31 Pew-pew
It turned out that everyone tested could improve their reflexes significantly, with New John and his sister showing the most potential to improve at over 125%, whereas Big John showed the least at only a theoretical 50%, which was still well worth the treatment in everyone's opinion.
Lily decided to do Grace's surgery first, with the Apprentice assisting and Melissa observing. Although, to be honest, while the level of assistance the Apprentice could provide was still subpar, she was improving day by day.
It wasn't a long surgery, and Lily was already over halfway done, so she was making small talk, "So, you guys have Power Armour?" she asked Melissa interestedly.
Melissa pursed her lips, although it wasn't visible behind the surgical mask, but ended up nodding, "We do. Some, anyway. They don't generally utilize it so close to the D.C. area or out in the open, though. Brotherhood will think we're Enclave and pretty much shoot us on sight, and any Enclave troops we see will quickly discover we're deserters and then shoot us, and then we'd be on the radar again." She stopped the think, "The fusion cores are difficult to get, also. Raven Rock had the capability to both build them and refuel spent cores, but we obviously don't. I presume the Brotherhood also has the capability to refuel spent cores, if not manufacture them themselves as well, but we don't really know. They certainly don't seem to mind using power armour, anyway, so that's indicative."
Lily nodded. She didn't remember Power Armour ever taking any kind of fuel, but she discovered that her knowledge from playing Fallout 1, 2 and 3 wasn't comprehensive in this new world, which was obvious because there were clearly some small differences. She had read about fusion cores but hadn't been able to acquire any, as of yet.
They were manufactured by the same company that made the micro fusion power cells, though, which was called Mass Fusion and had their headquarters in Boston. And they were utilized not only in military applications but civilian ones as well; for example, the majority of the cars sold in the pre-war era used fusion cores while miniaturized fission reactors powered the rest. It was something akin to the competition between VHS and Betamax, and fission reactors in cars were well on the way to meeting the same fate as Betamax did, despite many people claiming they were vastly superior since they didn't need to be refuelled at all for over 50 years.
Lily agreed with Melissa that the Brotherhood had to have a way of refuelling them, but she privately suspected that they did not have a method to manufacture them, at least not this chapter in the Capital, because no matter how she looked, she could not find a spent fusion core in any wreck of a car she discovered.
She suspected one of the first things the Brotherhood accomplished when they migrated to the Capital, beyond seizing the Pentagon, was a systematic search of every car that was within the greater D.C. area that was in a relatively safe or easily accessible location. It's likely they hadn't searched even a fraction of D.C.'s total area, but they certainly have in all the areas around Megaton and Canterbury Commons.
There was no way the Brotherhood would have been as systematic at this looting if they could manufacture the fusion cores themselves; they would have been more opportunistic as they were in all their other pilferings of technology.
She had originally intended to just wait until she hit her first target, the VSS building, which she knew had fusion cores inside, but perhaps she could buy some from these former Enclave people. Especially if she told them it was to examine them to examine the possibility of refuelling them.
She sighed when she thought about the Brotherhood, how she hated those people. She didn't know how she was going to deal with them but certainly knew she wanted to stay as far away from them as possible, at least until the Brotherhood Outcasts left the local chapter.
Tilting her head, she considered as she finished connecting the PHOENIX implant to Grace's cardiovascular system, her hands moving almost on autopilot since it was such a simple procedure. Her knowledge wasn't perfect, but it was pretty significant; she had played Fallout 3 multiple times, including all of its DLCs. She knew of two main areas where the Outcasts would base themselves -- the first was the location she was still planning to loot to its bedrock as soon as possible, namely the VSS building.
The other, and the main base, was at Fort Independence. Perhaps she could take the fission kernel of Megaton's bomb, build a new, smaller bomb and bury it somewhere inconspicuously in Fort Independence? Then incinerate them all the moment they set up shop? There was no reason beyond the shortcoming of some Fallout electronics and yield desired that Megaton's bomb was so giant. Certainly, the invention of mini-nukes and the Fat Man indicated that they well understood how to miniaturize nuclear explosives.
The critical mass of the most common weaponizable isotope of Plutonium was only about ten kilos, after all. Judging from her scans, the core in the bomb was only around 8 kilos, probably to prevent any criticality accidents during assembly. Maybe she would have to cart away another ten kilos for the high explosive lenses, which she would also loot, and the rest was the useless electrical firing circuits and similar electronics to ensure all the explosives detonated simultaneously as well as a vastly oversized second thermonuclear fusion stage.
She suspected the yield on Megaton's bomb should be greater than that of Tsar Bomba of her past memories, but it clearly had some dial-a-yield settings, the lowest of which would probably have been used in the Tenpenny quest.
It was barely a high school science project to construct a simple implosion-type fission-only nuclear bomb, especially if you had the fissionable core and all the high-explosive shaped charges made for you already. It might not be more than twenty kilotons of yield, but that was sufficient to incinerate the Fort even if it was buried underground. Could she kill them in cold blood? Yes, she definitely could.
She intended to introduce both old and new technology widely in the Capital Wasteland. The Outcasts were like a pendulum swinging away from Elder Lyons' more moderate policies, and as such, they were, or would be, even more hard-cased than the Brotherhood usually was. She couldn't see how her existence, long term, would be tolerable to such a paramilitary group.
And military men would see military solutions to their problems, so in her mind, they were almost already irreconcilable even if the group didn't even exist yet. However, she wasn't willing to condemn a bunch of people to death on her hunch, but she would take steps. Then, she would have to see, and perhaps there would be a tragic accident involving hitherto unexploded ordinance at the Fort, if necessary.
Finishing up on Grace, she waited until the newly implanted device started functioning, which took several minutes. After that, she saw the incision site start to heal in real time, albeit incredibly slowly. She wouldn't even need any sutures for this, but she used some surgical glue anyway just to be careful.
These PHOENIX systems offered much quicker healing than her medichine hives for trauma, but they relied on a similar synthetic stem cell as Stimpaks did, produced in small quantities by the device itself. These stems seemed less aggressive than those used by StimPaks, which made them a little less effective for trauma healing, but on the plus side, they probably wouldn't even give anyone but herself cancer.
On the downside, the PHOENIX system offered zero protection against infection or disease. Taken altogether, medichines and the PHOENIX system were quite complimentary devices which is why she had already installed a slightly customized version of the PHOENIX in both herself and the Apprentice. She was much more scared of bullet holes than cancer, after all.
She took her surgical instruments to the sterilizing autoclave she had built from parts and welcomed the next patient.
After starting at 1500, she was done with all patients conscious and reporting only mild discomfort by 1730. Lily suspected most of the discomfort was caused by the slight fever they were experiencing from the reflex treatment.
After dinner, Lily invited the recovering Grace to convalesce in her personal boudoir, where in Lily nursed on her until the amazon's health and vigour returned. It took most of the night.
---
"Say, Girlie. You're also pretty good at repairing tech and energy weapons, right?" asked Grace out of the blue, the next morning.
Lily blinked, "Better zhan most, I suppose. Why?"
"I remember you joking about putting a laser in a cybernetic arm. Could you actually do that?" asked Grace, fishing out a near totally destroyed laser pistol. Its grip and trigger looked melted off. "This was Miller's, was in his hand when that mutie shot him with a plasma caster. I know it's a long shot, but he was quite fond of it, and I've saved it these past few years. I wanted to get the pistol itself repaired but everyone has said it's totally trashed."
Lily grinned, now totally awake, asking like a kid who got offered to open their Christmas presents a day early, "Oh Boy, could I?" She decided not to tell Grace she already had a number of designs of first-generation cybernetic limbs that incorporated integrated weapons and tools, lasers included.
She took the wreck of the laser pistol and looked around her room for the little bag of tools she normally carried on her hip, finally finding them under her panties that she must have tossed off the bed last night in fervour.
Humming, she disassembled the pistol. However, it took her super-sharp diamond knife in places, at areas where polymers and metal were fused together. She made a pile of salvageable parts and a pile of trash. Thankfully the ruby rod gain medium was not even cracked, so she would be able to fabricate everything else herself -- her laser pistol parts, aside from the gain media and energy cells which she could not duplicate at all, were all smaller and more compact anyway.
Tossing the corpse of the pistol, mainly the melted frame, back to Grace and carefully setting the ruby rod and other associated parts on her nightstand, she said, "Yep! I sure can, and I would love to do so, too!"
Grace grabbed the pistol frame out of the air like a snake snapping at prey, looking a bit surprised at herself, "Woah. I already feel quite a bit faster!"
Lily nodded, unsurprised. "Yes, most of zhe changes happen in the first thirty-six hours, with diminishing returns after that until a plateau at about seventy-two hours, more or less."
She peered at the clock displayed on her PipBoy, which was unceremoniously laying amidst her crumpled clothes across the room.
Lily sighed at the time, 'It is almost 0800, already.' Standing and stretching her naked body like a cat, she languidly said, "We should probably get up. I have to give my Apprentice zhe second genetic treatment and start working on this arm."
However, instead, she was tackled back into bed, and Grace informed her huskily, "They can wait a little while."
---
"Dr St. Claire! It's nine o'clock! You missed breakfast, but I didn't want to disturb your patient's... convalescence," the Apprentice said as Lily walked into the cafeteria.
Alice was seated at a table with Miller and Melissa, so Lily joined them after scrounging up herself something to eat and replied drier than James Bond's martini, "Yes, we all appreciate your commitment to healing, Apprentice."
She handed Alice a small inhaler, "Zhis is for the clean metabolism. It should be fine to start it now if you want." The girl didn't need to be told twice and took one huff immediately. She was barely 45 kilos soaking wet, so a single puff was more than sufficient.
Miller and Melissa seemed interested, "Is this another enhancement?" the older man asked, to which Lily nodded.
Melissa seemed enthusiastic, "Alice was telling me about how you use a viral vector to make a genetic change on a person, but I couldn't quite understand why it is so safe or why you seem so unconcerned about the subjects infecting others. It is fascinating, though!"
Lily gave her Apprentice a bit of a side-eye, although not because she was upset that the girl mentioned such. However, being able to teach or tell someone something in a way that they themselves understood it was a sign of mastery of the material. The fact that she couldn't explain in her own words how the Vector MkI was a sign that she did not, herself, understand it sufficiently.
Granted, the girl had only been studying under Lily officially for about a month, but it was a deficiency that Lily noted for later correction. Miller seemed very interested in the answer, too.
Lily shrugged, none of this was secret, and she had long ago realized she'd have to publicize this part of her treatments just to set people's minds at ease, "It started out as a virus, but it isn't really a virus anymore. A virus will replicate endlessly in zhe presence of zhe living cells, yes? My genetic vector is only capable of replicating a certain number of generations inside a host before it deactivates itself. That is why people over 50 kilos need two puffs, to get that much more of the treatment to ensure zhat zhere is full propagation considering their additional body mass."
It was true, too. In fact, Vector MkI hardly resembled a coronavirus anymore. It didn't look spherical under magnification anymore; with the changes Lily made, it resembled an American football.
Both of them looked impressed, but Miller asked, "What if it mutates? Since it is still based around a virus."
Lily clucked her tongue at the man's insightful question. Beyond reducing the coronavirus virulence, that was the main area Lily had changed. "Viruses, or in my case virus-like semi-synthetic polymeric proteins, can change their genome by two different mechanisms; firstly, copying errors during replication, zhis creates mutation. Secondly, zhey can also recombine with other similar viruses during replication; zhis is zhe usual mechanism by which a new strain of a virus is formed in zhe wild during a pandemic when a host is infected by two similar viruses."
Both Melissa and Miller nodded, realizing she was giving them some background information prior to an explanation and waited.
In between bites, making sure to chew completely as was polite and expected of a lady, Lily continued, "Well, I've increased both zhe replication processes fidelity as well as introduced an entirely novel error-correction method -- normally viruses do not possess such a feature. Not only is mutation more than an order of magnitude more difficult as the replication process functions better but in zhe event a mutation occurs the error correction will get it and stop zhe replication process by triggering programmed cell death in the host cell."
Miller glanced at Melissa, who shrugged and said, "I'm not sure what you're expecting. I'm a paramedic, not a virologist. It sounds plausible and comports with what I know of biology, though. She certainly doesn't seem concerned she's throwing around live viruses or that it will mutate into a live virus."
Lily grinned a little bit, "Finally, zhe mechanism by which prevents perpetual replication in living cells is designed quite fragilely, so that if after all zhat any mutation or change occurs, zhe entire replication mechanism will break down so that it can't replicate no matter where it is. I have no fears whatsoever about it, and I have a healthy respect for viruses, I assure you."
Miller seemed impressed and mollified. Then he blinked, "Wait, second treatment? What is this other enhancement, if you don't mind my curiosity?"
Lily nodded, "Yes, something I am going to be marketing towards zhe civilian sector. I call it zhe clean métabolisme mod. It adjusts a person's sweat glands, changing the make-up of the sweat excreted to have a protein zhat is somewhat similar to surfactants used in soap but milder."
After explaining its mechanism of action briefly, Lily shifted into marketing mode, "So instead of sweating making you feel all grimy, zhe more you sweat, zhe cleaner, more moisturized and smoother your skin becomes! It also eliminates offensive body odours, as zhese new secretions have a pleasantly minty odour. Zhis enhancement ez one I have myself! I stand by it one hundred per cent! And actually, zhe Apprentice was more looking forward to zhis than the increased reflexes, I think."
Alice rapidly nodded her head in agreement.
Melissa looked extremely interested, but surprisingly Miller seemed the most interested, in fact, he was slackjawed with shock. "Uh... could you sell us this, as well?"
Lily blinked, "Of course. It just didn't have a combat application, so I didn't know if you would be at all interested. I was planning to offer it to you, one on one, as a personal sale."
Miller chuckled, shaking his head, "You impressed me with your thoughts on logistics yesterday, but you've disappointed me today! Sure it may not make you faster or tougher, but it will increase... and by leaps and bounds... the morale of a soldier in the field. And that translates directly into combat effectiveness! If anything, this is as important to our organization as the increased reflexes."
Lily blinked. She knew that, of course, but she hadn't put two and two together. If a soldier felt fresher for longer, they could move past their baggage train into less improved areas, can stay on patrol longer and a number of other benefits.
He coughed and asked, "I'm not sure how to say this politely, but will you permit me to... sniff you?"
Alice broke up, laughing wildly.
"Yes, sure. I suppose," Lily replied and stood up to present herself for his olfactory inspection.
After a slightly embarrassing minute for both of them, she sat back down, and he didn't waste any time, "How much?"
Lily tilted her head to one side. She didn't intend to be usurious, especially considering her production costs of a self-replicating semi-virus were nil, "I was zhinking about charging walk-ins five 'undred caps per treatment. You can have my friends and family discount of two 'undred."
Miller nodded, "Is there a way I could buy the treatments in bulk and take them away with me? It just isn't possible for many of our people to come to you."
Lily considered this before nodding. She had intended to sell treatments this way, but she was earmarking that at Vector Mk2 or Mk3, which would be even more airtight as far as misuse or mutation was concerned and, most notably, more user-friendly, "Yes. But you 'ave to administer them per my directions. 'ow many doses?"
Miller seemed a bit cagey about that but then sighed and shrugged, "Let's call it... 75?"
Lily blinked again. That was more than she thought. A platoon was about twenty-five men, plus an equal amount of civilians equalled fifty at the time of their desertion.
She thought their group would experience contraction with people who went their own way or died. This couldn't be explained by human reproduction, not in the 8 years since they deserted. They must recruit, but very carefully.
She had a feeling that was one of the reasons Grace invited her to do that University looting job as a preliminary screening. How interesting, Lily thought.
"Zhat won't be a problem. Do you want all 75 copies of the reversing agent, too?" Lily asked.
Miller blinked, "These changes are reversible? Uhh... that's impressive. No, probably not. Half, maybe. Just in case?"
Lily nodded, and then Miller started negotiating on price and payment terms, suggesting that a bulk order should have a discount even on top of their existing discount. Lily grinned; she did like haggling.
After negotating, she did end up offering them a discount for the bulk order as well as favorable payment conditions -- they could pay a third now, a third in three months and then the last third at the end of the year. She was, in effect, offering them zero per cent financing on the purchase, but in exchange, Miller had agreed to bring her several spent fusion cores and two more precious ones that still had a charge.
"I'll 'ave your order boxed up by zhe time you get back from l'hôpital. Merci for your patronage of Custom Tailored Genes," Lily sealed the deal with a handshake.
Her chosen business name caused Miller to smirk and Alice to try and fail not to chuckle. The girl asked incredulously, "You are not calling your business that, are you?!"
Lily stared at her, somewhat self-conscious. She had thought long and hard about the name! It was great! "Yes! Although zhis building we shall call zhe Megaton General Hôpital, yes?"
Alice waved her hand, "No, no. I think it is a great name! I just didn't expect you to make a pun, Dr St. Claire."
Lily pouted and finished her breakfast in companionable silence.
---
The next day Lily was having her second consultation with Miller, they would be leaving to go on the job as soon as their reflexes plateaued out. If her patient stopped delaying her, he would have a new arm to use on the trip.
"Are you sure you're going to have to take what little forearm I have left, Doctor?" asked Miller, sullenly.
"For zhe fourth time, yes!" snapped Lily, in a very unusual break of her usual serene bedside manner.
Miller sighed and nodded, "Very well. This arm looks really good, and I'm amazed you were able to build it so quickly."
Lily glanced at the cybernetic arm on the table. It was modelled after a real arm, his right arm, in fact, looking more like an articulating statue than a Terminator's mechanical skeleton arm. The exterior was a combination of carbon fibre and graphene, matte grey. The colour didn't match his colouration, but there was nothing she could do about that on a first-generation model.
He had to have one more question she had already answered, of course, "And I'll actually be able to feel things touch this arm and hand?"
Lily didn't mind this question because she got to show off her skills. "Yes. Although, definitely not as good as your real arm or hand. Zhe tactile feedback sensors built into it are so so crude compared to sensory neurons, after all. But it will interface with both your sensory cortex, central nervous system and proprioception. It won't feel like a ghost hand you're moving around, but like a real hand albeit with muted sensation, as if you've had nerve damage in your arm." Probably. She'd never worked with such crude synthetic parts before, but she was pretty confident that is what it would feel like.
"Alright, alright. I'm ready for the surgery then, I guess, Doctor. Is Melissa watching again?" asked Miller.
Lily nodded, "She had me turn off her sense of pain instead of sedating her so she could watch her own surgery using a mirror, so what do you think?" Lily was actually quite approving of such behaviour. She wasn't far off from conducting her own open-heart or brain surgeries on herself, like Lily frequently did, 'Is that the sign of a good scientist, perhaps?'
Miller nodded, before following Lily to the pre-operative room.
---
Miller had been awake for a couple of hours, and Lily had the Apprentice perform the initial post-surgery calibration of the arm as she had pressing engagements to install a small fifty-kilowatt generator in the pumping station.
While they would indeed power the pumping station with the large generator at the electrical substation, this smaller one would act as a backup. The main electrical generator required constant cooling -- even if it was scrammed, it needed continual cooling for at least a half hour, or it would melt. That meant the pumping station required backup power.
Also, they could get the water pumping sooner -- which would be very necessary to start the process of cleaning out all the water lines.
Already, as she returned to the hospital, grimey, dark and disgusting water was being pumped into the sewer across the east side of Megaton. Progress. Lily was pleased.
Walking, trailed by Grace, into the room Miller was sitting in doing what amounted to cybernetic physical therapy with Alice, she greeted him, "How is zhe arm, Capitaine?"
He was grinning, "I crushed a few things that weren't exactly fragile. It is ALOT stronger, but I have pretty good control of it now." He was moving around a few specially constructed blocks she had made for his physical therapy that were as fragile as eggs, without destroying them too.
"Good, good. Grace has a surprise for you, and I must apologize for not giving you a complete breakdown on the specs of zhe arm," Lily told him. She rationalized the slight breach of medical ethics by the fact that the laser was completely inert, and if he didn't want it she could permanently disable it.
Not one to mince words, Grace gave it to him straight while grinning, "Doctor Girlie put a laser pistol in your arm! She used the parts of your old pistol that got toasted along with your hand; I kept it and asked her to do it as a surprise!"
He was shocked, pleased but shocked. "Uhh, how does it work? I won't accidentally shoot anyone with it, will I? And you actually managed to get useful parts out of that old piece of shit? My dad gave me that, you know."
Lily walked over to him, "No, it is disabled right now. I guess, you could say the safety is on. Here, put out your arm." He held it out and Lily slid open a small recessed panel on his forearm that wasn't obvious, which shocked him. "Here is zhe activation switch. I'm going to turn it on, but don't worry -- it is in target practice mode, zhe laser will barely be more than a pointer. Might give someone a sunburn, but won't even burn their clothes." She indicated the other control, but left it in its present position.
Everyone made sure they weren't anywhere near where his hand was pointing, just in case.
"Uhh... I don't feel any different?" said Miller.
Lily clucked her tongue, "Of course not. While I call zhis the safety, it's really the second safety. I imagine that once you get used to it you will likely keep it in this ready state most of the time. Zhere are electronics watching your nerve impulses, it won't go ready to fire until you make a specific series of gestures."
Miller looked quite relieved, actually, "Ah, what series of gestures? I hope I can remember them in the middle of a fight."
Lily nodded, "I zhought about zhat. So it is simple, yet not something you'd do accidentally. You have to make a fist zhree times rapidly within one second," she held her hand out and clenched her fist three times quickly, demonstrating. Then she warned, "Go ahead and try, but after zhe third fist do not move your pointer finger."
Miller clenched his fist three times rapidly, then his index finger straightened out, pointing at the wall, "Ahh.. I had to really stop myself from trying to curl my pointer finger when it popped out. I don't have any control of that finger anymore," he reported.
Lily nodded, "Point it at a target, just use the wall right now. To fire, curl your finger like you're squeezing a trigger. Your finger won't move but the laser will fire." She indicated the tip of his index finger, which had mechanically opened to reveal the optical aperture of a laser.
He pointed at the wall, and then suddenly, a blue beam of light hit it. He grinned, and several more beams hit the same spot. Grace was cackling, "That is BADASS, Cap!"
"It really is. I thought it would come out my palm, this is so much easier to aim. How the hell did you fit a laser in an index finger?!" asked Miller.
Lily sniffed, prepared to brag and receive praise, "I didn't. It's in your forearm. I considered zhe palm, also, but it is a bit inelegant. Hard to aim, like you say. So, I ran a waveguide up to your finger so all I had to fit zhere was the output coupler optics. Much smaller, no?"
Without being prompted by Lily, Miller figured out how to stow the laser, which was a repeat of the same three fist gestures. He then repeated the deployment, firing, and stowing of the laser several times.
Grace asked while he was playing with it, "Why are your guys lasers always blue, anyway?"
Lily blinked, 'You guys?' Had she been at the range with the Apprentice? Miller glanced over and seemed interested as well.
Lily decided to explain, "Well, you've seen rainbows, yes?" They both nodded. Then Lily gave a brief explanation about the spectrum of light, that visible light was only a small part of it and that blue was higher energy than red. "So, zhe result is about a ten to fifteen per cent increase in energy or damage delivered if it is zhe blue compared to zhe red. I'd rather it be invisible, but zhese pre-war laser designs are ruby lasers, so it is difficult to push it to anything past zhe visible spectrum. I can't even get it to zhe violet, my favourite colour," Lily complained.
"Ahhh..." they both said simultaneously as if some deep mystery had been revealed.
"Uh, could you change it back to red? Or maybe give me a switch? I understand the performance benefits, but there is a tactical advantage to ... uhh... not calling attention to the origin of this laser, you understand?" Miller asked.
Lily blinked. She had been using blue lasers in front of God and everyone and would continue to do so, so she understood completely. Although, she didn't think he would fool anyone -- only she, Lily, could create such an arm in the first place!
"Yes, zhat should be no trouble," Lily said. She had designed the arm to be easily removable for maintenance and upgraded versions. "I'll add a dial next to the training mode switch; you'll be able to go from red to blue or anywhere in between, if you want. Maybe that will be useful somehow, someday."
"Excellent, we will be heading out tomorrow morning on your job, don't worry," Miller assured her.
Lily wasn't worried. All six of them were vastly improved specimens compared to just a few days ago, Monsieur Miller especially.
