I'm Taking All The Risk Here

The first week the hospital was in operation was reasonably busy, if you didn't count the first lacklustre day. Thankfully, Lily did not have to work every day. She would not have even started this project if she was expected to be tied down to it perpetually.

Dr Taylor was the biggest surprise, as he had a comprehensive set of medical skills, even knowing how to operate all of the equipment she had, including the Auto-Docs.

When asked about it, he told her that the New California Republic had hospitals and modern equipment, including limited Auto-Docs spread out here and there, but he received most of his medical training at a medical University set up by a group he called The Followers of the Apocalypse.

From the description he gave of the organization, they seemed to be some band of hippy anarchists to Lily's sensibilities, so she was curious how they managed to avoid being murdered or subsumed. Clearly, their supposed pacifism only went so far, she thought.

Dr Taylor, in turn, was seriously surprised at Lily's level of technical development and skill, especially in the field of genetics and inquired a couple of times where she matriculated from, a question which she politely demurred. He was especially interested in some of her designs for cybernetic prostheses as well as her genetic enhancements, which she shared in broad strokes; however, she wasn't willing to walk an educated man through precisely how her tech base functioned.

The only reason Lily had reason to hoard knowledge was her own survival, presently. So, she did not have anything against giving him a primer on either cybernetics or biosculpting via gene editing, but she decided to put that on a back burner until she was positive he wasn't some kind of infiltrator or enemy agent.

Not that she really had any enemies per se, but that was probably only because most of the groups who would be her enemy weren't quite aware of her entirely yet. The very fact that Taylor was already a resident in Megaton with his own small practice for the past two years tended to make the possibility that he was a plant unlikely.

Would any group activate a long-term sleeper agent just to get information about her? And what groups would even have long-term sleeper agents in this day and age?

A *ding* noise heard internally brought Lily out of her reverie as the familiar piano solo Für Elise became audible. Unlike the last few times she used this diagnostic tool for her auditory sense, this wasn't playing internally on her brain-computer, but it was, in fact, playing over the speakers that sat on her desk.

However, the reasons were still the same, diagnostics for her hearing. An hour ago, she finished a surgery that replaced both organic ears and all related organs with a combination of digital/analogue audio transducers. These microphones were incredibly small, durable and rugged and had two modes of operation. In their primary mode, they were wired directly into her brain-computer, which handled relaying the audio signals directly to her auditory cortex.

However, in the event of either a failure of her computer or power loss, the devices switched to a secondary fail-over mode which interfaced with the existing cochlear nerve much like the cochlear implants for certain kinds of hearing-impaired people she was familiar with in America did. This backup hearing sense was inferior to even her normal organic hearing she removed, but she did not expect ever to have to use it except in the direst of emergencies.

This upgrade did mean that she was now, during normal operation of her new "ears", bypassing a large part of her existing brain that handled auditory sensing, but the functions she was bypassing were mostly hindbrain functions originating in the brain stem that she did not really appreciate, like or want in the first place.

Functions like the acoustic startle response, which generally causes an instant fight-or-flight response in a human's amygdala when they were exposed to an unexpected loud noise and was almost impossible to mitigate or prevent.

Also, the sense of auditory localization was bypassed, but this sense was finicky in the first place. The human hindbrain compared the inputs between both ears for time, amplitude, and frequency to judge, poorly, a sound's bearing and distance. This sense was how a normal human could detect the direction of a sound they heard. However, these were types of operations that digital computers excelled at and that "organic" computers derived merely from evolution barely performed adequately at all.

So, she was glad that was bypassed now. Her new ears more accurately told her brain the bearing and distance of a sound, to the point where she could triangulate a gunshot when she heard it if it was within a certain distance.

In fact, they were so sensitive that Lily was already considering adding perhaps two or three more audio transducers somewhere on her body if she could disguise them well enough, which would allow her to incorporate a passive sonar system as an additional low-light visual option, as that would get to the point where she could map the shape of objects just by hearing sound waves bounce off of them similar to echolocation, except without having to be limited to high-frequency sounds like a bat was.

As for the acoustic startle response, on the other hand, it generated the startle reaction in a human's brain before their conscious brain even heard the noise they were supposedly reacting to.

It was a survival adaptation inherited from the earliest mammals, and she felt that she did not need or want it any longer. In fact, she felt it was a net negative to her survivability. Especially when she could achieve sub-two-millisecond latency on her digital signals, which was multiple times faster than the startle response could propagate anyway.

The mechanisms in the human brain for hearing sound were actually well capable of understanding sounds that the ear could not hear, so she now had a range of hearing that would make a dog blush. She could hear well into the infrasonic and far into the ultrasonic range, past normal human hearing.

Now she just had to replace her sense of organic smell with a digital sniffer, and she would be in business, but she did not actually know how to build one that would fit into her nose, even with the extra space it had available when she removed her sinuses after replacing her skull. She needed to examine some Fallout universe equivalents and then seek to miniaturize them from there. It wasn't an insurmountable problem, but it relied on chancing upon such a device.

'Hmm, where would any be? Explosive detectors, probably? Command, Take Note - Look for a commercial airport or port of entry for chemical explosive detecting systems,' Lily thought to herself.

'Oh, and of course, my eyes!' she added. Of course, her eyes. Those were the most important, in fact. She did know how to build cybernetic replacement eyes, but she still was a ways off from making them appear to be natural replacements. But, she was sure there were at least a few blind people around who wouldn't mind being her guinea pigs on the project.

"-id you hear me, Dr St. Claire?" asked her Apprentice, who must have entered her office when she was in thought.

"I CAN HEAR EVERYTHING," Lily replied in a huff, pronouncing all the syllables for once. But internally, she triggered, 'Command, Playback last statement directed to me.'

Alice's voice played in her head, "Dr St. Claire, someone is here to see you. It's actually the same man from Canterbury Commons, the reflex one... Did you hear me, Dr St. Claire?"

Lily coughed into her hand delicately, "Ah yes, Monsieur Edgar. I recall. Let us go see what business zhis gentleman has for us today, Apprentice."

Lily turned off the speaker and stood up gracefully, gliding out of her office with Alice trailing in behind her. Lily had to admit that the Apprentice looked quite fetching in her new lab coat. Such visual cues were important when you were still in the "fake it till you make it" stage.

She found Edgar in the waiting area, standing next to a rather corpulent man of about the same age, which wasn't a sight she normally saw in the Wasteland.

"Why, hello there, Dr St. Claire. It is I, Edgar." The man took an exaggerated theatre bow while continuing in an affected suave-sounding accent, "The slowest and most thorough man in the world." The man looked a lot better now that he'd seen a bath or shower; he was clean and wore clean clothing as well.

Behind her, Alice cracked up a little, but he hid it well. Lily, herself, was quite amused too. She gave the man an inspection, considering.

He actually was rather rakishly charming, and Lily suspected he was probably popular with the ladies. She did not have anything more than a friendly relationship with Grace, but with so much on her plate she had rather low libidinal energy, so she wasn't presently tempted to give him a "test ride" so to speak.

However, some friendly teasing and flirting weren't out of expectations as far as the banter was concerned when dealing with handsome and charming men. "Ah, yes, 'ow could I forget one such as you?" Lily simpered politely. "Tell me, Monsieur Edgar... 'ave the bevvy of ladies you no doubt patronage finally taught you your ABCs?"

Edgar seemed confused but grinned, "Normally, it is I that teach them things, of course. But I'll bite; what about the alphabet do I need remedial instruction on, good Doctor?"

Lily enjoyed it when the target of her verbal barbs played along, and she let him have it simply instead of dragging it out, "Judging from your previous title of zhe fastest man in the world, I would have zhought they would be trying to teach you ...that I comes before U."

Alice got the risque pun before he did and quickly moved to hide behind Lily's body to hide her snickers, but Edgar wasn't that far off. It only took him a few seconds to get it, and it caused him a genuine chuckle of laughter, followed by, "Oh, you have nothing to worry about on that front, Doc."

Lily rolled her eyes, "Sure, sure... tell me, what can 'elp you and your... friend... with today?"

Edgar grinned, "Well, two things! First, I have a delivery from Craterside Supply! Second, you are still paying to see people with unusual traits, yes? That's why we're here. But I'm sorry to say you ain't gonna get off so cheaply this time, not after I hear you offering some sort of treatment to increase a person's reflexes, barely a month after meeting me?" He handed her a box, which must contain a dozen tasers she was promised. Lily spared a glance at it before setting it down for the moment and considering what Edgar had said.

Lily frowned. She hated insightful people, sometimes. It was true, she paid him a pittance -- but she wasn't, in fact, sure she would have gotten any useful traits from him until studying his genome. She ignored the implied offer to negotiate a price for the moment until she knew she had something actually interesting, "And what special in-born trait does your friend Monsieur..." she trailed off.

Edgar took the hint and introduced her, "This here is James Teevee, a friend of mine. A true life and death brother, really." He slapped the man named James across the shoulder, "He lives here in Megaton."

"And what trait or traits does Monsieur Teevee 'ave?" Lily finished.

James Teevee rubbed his head full of brown hair, looking a little embarrassed, and Edgar answered for him, "He's fat! He's always been fat since he was a kid!"

James nodded, "It's true."

Alice looked like she was about to lay into the slowest man in the world for wasting their time, but Lily held a hand up to stop her. "Monsieur Teevee eats a lot, zhen?" Lily asked, needing more information.

Edgar grinned wider and shook his head, "He's poor! We grew up together! He ain't that much better off, now, either, so you tell me?"

Lily clucked her tongue, once again surprised at the man's insightfulness. Not only did he realize what she did with his genetic sample, but he considered what most people would consider a disability with a potentially useful genetic trait.

In the America of her memories, there was what was called an obesity epidemic. Most people just assumed that people needed to eat fewer Big Macs, and that wasn't untrue. However, you did occasionally run into a person who could not lose weight no matter what they did. It wasn't possible to supervise people twenty-four-seven, so most doctors just assumed that they were liars when they said they followed their dietician's plans, and certainly, for some, that was true too.

However, there were people who had a mutation that caused an increase in the efficiency of either the use of energy in their bodies or the energy extracted by their digestive systems or both. In effect, these people could live on vastly fewer calories than the average person a day.

It was a beneficial mutation until you considered that the feeling of satiation after eating has nothing to do with how much energy the body has and was only a function of whether the stomach was full.

So, these unlikely people, perhaps like Mnsr Teevee, would eat what a normal person did due to the signals their stomach was telling them, which would be much more than their body needed and then they would get fat.

For hundreds of years, these types of mutations were already included in virtually all biomorphs by default, except with the hunger problem resolved. It made too much sense in a world of finite resources to use the most efficient use of those available.

It had the potential to be very useful, especially if she could also alter the body's satiation response to go along with it.

Okay, maybe she would have to negotiate with them after all. She tilted her head to the side, "So, what do you want if you say 100 caps is too little? I don't know for sure if I'll be able to extract anything useful. I'm taking all zhe risk, 'ere."

Lily channelled Pawn Stars internally, amused, 'His genome will sit on my shelf for years; I'll need to hire someone to frame it; the best I can offer is $3.50.'

"A percentage of future sales! Same with me, for my contribution!" started Edgar.

"Absolutely not," said Lily with some finality.

With that, they began haggling back and forth. Teevee seemed willing enough to allow Edgar to barter on his behalf, and it was probably a good idea.

Finally, they settled on a mix of caps, and in-kind contributions from Lily's side, including an extreme discount on any other genetic therapy to any contributor that ended up producing a valid therapy. Edgar especially wanted the clean metabolism mod immediately.

For once, Alice was faster on the up-take than Lily was, "Wait, Mister Edgar. The only people we've sold that to was the girls working at The Pink Slipper. I didn't think when Dr St. Claire said you were the patron of ladies she was being so literal!"

This caused Edgar to sputter and clearly lie, "Uh, I have no idea at all what you are talking about. Is that shoe store?"

'Nice one, Apprentice,' Lily internally cheered the girl for the good barb. She was teaching the girl more than medicine, after all.

He continued to deny the accusation for a time before Lily got them both on track. She noticed that Teevee had been blushing too, so she suspected he might be a customer of the girls over there, as well. She was fairly confident she would be able to get something useful from Teevee, so she was willing to pay him in advance.

Lily concluded, "Okay, I zhink I can agree to zhese terms. Monsieur Teevee, do you want to do your surgery today or another day?"

The man seemed surprised, "Uhhh... you can do it today? You don't need to get ready or anything?"

Lily shook her head, "It isn't a complicated procedure." The man then got his courage and nodded, "I would like to do it today, then!"

Lily nodded. She would never have expected, not in her wildest dreams, that she would be asked to perform a gastric lap-band type surgery during the Apocalypse.