69% Lustful

It was over a week since Lily watched Miller and Grace depart, giving them a small energy-cell-operated refrigerated container with all the treatments that they were owed.

Miller told her that Grace's team was based at Megaton, but that didn't mean that they were usually sitting around here doing nothing, after all, which was a little unfortunate because Lily could have used their assistance in the last week.

It had been somewhat hectic since the news broke about the full extent of the water and power services that were going to be offered in the Eastside. The disconnected portion of the Eastside was only about fifteen per cent of Megaton's total surface area, and many of the buildings were amongst the poorest condition of all buildings in Megaton, but there was rapid activity in this part of the town.

Lily had heard about the details of the demise of the leadership of the Merchants gang. Apparently, the missionaries-cum-mercenaries had taken the simple expedient of shooting each of the three simultaneously in the head with sniper rifles from over a kilometre away during one of their morale-building exercises. Lily imagined the former gang leader had a very simple carrot-and-stick approach when it concerned his intra-gang discipline.

Hearing about this had chilled her a little bit because that was also probably the easiest way to deal with her, also. Although her skull was very bullet resistant these days, and she did not think a typical sniper bullet would likely penetrate, Lily thought a long-range anti-material rifle in the .50 calibre or 14mm range definitely would. Such a rifle would be especially effective against her if the bullet was of the armour-piercing variety, including a depleted uranium or tungsten tip.

This meant that she would likely get one freebie; if a competent long-ranged assassin was targeting her, she would likely survive the first attempt but probably not the second. Lily hummed, 'Well, that is one more than most people usually get. Hopefully, if assassins are sent after me, they are of the up close and personal variety, which I have a lot more confidence in dealing with.'

The Merchants were done as a gang, but they were, despite their insanity, a somewhat stabilizing force, so things become a mite chaotic after they were dealt with. That was nothing, though, compared to the news of the opening of Eastside Water & Power.

The news precipitated a sharp interest in the run-down area, and Lily got a number of complaints that she wasn't being a team player out of the Mayor's office, which she took to mean that he was annoyed that they attempted to profit from their own enterprises indirectly through the real estate market, as since almost all the property in her area of influence was owned by the city every dollar she made was a dollar taken out of his wallet.

If she did not have her agreement in writing about the deed to her building being hers, if she managed to improve it and put it to productive use, she would expect to try to be cheated out of it, honestly. Just to be safe, she had publicized the existence of her contract with the city and proclaimed that the Megaton General Hospital would open to limited patients as soon as the Mayor's office had inspected the building, approved the improvements and provided her with the quit claim deed.

Theoretically, stating her business plains in this manner would allow the Mayor to block her from opening if he was feeling intransigent, but in practice, despite not being entirely democratic, the Mayor had to at least be responsive to the citizens. And being seen as blocking opening a new, high-tech and modern-looking clinic was utterly unfeasible.

However, she was surprised to find an assistant from Mayor Grady Underwood showing up this morning as she was dealing with the aftermath of an attempt by random people to break into the hospital over the evening. The Protectrons had dealt with the intruders without her expert system judging the situation important enough to even wake her up.

"Doctor St. Claire? I'm Jason Knox, from the Mayor's office. I'm here this morning to inspect your building, although it is just a pro-forma matter because we can already see such extensive improvements just from the exterior," a younger dark-haired pale man about the same age Lily looked stated.

He got a little sour-faced and added, "Although, we would have appreciated it if you had just kept this matter between our office, we have been dealing with a couple of constituent complaints regarding the matter."

Lily smiled in a friendly manner, trying to demonstrate the emotional effect of both affability combined with the ditzy low-EQ that was a stereotype of scientists. It has been Lily's experience that politicians, of which this kid certainly was, were at their core social predator types and usually had an intrinsic disrespect for, and underestimated people who they felt had low social awareness and skills.

She smiled and rubbed the back of her neck in an embarassed-seeming way, "Ahahaha... sorry about zhat, Monsiuer Knox. It just slipped out when I was talking with zhat man from un journal," she said, using the french word for newspaper.

The man glanced at one of the Labourtrons that was dragging a dead man into the hospital, "Uh... what happened? Were you attacked last night? Are you taking that guy to your morgue?" He seemed impressed at that.

Lily tilted her head to the side and gave the body a sideways glance. It was the only fatality last night of a group of about ten disorganized men who tried breaking into the building. Morgue? Well, she was taking him to dump him in the recycler to recover most of the carbon he was made out of, actually, but yes, morgue sounded more politically correct, "Ah, yes. Briefly, zhen 'is body will be disposed of cleanly and ethically. Zhis man was amongst a group of nar-do-wells who tried to break into the 'ospital last night, probably searching for drugs or zhings to steal. Zhis one shot at one of the Protectrons, who escalated to lethal force." She gave a Gallic shrug as if to say, "What can you do?"

Jason nodded, "Yes, there has been a lot of unrest since your other venture was announced. Many people are scrambling to buy the properties over here, and not taking too kindly to the squatters already living in them. We wish we could have coordinated that a lot more closely too!"

Lily narrowed her eyes, but still in a friendly manner. She was pretending to be ditzy, not stupid. The nuance was totally different, but social predator types would underestimate people they considered ditzy but totally steamroll or take advantage of those they considered stupid, so she had to correct this misapprehension. She replied to him in a teasing voice, even bringing a finger up to scold him like a naughty child. "Tsk, tsk tsk Monsieur Knox... Zhere is no way your office would have been willing to sell zhe properties to us at such low costs if you knew what we had planned. Zhat, my friend, was just business."

This got a genuine chuckle from the man, and she felt he thought better of her, "Okay, fair enough Dr St. Claire, perhaps most of that is just sour grapes. It's not as though we did badly, anyway. I even bought one of the properties near your building myself, which I feel has a good chance of becoming an up-and-coming medical district with the right investment."

Lily smiled affably. She thought the same, actually. They continued their small talk for a while quite pleasantly. While it wasn't a complete analogy, social predator types were akin to bullies with a higher level of intelligence and did not have to settle for physical anti-social behaviour. And similarly to bullies, if you popped them in the nose and showed a little backbone, there was often a good chance that they'd approve of that sort of behaviour and become your friend, or at the minimum, stop pushing you to see where your line in the sand was.

She could never have done this behaviour in the past when she was a robotic spider; she was definitely what would have been called autistic in the America of her past and relied so much on social assistant AIs to judge human behaviour and formulate responses in social situations with other people that it would have been an impossibility to formulate and implement even this basic social strategy.

However, after she was melded with her memories of being a soldier and engineer in America, she found that her emotional or social intelligence increased to the point where she could at least make these basic moves, and this was despite the fact that she wasn't exactly an outgoing people person back in America, either.

She glanced at the enhanced reality tag over Jason's head. She had been training, slowly, the human emotional sentiment detectability system, using both everyone she interacted with during the day as well as, more helpfully, all the films that she had managed to download from Monsieur Tombs' family's data archive.

Tombs wasn't against sharing all the data he had; he just wanted to make sure he didn't lose it himself, which was why his family never offered it to the town, as there was nowhere else that could store it, and they, probably rightly, feared losing control of it. It wasn't a huge archive as pre-War archives went, but it still had the digital representation of thousands of books and over a hundred films.

The films helped because actors generally were experts at emotion, especially the good ones. She could watch a film and tag many exemplars of sorrow, joy, happiness, and other emotions that served as a great baseline for training the detection algorithms.

Below the tag of his name, [Jason Knox, Assistant to Megaton Mayor] was [Friendly (81%), Lustful (69%)].

Lily internally sighed, she had not noticed that he was noticeably attracted to her, so it was clear that her EQ was still subpar, even if it was miles away better than it used to be. Although her algorithm's confidence level of that prediction wasn't super high, it was high enough that she did not expect it to be totally wrong. Still, it was better to be pretty than not to be pretty; every woman and girl knew this.

"Well, let's begin zhe two-cap tour zhen, shall we?" Lily offered genially.

She brought him through all the hospital areas and the second and third floors, which were as of yet unutilized, before bringing him to her office to finish talking. "Ah, the basement... well, I have some confidential equipment there, so I cannot presently show it to outsiders, and the fourth through sixth floors are either unfinished or simply private accommodations for myself or my Apprentice and 'er family."

The main reason she didn't want to show him the basement was that the hobo's legs were still poking out of her primary recycler, actually. She didn't think he had the intellectual capacity to actually uncover any of her secrets from just the external appearance of her equipment down there, besides the fact that she had advanced technology, which was already apparent given her hospital equipment which included two working Auto-Docs, which was almost unheard of.

Jason glanced at the plaque at her door, "What is 'Custom Tailored Genes'?" he asked. Lily glanced at her plaque that listed her as both Hospital Director, Medical Doctor and Proprietor of Custom Tailored Genes, Ltd.

She welcomed him into her office, which had warmer colours than the off-white or grey of the carbon fibre walls of the rest of her building. Paint for walls was a bit of a hard commodity to find but she had her office painted by Mr Tombs' men; even some dyes were difficult to find, which was an issue she had already run into when she got her Auto-Tailor system operating. It could recycle most types of fabrics but did a worse job of recycling dyes. Still, the device was a marvel.

Lily sat in her comfortable chair and "Ah, I suppose you could say zhat is my zhird business. In addition to performing normal medical services and selling advanced prostheses, I am going to be offering my services as a geneticist to the public."

Lily smiled but looked a little disappointed, "Right now, zhe products are a little limited, a treatment to enhance zhe reflexes of a person, a treatment to adjust a person's sweat glands to reduce offensive body odours and zhe feeling of griminess you get when you sweat, as well as I am finishing up the preliminary efforts and am about to test two new treatments. One to reduce zhe need for sleep to approximately five hours a night, as well as some basic life extension zherapies."

The mayor's assistant looked amazed. Lily had intentionally not publicized either her prosthesis business or the genetics one in the paper. She didn't think she could keep it secret, but it was better not to rub it in the Brotherhood's face, either. Or invite Colonel Autumn to judge the relative risks and benefits of a Spec Ops raid to rendition her to Adams Air Force Base.

He asked, "And these treatments are... safe? What precisely do you mean by life-extension therapy, anyway?" Of course, politicians would always focus on that one. Lily felt her most important therapy was the one that stopped people from stinking personally.

It was, however, the basic LET service that made her the most nervous about offering. Men with power were generally old, and old men would do a lot to live a little longer. Just look at all the Pre-War experiments along this vein. If she thought President Eden was a real person, she might not even try it. Colonel Autumn was still young enough, probably just turning fifty, that he probably wasn't quite at the point where he was worried about the grim reaper -- plus, she was certain the Enclave had to have some similar technology, too.

Lily smiled, "At zhis stage, it is just very basic things. There are certain diseases, hundreds and thousands of different types, zhat possess a certain genetic factor that makes a person predisposed to get zhem, especially later in life. Some types of heart disease, breast, prostate and testicular cancers, amongst dozens of others. Zhis treatment effects and corrects the gene expressions for about... eehh.. the top fifty zhat I know about."

Lily hazarded a guess. There were a number of disease predispositions that overlapped, so changing one set of gene expressions could result in an effect on three or four different potential diseases sometimes. She then continued, "And on top of zhat, zhe treatment also affects certain formations in your cellular DNA called telomeres, lengthening them, which correlates to a direct increase in zhe 'ayflick limit of cell division which correlates indirectly to an organism's longevity."

She was pretty sure he didn't understand a word of that, so she translated it to plain English in a summary, "So, in zhe total, I don't expect a startling increase in zhe lifespan of the average person treated, I do expect to see an increase of two, maybe zhree decades. Much more if you are one of the few predisposed to one of the cancers or early-onset cardiac diseases." She paused to consider, "It'd work better the younger you are when you take zhe treatment. Two or three decades for you. Maybe only ten to fifteen years for someone as old as your boss... but, still, yes?"

In fact, her Apprentice was running intake on the group of fifteen volunteers being interned to test this treatment as Lily spoke. The volunteers for this treatment were a completely fresh batch, not having been used before, as she felt she might have to publish her testing methodology or at least make it available before important people felt the treatment was safe.

The mayor's assistant looked amazed, "That is amazing, if true! What are the costs of these treatments? Also, I know a few people who naturally need very little sleep, what would that sleep treatment do for them?"

Lily waffled her hand, "The ones zhat directly impact a person's combat performance are a little pricey, four thousand caps or equivalent for the reflexes. I'd give zhe clean sweat treatment away, but zhe people zhey wouldn't trust it if it was free. So, I am charging four hundred caps." She then tilted her head to the side, "The last two new treatments, the sleep and the basic LET, I am thinking one thousand each."

And then she nodded, "About people who naturally need very little sleep... Hmm, zhat is an insightful question. Zhe answer is... nothing, so I don't recommend such people get such treatments."

He nodded, "I see. I think there will be a lot of interest in some of those if you can show that they are, in fact safe and in fact, do what you claim."

Lily pursed her lips, "I 'ave a cohort of fifteen volunteers testing zhe life extension therapy starting today. We should know its safety fairly rapidly. 'Alf of them will test the reversing agent, while the rest will just continue on life with it so as to test its long-term safety. 'owever, I have no doubts there, and my Apprentice and I will likely take it ourselves once its immediate safety has been confirmed. I won't sell a product I wouldn't take myself, after all." She was slightly lying, she wouldn't take it because it would interfere with her existing genome, but she would have definitely taken it if she was a baseline flat like all the rest of the people here were.

The man nodded, looking impressed, "The fact that you'd stand behind your products that way will definitely make a lot of people less leery of them. I'm not sure how we can reasonably test its actual efficacy, though, but presumably the efficacy of your other treatments would indicate you're not selling snake oil."

"I suppose another scientist could look over my work, if necessary. If you could find one. I'm not sure zhey'd entirely understand all of it, but someone with a background in genetics would at least be able to confirm zhings about the telomeres and many of the negative genetic disease markers being replaced," Lily allowed, although slightly unwillingly.

Jason chuckled, "Perhaps there is someone from Rivet City we could find. Well, Doctor St. Claire, I have to say I am impressed and amazed. I have with me your deed, if you'd like to sign it, and then I have to depart. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, though."

Lily smiled, and did so. They both stood and shook hands, "So, can I report to the damn press you'll be opening tomorrow, then?"

She wanted to scowl. That was too early, but she did say the only thing stopping her was the Mayor. Hoisted on her own petard, she hadn't expected such a rapid response. She nodded slightly, qualifying. "Yes, although we may be seeing only limited patients or emergencies for the first week."

The politician shrugged; he lived and worked in qualifying statements, after all. Lily noticed that his hand lingered on hers a bit too long but didn't mention it. Social predator types were definitely not her type of desired romantic partners.

She showed him to the door, and then found and told the Apprentice, who was finishing up sequestering the volunteers in the isolation wards. She had two, a female and a male one now, which each had about ten beds.

Also, she didn't need lethal force guarding the door. She had finally armed, sort of, her Labourtrons. She had built what was essentially a compressed air-powered dart gun into one of their arms. The darts contained a number of medichines that would paralyze most humans in seconds.

Lily barely considered it a weapon because any sort of armour or even thick clothes hard countered the darts, and the Labourtrons did not have sufficient accuracy, even using the Protectron tactical software to take more than centre-of-body mass shots with any reasonable accuracy.

The reloading was also slow, taking over a second and a half to prepare a follow-on dart, so while it would prove useful, it was of strictly limited utility, and she still searched for better less-lethal weapons.

Still, it did mean that she could incorporate the Labourtrons in the patrol schedule at night if they did not have any other duties, even if they mainly would be simply sounding the alarm and waiting for the two Protectrons to respond.

"We're going to have to open tomorrow?! We don't have all the staff hired, though!" complained Alice churlishly.

Lily sighed, "I know. I was 'oping to hire at least one other doctor before we opened, and I finally have a couple of applications which might be suitable. So, we'll just open partly. Zhe pharmacy will be closed, except if they buy from you or me, and we'll see limited patients and emergencies only."

Alice nodded, "Okay, we can probably do that, then. By the way, Dr St. Claire, I read the article in the Megaton Ground Zero," she indicated the name of the local rag that served as something like a newspaper, "and you barely gave any details at all about the hospital. Why were you so sparse with the details?"

Lily smirked, "It 'as been my experience that you should treat a journalist like you should treat a man who is courting you."

"Uhh?" Alice asked confusedly.

"You 'ave to string zhem a long a little, yes? Leave zhem begging for more and more until such a point as you deem it is time to surrender completely to them and give zhem... zhe story," Lily told her Apprentice amusedly.

Alice tried to act scandalized, but it was spoiled somewhat by her sputtering laughter, "Dr St. Claire!"

Lily grinned and ignored her, deciding instead to say, "Well, let's go finish zhese subjects medical files, and call catering to verify zhat zhey will be in to feed them for lunch and zhe dinner, yes?"

With two working Genome Sequencers, they were taking genetic samples from every patient and including them in their digital medical record, which only Alice and Lily had access to. Alice sighed at the prospect of paperwork but nodded, "Okay, it'll go quick if we both work half. You want the females or the males?"

Lily shrugged her indifference, walking side by side with the younger girl back towards their offices.