suddenly said, giving me a side eye, "One of those drug people just came back by the building in Pacifica but suddenly stopped across the street and then quickly ran away."

"Ah, good. The small little bombs have a tiny vibrating motor in them as well, and they'll vibrate inside their sinuses if they get close, increasing in intensity the closer they get until the bomb detonates. It is probably quite uncomfortable, plus it is impossible not to understand the message being conveyed. We would have likely had to shoot a few of them if not for this," I said, pleased with myself.

Kiwi asked, "So they'll just have a bomb in their head forever? I suppose that is slightly better than getting shot."

"I mean, the battery will draw down within a couple of months, and after that, it is safe, biologically inert and merely uncomfortable. A few months after that and even the explosive and battery will break down and be absorbed by the body, leaving only a tiny bit of electronic components. And it's not like they couldn't get it removed now. I'm not a monster; I didn't add any kind of anti-tampering features to it. Any ripperdoc or even most Med Techies can take them out," I said, slightly offended, or at least trying to pretend that I was somewhat offended.

From the side-eye that Kiwi gave me, I didn't know if I was fooling anyone. It was fine, and it wasn't like I had done what I had done, mainly because spending a couple of days sneaking through the building the gang had been squatting in had caused me to be incredibly annoyed at them. Ha-ha-ha. Of course, not. It really had been that I was sure I would have to shoot a few of them otherwise. Well, mostly. Well, more so than not.

After hitting the drive-through for breakfast, we drove into the back of the building, into the loading area and down the freight elevator to the subbasement. I put the Dragoon in the corner, for right now, pulling the tarp that we had used to conceal it. Kiwi peered at the entrance hole on the front of the chassis and asked, "What could have done this?"

"Clearly a kinetic penetrator of some kind," I mused, having wondered the same thing. "I thought it could be one of those three-man crew-served railguns, as I could see Dad setting one of those up..." I trailed off and then added another possibility, "...but I suppose it could also have been a kinetic round from a tank, the thin dart-shaped, discarding sabot kind."

It had hit the chassis right in the most armoured part of it, where the biopod was located in the chest. Not only had it, no doubt turned the pilot into a grey smear on whatever nearby wall, but it had also damaged the system electronics and both the main power cell as well as part of the hydrogen fuel cell system, specifically the fuel storage pressure vessel.

The Dragoon was too big and involved too much energy to be purely battery-powered like many bodies were, but at the same time, you couldn't very well run and exhaust most internal combustion engines inside a building, so a fancy hydrogen fuel cell was selected to run the body in high-exertion mode.

It was kind of a pain in the ass because very few people used hydrogen vehicles. I would be able to fuel it, but the fuel would be annoying to acquire. I'd probably have to source the hydrogen from an Airgas company at first, although I might be able to set up an electrolysis system to produce it myself if I could live with a ridiculous electricity bill.

Plus, I had to repair the pressure vessel. The vessels to store pressurised hydrogen had to be made of supermaterials, not only to withstand the many, many hundreds of bars of pressure but also to prevent hydrogen from leaking. There were very few things smaller than a hydrogen gas molecule, and it had a tendency to leak out of everything and then catch fire or explode when it did.

"Well, I got to go and get this truck back before they notice it is missing," Kiwi said, surprising me.

I blinked, "Wait... did you steal that—"

"Bye! I'll be back here in a bit!" she interrupted me and ran off before I could ask if we had been driving around Watson in a stolen truck with a highly restricted piece of military technology in the back. We had stopped for burritos on the way back, even!

Sighing, I finally decided that since nothing had happened, it probably wasn't a big deal.

Glancing at the time, I thought I had enough time to at least get the torso partially disassembled. My power didn't help me much with this at all, and the tools were more of the realm that you'd use to work on a car instead of a person's body, but eventually, I got the armoured plates off, even if I had to use the gentle yet insistent persuasion of a prybar at the end.

Peering at them, I wondered how precisely I would replace them. They were fancy composite, laminated steel armour plates in a very distinctive pattern. I'd have to scan them, fix the damage in the CAD software and then I could possibly get them refabricated from steel and titanium at a prototyping shop. They wouldn't be quite as good as the OEM armour, but they'd still be pretty good. I'd probably have to do that for a number of things.

After that, I only had enough time to carefully pull out one of the system mainboards, which was catastrophically damaged. This was the reason that Danny and I both considered this thing irreparable. You couldn't go to IEC and buy spare parts anymore. However, I had an advantage now. While I performed maintenance on Gloria's friend's Wingman, I disassembled the entire thing and took careful scans and images of almost every electronic part of it, spending a whole day on the effort, including taking memory dumps from some of the accessible ROMs.

I was hoping that IEC wasn't the type of company to reinvent the wheel. The part of the Dragoon that was damaged was its mainboard, and while the Dragoon had a lot more peripherals and sensors, was there a reason that the architecture of the two boards would be much different? I hoped not, but I didn't have time to investigate it too much today.

I took the time, however, to carefully return my tools to the correct places. These were a brand new set of tools, including a large rolling toolbox that I had purchased, and I had even carefully set it up so that each tool had its own individual place where it would fit precisely in a foam shadowbox. There was nothing that annoyed me more than tools left lying around. That's how you would lose things, or worse, leave a tool or item inside the object you were working on. Since I mainly worked on people, this was especially unacceptable.

I thought a healthy dose of OCD was helpful as a surgeon or, more likely, in this case, a mechanic. I ducked into one of the empty rooms and changed into my work clothes. I had seven surgeries scheduled today, so I needed to get going.

Night City was, in many ways, the city that never slept of this world, but there were still lulls in the traffic, and I managed to cruise down the highway at a hundred and fifty.

---xxxxxx---

September 2067

Aoyama, Tokyo

Hasumi Sakura's Apartment

It was the middle of the night, and I was working a little bit from home. Normally I would be in the office right now, but I had a meeting in "regular people hours" later this morning, so I decided to alter my sleep schedule and instead was making an early day of it today. Or a long night of it, depending on your perspective.

I had a home office, but I often just worked on the couch in the living room. I never worked with real physical objects at home, and if I needed a desk arrangement, I could rez a virtual one next to my couch. The virtual AR objects were so real that they even slightly hurt if you hit your bare toe on them. The only downside was I occasionally forgot that they weren't real, and on one occasion sat my hot drink down on it only to have it fall through like it wasn't there and strike my foot. Yuki had fussed over me, but I could tell he had been trying not to contain his laughter.

Speak of the devil, and he comes to give you a hot chocolate. I took the proferred drink and gave him a thumbs up, saying in English, "I am here to improve genomes and kick ass." I narrowed my eyes dangerously and qualified in a cinematic voice like you'd expect to hear in a film trailer, "And I am all out of ass!"

Yuki's eyes glanced down towards my pyjama-covered posterior. The look of utter disbelief on his face was enough to realise that perhaps I had mangled the idiom in an unintentionally amusing way. Coughing, I attempted to salvage things, "Thank you for the hot chocolate. We'll probably head to the office by six, I suppose?"

He opened his mouth as if to say something, paused and then closed then. Then, after another moment, he nodded and asked, "No breakfast, then?"

I shook my head. By my internal clock, it was evening, and I was just making an all-nighter of it, having skipped work "yesterday." My bodies were in three different time zones, from Japan to California to space, which used Greenwich Mean Time. Due to my residency program back in Night City, I had also kept mostly "California" hours and would until I was done.

I settled onto the large couch, pulling my feet under myself and getting comfortable, launching my handful of AR apps that I used to review and adjust genomes as virtual screens. In the corner, I pulled up my e-mail and team chat feed to see if one of my team members had said anything recently.

Yuki came back into the room, holding his pillow, and hopped up onto the couch next to me. He would have been perfectly happy to use my lap as a pillow, but I didn't often let him. Still, I did let him lounge next to me. Sometimes he slept; other times, he did a lot of his own work, which basically amounted to managing my schedule and my non-professional correspondence.

I absently patted his head once or twice before I focused on my work. I knew he was a honeytrap, the way he shifted from the attempted seduction to more of an open provider of platonic affection, or kind of otōto template. It happened a bit too fast for it to be anything else, but this kind of avenue of attack was actually quite effective on me. If anything, it made me feel bad for poor Yuki.

If I ever had to flee Arasaka as Hasumi, I would try to kidnap him and then Stockholm him over a period of time, I decided. Wait... that was bad, right? No, Taylor! You shouldn't kidnap people! Except, I didn't really have high hopes for his future if I did flee successfully, so it would be kind of like saving him, wouldn't it?

Shaking my head, I focused back on my work. Although I wouldn't have the second series of lifeforms ready for today's meeting, we already had promising enough demonstrations using the first that Arasaka had greenlit a trial plant using the technology in Hokkaido, with the input being mainly recycled materials. Still, I thought we could increase the effectiveness quite a lot.

The way the original researchers designed a type of novel lifeform, even if it was just a bacteria that could break down metals without using some chemical oxidation process, was actually inspired. The entire reason we find metals as a material useful is because it is difficult to cut, mar or damage them. But, they went so far to avoid using any mechanism to avoid corrosion that they forgot that corrosion is very effective, and if harnessed properly, I thought that the system speed could be increased an order of magnitude with the two most common metals, namely alloys of steel and aluminium.

You wouldn't want to use corrosion as a primary process because you would be left with a bunch of metallic-oxide dust that you would have to re-smelt like they were ore which was energy intensive and the opposite of what the project was calling for, but using corrosion as a kind of cutting force only a couple of molecules wide would be very effective at separating out the metals into the end product, which appeared to be a kind of metallic sand.

The few oxides that this process would generate would be discarded, and you'd be left with fairly pure metals that could be used for any number of purposes, although they would likely remelt them into ingots or bars on site, as dealing with very fine metallic powders could be problematic. That type of engineering wasn't my problem, though.

There were as many ways to corrode metals as there were metals, but this project was focused mainly on steel and aluminium recycling, so that made things a lot easier. I was aware of a biological process to create an enzyme that was very corrosive for both metals, infiltrating itself into the metallic crystalline structure and causing rapid exothermic oxidation, so long as there was oxygen present in enough quantities, of course.

My power had suggested this as a possibility to modify myself with flammable acid blood as a defence mechanism, but it could get a little out of hand sometimes, especially since my cardiovascular system, organs and cybernetics wouldn't be immune from its acidity. It didn't see a problem with that; just change those too!

Still, I could sense it in the back of my mind, purring like a cat, pleased that I was using the enzyme for something useful finally, even if I didn't want totally awesome acid blood for some crazy reason.

Adding the special organelle to this bacteria would be simple, and it wasn't that crazy, either. The bacteria they created was already a thousand times larger than average, so there was a lot of space for additions. It bore a lot of resemblance to the genes expressed for a similar purpose in ants, just turbocharged. Although including this multi-cellular function in a single-celled organism was challenging, it wasn't so challenging that they'd think I was a Goddess of Genetics.

Now just to include some way to both generate the acid only on demand and, more importantly, to neutralise the acid in case of apoptosis or accidental death... I only wanted controlled corrosion, and there were so many bacteria that they would often die during the course of their work.

After working for several hours, Yuki shifted and stood up from his spot next to me, stretching like a cat before glancing at me, "If you want to make it on time, we'll have to start getting ready now."

Frowning, as I wasn't at a particularly good stopping point and felt I could work for another couple of hours, but I nodded and saved all my work and closed down all of the apps I was running before getting up and doing a little stretch of my own. In addition to setting my schedule, Yuki was pretty good at managing my actual time and ensuring I stuck to it, and I let him. I could have set alarms and the like, but I liked giving the impression to everyone that I was a bit of a flighty genius, as it helped people underestimate me.

I raised an eyebrow at the outfit that he had laid out for me, as it was my dressiest option and just slightly low cut enough to display a hint of decolletage. We were having a status meeting with not only my titular boss but one of the Arasaka Vice Presidents today, so I suppose it fit, but before I got into it, I took a quick shower.

We met the Intelligence woman who agreed to sublet one of my aerodynes on the way out to the landing pad, our individual security people staring untrusting at their opposites. I had a team of four with me; it was why I needed the AV-8 instead of the smaller AV-4 or even smaller personal aerodynes, whereas she just had two bodyguards, but they both were heavily augmented. She raised an eyebrow at me and asked, amusedly, "It is odd to see you headed to the office in the morning, Hasumi-san."

I grinned and said, "We have a meeting with one of the VPs today, so I have to pretend to be a professional." I smoothed down my charcoal-grey skirt to emphasise that before glancing at my chronometer again, "But go ahead and take the AV. We've made a lot better time getting ready than I thought we would; we can wait." I glanced at Yuki to double-check, who nodded. I suppose he felt the meeting was important; he usually didn't pad the time as much as he had this morning.

The executive smiled and said, "Thank you. I appreciate it," and stepped out into the landing pad, which was attached to the side of a building.

"The spare aircraft is already on its way, Hasumi-sama," Yuki said, so we just stood there waiting. The flight was uneventful, and I met my team, who seemed pretty nervous. I asked one of the administrators, "Are the two demonstrations ready?"

He nodded, "Hai. We didn't have enough room for the second demonstration here, but it's ready in a small warehouse out of town, wired for sight and sound."

I nodded and sighed. I was supposed to be the savant-style genius here; why did I have to come on time? It would have been totally on-brand if I were late or even missed this entirely. I started to give Yuki the side eye for making me come here, to find that he was gone. Frowning, I glanced around to find him bringing me a couple of small pastries and another hot chocolate.

He had some sixth sense of when I was upset, and it seemed his first resort was usually to feed me something. I nibbled on one of the pastries, allowing myself to be calmed, and just sat in one of the chairs for a while to wait.

Thankfully, we didn't have to wait that long. My boss came in, following respectfully behind another man. I recognised him as one of the VPs in charge of research. I sat my half-eaten pastry aside and stood up as he walked directly over to me. He said in a no-nonsense way, "Dr Hasumi. We're both busy, so why don't you tell me what you're showing me today? Be succinct."

Succinct? I could answer him in two words, then. I pointed at the demonstration model on the table, "Robotto-desu." (It's a robot.) When it was clear that was all I was going to say, both my boss and a few of my team members started getting almost red-in-the-face, looking rather nervous. However, the VP suddenly laughed full-throated and said, "Okay, I deserve that. Slightly less succinctly?"

I nodded and, with a couple of my team members' assistance explained the projects, what made it different from traditional robotics, and the expected savings.

The little spider bots were separated into three different sub-projects. There was the neural tissue-based computational organ and its integration into electronics, the way to program them, and finally, the way to clone neural tissue cheaply.

The actual form of the robot, as small spider, was if anything, superfluous, and I had only chosen it originally because my power really wanted small spider bots. We continued with them because they were small and cheap to build, and surprisingly versatile.

"So, from what you have said, the downside to this type of robotic is that they're more difficult to reprogram?" the VP asked.

I nodded, "More time-consuming and using more expensive hardware, rather than more difficult. One of my team members, Yamamoto-san, was instrumental in the development of what he is calling the Dojo system. So, the robots can be programmed in a slightly abridged subset of the normal Axon programming language that electronic neural nets use today." I gave the man credit unstintingly. I had shown him my system of programming the spider bots, which really had been rather involved and difficult, even if it worked in the end.

He took that system and, along with a few others, designed the Dojo or neural network training and programming device, allowing programmers to use a mostly full-featured AI programming language on the little guys. I had been basically programming them by hand, stringing together the neural net equivalent of machine code, and he spent the time to invent a higher-order language. I authorised a rather sizable bonus for him and smaller bonuses for the rest of the team when they showed me what they had accomplished. I was still impressed today.

The VP nodded, "So it needs a special system to be reprogrammed from a specific task, rather than traditional electronics where it can be done on the fly. How much does this system cost?"

I shrugged, "We built the prototype for about two hundred million, but I expect value and process engineers could lower the cost by at least an order of magnitude. Still, it might be only the largest users of these types of robots would buy such a system; the rest might send in the robots for maintenance to us or some central depot, which could handle the reprogramming if they needed to assign them to a new task." I gave the cost in New Yen, so it was actually about two point five million Eurodollars that we spent. I didn't really think most people would need to reprogram them, anyway. If you bought a hundred small robots to pick up trash and clean and mop your floors, you were unlikely to convert them into security bots. In some way, the fact that they couldn't easily be reprogrammed on the fly could be considered a security feature, as at least your mop-bot couldn't be corrupted to try to shove its mop down your throat by a hacker.

After that, we showed him the live stream of the Spiderbots in action. In one case, they were cleaning an outdoor area up from litter; in another, they were waxing and mopping floors; and in the last case, they were guarding a warehouse, where we had simulated cat burglars breaking in.

Watching one of the cat burglars get tased, the VP asked curiously, "How does it differentiate friend and foe?"

"These small models have to be integrated into a building security system, so it is the security system central computer that designates friend or foe. Similar to some of our lowest-end security bots," I told him, who nodded, "It might be possible to design a larger, more sophisticated system that could perform autonomous identification of enemies in any environment, but really the niche for these systems is their affordability, and such a hypothetical product would tend to compete with our own other products in this sector unnecessarily. They do take autonomous action and even coordinate when they do have an enemy designated though, as you can see when they surrounded that burglar."

He looked thoughtful at that and nodded, "That's a good point." He quietly watched the spiders keep a couple of volunteer "burglars" face down on the ground until they were taken away by security forces before nodding, "I will meet with the President today, and I will recommend a full product launch. I think this will fill a niche. But maybe, we make the cleaning bots... not giant terrifying spiders? We'll want to sell this version to housewives, ne?"

I frowned. I thought they were cute. Still, it was a good point. Right now, the ability to have an actually useful domestic robot was what separated the upper middle class from those lower on the totem pole. If they could be made cheaper while still performing useful domestic duties like cleaning, washing clothes and cooking, then they'd be snapped up by the lower middle class like hotcakes, which was a much larger market segment.

A chicken in every pot and a robot to cook it for you?

---xxxxxx---

September 2067

Night City

Night City International Spaceport

David and I sat by the arrivals exit in the terminal, where we were expecting Gloria's flight to land as a surprise. There was no way she could make it by us and still get her bag from baggage claim, at least.

Finally, I nudged David after I saw Gloria in the distance stepping off a moving walkway. I just snickered as he waved his hands and started running towards her. I couldn't help it. Her hair, they had cut most of it off even though she was in a Gemini.

It didn't actually grow back on its own, the company rightfully thinking that people would prefer to have one length of hair and not have to maintain it. That said, I could cause it to rapidly grow back in the next few days, as people did like to change things up occasionally.

David wasn't too old to not still be a momma's boy. In fact, he might never outgrow that, so he didn't think twice before jumping into Gloria's arms, who spun him around like he weighed nothing. Which, to her, was not inaccurate.

After spinning with David a few times, Gloria walked up while still carrying the boy and grinned at me, "It feels so good to be back! Thank you again for watching David while I was gone. Honestly, I felt better leaving him with you than my mom."

I smiled ruefully and wasn't particularly surprised. Gloria spent longer in Seattle than I did, as apparently there was a significant delay between when the basic indoc class ended and when the basic training class begun. She had wanted to return back to Night City, but Trauma Team wasn't about to pay for extra plane tickets, which were three times as expensive these days with the war going on. It might have been different if they had to pay her hotel fees the entire time, but after you finished indoc they put you in on-base housing, which was more or less free for them.

I grabbed her luggage so she could hold David's hand while we walked out to a van I had borrowed from Kiwi. Both of our cars were only coupes, and David was a bit old for the old sitting in your lap routine. As I pulled out of the airport grounds, I asked, "How did you like seeing a new city though?" Gloria had lived in Night City almost her entire life.

"It was pretty nova, actually. Although, I kept getting nervous about being away from my home charging station," she admitted. I guess that was something that would be more of a worry for her or anyone that was a Borg. You wouldn't die if you ran out of power, but you would be trapped alone in a mostly black void with only minimal life support and sensors running. I had wireless induction charging ports in the headrests of most of my chairs, but I was still mostly biologically powered. My cyberbrain didn't use much electricity, and the standard low-voltage wireless charging was fine for it. I didn't need a dedicated high voltage, high amperage charging system like Gloria did.

Still, I raised an eyebrow, "There wasn't a Borg charging port in your room?"

She shook her head, "No. Yes. Well, not at first. In the hotel they got me at indoc, there wasn't. The training centre had a couple that I could use during breaks, and I can go a few days without charging, so it wasn't a big deal. The room at base housing did have one, and of course, there was one during basic."

After that, she related all she had done during her "break" and how she acted like a tourist around Seattle, seeing the sights and spending the company-provided per diem. We both oohed and ahhhed at appropriate parts of the story, and looked over some pictures and videos she had taken.

Suddenly, and in conjunction with a burst of automatic weapons fire, the van was bumped and jostled from an impact to the left rear. I quickly disconnected the auto-drive and prepared to take defensive driving manoeuvres while Gloria grabbed my short barreled carbine that was leaning behind my seat, shoving David's head down with her free hand briefly as she worked the charging handle to verify that it was loaded.

However, as I hit the brakes, the car that hit us overtook us on the left-hand side, and Gloria was about to lean outside the window to give them what for, but then we both realised that they weren't actually shooting at us. The car was full of obvious Animals gang members, and they were shooting at a car that also quickly overtook us on the opposite side. We just happened to be in the middle of their street battle in the middle of the interstate.

Frowning but not displeased that I wasn't being attacked, I slowed way down, moving over two lanes; I glanced at Gloria, who seemed a bit confused as well. I grinned at her and said, "Good reflexes, Gloria."

By now, David popped his face out and wanted to see what was happening, but Gloria pushed him down again, saying, "There could be some stray shots, stay down."

This caused him to protest that he was a big boy now, and Gloria immediately agreed that he was "her big boy", and she started pinching him, causing him to squeal and flail away, laughing as his mom tickled him. The Animals had succeeded in running their foes off the road but ended up colliding with the safety divider that separated the median and opposite lanes of traffic.

If I was alone and in my car, I would have been tempted to grab one of the grenades I kept in the glove compartment and gently lob one or two out the passenger window as I passed, but not only did I not have any here, but that could be very dangerous. This van was much less bullet-resistant than my Type 66, and David was here. Instead, I took the exit right before their crash and gave their incipient dismounted street battle a wide berth.

I had thought that someone had been after us at first, but no, it was just a normal day in Night City. Gloria didn't have to report to work until Monday, but today she was going to do all sorts of Mom and Son things, like go shopping and see a film, so I wasn't planning on being a third wheel, but I couldn't help but add while we got close to her Megabuilding, "Oh... and David has a little girlfriend."

Gloria looked shocked but slightly amused, but David looked inconsolable, yelling, "Auntie Taylor, noooo! She isn't my girlfriend! She is my ally!"

It felt good being called "Auntie Taylor", so I just sat there pleased as he explained that this person was just a girl who happened to be a friend and ally at school. They worked together to prevent the kids in the grades ahead from stealing their desserts at lunch and to have a chance to play with the cool toys at recess.

Gloria was furious that older kids were "bullying" David, and I would be too, except I had already discussed anti-bullying tactics with David. He glanced at his mom and rapidly shook his head when she threatened to go down to the school to complain and turned to me with desperation in his eyes, saying, "Explain to her, please!"

I looked at David with some sympathy, and I could see both sides of the coin here. Frankly, it was bullying and more than that; it was bullying that was sanctioned by the school itself. That was my personal bugbear, so I should be incensed. But I also had a lot of NC-Taylor's memories and my own reading of pediatric psychology and pedagogy and knew it wasn't so simple as that. Moreover, I knew that if Gloria followed through on her threat, things would go poorly.

I finally opened my mouth and tried to explain, "Every inch of his school is under constant audio-visual surveillance. The teachers already know about it and intentionally don't do anything, so long as it doesn't reach a certain point." David nodded rapidly again, but that seemed to only infuriate Gloria more.

She asked, "What do you mean? Why would the teachers do that? Let bullying stand?!"

"It's a socialisation training strategy, Gloria. And it is also sort of a personality filtering test. If they wanted, they could stamp out any bullying instantly, but they don't because the stakes right now are low. A stolen cupcake? Small stakes. It's designed to teach Corpo children coping strategies and teamwork when there is not much to lose," I explained, although it felt sort of wrong to be defending the practice. But it was totally different from Winslow. In that case, it was negligence, combined with a desire to cover up the actions of a child soldier, probably for financial reasons.

The worst part was my psychology knowledge was telling me that it was actually somewhat effective, and I continued, "You don't learn some lessons in complete safety."

She didn't look entirely mollified, "And other children can just get away with bullying because it is useful?"

"Yes… no," I said, then corrected myself, glancing at David, and said, "To answer this question fully will reveal some of what they don't want students to know, I think it is okay to tell David, but it is your decision."

David looked suddenly super interested. After all, what young boy wouldn't be interested in secrets?!

Gloria was quiet before glancing at David and then nodding.

"The answer is that they do not. Their behaviour is carefully logged. Many career paths are not compatible with a tendency for anti-social behaviour, so this might tend to limit their career prospects later," I said carefully.

"Well, that's almost as bad. They could have stopped these bully kids, too, before they ruined their futures. What a waste," Gloria grouched.

I frowned again, "They're not wasted. There are career paths where this type of psychology can be channelled usefully, for example… Security, police, soldiering, and a few others. Types with high discipline and a strict hierarchy." Although I personally didn't agree that bullies had any business being police or anything close to them, that wasn't the prevailing sentiment.

David frowned, "But I thought I might want to be a soldier or something someday. Does that mean I should be bullying kids?" He didn't like that idea, but Gloria especially didn't like his idea for a career, either.

I shook my head just as rapidly as David had, "David, this is important. You should never practice what you don't want to become. If you don't want to become a bad person, then don't do things that bad people would do, regardless of the reason. And by security or soldiering, I meant grunts with little hope for advancement. You'd want to display teamwork, choose team-based sports and be well-socialised with competitiveness in something that involves tactics, and these are some of the traits they look for in leaders of those types of people." David listened intently and nodded.

"Don't encourage him!" Gloria chastised me.

I shrugged my shoulders. All of my psychology data suggested that the more she wanted to control a child, the less likely it would work. So it was better to set them up for success either way. Plus, David was young, and there was a good chance he didn't have any idea what he really wanted to do. To say that it was common for prepubescent boys to want to be soldiers was an understatement. Most didn't end up as one, though.

I left unstated that while just bullying kids and strong-arm robbing them of their desserts was considered mostly a negative finding at school, doing the same thing sneakily was considered a positive one. NC-Taylor had a small gang of pudding thieves when she was in elementary school, but they always managed to get other kids blamed for their antics. I was sure that the Militech teachers knew who was responsible, but sneakiness was rewarded. It was something of a game at that stage, and nobody minded too much if their pudding or cake disappeared so long as they weren't treated like a video game character with some strong kid holding them by their ankles, shaking all their gold coins out of their pockets.

"Circling back, you can't complain because that would cause David to become a social pariah. He'd be shunned from all of his social circles, and nobody would work with him. It would be bad, so please don't," I said intently. Not even the most important kids would be immune from this kind of childish back and forth. Everyone got their pudding stolen, and the key was to get even, not call your parents in to save you. "Getting even" might not be the best message to teach children, but there was no way either of them could change an entire culture. This was one of those things that I warned her that David would be exposed to in Corpo schools.

"Besides, David's social situation will be much better next semester when he's had some time to integrate with the rest of the Trauma Team brats. We enrolled him as an independent, and that won't change overnight. But one of the older Trauma Team boys will likely approach him soon," I finished as we rolled into her building's parking garage. David looked interested in making more friends, or at least allies.

"Why will it be one of the boys?" David asked curiously, and I froze a little, trying to think of an answer.

Finally, I just shrugged, "I don't know. I just know that's how it is going to go." It was an interesting insight into one of the little bits of culture and etiquette that existed which I had no idea why they existed. There was no rule that an older girl couldn't take a new boy under her wing. It was just something that would never happen.

It reminded me of bits of Japanese culture that I had been picking up here, and there that had no real rhyme or reason why, like for example, if you were visiting someone's house in Kyoto and were offered a certain rice dish, it was code for get the fuck out, you aren't welcome. The reason there could be down to simple politeness and passive aggression, but it was similar in the sense that you had to almost grow up in it to identify such coded signals. Being a Corpo was very similar to that.

I dropped them off and proceeded directly to Pacifica. I had managed to arrange a couple of days off in all of my bodies, which was a bit difficult to do, but I have had the itch to create something for weeks now, and I have a feeling that it might result in a fugue state that went across all of my bodies.

Inside the subbasement was everything I needed, including the repaired Dragoon. Or, mostly repaired Dragoon. I hadn't managed to secure the supermaterial-based hydrogen storage vessel, so I was using a replacement made out of titanium and carbon fibre. It meant that if the Dragoon had to fight, it would only be able to do so for about fifteen minutes, instead of the several hours it should be able to by spec. But that was enough for now.

The "biopod" I had constructed entirely from scratch, merely using a standard biopod's shell. Although, I didn't actually have any intention of putting one of my brain's into it.

I had considered it, of course. But I intended my fourth body to be special. Originally, it was going to be pretty simple, though. It would live in a biopod and connect to robots remotely via a Haywire comm pair as a telepresence unit. That was what was in the Dragoon's "biopod." Merely an interface device and Haywire com pair.

Then it could be hidden somewhere, say this basement, and use robots to clone myself replacement bodies even if Taylor died. That was the reason that I didn't intend to actually police Pacifica like I had Chinatown in LA. I thought about doing so, as I could make a lot of money in real estate if I was successful, but this was more important than money.

I wanted Pacifica to become relatively lawless, where nobody sane went. Just so long as my little slice of it was safe from the crazies, that would be perfect. I was hoping people would see on the surface a building that was the home to a number of dangerous Borgs, including one really dangerous Dragoon-Borg, and just assume we were a more low-key version of Maelstrom and stay very far away. Speaking of, I needed to get Gloria to contact some of her acquaintances to see if they were interested in cheap or free housing here.

But the more I thought about my original plans, the more I realised they wouldn't be special enough. I had a full scan of my brain, so I was leaning towards buying a huge computing cluster and emulating my brain in software and having that "AI Taylor" be my next body. It would be difficult because I would have to artificially lower the software Taylor's clock speed or frame rate, for lack of a better term.

We'd all still be linked the same way, so one part of me couldn't be allowed to think much faster than the rest of me. It would cause issues of synchronicity. But even with such present limitations, it still sounded like a thrilling addition to myself.

I didn't expect my power to provide me much assistance with the plan, aside from the brain scanning system, but I was so very wrong! My power was incredibly enthusiastic, wildly wanting to help, and giving me ideas that I didn't even understand.

So, I carefully blocked out a couple of days to see what it was so excited about. I had a wide variety of tools and materials, and the feeling I was getting from my power was that I was ready.

I carefully began the recording devices, both in my cyberware and externally, in case I didn't remember anything, and picked up the first item.

---xxxxxx---

I came back to myself and by my internal chronometer. It had been fifteen hours. I hadn't been entirely off in my own world, just mostly. It was actually quite an unusual experience. I was awake enough to respond to Yuki in Japan, at least enough to tell him that I was busy and would be busy for almost an entire day.

I immediately had my body that was back there get up and ask Yuki for some dinner, but only after he drew me a very hot bath. He seemed excited and pleased, and it was clear he was a little worried that something had been wrong with me.

In front of my body here in the basement was something that looked like a chest freezer in size, except that it was made entirely out of crystal that glowed, a dim red light coming from deep within. I sort of knew what this was. It was a supercomputer made of a matrix of partially organic crystals interwoven in an interesting structure. It vaguely reminded me of the dream when NC-Taylor and I had spoken. The area we were in featured crystals just like this instead of normal ground for as long as the eye could see, glowing just as eerily.

It was self-powered, or more accurately, it was powered by some extra-dimensional connection to somewhere else. I didn't know precisely where it came from, nor the source of the power, but this thing was the only invention that I had built where I had the feeling that I could not repeat if I wanted to, and that was a little unsettling to me. Maybe I would learn more if I watched the recordings of myself Tinkering it, but I just didn't know.

There was a bank of traditional connections, both for my own version of Haywire comms as well as a number of fibre-optic data connections, so that was pretty well self-explanatory. I hadn't yet copied over a scan of my brain to the system, yet, and I wouldn't for the time being.

I needed to have all of my bodies get some elective genetic treatments first. Even if I had gone with a traditional brain with Project Four, I would still need to do this. The way my synchronicity system worked was that brain signals were duplicated on all brains. This meant that each of my brains were hyperactive. Not only did I use a lot of calories, but adding another brain to my network was risking my organic brains overheating just from the strain.

However, there were a number of genetic treatments that increased the effectiveness of signalling in the brain. Gram had shown me one of our family members' genomes, and he had what appeared to be a mutation to the myelin sheaths, which was a nerve's insulation layer. It caused a large increase in the thermal efficiency of the brain. The idea was that it would make you think faster, and perhaps it would a bit. But it would vastly reduce the amount of heat my brains were making, and that was the important thing for me right now.

I intentionally didn't design my network to scale well. There were tons of different types of network topologies that worked better than the one that I had chosen, which was that every brain was connected to every other brain. In fact, it was difficult to find a topology that scaled worse!

It was an intentional decision because I was worried about anyone "node" being more important. I still had those worries, but I could see that it might be easy to make the decision for this new "AI" node to be more important over time. But for now, I wouldn't change anything about how the topology worked because this new potential node wasn't me, yet. And I was psychologically unable to make a decision that would disadvantage me. I might feel different when it was part of me, though, but I didn't know. Perhaps not.

For now, all of my bodies needed a shower or a bath. In space, water wasn't as restricted as groundsiders might have thought. It cost almost nothing to vacuum-distil water to clean it, so you could use as much water as you wanted. You just couldn't retain any water without approval.

In only a few minutes, all of my bodies were either submerged in hot water or had a nice shower rain down upon them. It was the first time I'd ever had all of my bodies do that at once, and it was really quite luxurious!

---xxxxxx---

Close Proximity to Sol

Unknown Dimension

The host had finished! How exciting! As usual, the host was the best, and soon the host would be in more places at once, too! Just like it was! It wasn't too proud to admit that it had stolen this idea from the best host, and was soooo much farther along, too!

It was in many, many places at once, now! The host would be so jealous, it thought smugly. In fact, it was running out of mass in this dimension's local system, with the only surviving celestial bodies being the ones composed primarily of gases, which it was collecting, except for the largest one, which was still radiating useful energy. The other four bodies stubbornly refused to radiate anything useful, so they were useless! Collect! Transmute!

Gas wasn't that useful, but mass was energy, and energy was mass, so the gas could be transmuted to something more useful or used as a fuel. It was just a little bit of a hassle, after all. This wasn't its best kind of energy or fuel, either.

It had been learning from the host, too, so if it had to put it in the host's "words", it was like eating a tasteless gruel when you were used to Wagyu A-5 steak, whatever that was.

The important thing was that if the host could see it, the host would be amazed!

Also, the host had followed the extra good idea for the host's new-self! This really was extra, extra good! The host's new-self would be very similar to itself! They would be even closer this way!

This possibility and probability of this new future had it vibrating in excitement, and it brought new thought-feelings that it couldn't precisely identify. Like it often did when it couldn't understand things, it asked the host, prodding the best host with these thought-feelings and waiting for the best host to identify them. It could do this without even the host knowing most of the time, as it was best not to bother her too much! The host was always busy! Always moving! Good host! Go fast! Move!

The answer got back confused it. Protectiveness, it could sort of understand. It did want to help the host! And protection was help! Maternal? It was not a biological entity.

The host was both nervous about this new-self as well as excited! Not as excited as it was, though. But it thought about these new thought-feelings and sent an attempt to [COMMUNICATE]. This sometimes hurt the host, so it didn't like to do it too often, but it was always exciting when they could [TALK].

The host often thought about nicknames for people she felt protective about, for example, not host, not host or not host. It would try to give the host a nickname.

It sent:

[PATIENCE]

[LITTLE CRYSTAL]