[SSU] [IC] California Dreamin'
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 6:29 pm
The tiny human doctor led Grudge down an anaseptic hallway. The smell of cleanser, only just masking the smell of illness. The blazing light, glaring white off every gleaming surface. Nurses and patients and students, walking very quickly or very slowly, all wrapped in their shells of hospital privacy: don't look, don't respond, don't think about it. Grudge was used to sensory overload; unlike most people, he used all his senses all the time: where most people only saw a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum - and then had the audacity to call this "visible light" - he could see a much wider range of frequencies, from the thermal radiation or objects to near-UV, all wrapped with the wireframe his ultrasonic sensors projected over his vision, itself tagged with active vector projections fed by his mathematics subprocessor and his smartlink. Polarized spread-spectrum lighting emitted from his eyes cast headlamps only he could see, casting everything he looked directly at in a detailed spotlight without anyone else perceiving it. Clocks, alarms, timers; he was used to a barrage of information. But this gleaming hospital threatened to make him go mad from the sheer overwhelming actintic sterility of it.
The tiny human doctor was speaking, politely raising his voice enough that Grudge could hear without changing his ears' dynamic range, though the doctor's mouth was some distance from Grudge's twisted ears. The university hallways were required by code to be 3 meters tall, which meant Grudge could walk while only hunching a little from his own 4.5 meters. He was used to pressing himself agaist ceilings, too. "The procedure itself should take no more than a week, though we'll likely have to keep you immobile for another few days after that, given the...scope...of the procedure. I'd like to caution you again: this is some distance beyond what I would consider a risk-free--"
Grudge held up an enormous knotted hand. "I understand, Doctor."
"Nano-upgrades are new, and as a rule, we only perform one at a time. To do...all of this, at once? You understand why I'm cautioning you."
Grudge smiled, his lips pulling tight across a mouth full of crooked, tapering tusks. His face was like a horrible like a train wreck, all asymmetry and bony lumps, topped with long, curving horns and a well-kept but overwhelmingly spacious field of hair, but the smile made him look truly affectionate, sincere and jovial. It had taken many years of practice in front of the mirror to make it look that way. "Doc, really, I seriously understand. But I'd rather not spend the next couple years doing this. And I'm tougher than I look."
The doctor barked a slightly nervous laugh. "You look pretty tough."
"I'm tougher," Grudge said, almost distractedly. He wondered, suddenly, where they'd managed to find a gown and surgical loincloth for him. He was 14 bloody feet tall, and wide across to boot! Did they have some kind of machine that made them custom for each patient?
They pushed through a set of double doors, and then through another, marked cOR2a. Both read the doctor's retinas; neither read Grudge's. The advantages, he supposed, of being well-connected. They came to a darkened room, filled with dim trid screens blinking messages like SCAN BED INERT and SYSTEM CLEAR. It overlooked another room, this one bright again, with a giant transparent tank in the center, with cables and hoses leading from the bottom. This, then, would be his bed for the next couple of weeks, his home. "Don't tell me you just had this this lying around."
"We borrowed it, actually. A friend of mine in marine wildlife lent it to me." The doctor was a little more nervous than usual now, and Grudge wondered what marine biologists would want with a tank made for implanting cyberware.
A nurse entered behind them, and said, "Sir? We're ready, if you'll come with me."
Grudge nodded as much as he could with his shoulders hunched against the ceiling. He paused to shake hands: "Thank you, doctor, for bringing me down yourself."
Doctor Murphy sighed. "What are friends for?"
The nurse led Grudge into the chamber. They were filling the bed, now, transparent melon-colored liquid welling up from the hose fittings on the bottom. "You'll need to take off your gown, sir, but you can keep your loincloth."
Grudge laughed as he shrugged off the oddly well-fitting garment. "Well, thank god for small favors."
People were filing into the control room, now, taking their seats, powering up their scanners and monitors. One, a thirty-something elf with dark hair and a large datascreen on the inside of one forearm, passed into the operating room and approached Grudge. "Sir. Good to meet you. I know you've been through processes <i>like</i> this before, but...that doesn't save you the speeches, I'm afraid. But let's do it quick, yeah? This is an oxygenated fluorocarbon bath, it's what you'll float in during the procedure. Once you're under - you're..."
"Going to jack in."
"Excellent, excellent, good. There are a lot of advantages to that over doing things chemically, particularly for such an extended process. So you'll be patched in to the library system, with your own private line, I'm sure, and you can do...whatever it is you'll be doing for the week."
"Yeah. My tax returns."
"Right." The intern, impressively, kept a straight face; while no one here knew what Grudge did for a living, they all knew what kind of hardware he carried, and they all suspected something like the truth. They didn't mind: who else could they practice on? Few enough people outside the corps had this kind of equipment that private medical schools were always praying for someone who would let them do the kind of research that would allow them to publish the kind of papers that would get them the grants they needed to stay alive. It was a mutually benefitial arrangement.
"Once you're under, we'll flood the bath with nanites, tiny robots that'll enter your system. That's when our work begins. We'll monitor their activities; they'll follow the programming we've agreed on. It should take about a week, because we'd like to do this right, but when all is said and done, you'll have finished a couple of years of implant surgery in a couple of weeks. Since you'll be awake while we're doing this, I can give you the rest of the speeches as things progress. We'll ping you when we need to talk to you."
"Thank you," Grudge said, with sincere respect. "And fortune."
The intern nodded, once. "And to you."
The nurse helped Grudge to lie down in the bath - no matter how much they warmed it, it always felt cold - as the intern returned to the control room. He arranged his loincloth, settled back, and as the nurse connected the cable from the bed to the jack on his temple, let his senses fade to nothing.
<center>- - -</center>
The view was incredible. Every part of his body, marrow to knotted skin, mapped out, living, breathing, in three dimensions in front of him. He could view the process at any level of detail, from nothing more than a dim echo in the back of his mind to nanoscale representations of the work each tiny machine was doing to his cyberware and its connections to his body.
"How does it feel?" He directed his attention to the transparent video window of the doctor, and the image filled his vision and became more opaque.
"Kind of like being tickled, all over, on the inside. Except I know I can't really feel anything from my body, so it's all just in my head. Which doesn't stop it from tickling." Grudge was good-natured about it, at least; he'd been through enough surgery over the years to take this all in stride. Still, this was something new, for everyone.
Lynch stepped forward to stand next to the doctor. "I have to tell you, I don't understand anything they're doing, but it all looks impressive enough to make me feel better."
Grudge found it interesting that Lynch had come himself. When he'd met the man after their last job and asked for some medical advice, he'd never expected it would come to this. That Lynch might have access to some street doc and be willing to put a word in was believable; it was inconceivable that Lynch would have access to a university beta clinic, and be able to make these kinds of modifications to someone whose name they would never know, of whom all records would be destroyed - save those diagnostic and experimental datastreams that would allow the university to learn from and apply to their next generation of research - well, it was all a bit much to take in. And to come hmself; Lynch was making a strong statement about what he considered Grudge's potential worth to be. It was a tremendous vote of confidence.
Everyone gained from the arrangement. Lynch would earn hundreds of thousands of nuyen for making a few calls, and would gain a stronger resource to accomplish more challenging tasks. The university would get a chance to do something their competitors in the fierce world of corporate-sponsored academia would not get to do for months, perhaps years: perform and analyze the results of a nano-upgrade, the completely unintrusive replacement of one generation of combat cyberware with another, accomplished all at the molecular scale, the tiny machines' actions controlled by a detailed plan of what materials to remove, and which to add, and where. They purposefully trundled through his body, using the same molecules of silicon and silicate glasses, in combination with newly imported ceramics carried in as the nanites' own structure, to replace the logic gates and pathways of the old system with a new, more advanced one. And so many modifications, on perhaps the only patient who could survive so much physical trauma, and of such...well, /lethality.../ The doctors had a difficult time not salivating when he walked into the room. Those that weren't cringing in fear, that is.
Grudge benefitted perhaps most of all. For the price of his life savings - more money than most people earned in a lifetime - and the sale of a handful of magical items he'd preferred not to allow his team's borderline psychotic shaman to have access to, he would gain powerful new abilities, phyisical improvements he'd never dreamed of until a few weeks ago.
But one day, looking in the mirror, he'd thought, <i>This isn't even my body. I hate this body. Spent my whole life resenting it. But I have it, and there's no reason not to use what I have.[/i] When the money had come in, he dove into the latest research without looking back.
On the way, he'd learned enough about the sota in ceramics and other materials sciences to rethink the way he fought. Why use an axe designed for 10th century warfare in the cold forests of northern europe? Why use an assault cannon designed for someone nearly one-third his size and less than one-quarter his weight? Why use weapons with triggers, when the need for mechanical operation of firearms was obsolete a decade ago?
So he was going to spend the next couple of weeks in the matrix, away from its body while the tiny machines did their work, in close conference with the doctors and with the very eager dwarf Lynch had recommended for the custom weapons work. As it turned out, the engineer was an avid supporter of metahuman rights, and most of his legitamate clientele were metahumans looking for custom work to suit their unique physical needs. Much of what Grudge had proposed thus far could revolutionize metahuman useability. At least, the useability of really, really big guns by really, really big trolls.
Grudge pulled his thoughts back to Lynch. "They're doing fine. I just can't wait to see how it all works. I mean, you know, in real life. On the <i>computer,[/i] it all looks great, but these things lie to you all the time. I used to have this talking scale, and I swear it was embarrassed for me; always told me I was 250 kilos. Took me a year to figure out that was just as much weight as it could handle."
Lynch smiled. "Patience is a virtue. I can't believe this is all... No physical therapy? Nothing?"
"I'll have to take it easy for a couple of weeks, but it's all still the same stuff in almost the same places. Most of this is just upgrades."
The doctor looked like someone had danced, stomping across his grave. "Most of it."
The real trick was doing it all at once. While one batch of nanites upgraded his cyberware, another set about building the connections for a few additions. At the same time - and this was the <i>piece de la resistance</i> - a tailored retrovirus was infecting his system while his immune system was being completely suppressed, passing on new instructions, new pieces of DNA, stimulating cells to begin changing the organic structure of his body, causing new organs to be grown, incubated in his own body. His muscles would undergo a subtle transformation, as well; his genetic stock was european, and his muscles were what the doctors had called "slow-twitch." By making a few minor changes, the genetic recipe for producing fast-twitch muscles would be activated. He'd be faster, nearly 20 percent faster, and every bit as strong.
His old synaptic accelerator would be reabsorbed into the body; it had been effectively bypassed when he'd gotten his first set of wired reflexes, and the upgrades to them - impressive though they were - wouldn't change that. His suprathyroid would be absorbed, as well, while another grew in its place, better, a clonal match, less intrusive and much less obvious to scanners.
His platlet production would increase, and as they were replaced, the new generations would be produced according to the recipe spelled in RNA inside the virus. He'd heal more quickly, suffer less trauma when he was injured, and help prevent catastrophic bleeding. Combined with his new ability to defeat all the pain sensors in his body, and the microscopic web of lunacy that was his new nervous system, he was definitely on his way to making the most out of his body.
He'd long ago abandoned the idea of being able to walk through scanners without having the national guard called out. He'd found ways around it; after all, in a world where the breeders couldn't even build a damn /urinal/ high enough to piss in properly, fences were seldom a real barrier. But his research had convinced him that enough developments had occured in materials science to make a major lifestyle change possible. Optics were better every year, and capable of using far less material to transmit their signals. Metal no longer had any claim over ceramics, and in fact, they boasted several benefits over his older systems.
If he were scanned now, even fairly sophisticated cyberscanners and metal detectors would show only a state-of-the-art sensory and headware package, with no hint of the extreme reaction enhancements or advanced bioware in his system. An MRI would do him in, but once things got down to the MRI stage, you were in dire straits anyhow.
Combined with his new personal weapons - themselves made entirely of nonmetallic ceramic and silicates - he could theoretically even board a plane in a regional airport, provided his false identification held up. Which it always, always did: documentation had not been a problem for him.
"You'll have some reading material when you get back to...wherever it is you go to read messages people send you. I'm looking for a decent tailor; I think this is a pretty good excuse to look into a new wardrobe." Grudge laughed, and Lynch and the doctor joined him.
"I'll call you later tonight, to check in and exchange ideas. I'm curious to see your progress on your summer vacation project." Lynch knew, in general, what he was planning to do: design a suite of weapons, built specifically for a single individual troll, tailored for his size, strength, and the tactical needs of the combat enivironments he found himself in, without any of the preconceptions of the last centuries of firearms design, fabricated from the most advanced nonmettalic materials available. When all was said and done, it wasn't at all impossible that he could get all his personal arms on board that regional flight.
"I look forward to it. And doctor..."
The doctor nodded eagerly. "You'll be updated live as the process continues. Feel free to contact me personally at any time; you have my ltg. And I don't think I'll be far from this room for a couple of days, at least."
He let his attention wander from the video window, and it returned to transparency and slid to the nascent strip to the left of his vision, waiting for his attention to return to his communications system. He opened his private matrix access point, and began to scan through his notes; he had nothing to do but lie here in a pool of hyperoxygeneted water with molecular machines tearing his body apart while a genetic virus made a few million cells cancerous for three weeks. He might at well get started on his new assault rifle.
<center>- - -</center>
"So you remember what your accelerator felt like."
"Yeah. More fluid; natural, just faster."
"Well, this is going to be nothing like that."
Grudge laughed. "Okay."
The young doctor brought an overlay up; it was the standard system overview, a map of Grudge's body and the work being done to it. Highlighted was the newly forming nervous system, a nanoscale mesh of optical fiber that detected nervous impulses at one end, then raced them as fast as possible to the brainstem. The system being installed was the fastest available short of a high-grade move-by-wire system [which would end up leaving him a vegetable after a few years]. There were no faster reaction enhancers nor wired reflexes available; some systems were less intrusive, but none were faster. Combined with the fast-twitch genetic treatment, Grudge would be able to act and react faster than almost anyone on the street.
"This is going to be way more like your old wired-plus-enhancers setup. But it's also going to be light-years ahead; you're going to have to get used to the new timeframe, get used to anticipating the reaction."
"How fast is the cycle speed? I read it somewhere, but there's so many numbers on these whitesheets..."
"Yeah. Your new system is...let me check. Yeah, one hundred cycles per second at maximum engagement."
"What's 'maximum engagement?'"
"You know, I actually, I have no idea. But nevermind: this reminds me that your senses will also have to recalibrate."
"By which you actually mean I'll have to get used to it."
"Yes. You now sample data from your senses 100 times every second. You're going to notice some cheaper trids and flatscreens aren't going to track right. Those cereal box things are <i>right out.[/i] Ditto a lot of cheap kids toys. But - you run full senses, right?"
"Yeah. Including ultrasound. I have some questions about this 'disclaimer' on the whitesheet for my ultrasound emitter, but they can wait."
"I'll note it so we don't forget. Anyway, you're going to have a lot higher fidelity in both audio and video inputs, but you <i>won't</i> see much of a difference in tactile or taste/smell responses. Those systems are meat, and there's not much we can do about the engagement speed of electrochemical gates."
"I'm absolutely certain I wouldn't want you to do whatever you just said, anyway."
"Like what we're doing now is so much better."
"Fair enough. Let's move on; there's no working around the adjustment times, and I have some idea of what to expect. I wanted to ask about the learned reflex for the pain editor..."
The tiny human doctor was speaking, politely raising his voice enough that Grudge could hear without changing his ears' dynamic range, though the doctor's mouth was some distance from Grudge's twisted ears. The university hallways were required by code to be 3 meters tall, which meant Grudge could walk while only hunching a little from his own 4.5 meters. He was used to pressing himself agaist ceilings, too. "The procedure itself should take no more than a week, though we'll likely have to keep you immobile for another few days after that, given the...scope...of the procedure. I'd like to caution you again: this is some distance beyond what I would consider a risk-free--"
Grudge held up an enormous knotted hand. "I understand, Doctor."
"Nano-upgrades are new, and as a rule, we only perform one at a time. To do...all of this, at once? You understand why I'm cautioning you."
Grudge smiled, his lips pulling tight across a mouth full of crooked, tapering tusks. His face was like a horrible like a train wreck, all asymmetry and bony lumps, topped with long, curving horns and a well-kept but overwhelmingly spacious field of hair, but the smile made him look truly affectionate, sincere and jovial. It had taken many years of practice in front of the mirror to make it look that way. "Doc, really, I seriously understand. But I'd rather not spend the next couple years doing this. And I'm tougher than I look."
The doctor barked a slightly nervous laugh. "You look pretty tough."
"I'm tougher," Grudge said, almost distractedly. He wondered, suddenly, where they'd managed to find a gown and surgical loincloth for him. He was 14 bloody feet tall, and wide across to boot! Did they have some kind of machine that made them custom for each patient?
They pushed through a set of double doors, and then through another, marked cOR2a. Both read the doctor's retinas; neither read Grudge's. The advantages, he supposed, of being well-connected. They came to a darkened room, filled with dim trid screens blinking messages like SCAN BED INERT and SYSTEM CLEAR. It overlooked another room, this one bright again, with a giant transparent tank in the center, with cables and hoses leading from the bottom. This, then, would be his bed for the next couple of weeks, his home. "Don't tell me you just had this this lying around."
"We borrowed it, actually. A friend of mine in marine wildlife lent it to me." The doctor was a little more nervous than usual now, and Grudge wondered what marine biologists would want with a tank made for implanting cyberware.
A nurse entered behind them, and said, "Sir? We're ready, if you'll come with me."
Grudge nodded as much as he could with his shoulders hunched against the ceiling. He paused to shake hands: "Thank you, doctor, for bringing me down yourself."
Doctor Murphy sighed. "What are friends for?"
The nurse led Grudge into the chamber. They were filling the bed, now, transparent melon-colored liquid welling up from the hose fittings on the bottom. "You'll need to take off your gown, sir, but you can keep your loincloth."
Grudge laughed as he shrugged off the oddly well-fitting garment. "Well, thank god for small favors."
People were filing into the control room, now, taking their seats, powering up their scanners and monitors. One, a thirty-something elf with dark hair and a large datascreen on the inside of one forearm, passed into the operating room and approached Grudge. "Sir. Good to meet you. I know you've been through processes <i>like</i> this before, but...that doesn't save you the speeches, I'm afraid. But let's do it quick, yeah? This is an oxygenated fluorocarbon bath, it's what you'll float in during the procedure. Once you're under - you're..."
"Going to jack in."
"Excellent, excellent, good. There are a lot of advantages to that over doing things chemically, particularly for such an extended process. So you'll be patched in to the library system, with your own private line, I'm sure, and you can do...whatever it is you'll be doing for the week."
"Yeah. My tax returns."
"Right." The intern, impressively, kept a straight face; while no one here knew what Grudge did for a living, they all knew what kind of hardware he carried, and they all suspected something like the truth. They didn't mind: who else could they practice on? Few enough people outside the corps had this kind of equipment that private medical schools were always praying for someone who would let them do the kind of research that would allow them to publish the kind of papers that would get them the grants they needed to stay alive. It was a mutually benefitial arrangement.
"Once you're under, we'll flood the bath with nanites, tiny robots that'll enter your system. That's when our work begins. We'll monitor their activities; they'll follow the programming we've agreed on. It should take about a week, because we'd like to do this right, but when all is said and done, you'll have finished a couple of years of implant surgery in a couple of weeks. Since you'll be awake while we're doing this, I can give you the rest of the speeches as things progress. We'll ping you when we need to talk to you."
"Thank you," Grudge said, with sincere respect. "And fortune."
The intern nodded, once. "And to you."
The nurse helped Grudge to lie down in the bath - no matter how much they warmed it, it always felt cold - as the intern returned to the control room. He arranged his loincloth, settled back, and as the nurse connected the cable from the bed to the jack on his temple, let his senses fade to nothing.
<center>- - -</center>
The view was incredible. Every part of his body, marrow to knotted skin, mapped out, living, breathing, in three dimensions in front of him. He could view the process at any level of detail, from nothing more than a dim echo in the back of his mind to nanoscale representations of the work each tiny machine was doing to his cyberware and its connections to his body.
"How does it feel?" He directed his attention to the transparent video window of the doctor, and the image filled his vision and became more opaque.
"Kind of like being tickled, all over, on the inside. Except I know I can't really feel anything from my body, so it's all just in my head. Which doesn't stop it from tickling." Grudge was good-natured about it, at least; he'd been through enough surgery over the years to take this all in stride. Still, this was something new, for everyone.
Lynch stepped forward to stand next to the doctor. "I have to tell you, I don't understand anything they're doing, but it all looks impressive enough to make me feel better."
Grudge found it interesting that Lynch had come himself. When he'd met the man after their last job and asked for some medical advice, he'd never expected it would come to this. That Lynch might have access to some street doc and be willing to put a word in was believable; it was inconceivable that Lynch would have access to a university beta clinic, and be able to make these kinds of modifications to someone whose name they would never know, of whom all records would be destroyed - save those diagnostic and experimental datastreams that would allow the university to learn from and apply to their next generation of research - well, it was all a bit much to take in. And to come hmself; Lynch was making a strong statement about what he considered Grudge's potential worth to be. It was a tremendous vote of confidence.
Everyone gained from the arrangement. Lynch would earn hundreds of thousands of nuyen for making a few calls, and would gain a stronger resource to accomplish more challenging tasks. The university would get a chance to do something their competitors in the fierce world of corporate-sponsored academia would not get to do for months, perhaps years: perform and analyze the results of a nano-upgrade, the completely unintrusive replacement of one generation of combat cyberware with another, accomplished all at the molecular scale, the tiny machines' actions controlled by a detailed plan of what materials to remove, and which to add, and where. They purposefully trundled through his body, using the same molecules of silicon and silicate glasses, in combination with newly imported ceramics carried in as the nanites' own structure, to replace the logic gates and pathways of the old system with a new, more advanced one. And so many modifications, on perhaps the only patient who could survive so much physical trauma, and of such...well, /lethality.../ The doctors had a difficult time not salivating when he walked into the room. Those that weren't cringing in fear, that is.
Grudge benefitted perhaps most of all. For the price of his life savings - more money than most people earned in a lifetime - and the sale of a handful of magical items he'd preferred not to allow his team's borderline psychotic shaman to have access to, he would gain powerful new abilities, phyisical improvements he'd never dreamed of until a few weeks ago.
But one day, looking in the mirror, he'd thought, <i>This isn't even my body. I hate this body. Spent my whole life resenting it. But I have it, and there's no reason not to use what I have.[/i] When the money had come in, he dove into the latest research without looking back.
On the way, he'd learned enough about the sota in ceramics and other materials sciences to rethink the way he fought. Why use an axe designed for 10th century warfare in the cold forests of northern europe? Why use an assault cannon designed for someone nearly one-third his size and less than one-quarter his weight? Why use weapons with triggers, when the need for mechanical operation of firearms was obsolete a decade ago?
So he was going to spend the next couple of weeks in the matrix, away from its body while the tiny machines did their work, in close conference with the doctors and with the very eager dwarf Lynch had recommended for the custom weapons work. As it turned out, the engineer was an avid supporter of metahuman rights, and most of his legitamate clientele were metahumans looking for custom work to suit their unique physical needs. Much of what Grudge had proposed thus far could revolutionize metahuman useability. At least, the useability of really, really big guns by really, really big trolls.
Grudge pulled his thoughts back to Lynch. "They're doing fine. I just can't wait to see how it all works. I mean, you know, in real life. On the <i>computer,[/i] it all looks great, but these things lie to you all the time. I used to have this talking scale, and I swear it was embarrassed for me; always told me I was 250 kilos. Took me a year to figure out that was just as much weight as it could handle."
Lynch smiled. "Patience is a virtue. I can't believe this is all... No physical therapy? Nothing?"
"I'll have to take it easy for a couple of weeks, but it's all still the same stuff in almost the same places. Most of this is just upgrades."
The doctor looked like someone had danced, stomping across his grave. "Most of it."
The real trick was doing it all at once. While one batch of nanites upgraded his cyberware, another set about building the connections for a few additions. At the same time - and this was the <i>piece de la resistance</i> - a tailored retrovirus was infecting his system while his immune system was being completely suppressed, passing on new instructions, new pieces of DNA, stimulating cells to begin changing the organic structure of his body, causing new organs to be grown, incubated in his own body. His muscles would undergo a subtle transformation, as well; his genetic stock was european, and his muscles were what the doctors had called "slow-twitch." By making a few minor changes, the genetic recipe for producing fast-twitch muscles would be activated. He'd be faster, nearly 20 percent faster, and every bit as strong.
His old synaptic accelerator would be reabsorbed into the body; it had been effectively bypassed when he'd gotten his first set of wired reflexes, and the upgrades to them - impressive though they were - wouldn't change that. His suprathyroid would be absorbed, as well, while another grew in its place, better, a clonal match, less intrusive and much less obvious to scanners.
His platlet production would increase, and as they were replaced, the new generations would be produced according to the recipe spelled in RNA inside the virus. He'd heal more quickly, suffer less trauma when he was injured, and help prevent catastrophic bleeding. Combined with his new ability to defeat all the pain sensors in his body, and the microscopic web of lunacy that was his new nervous system, he was definitely on his way to making the most out of his body.
He'd long ago abandoned the idea of being able to walk through scanners without having the national guard called out. He'd found ways around it; after all, in a world where the breeders couldn't even build a damn /urinal/ high enough to piss in properly, fences were seldom a real barrier. But his research had convinced him that enough developments had occured in materials science to make a major lifestyle change possible. Optics were better every year, and capable of using far less material to transmit their signals. Metal no longer had any claim over ceramics, and in fact, they boasted several benefits over his older systems.
If he were scanned now, even fairly sophisticated cyberscanners and metal detectors would show only a state-of-the-art sensory and headware package, with no hint of the extreme reaction enhancements or advanced bioware in his system. An MRI would do him in, but once things got down to the MRI stage, you were in dire straits anyhow.
Combined with his new personal weapons - themselves made entirely of nonmetallic ceramic and silicates - he could theoretically even board a plane in a regional airport, provided his false identification held up. Which it always, always did: documentation had not been a problem for him.
"You'll have some reading material when you get back to...wherever it is you go to read messages people send you. I'm looking for a decent tailor; I think this is a pretty good excuse to look into a new wardrobe." Grudge laughed, and Lynch and the doctor joined him.
"I'll call you later tonight, to check in and exchange ideas. I'm curious to see your progress on your summer vacation project." Lynch knew, in general, what he was planning to do: design a suite of weapons, built specifically for a single individual troll, tailored for his size, strength, and the tactical needs of the combat enivironments he found himself in, without any of the preconceptions of the last centuries of firearms design, fabricated from the most advanced nonmettalic materials available. When all was said and done, it wasn't at all impossible that he could get all his personal arms on board that regional flight.
"I look forward to it. And doctor..."
The doctor nodded eagerly. "You'll be updated live as the process continues. Feel free to contact me personally at any time; you have my ltg. And I don't think I'll be far from this room for a couple of days, at least."
He let his attention wander from the video window, and it returned to transparency and slid to the nascent strip to the left of his vision, waiting for his attention to return to his communications system. He opened his private matrix access point, and began to scan through his notes; he had nothing to do but lie here in a pool of hyperoxygeneted water with molecular machines tearing his body apart while a genetic virus made a few million cells cancerous for three weeks. He might at well get started on his new assault rifle.
<center>- - -</center>
"So you remember what your accelerator felt like."
"Yeah. More fluid; natural, just faster."
"Well, this is going to be nothing like that."
Grudge laughed. "Okay."
The young doctor brought an overlay up; it was the standard system overview, a map of Grudge's body and the work being done to it. Highlighted was the newly forming nervous system, a nanoscale mesh of optical fiber that detected nervous impulses at one end, then raced them as fast as possible to the brainstem. The system being installed was the fastest available short of a high-grade move-by-wire system [which would end up leaving him a vegetable after a few years]. There were no faster reaction enhancers nor wired reflexes available; some systems were less intrusive, but none were faster. Combined with the fast-twitch genetic treatment, Grudge would be able to act and react faster than almost anyone on the street.
"This is going to be way more like your old wired-plus-enhancers setup. But it's also going to be light-years ahead; you're going to have to get used to the new timeframe, get used to anticipating the reaction."
"How fast is the cycle speed? I read it somewhere, but there's so many numbers on these whitesheets..."
"Yeah. Your new system is...let me check. Yeah, one hundred cycles per second at maximum engagement."
"What's 'maximum engagement?'"
"You know, I actually, I have no idea. But nevermind: this reminds me that your senses will also have to recalibrate."
"By which you actually mean I'll have to get used to it."
"Yes. You now sample data from your senses 100 times every second. You're going to notice some cheaper trids and flatscreens aren't going to track right. Those cereal box things are <i>right out.[/i] Ditto a lot of cheap kids toys. But - you run full senses, right?"
"Yeah. Including ultrasound. I have some questions about this 'disclaimer' on the whitesheet for my ultrasound emitter, but they can wait."
"I'll note it so we don't forget. Anyway, you're going to have a lot higher fidelity in both audio and video inputs, but you <i>won't</i> see much of a difference in tactile or taste/smell responses. Those systems are meat, and there's not much we can do about the engagement speed of electrochemical gates."
"I'm absolutely certain I wouldn't want you to do whatever you just said, anyway."
"Like what we're doing now is so much better."
"Fair enough. Let's move on; there's no working around the adjustment times, and I have some idea of what to expect. I wanted to ask about the learned reflex for the pain editor..."