Higher education

October 2066

Los Angeles, California

The meeting wasn't in person, which told me about how much this Dynacorp suit disrespected me. I had his dossier pulled up on the side, as I already had as detailed a background investigation performed as possible before speaking with him. There wasn't a lot of good to say about him, and honestly, he probably should be in prison. From what I could tell, he had a motor vehicle collision while he was operating a car manually while drunk, which seriously injured a couple of people a couple of years back.

Drunk driving was a lot less severe of a crime here than it had been in Brockton Bay, and that was because most cars had autodrive systems. It was still illegal unless you had a fully AI-controlled car, but it wasn't often enforced—especially since it didn't often cause any accidents since most autodrive systems could at least get you home. But driving a sports car manually while drunk was still supposed to be pretty serious, as far as the cops were concerned.

However, the police never bothered investigating it further after they discovered that the driver was a University student who also was the son of a high-ranking Corpo. Today, he was a low-to-mid-ranking one himself, but clearly, he still had a chip on his shoulder based on who his parents were.

I listened to him finish his spiel, "..., and as such, I believe that we can offer your shareholders an offer of twenty million Eurodollars for the company, lock-stock-and-barrel." He smiled as though he was doing me a favour.

I just regarded him levelly for as long as I could before he started looking uncomfortable. Then I opened my mouth and sighed, "We decline."

He started to say, before I interrupted him, "Now, look here... this is more than a reasonable offer—"

"It's an insulting offer, which was what I expected," I told him flatly, then laid my hands on the table, "I'm sending a document to you. It's a certified copy of a contract I have prepaid for and executed with Veritas Corporation. In the event that either this company changes hands or this technology is licensed without suitable remuneration—see tables three, four and five—this contract will automatically activate. This will cause Veritas to, without further action from us, transfer both the technology and a pre-signed license to the largest competitor of the firm performing the acquisition."

There were a number of other clauses, some of which I had redacted from the copy I sent this Dynacorp guy, but others I highlighted for his perusal. For example, if I, "Sakura Hasumi", disappeared, the same thing would happen, with Veritas trying to figure out which Corporation was likely responsible and then giving my technology to their competitor. If they couldn't do so within two weeks, then the technology would transfer to a random company from a list that definitely didn't include Dynacorp.

The term for what I had done was a "poison pill." It was a way to either make the acquisition of a company cost a lot more or, alternatively, to poison the fruits of the investment, in this case, by handing the same technology to their competitor for free. If this was Brockton Bay, this wouldn't make much sense as my company was private, and generally speaking, this type of "poison pill" defence strategy was only used when dealing with publicly traded companies. In my old world, the only way to perform hostile takeovers was to buy outstanding shares that were publicly traded, after all.

Since shares in my firm weren't available for trade anywhere, nor were the shareholders (consisting of only myself) publicly known, the strategy would sound a bit odd. But that wasn't the only way to perform hostile takeovers in this new world. The simplest way a hostile takeover happened in this world was by military force of arms. If someone placed a literal gun to my head, like a feudal king that had been captured, I would agree to whatever terms they set. Checkmate. This contract was a hedge against that scenario, as I could not call Veritas up and tell them not to do this anymore. It was already done.

This wasn't fool-proof by any means, and I had to pay a significant sum for Veritas to agree to execute this kind of contract in the first place, but it would still force this little shit to consider his options. If he was smart, he would ask to license the technology at the level where this agreement wouldn't be executed, although that would cause me to receive a percentage of revenues and probably many hundreds of millions of Eurodollars a year in royalties. It would still be less expensive than having to compete with someone else who had the same technology and was therefore driving the price down against their monopoly, though.

There was no way he had the authority to make such an agreement, though. Not by any means. I watched the man, that was only a few years older than me and a few years younger than Dr Hasumi, get red in the face until he said, clipped, "You've made a mistake." Then he slapped the disconnect button on his end and immediately hung up, his hologram derezzing and falling into the desktop.

Well, that was ominous. I didn't really know what he would do now, but I would be looking underneath my car for bombs from now on. Twenty million Eurodollars was probably the limit of his authority to make deals on his own say-so, and he was clearly upset that he would either have to cut this one loose or draw in his bosses and lose most of the credit.

It would be wrong to consider him a stupid young master, too, like out of a wushi or xianxia story. It wasn't as though such tropes didn't exist, and he might even be an excellent example of them; it was just that you didn't succeed even marginally, even if you were a young master in this world without a fair bit of animal cunning, if not straight intelligence.

I called Kiwi.

"Yo, just the doctor I wanted to talk to," she answered with an affable grin.

I raised an eyebrow, "Oh? What about?"

"Can't talk about it on the air. Give me about an hour, and I'll be in your office. Can what you want to talk about wait till then, too?" she asked and then hung up after I nodded.

Well, well. All of my calls with her were encrypted as highly as possible, so it must be something pretty interesting. While I waited, I logged into the dev system that only I and my engineer Phillipe used. The first version of the software for the ruggedised military version of the sleep inducer was done, and we were beginning to assemble units for testing. Phillipe had commented on how simple it was to produce because most of the squad management systems already had trigger and event hooks for things like 'possible enemy detected' during rest time. For the version that did not include that, all he had to do was create a master control that could override and wake all members of the squad so that a lookout could rapidly wake everyone up.

The military version of the sleep inducer only really had two features, beyond the fact that it was rugged as hell, that the standard did not. That was the main one, and the other one was adding a "last rested" attribute to each soldier in the management system. I didn't do anything with this data field, but most brigade management was done partly by AIs these days, and they would definitely notice the new data field and adapt it on the fly to the suggestions and options given to field-grade commanders.

That was all I thought it needed to be very successful in the first place. I had already bought some of the special tooling necessary to assemble them. The exterior was made mostly of a specialised flexible nano-polymer that was five times stronger than polycarbonate and very flexible. I had carefully designed each module that used other plastics so that it was almost impossible to fracture, too. I had run over one of the prototypes in my car multiple times, and it would always snap back into shape. It was also waterproof enough that it would only be damaged by total submersion in water for over two hours, at least at small depths. If you dropped it in the ocean, well, you better go after it before it sinks more than twenty metres or write it off.

After I reviewed any commits that Phillipe had submitted, I checked a couple of messages, frowning. I had been forwarded a post on a BBS that focused on high-end consumer electronics where this user claimed that he accidentally dropped his Cherry sleep inducer out of the tenth floor of his apartment complex but managed to recover it.

It stopped working as a braindance wreath, but the sleep-inducing parts still worked, and moreover, apparently, it was causing him to have lucid dreams every night. There were a number of replies claiming that he was spreading bullshit, but a few were curious if it were true.

I gaped and quickly went through the process of registering an account and replied directly in the thread:

"Dear xX69XxMightyThunderCockxX69Xx,

I urge you to cease using the damaged product immediately. Please return it to our headquarters personally or via mail, and I will, in this instance only, waive the negligence exclusion to our warranty and provide you with a fully-functional replacement.

I have no idea how or why this could be happening, and that means it is dangerous. I remind you that Cherry Limited will not be liable if you fry your brain using an obviously damaged product. See product license, end-user-license-agreement and hold-harmless policy for details.

For the good of your brain, please return this device immediately,

Dr Sakura Hasumi, MD, PhD, CEO"

The truth was I was a little bit concerned about his brain, but I was more interested in examining the faulty device to see why it might be causing this novel effect. I did know a bit about the phenomenon of lucid dreaming and thought there could be a number of reasons why. If it could be replicated and was safe, I might sell it as a "DLC" for the device.

I got both a reply and a DM from a forum moderator. The latter was asking me for proof of my identity, and I raised an eyebrow. Honestly, that wasn't easy to do. Even if I called them, machine-learning systems could credibly fake any person these days. I thought about it.

Ah, that would probably work. Nodding, I took a screenshot of the DM and uploaded it to the Cherry Limited net site. Then, I sent the link back to the moderator in a reply. The ability to instantly upload anything and serve it on the verified net site of the manufacturer was likely proof enough. I could have sent them a cryptographically signed e-mail from my net site as well, but this BBS specifically did not include mail addresses for the administrators or moderators. This site was a hobbyist or enthusiast BBS—right on the periphery of what I would have considered "dark net" sites, so it tried to be edgy.

Sure enough, they replied with a thumbs-up emoji and added a special badge and title to my account. How interesting. I had never browsed this BBS before.

The reply from the original poster claimed that he was concerned that he would lose the "additional functionality" as he had gotten used to being able to lucid dream every night. I didn't have to reply again, though, as he got dog-piled by many posters. Some people requested that he continue to use it until his brain melted for science, but most called him an idiot for not taking a good deal when he got it. Finally, he sent me a private message and said he would stop by after work in a couple of hours.

Sighing, I didn't have anything pressing to do until Kiwi came over, so I started my word processor and opened up the latest chapter in Rage Of A Villainess and started tapping away. I had been slacking a bit in releasing chapters, much to the dismay of the readers. Right now, the plot was, chronologically, in the middle of the third sequel to the otome game, which the protagonist hadn't actually played yet. Would our plucky heroine, who was now an Archduchess in her own right, discover the chilling truth behind the [Anti-Saintess] and her capture targets before it was too late?!

Well, the readers would just have to see. I could write quite fast these days, and I was also even experimenting with drawing, partly as a way to compensate the readers for the reduced release schedule of twice per week. Not to create, say, a manga but more to make it more of a traditional light novel, with illustrations every fifty pages or so. Normally, my art skills would not be up for it. But I've found if I focused all my brain power, I could draw things in numerous styles, even "manga style." It might help that I spent hours every week "painting" new bodies into existence, but it was probably mostly because the way my brains worked together had expanded the way I thought.

That was clear when I had partially disconnected the other week while meeting Gram. The experience was pretty terrible from both perspectives, but it was the worst for the part of me that was the smallest. It felt as though I had a stroke, almost. I was sure I could have recovered from it, but it would have taken some time. That was something to keep in mind, as it could possibly even cause some danger. My third body was in space, learning how to work safely as a construction worker and electrician in microgravity. If I flipped out in a hostile environment, there was a chance I could do something to put myself in real danger.

I got through the chapter and started the first couple of paragraphs for the next before I was interrupted, which was good. I liked to immediately write at least three or so paragraphs for the follow-on chapter, as I found it was much easier to motivate myself to continue writing a chapter than it was to begin one. Kiwi stuck her head into my office door and asked, "Hey, is anyone using your OR?"

OR? Singular? Girl, please. I had three now. And yes, someone was using one. But the two new ones upstairs needed to start earning their keep, too, "I have two new operating theatres upstairs. Let's go up there." I was curious why she wanted to talk there, but my curiosity didn't last long. She had a bodybag with her, so that answered a lot of questions.

When we got to the free OR, I started to unzip the bag but was stopped by Kiwi, and I quickly raised an eyebrow. She said, "Wait, let me start a jammer real quick, just in case." I peered at the bodybag, and sure enough, it was one of the few that also had a fine wire-mesh lining to stifle radio-frequency emissions. Just what had she brought me?

I hummed and waited until she got set up before unzipping the body bag. I gaped at what I saw. The first obvious thing was that the corpse was missing half of the body; only the torso from the waist up was in the bag.

Second, the cybernetics I saw were very distinctive. I glanced around, looking left and right, "Please tell me you didn't bisect a Netwatch agent, Kiwi."

She laughed and shook her head, "No! We found him like this on a job last night. How long do you suppose he has been dead?"

I frowned and considered that question before confidently stating, "One hundred and fifty hours, plus or minus six hours."

That caused her to let out a sigh of relief, nodding, "I figured it was pretty long, but that means there's no way the netpigs really knew he died. Otherwise, they would have extracted his corpse here before we got there." She then grinned and said, "That's the highest-end Netdriver that NetWatch makes, to say nothing of the cooling system. None of that tech is available on the market, not even for large Corps. Do you think you could remove it? I am almost certain I can crack the firmware on the Netdriver. At least that will let me install a customised OS and not get tracked using it."

I nodded slowly, pulling the torso out of the body bag and getting my tools, thinking about the cyberdeck the former NetWatch agent had. "Yes, I can maybe even add some customised panelling to disguise it. I can make it look like a high-end Tetratonic cyberdeck from the outside easily enough. The cooling system, though..." I just shook my head, "There is no way I can disguise that, so I recommend you forgo it for the moment. It's too much. Too large. You can't hide it. One pic of you gets out, and they'll be after you, I bet. I'd like to examine it, though, so I'll buy it from you if you want."

I wondered what bisected him, but I didn't ask. If I recalled correctly, her gig last night involved recon of an abandoned area that was, until recently, used by a gang very similar to Maelstrom. They were called something stupid, like Alligators or something like that. They totally would have made off with this guy's body if they had done him in, but who knows how he did. A trap, perhaps?

"Give me about thirty minutes to take all of this out, identify any tracking systems and disable them. Once I get the deck removed, I'll hand it to you, and you can do your magic; then, whenever you want it installed, let me know," I told her.

She grinned and gave me a thumbs up, and asked, "So, why'd you call me in the first place? Also, do you have one of those nova stealth systems you use in stock?"

Oh. I almost forgot in the excitement. As for the other request, I winced. I had two in Night City, but that wasn't any help here, "Not right now. It's kind of difficult getting Arasaka products shipped here. I'll see if I can find a substitute... And I need a gig on a fast turnaround. Today, preferably. That Dynacorp guy you investigated for me."

She looked interested and tried to effect a terrible New York accent, asking, "You wants me to rubs him out for yas, boss?"

I sighed, "No. I would like I his apartment wired for sound... and video, too, if possible." I then spent about ten minutes working and simultaneously explaining both why I had asked her to investigate him in the first place and the contents of the discussion he and I had earlier.

She frowned and said, "You sure? He sounds like a problem waiting to happen." She shifted to a different terrible accent, "He sends one of yours to the hospital; we send one of his to the morgue! That's the Night City Way!"

I groaned, "Okay, no more one-hundred-year-old mobster movies in the evenings for a little while. Yes, I'm sure." That caused her to pout. That had been almost a direct quote, sans the Night City part, from a film that this world had but that I did not recall existing in Brockton Bay. It was about Al Capone and was filmed in the eighties. It was really good, and I did think that this character Jim Malone was on to something.

His philosophy mirrored my own, almost word for word, so I preferred thinking about it as The Taylor Hebert Way. However, my Way did have some morals attached to it. I didn't have to wait and soak up the first attack like a gonk, but I did need to know with some degree of certainty that it was coming. I wouldn't "whack" this guy, especially since his father was one of the higher-ups in Dynacorp in this city unless I was pretty sure he was going to attack me first.

It grated on me that he would get special treatment, but I really did need to be wary of his father. So, even if he tried something stupid with me, I would also send him a "message" first, too. Although, since I decapitated the last man I wanted to send a friendly message to, I think I would contract this work out to Kiwi.

She nodded, "We already did a preliminary on his apartment. Might not be able to do it today, but should have everything by tomorrow. A rush job like this carries a fifty per cent premium due to the risk, plus we'll have to use a lot of consumables and speciality equipment. We'll also need to pay out bribes that we might not have needed to do if we paced it out a week or two."

I waved a hand, "You have a blank cheque, within reason."

That got a grin, and she said, "Preem."

---xxxxxx---

October 2066

Night City

At about the same time that I was disabling a couple of physical tracking devices in one of NetWatch's premiere cyberdecks, I was also taking a call from an unusual number. My Agent had screened the call, and I raised an eyebrow at the report that came through.

I picked up, answering, "Taylor Hebert speaking."

The man's voice was British, and my Agent had identified him as "Sir John Stewart, Dean of Oxford University Medical School." I thought it was a prank call at first, but the address he was calling from matched an Oxford publicly available number associated with their telepresence exchange. He coughed, "Yes, Miss Hebert. I am calling you today to arrange a time that you can come in for testing."

For fun, at super speed, I searched through the drawer at my desk until I found the shard I was looking for and surreptitiously inserted it in the side of my head. It was the same accent English language chip that included a number of accents. It was still set in Miss White's posh Received Pronunciation setting. I said in the accent, "Testing? I'm not sure I understand, sir."

He sounded put out with me and continued, "Although I was instructed to graduate you, I will not allow anyone to risk the reputation of our hallowed institution of learning, no matter the personage that made the demand. If you want an MBBS from this College, you will need to present yourself, in person, for testing. If you somehow manage to pass the knowledge and practical skills evaluation of what you would have otherwise spent six years learning, then I will accede to the demands made to me and issue you a degree."

Oh. How interesting. Gram had said that she had a more concrete way to compensate me for the "trauma of remembering being interrogated." That rubbed me the wrong way when I heard it because it seemed to imply that they had ways to remove memories, just like I did, and only consider it traumatic because I remembered it. Still, I wasn't going to say no to free stuff. I had expected it to be money or something equivalent to money, although perhaps that was stupid because she had said it would take a little while to arrange.

Could she have known about my plans to just bribe my way into a degree from some small medical school somewhere? Well, perhaps not, but I got the impression that she thought that this "hereditary power" that the Astors had was the bee's knees, so she might have assumed I could pass any test that this upset man demanded of me since she thought I had the same thing. Silly old bint, I had something much better than that. The man on the vidcall really did look put out, too—kind of like he had just bit into a lemon.

This beat the West Virginia University School of Medicine. I was pretty sure I could bribe a degree from there, but this would be much cheaper, too. It would have cost several hundred thousand dollars to do even that. This would just cost me however much a trip to England would cost. Besides, this guy was starting to piss me off with his smarminess, "Oh, certainly. I'm presently in the States right now. But I believe I could be there by the eighth of November; that would be a Monday, I believe. How long do you suppose I should schedule for this ...ah... assessment?"

He frowned even more somehow, "It would be best to free at least ten days, madam, for the entire battery of tests. The eighth is fine. Please come to the John Radcliffe Hospital Cairns Library at nine o'clock." With that, he disconnected without so much as a by-your-leave.

What a dick. Sure, Oxford had been teaching medicine since at least the 12th century, but the United Kingdom, which only included England, Scotland and Wales these days, was widely considered the "sick man of Europe." A lot of the lustre of many of its hallowed institutions has been lost, at least for the moment.

While they were doing a lot better than NUSA was, on average, that wasn't saying a whole lot. The Navy of His Royal Highness, the King of Ireland, often sunk ships containing refugees from England. Well, perhaps not often, but it happened once or twice a year. From what I could tell online, my Gram's family had a long history in both countries, although with a bad reputation from "Irish patriots" for being too cosmopolitan or even English-like.

At least I had a valid passport. I had requested one from the State Department before the exchange with Biotechnica in case "Taylor Hebert" needed to flee the country. Things would have been fucked if I had to wait for the twelve-to-sixteen-week turnaround time to deal with that first.

Getting a visa might be a pain; there was no UK consulate in Night City, and although I could apply online, there were occasions when countries would "defer" the application until you showed up in their embassy or consular office for unknown reasons. Well, I'm sure they had a reason, but nobody seemed to know what they were.

"...never mind," I said to myself, as the webpage refreshed with an approval and digital visa milliseconds after I submitted the initial application on the UK government net site. Either they had an extremely rapid turnaround, or perhaps more likely was that my name had been added to a whitelist. Well, either way, I was set there.

I hadn't been really trying very hard here in Night City, compared to my day as Dr Hasumi, which was more akin to a workaholic, or Hana, who also was quite busy learning to live in space.

Here, I ran a little pharmacy, and I usually had an employee work the till. I also occasionally did some Ripperdoc work for the Tyger Claws or the dolls, and that was it, but it was mainly a lot slower pace. I kind of liked it; it gave me a chance to relax. I've noticed that if even one of my bodies was relaxing, then I didn't feel as though I was burning out, even if my other bodies were working twelve or even sixteen-hour days.

Long term, Hana was the part of me that I was going to earmark into taking it easy, in so much as one could take it easy in space anyway. For a while, though, she would be working quite hard, both learning what amounted to a new trade and gaining enough experience to be considered credible at it. Eventually, I thought I might start my own business as I have everywhere else, but that wouldn't be possible unless everyone thought I was skilled. Spacers, I had discovered, were extremely clannish.

They just wouldn't patronise a new business unless they had a previous personal or business relationship with the proprietor or if one of their friends or family vouched for them. It was a completely different culture, focused more on handshakes, or at least their equivalent of them, personal relationships and responsibility. I was planning to rent cubic, or personal space, on one of the smaller orbiting space stations, one in particular with the uninspired name Space Station 13, and I managed to do so with a referral and a handshake.

I remember feeling that the man I had rented from would not merely take me to court if I damaged the space he was renting to me; to him, it would be personal.

In a lot of ways... well, in almost all ways, it was much more honest than the way business was conducted down here. Better, but it was hard to scale, I thought. Such things would work in a community of a few tens of thousands, especially because they shipped everyone who was actively, criminally disruptive back to Earth, but probably not in a few tens of millions.

I wasn't quite in the "in-group" up there yet, so I was treated brusquely and not quite trusted. I felt it might be a while before that changed, too.

Nodding, I got up. I had a lot to do to get ready, then. But for now, some relaxation was in order. Evelyn had shown me this place near my building that did excellent massages. I had never partaken in such things in Japantown before because I was a little concerned they would all come with mandatory happy endings or something else weird.

This, however, was a place that just gave straight massages. Moreover, their clientele was on the paranoid side, with mercenaries and Tyger Claws being common customers. They'd let you have a weapon within hand-reach, and they also had a series of cameras that you could watch of both the room you were being worked on, as well as the front, so you would be warned if anyone rushed back to get to you.

The only real danger was that the masseuse would be a kunoichi and assassinate me. I couldn't really get around that danger, though, because I needed my masseuse to have strong hands, so they had to be augmented in some way, either through biosculpt or cybernetics. As such, there was this one girl who I sort of trusted, and she was the only one I would let rub on me. I gave her the strength-enhancing biosculpt treatment personally so she could get better at the rubbing, and I tipped her very generously.

She probably thought I was insane, as I got a massage for an hour four or five times a week, but it really did help me work hard in my other guises. I pulled on an outfit, strapped on my gun, and walked out of my apartment whistling.

---xxxxxx---

November 2066

Night City

I wasn't such a tycoon that I was taking a suborbital spaceplane flight to Europe. That, I couldn't rationalise paying for. However, I could rationalise first-class on a supersonic jet.

Modern supersonic airliners flew at altitudes of almost twenty thousand metres and were carefully designed with geometry so that the sonic booms were mostly dissipated by the time they reached the ground, sounding no louder than a normal jet flying by, anyway. Without these advancements, they would have been like the Concord I remembered from Brockton Bay, where they only allowed it to fly over the ocean.

Here, they couldn't fly super fast, not like military jets, but it was still about one point six times the speed of sound. There also wasn't a direct flight to London, either. Not the day that I was leaving, anyway. I would have to land at Charles de Gaulle and take a connecting flight over the English Channel.

Oxford was northwest of London, and there weren't a lot of hotels available in that town either. Almost none, and none that would accept a longer-term two-week booking on short notice. I was almost at the point where I was going to give up and secure lodgings in London and just accept the hour-and-a-half commute one-way every day. However, then I received a message from Gram. Well, it wasn't from her. It was from one of her personal assistants. He offered me the use of the a small house they had in Oxford itself, which they keep for any time someone attended the College.

The idea that they would keep a house vacant for years just so it would be ready in case some cousin got admitted to the school was absurd to me, but I suppose if you had what was, in practice, unlimited money, it made some sense—especially since the house itself was an asset.

I thought for hours about whether or not to accept, as I was trying to keep my entanglements with my mom's family to a minimum, but in the end, I did accept. It was just a polite gesture that didn't mean anything to Gram or to me, either.

As such, I was sent the digital keys to unlock all of the doors and alarm systems. Surprisingly, it wasn't some kind of mansion but just a regular three-bedroom house with an attached garage, not much larger than my house in Brockton Bay. Unless there was some sprawling hidden bunker beneath it, this must be "roughing it" standards for Gram.

When I told Evelyn that I had to travel to England for a couple of weeks, she used it as an opportunity to shop for a whole new wardrobe for me. Honestly, I appreciated it as I didn't have that much that would be considered fancy clothing or even casual clothing that was less than three or four years out of date as far as fashion went.

We spent a day at it and hit a number of clothiers that were on the high-end in Night City. I spent more than I expected, but I felt that I got a lot of outfits that I could use for years. I bought Evelyn a new outfit at each place we shopped as compensation for her assistance, which she practically squeed at. Personally, I thought I looked like some Euro-poseur, but Evelyn seemed to think I looked very chic.

Most were still in the subdued colours that I preferred, although the outfits were more European in style to befit my destination. I even brought two dresses with me, the more casual of which I was wearing right now.

Paying for first-class on a supersonic, rather than economy on the slower subsonic, did give me some niceties when I arrived at the airport to check in. There was a young woman that claimed she was a concierge waiting for me. Blonde, perky and about my age. She helped me check my bags and walked me through security, where I received another security band on my wrist, although this time, they let me select from four different styles rather than picking the ugliest one available, like when I went to Seattle.

I also had access to the airport lounge both in Night City as well as in Charles de Gaulle in France during my layover, the latter of which I intended to use as I had a multi-hour wait before my flight to London Heathrow.

I had timed things pretty well, so I did not have to wait too long to board. I got on with the first group and was ushered into a window seat in front of the aircraft. The first-class section was kind of small; most of the cabin was split about evenly between business class and economy. I kind of wondered why they had economy fares at all until I realised that groups of obvious Corporate employees seemed to be flying together, with the boss up in first and the minions in the economy or business class, depending on their current position in the hierarchy. I found it very amusing.

I would have been delighted with everyone having the same seat but in this world? If there wasn't a first-class, then it would have been necessary to invent it.

'There I go, thinking vaguely socialist things again,' I thought, amused. Unlike in her old world, here, there were pseudo-socialist nations that functioned pretty well in this world. The Soviet states, for example, had a high standard of living, higher than the NUSA for the average citizen, but it was all built off state capitalism as well as a dictatorship of the proletariat where the dictator was, in effect, an artificial intelligence, at least in practice even if humans did make all the decisions in the end. But why wouldn't they listen to his suggestions? After twenty years of always having correct suggestions, in many ways, the humans had become something of a rubber stamp.

Герой, or Hero, was the Soviet artificial intelligence and was theorised to be one of the most powerful in the world, including those trapped behind the Blackwall. He was built in the years following the DataKrash, and NetWatch hated him but had no basis by which they could object to his existence. He was, in effect, grandfathered in because NetWatch as an organisation had been very weak at the time he was born. The Soviet data scientists had been right, though; in no other way beyond sheer computational power could a single entity effectively manage an internal command economy.

I wasn't exactly an economist or a political thinker, but I felt the issue with truly socialist nations was that, until recently, there was no practical way to replace the information the free market provided. Many people waxed philosophically about what precisely the free market was, but I thought it was pretty simple. It was nothing more or less than the sum total of millions and millions of people all trying to screw everyone else over.

Still, at the same time, it did convey what needed to be manufactured, what needed to be sent where, and the like efficiently, even if, as a by-product, certain people were enriched while most others were impoverished or exploited.

These days a hyper-intelligent AI like Hero could model an economy well enough to perform this necessary function, sucking in all data about everything and managing production and logistics. However, then you were just trading an exploitive boss for a god, and I didn't particularly like that idea, but then again, I was a boss. Perhaps I would have thought differently if, instead of having all the advantages and abilities I did, I was just one of the workers in my factory producing a product every day.

I paid my workers way above average, but there was no way I could pay them what I actually thought they were worth. If I tried, it would quickly become public knowledge, and nobody would take me seriously. It would be like a low-level Amish shunning, where I wouldn't be able to buy goods and services unless I paid treble the price, at least. I would go out of business in months.

Although it wasn't close to balancing the scales, I tried to provide a number of fringe benefits that were difficult to quantify the value of, like free or discounted medical services at my clinic and pharmacy, extra days off, rotating into the highly-sought after quality-assurance jobs and the like, as well as a somewhat flexible schedule. This did seem to be very popular with my workers, at least.

About AIs, though, I thought if it was inevitable that there should be gods in this world, it should be something you had to work to become, not something you were born into. That was my major gripe against AGIs in general, that and jealousy.

Still, I thought, wistfully, that it would be nice if everyone could work together somehow.

I glanced to the left as I saw a man slide into the aisle seat next to me. I had been staring out the window at nothing in particular while I was woolgathering.

I blinked, mouth opening in surprise as I recognised the man. And I could see that he recognised me, too. Although I didn't have blonde hair now, and I had made subtle alterations to my face, those alterations were only designed to prevent simple facial recognition software from identifying me. It had been a mathematical way to slightly change a face to prevent being identified by computers, not people. I had still looked pretty much exactly like myself, except blonde, when I had been Miss White.

He grinned as he settled into his seat, tilting his head to the side and saying, "Miss Barnes! I am surprised to see you here today. More personal business?" He waggled his eyebrows.

I coughed. Although it likely didn't matter at that stage, I didn't want any association with the temporary Emma Barnes identity. Besides, I hated that bitch, and just hearing her name aggravated me. I wondered why I had ever picked it.

Still, he clearly knew who I was. I considered trying to blagger my way out, but it would have been obvious. I still had the accent chip installed from the other day, so I switched to the posh accent I used the last time I saw him and said, "I'm certain that you have me mistaken for someone else. I am called Taylor Hebert, sir." I tried to keep my tone slightly disapproving. Although what I said denied everything, my non-verbal cues amounted to 'You got me, but kindly shut your mouth.'

He chortled and accepted my scolding, saying, "Ah, sorry, Miss Hebert. You reminded me of someone I met once. My name's Richard Stewart. I work for British Aerospace."

I grinned slightly, remembering our previous conversation, "Over here to service those observation drones the city bought? I saw one briefly break stealth the other day when a cloud got in the way. The refresh rate on that stealth system could be improved, I imagine."

He chortled, "Madam, that platform is over twenty years old! The newer versions have all been improved! Still, I suspect Night City is getting a lot of value out of the system." Then he shook his head, "No, I don't do service, just sales. A fertile ground for sales of military hardware these days, what with the unpleasantness in this part of the world."

I nodded grimly. What had been called a mere police action at first was looking like it was heating up into an actual brush war with little sign that either side was putting on the brakes. Casualties were heavy on both sides, although each side had kept its cadre of professional soldiers intact and was mainly fighting battles using reservists and mercenaries at present.

The Soviets were sending shiploads of "humanitarian supplies" to the Free States and even Night City, but word on the street was that they were filled to the brim with weapons. The motives were clear. They preferred a North American continent that was broken up into different polities, and if the NUSA wanted to push things for the sake of unity, then at least they should be mauled for doing so.

Although I didn't like the NUSA invading, I had to admit that I hated outsiders wanting to prolong the conflict for their own personal geopolitical reasons even more. Still, I'm sure the Free Staters appreciated the assistance, so perhaps I had the wrong opinion.

We quieted there for a while as the aircraft taxied and took off. I glanced out of the window, looking at the green-blue algae that was hugging the coast as far as I could see. My seat buddy saw me looking and nodded, "Strange days, isn't it? How many things can change in just a short amount of time."

I tried not to look bashful and nodded, "Your boys must have some plans, I suspect. Arasaka's new drone-based harvesting system sure looks fancy."

He snorted and nodded, "Sure, and it'll take at minimum nine-months from now to see the first prototype platform designed and built. We'll have harvesters in the azure main in three months at the most."

I raised an eyebrow. The term he used for the open sea was a bit odd, so I searched for it and immediately got a match for an old patriotic song from the United Kingdom. This one I hadn't heard before, unlike the IRA one I sang for Evelyn, but I looked at the lyrics and remembered Mr Stewart mentioned a lyric from it before. I snorted, "Britannia rules the waves?"

"You're god damned right," he said, and then he coughed, "But in truth, we're taking a lot of ships of a specific class out of mothballs from the Scapa Flow and refurbishing them quickly, turning them into drone harvesters in an interim. The multifuel engines on most of those wrecks can burn anything, so they'll be self-fueling after the distillation apparatuses are installed." He nodded, "We'll have a system very similar to Arasaka's that we're developing in parallel..." He then admitted, "...probably about the same theirs comes online." That actually meant "probably afterwards," I thought.

He shrugged, "Still, I'm sure we'll have buyers for these first interim drones who can't afford a brand new system from Arasaka or us. I hear Militech is partnering with Petrochem to build similar systems, as well. SovOil, obviously, is doing the same." He shook his head and finished ruefully, "Everyone has gone algae-crazy."

I rubbed the back of my neck and chuckled, but it sounded forced.

The flight attendants were very attentive, but I declined anything to drink and just watched the BAe executive down two Dewars in rapid succession. Although we were already supersonic, it would still take a little over five hours to reach Paris, so I just decided to superficially pretend I was napping while I instead focused on other things.

The design for the militarised sleep inducer had been finalised, and we were in production now. I had lucked around meeting the commanding officer of a small band of mercenaries. Most of my work with mercenaries had been singletons, but this man approached me for a bulk discount. He was a white South African, and he and his entire band of mercenaries had arrived for the upcoming conflict. That was, apparently, what they did all over the world. When one war died down, he left and found another.

The idea that there was still something like independent Freikorps or bands of mercenaries like this was kind of ridiculous, but of course, there was. Because why wouldn't there be in this world? Everyone could be their own PMC. This guy had a long-standing mercenary company and was reconstituting it after some losses in Central America. He had heard about how cheap I was selling relatively new Sandys.

He had walked in my door wanting a bulk discount on such boostware but walked out getting that, but also agreeing to purchase one platoon worth of my militarised sleep inducers and test them in combat. I was giving this initial fifty units to him at a steep discount, but in exchange, I would be able to use him in marketing material.

Hopefully, they didn't get sent into some death trap and get annihilated, as that wouldn't make good ad copy.

It had only been a couple of weeks since I had Kiwi bug the apartment of the pushy Dynacorp guy, and while I had heard a lot of disparagement of myself in our surveillance, I hadn't yet heard him plotting my imminent demise as I had expected. He had tried to contact Dr Hasumi again yesterday, and I just declined his call, though, so I felt that he was going to have to do something soon or just accept he lost.

I increased the security at my small factory. I bought several airport-quality security scanners, the kind of security pylons that I had walked through numerous times at the Trauma Team's headquarters and the kind I had just walked through this morning.

I did this mainly to prevent any kind of build-up of employees at shift change times, as they all had to pass through security themselves both when entering and leaving. When they entered, it was to catch weapons and contraband, which I forced them to leave in a locker, and when leaving, it was to prevent theft.

But it occurred to me that this was becoming an attack surface and, moreover, a soft target. With my previous security procedures, not only was I relying a bit too much on the fastidiousness of the security personnel doing the checks, but it backed up, causing a fifteen or twenty-minute delay at shift change times.

The employees didn't like this because they weren't being paid for this time, and I didn't like it because someone wanting to attack my enterprise could spray the lobby down with automatic fire or RPGs and kill most of the people building my products, so it was a sensible, if expensive, purchase. Now they just walked through the scanners and were held up only if the scanners caught something.

When it came time for the actual meal of the flight, I had picked a clam chowder and lobster a week ago when I bought my ticket. Being a native Brocktonite, I would be pretty suspicious of this meal choice anywhere but the East Coast, even in my old world when I was pretty sure the meat would be actual clam and lobster. Here, it was much more questionable, although there was still considerable fishing activity in the world.

With the drop in population and many wars, the ocean biome was one of the few that was actually doing well. Even the hammerhead shark, which was almost extinct in my old world, had a resurgence here.

I sniffed snobbily at the lobster and clam chowder. The lobster was a real lobster, which surprised me. I figured they would have given faux-lobster meat already "deshelled." My seat buddy eyed my meal suspiciously. He had a simple steak that must have been close to five hundred grams, as well as mashed potatoes. I was sure the steak was cloned and vat-grown, but the potatoes might have been real. He said, "This is going to sound weird, but I've never eaten a real lobster. It looks difficult to eat."

"Nah," I said, my accent chip protesting my casual use of language, "It's pretty simple." Then, I expertly twisted off the tail and showed him how easy it was. Only the claws were a little bit tricky, but even then... even with Leviathan imperilling the sea now and then, any girl growing up in Brockton Bay would know how to eat the tastiest of all arthropods! Well, shrimps were really delicious, too.

Back in my old world, the famous Ward Ladybug had been based in New York City, along with Legend, and there were rumours that she owned and operated an entire lobster farm in Staten Island as a hobby. Apparently, her "bug control" extended into all arthropods, not just insects, so she could get a bunch of lobsters to be pleased as punch doing nothing but procreating and getting along with one another.

It was already well-known that she had a huge farm of Australian Darwin's bark spiders and black widows that she used to create very effective, armoured costumes for any Ward that asked, as well as a lot of the Protectorate, too. What a good girl she was.

The clam chowder had been "acceptable" but not good, but I systemically disassembled that lobster in record time. Eating him made me feel quite nostalgic. I sat for the rest of the flight, thinking of home and of Dad.

---xxxxxx---

After we deplaned in Paris, Mr Stewart stopped me from walking off.

"You're headed to London, right? If you like, you can hitch a ride on our private jet. We're leaving as soon as I get there; you won't have to wait hours for the connecting flight," Mr Stewart offered, which I raised an eyebrow at. I guess it wasn't too surprising to fly back on a public supersonic and then have a business jet meet you there so that you didn't have to wait four hours for the next flight.

I'm not sure why he was so polite to me. I considered it but then shook my head, "No. I'm afraid I'll have to decline. As a foreign national and an American citizen, my visa is only valid if I enter the port of entry that I declared in advance. It'd be too much of a hassle to change it, and it would inconvenience you to wait to have customs meet your aircraft on the tarmac when we landed."

He snorted and tapped the side of his nose in a gesture I didn't recognise, "Right, right, Miss Taylor. I hope you enjoy your visit to our humble and rainy island."

My stomach growled a little bit which caused me to blush, "Besides, that lobster was hours ago, and I never had breakfast. I'm going to hit the airport lounge for a more substantial meal." The lobster was quite good but had been a little bit on the small side. It had merely whetted my appetite without actually satiating it.

That caused him to chuckle and nod, "That makes more sense. Well, till next time." Like last time, he walked away humming the melody to Land of Hope and Glory. What an odd man. We had exchanged net addresses this time, though, so I wondered if he would ever contact me. Or I could be the one to call him if I ever needed a Challenger hoverpanzer someday.

An especially bouncy girl in an airport uniform and a shiny bus driver or military-style cap met me as I deplaned and offered to show me around. A couple of other first-class passengers had personalised service like this, as well. I frowned when it appeared that each assistant had not been picked randomly. One of the older ladies had a muscley-looking and very attractive male assistant, while I and the three others had attractive females.

I would have been satisfied with the muscley guy or even no eye candy at all. This wasn't a VR, so it wasn't like they could generate an actual interpersonal ideal for me or anyone else, but people's ideas of attractiveness had incredible amounts of overlap, so just employing a few slightly different attractive people and you could have someone on hand for almost everybody. Taylor Hebert was my real identity, after all, and god knows how much of a profile they had on me from years of watching advertisements and buying products.

Just as you watched an ad in public, so did it also observe you. Eye-tracking systems would notice where you looked and where you didn't, streams would notice what you watched and what you skipped over, purchase history and preference for BDs and films, and all media could be combined with sophisticated psychological models to generate a profile that could be bought by anyone who had a little money. It wasn't even expensive, although I had never bought my own profile because I despaired at what they would claim I did like and did not like.

I let her show me where the airport lounge was but then dismissed her with a large gratuity, watching her walk away. Shaking my head, I walked into the lounge. As I waited for a seat, I heard a gasp, and a girl yelling, "Tay! Holy shit is that you?!"

Blinking, I glanced at the disturbance and saw a girl that was my age, along with what was obviously her parents. She seemed familiar, and I used all of my brainpower to identify her. Jessica Johnson. Jess or JJ, as she liked being called. She was one of my friends at the Militech school in Night City and one of only two people who had actually called me to see how I was doing after Alt-Danny passed away.

She had the appearance and personality of a kind of ditzy, promiscuous girl. She was definitely the latter, but not the former. She was intelligent, perhaps the highest scorer academically in the entire school, and had kept a keen social network, including even NC-Taylor, and people underestimated her at their own peril. NC-Taylor definitely thought that Jess had been more intelligent than herself, although that had been before getting our power.

NC-Taylor didn't go to her parties too often because they were a bit risqué sometimes, but she had been to a couple, and I even had memories of NC-Taylor almost getting to second base with a boy at one of them. NC-Taylor had been a lot more socially subdued, though, after Alt-Mom had passed away and stopped doing many of the expected teenage things.

She had also been the only one to call me more than once. She called me a few times over the years, maybe once a quarter, just to be nice, and we'd talk each time for five minutes or so.

I smiled, turning off my accent chip and waved, "Jess, is that you? What are you doing here?"

She checked with her parents real quick before ushering me over to sit with her so I didn't have to wait for a free table.

"Girl, you are looking good! I thought you had died! You disappeared for years!" she said and then raised an eyebrow as my adaptive firewall stopped a casual hardware probe attempt dead in its tracks. She gave me two thumbs up, grinning, "Nice ICE." NC-Taylor and her had both been "sisters" on the same technical track at school, so this kind of behaviour that I would consider disrespectful from others was tolerated and even expected. I reciprocated and got hardly any more information than she did before she also shut down the scan before it finished.

I did detect that she had upgraded her deck since NC-Taylor had last seen her. She had a Biotech Σ, the same brand that I had bought when I first arrived in this world, but her version was a step up from their entry level. It was a ten thousand Eurodollar deck, which was quite nice for a college student.

NC-Taylor had been training to be a netrunner, while Jessica was training to be more of an engineer, although there was a lot of overlap there. Her parents were rich and higher ranked than Alt-Danny had been, but both were about the same rank as Alt-Mom, both at the Regional Director level for different departments.

She reintroduced me to her parents since it had been a number of years since I met them, and I smiled, deciding to be honest, "I'm here to finalise my education and graduate from University."

Jessica went wide-eyed, and her dad raised an eyebrow, "You're receiving a degree from a European University? Impressive. Which one?"

"Oxford. There were no direct flights from Night City, so I had about a four-hour layover here before I could hop over to Heathrow," I said without bragging, merely stating facts.

"Fucking nova, Tay! Totally preem! Talk about a change from an apartment in Japantown!" Jess said, getting scolded by her mom for her language.

I chuckled, "I still live there, actually, although in a nicer part of the Megabuilding. Are you on vacation?"

Jessica nodded, "Aff. We're headed back to the States now. I was the female Honor Cadet in my class at OCS. I also got admitted to the UCLA engineering program last year. So my mom and dad gave me a trip to Paris as a gift!" That explained her shortened hair. She used to have hair down to her butt, but this was much more in-line with Militech's military regulations for female grooming standards.

Every Militech executive had a reserve commission in their armed forces. So, the fact that she was admitted to OCS prior to even graduating college meant that the Corporation had plans for her. It likely meant she was on a fast track. That she was the Honour Cadet, or highest achieving female cadet, was also a nice feather in her cap.

I raised an eyebrow, "OCS before graduating? Honour Cadet? Wow, Jess, you're killing it. Or should I say, Lieutenant Johnson, eh?"

"Aww, Tay, don't!" she said, although her non-verbal cues were clearly saying, 'Yes, praise me, continue praising me.' Both her parents looked quite proud too, which made me jealous that she had both of them still alive, but I repressed that.

I ate a nice lunch with them and promised that we would catch up together when I got back to the States, although with her in LA and "Taylor" in Night City, it might take a little bit before that could be in person. Still, I thought that I would.

In the past, I had been a victim of imposter syndrome, terrified to interact more than superficially with any of Taylor's old friends, most of which were only fair-weather friends anyway. Jess might still be that, just smarter about it, but even so, that described most people in this world, so I couldn't hold it against her. Besides, it would be useful to have more contacts with Militech, especially ones that were on a fast-track promotion schedule.

We parted as they left to board their flight back to the States, and I waited patiently for my own flight. The trip over was quick, and the only surprise was when I was clearing customs.

"Everything looks to be in order, and I have a digital copy of your weapons permit here if you want me to get that bracelet off your wrist," the customs man said in a friendly tone.

I blinked. Weapons permit? Europe didn't have the second amendment, obviously. Weapons were a lot more restricted over here. I had been a little concerned that they would make me remove my monowire altogether, not accepting me wearing a restriction bracelet that I might hack or remove.

Well, I knew who to thank for that. I'd have to send Gram a Christmas card. I quickly shoved my wrist at him, and he chuckled as he undid the device. I spent a good minute rubbing my wrist. Wearing the bracelets didn't hurt, but still, it was the freedom of now being able to decapitate most people I saw that I appreciated. But if I knew I would have a weapons permit, I would have brought a pistol.

Perhaps there were gun stores in the UK? Probably something like 'John Blasters and Sons, Armourers since 1012 AD' or something.

It was an hour and a half drive to the address Gram's secretary had given me, and by the time I got into the house with all my luggage, I was tired. Not sleepy, exactly, just tired. I slumped into a chair in the living room and just sat there for some time.