It should be no surprise that slowly but consistently, orders for jacks were changed from basic to ultra or at least high over the next couple of hours.
The more important news was that the cyberheart was finished being converted, and I now had the duty to reassemble it. I would love to tell everybody how hard and critical that work was, but in reality, it was just tedious.
Unlike Mia, I had the enhanced hand-eye coordination of a Pure, so while it was not completely impossible for me to mess up, with a bit of concentration it was extremely unlikely.
Add in that I was the only human with a working synaptic accelerator, and I was confident I could reassemble the heart without problems.
And with the finished heart lying in a bowl before me, waiting only for the final spray of nanite sealant I was proven correct in my assuredness.
The sealing would take a couple of hours to take effect, and we already had late evening on the 20th. But I had placed the operation at the late morning of the 21st, so it was all as I had planned it.
The bots had, in the time I fiddled with Glory, replaced the backseat of the skimmer with the bio-bed, and I had fabricated a battery extension for the pump, so from my side, everything was ready.
And despite doing everything possible in his power to change that little fact, Mr. Benjamin Walker was still very much alive.
Yes, I had given him a 50/50 chance, but realistically, it was closer to 30/70. I just did not want to demoralize Dr. Schaeffer and his staff. If they thought all hope was lost, then it was lost.
I made sure to be well-rested for the actual surgery, even if the auto surgeon would do the actual work. It was still only a machine, and not quite on the level of an expert system. In an emergency, yes, it could and would be able to save lives on its own, but honestly, if my implants had not been bricked, I would have supervised both auto surgeons when they operated on Mark and Justin. I did supervise when Kate’s shoulder had been set.
I seriously had to finish upgrading the control unit into a VI. That was the reason I had integrated the fuzzy logic core into the Chimera after all. As soon as I had managed that, it would become the mythical auto-doc that was so often used in SciFi. A machine that could essentially replace a living doctor in most circumstances.
As it was, I was the only one in the building even partly qualified to supervise the machines. A situation I viewed as suboptimal.
But that had to wait for a bit. Unlike the accidental VI, this one would be carefully planned and built. Just to give an example, the expert system that evolved into the VI took me a virtual year to write, and I was nowhere near as careful in its design as I would be with an intentional VI.
The good news in that regard was that it would take me considerably less time in the real world, thanks to my new compression. The bad news was that I would have to spend the time, even if it was just virtual.
But to come back to the big day, despite replacing the last two rows of seats in the skimmer with the biobed and the medic seat, it still seated six, including the pilot but excluding the medic.
The really good news was that Justin was coming back with the group. He would still require bed rest and pain medication, but until his new kidney was ready he could as well rest here. That, in turn, made Christine much happier.
I learned that Doc. Schaeffer decided to take the inflight medic spot for himself. Ryan was flying. That left room for four guards, slash nurses. I just hoped that the inevitable guards would not be too disruptive.
The idea that additional personnel could come by themselves proved to be unworkable. During the night, a snowstorm had hit NYC overnight, and unlike the more affluent Burroughs, Queens lacked the snow removal service that would have made the roughly two meters of snow passable.
Yes, I tasked the bots to clear the area around the building, and the building itself had heated surfaces that transformed the snow into water, but the roads were, as far as I could tell, impassable.
Unless they used a skimmer or a snowmobile, they would go nowhere. It was, of course, not impossible that Mr. Walker’s organization had a skimmer, both Justin and Ryan were able to fly mine, but it was unlikely that they would use one. These things were expensive to operate after all.
Snowmobiles on the other hand were as rare as hen's teeth in this region of the US. Basically, if there was a modicum of snow on the ground, public life stopped happening in Queens.
Before I sent Ryan to get Mr. Walker I controlled the pharmacopeia of the auto surgeon, not that it lacked a critical drug. It was nearly fully stocked, not surprising considering that the thing was for all purposes brand sparkling new, but the way I had learned it was to be better safe than sorry.
Then I waited for the skimmer to return.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. The mob not only had a skimmer, but they were also willing to use it. A better one than mine at that. They had a Sikorsky S203, a significantly bigger and newer design than my ABAS 545-E.
That alone was not something that I thought troubling in any way. No, the unfortunate part was that Dylan had for some arcane reason decided to supervise.hadhad
His sheer presence caused a bad taste in me, and I took a moment to center myself before I approached the group.
“Mr. Cox, I fail to see any reason for you to be here. I thought we established that we are uncomfortable with each other's presence.”
He snarled when I closed to the group.
“Somebody reliable has to make sure that you don’t kill our boss.”
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and shook my head.
“At this moment in time, you are as useful as a screen door in a spaceship. There are two options from your perspective. Either the modifications I made work, or they don’t. If they work, then there is an excellent chance that Mr. Walker will survive. If they don’t, he is dead.
There is nothing in between.”
Anger warped his face, while he answered.
“What do you mean, excellent chance? If your tech works, he should survive. I think you are already grasping for excuses.”
I, barely, avoided massaging my temples in the face of so much ignorance.
“You are aware that there is never an absolute guarantee? I can’t promise that one of the orderlies drops his stretcher on the way out, breaking his neck. And even the operation itself is not 100% safe. They never are. You could get a papercut and die from it if things go wrong.
What we can do is increase the chances of survival as much as possible.”
“I will be the judge of that. I will supervise the operation, and if at any moment things seem fishy to me, you will regret it.”
I tilted my head.
“I was not aware that you are a trained surgeon or a doctor at all. Much less an implant surgeon. Pray tell, where did you study?”
He sputtered for a bit and several of the guards snickered softly, while Doc Schaeffer fought to keep a neutral expression, but lost heroically.
After a few seconds of incoherent mumbling, Dylan recovered, somewhat.
“I don’t need to be trained in surgery to know if you are fucking up. I will know.”
I snorted.
“I humbly disagree. The actual work will be done by the auto surgeon. And I even let Doctor Schaeffer supervise it, even if I am better equipped to do so.”
That made Doc Schaeffer lift his hand as if he wanted to protest.
“I did not say better trained or more experienced, Doc. I am better equipped. Unlike you, I have implants that let me take control directly without having to use the much more cumbersome touch interface.”
That mollified him, and he nodded, while I returned my attention to the intruding Mr. Cox.
“And it will be hard enough for the good doctor to actually see if something is going wrong. He will need to focus his attention on the auto surgeon completely.
Somebody untrained and ignorant like you, who by the way will stay on the other side of the room to not get in the way, together with the guards, will have absolutely no chance at all.”
Cox grumbled at that.
“Just be sure that when I see you fucking up you will regret it.”
Just before I could answer him, a message appeared on my HUD.
<Hostility detected. Thread level moderate. Intervention appropriate?>
Just perfect. Cox had managed to make the VI concerned.
“I would advise you to keep your threats to yourself. It could prove hazardous to your health if you don’t.”
“Ha, are you threatening me? Do you have any idea how much power I have? I could have you killed with a single order! And you have just given me a reason to.”
I facepalmed and sent the VI a quick message to let me take care of it.
“I am not threatening you, I am warning you. I know you have been informed about the VI, which listens to every single word spoken in this building.
The VI, which sole reason to exist is to remove threats to my life before they can become a problem for me. The VI, that has access to several weapons of mass destruction, and the anti-personnel defense system in this building. Do you really want to keep talking about how you will have me killed where it can hear you?
Just to make it clear what sort of danger you are in, I already had to stop it from removing you as a threat to me. I can only do that to a certain extent. If it decides that the only way to keep me alive is to remove you you are dead.
And it will not care if it takes out several blocks around you with you. It will use a grav-pulse warhead, a nuke, an orbital lance, or maybe an OKKV. Maybe it will hire a battalion of mercs. Or a sniper. But be assured, if it decides you are a threat to my life, you are dead.
So again, I am warning you, that you should keep your threats to yourself. And another warning, there is nothing I can do now to keep it from observing you. If you take any action that it interprets as a threat to me, it will act.”
The reaction Dylan showed was, as I had expected, a mixture of shock, defiance, fear, and anger. Most of the guards were also pretty shocked, as was Doc Schaeffer.
The Doc was the first one to recover his ability to speak.
“Why… why did you create something that dangerous?”
I shook my head.
“Now is not the time for the complete story, but the short of it is, it was an accident. I managed to temper its reactions somewhat, but there is a hard limit. And Mr. Cox is close to it.”
Schaeffer just nodded and then addressed the other people.
“She is right. Let’s get Ben onto his feet again.”
A couple of the guards pushed the biobed. I had offered a couple of bots, but they categorically insisted to do it themselves.
On the way to the lab, Cox remained in the back, nervously looking around, while Schaeffer walked beside me.
“Do you really think that this will work? Does your technology save Ben?” He asked softly.
“Yes, I think it will work. Of course, this is the first real use of the technology. I had it in transhuman rats for tests, for a couple of months under adverse conditions, but there is no long-term knowledge.
But in the worst case, we will win time. The new heart, with the sheathing, will reduce the stage to three. With the nano therapy even if everything else fails, he will have decades before it gets critical again.”
He was silent for a moment before he replied.
“Wouldn’t then a normal replacement heart have been enough with the therapy?”
I had to softly chuckle.
“No, not really. Sure, it might have given him a couple of months.
Or it might have failed after a couple of days. With stage four CRS, the immune system is already in overdrive.
It will settle a bit when it finds no more myosynth to infect but while it is going full bore, it can critically damage a cyberheart in days, or even hours.
And at least that much time we will gain from the biosheathing. I know it works for a couple of months without the nano therapy.”
“Hm, I understand.” And then we reached the lab.
When the guards tried to place their boss in the auto-surgeon I intervened. That was a job for either trained orderlies, which we lacked or well-programmed androids, which we didn’t.
As soon as Mr. Walker was placed in the auto-surgeon, Doc Schaeffer moved to the controls, while I got the heart, placing it in the chute I had built in for that exact reason.
After getting comfortable with the touch interface, Schaeffer spoke up.
“I have to say, that these are good controls. The best I have ever encountered.”
“You should try it in cyberspace. The touch interface is only a bad replacement. I honestly don’t understand why so many auto surgeons have such complicated interfaces and concentrate on the manual one at that.”
“Hm, I have to take your word for it, my dear.”
Meanwhile, the auto surgeon was happily cutting into Walker’s chest. It had seamlessly interfaced with the pump and taken over control here and was now quickly removing the old heart.
“It is quite precise. But I really don’t see a reason for nanopositors. I can’t imagine that they are any faster.”
“No, not faster. They are way slower in fact. But they are also more than an order of magnitude more precise.
Too precise in fact. Even for neural surgery, you don’t need that much precision. That is the reason why I changed the design to exclude them.”
The old heart had now been placed into the bio-waste receptacle, and the new moved into the chest cavity.
“Would you sell us one of them? When I get the necessary funds together of course. And how much will it cost?”
“Yes, of course. And I will make you a friend's price of $70k.”
For the first time since the operation had begun, he actually focused on me with a shocked expression.
“How much? How can you make it so cheap?”
“You should keep your attention on the controls.”
“Oh, yes, right.”
“And as I said, a friend’s price. It costs me a bit over $60k to make them. Everyone else, and we are more in the $500k range.”
“That is still practically for free. The cheapest auto surgeon I had found when our normal one began to act up was in the mid-seven-digit range. And compared to this it was a piece of crap.”
“Just one piece of information, it is not quite yet finished.”
“Not? It works like a dream.”
At the moment the surgeon was busy connecting the neuronect to the nerves.
“Yes, but I plan to integrate a VI into it. Make it into a full auto-doc.”
“A VI? Really? Did you not have enough fun with them already?”
“The VI I have was an accident. This one will be planned. Actually, this plan was the reason that the reason the accident happened.”
“Hm, why that?”
“It is a bit complicated, but essentially, to get a VI, you need two components. A learning-enabled expert system and a processor with a fuzzy logic core. Until 2109 the textbooks left it at that. After that, they changed and stressed that it needed a physical fuzzy logic core.
At the same time, all processor designs with such a core vanished from the net. Anybody trying to work on a VI has to design a new processor.
Well, I needed such a processor to equip my auto-surgeon with a VI, so I designed one. That process includes simulating the new processor. I did that on a system I had an expert system up and running.
By now it has built its own processors with a fuzzy logic core.”
“That is a bit far-fetched, is it not?”
“It explains why there is a rogue VI every three to four years. Somebody wanted to preemptively remove possible competition. I traced it back to the 5th IC³.”
“And why is your VI so… I don’t know, aggressive?”
“The VI gets its objectives from the expert system. They can only in extreme cases be changed afterward. That is the reason why one normally carefully plans and designs a VI.
My expert system had basically two main functions. I used it as an attack dog in matrix combat, and to assist me whenever I was researching, designing, or programming something.
For the first function, I needed it to be as aggressive and brutal as possible. In essence, when I called it into combat, I needed it to immediately rip whatever threat to me existed to shreds.
In the expert system, that was no problem. When I called it up, it came, it ripped, it got back in its cage to sleep.
Now with the VI, the same attack dog morphed into a Stomper-sized ball of claws and teeth that actively searches for anything that could threaten me and categorically refuses to go back to its cage. I managed to temper it a bit when I proved that its own aggression was a threat to me. But it only moved so far.”
The auto-surgeon had meanwhile connected the heart completely before starting it and was in the process of closing the opening in the chest.
The whole process had taken roughly 20 minutes.
“Yes, I like the interface. Honestly, at the price you said, I can afford one of these immediately. 70k is in the slush fund right now. When can I get one?”
“At the moment? It will take a bit, as I have no idea how to deliver it. It will take roughly two days to build it. And with the state of the roads…”
“Yes, I understand. We will see, and I will organize the transport. What do you think, was the surgery a success?”
“It seems like it. The heart is working, according to the scanner, it seems as if the immune system does not attack it at all. Now he needs time to get back on his feet. A couple of days of bed rest should do it.”
Then I thought again.
“Scratch that. Make it a week. Otherwise, he will overextend himself immediately again.”
A wave of laughter coursed through the room, and Schaeffer chuckled as well.
“Too true. I will see what I can do. But he is stubborn. Still, he should be home for Christmas.”
