Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Twenty-Five - Hundred Burgers With Fries And Drink

Chapter Twenty-Five - Hundred Burgers With Fries And Drink

"#357EC7. This is the most infamous colour of the techworld. It is the colour used for the Blue Screen of Death.

Multiple companies have attempted to replace it with their own mark. Their stocks went down. Microsoft themselves have tried multiple times. They no longer exist. Samurais have tried. Their OSes didn't catch on.

Unless they used #357EC7."

--TechNews WorldWide Article, 2038

***

"Bad news?" I asked.

See-Three made a dismissive gesture. "Not so much bad, just news. Actually... yeah, news."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. "The weird emphasis, I mean."

"Well, news has gotten around about the clinic," See-Three said. She leaned down and grabbed a rag from under the hospital bed, then used it to wipe the area around the prosthetic she'd just installed. "It's not a bad thing, but it made the rounds quick. You gotta understand, the body-modder community is huge, but it's also pretty tightly knit? It's a hobby that's either super expensive, or demands a lot of time. And people are dedicated about it."

"What's that got to do with the news spreading fast?" I asked.

"Free prosthetics would be huge already. Free Samurai-grade prosthetics? Even if they're not top-of-the-line? Yeah, every modder in New Montreal knows, and more than a few would be willing to trade two limbs for one of these." She tapped the box the arm had come in, which still had a shoulder and a bit in it.

"Shit, are we worried about robbery again?"

See-Three blinked all three eyes, which really just meant flicking them on and off quickly. "No. Stray Cat, this is in your basement, basically. And it's a floor above another Samurai's home. There's rumours that the rest of the building has samurai in it too." Her head turned very slightly towards Rac, then back to me.

Right, I was probably feeding those rumours, wasn't I? Well, that couldn't hurt too much.

"Plus you did shoot the mayor, and tracked down the last bunch that stole shit from you, so your rep's pretty solid. No one wants to mess with Gomorrah either."

"She has a better rep?" I asked.

"She lights aliens on fire while laughing," See-Three said. "She doesn't need to be seen executing someone in public for people not to want to fuck with her."

Fair.

"Okay, so news is spreading, that's good no?" I asked. "We want to help people. We mostly want to help the ex-Sewer Dragons first, but I don't mind keeping this up afterwards. I don't think it would cost too much to keep the printer fed for this. We're talking... what, a couple of bucks per prosthetic?"

See-Three nodded. "Yeah. We're accepting tips right now, and we've already made over a hundred thousand credits."

I stared. "How much?" That sounded like a lot. That was... like, a hundred burgers with fries and a drink.

She shrugged. "It's less than you'd think? We need a lot of consumables to keep operations running. Anyway, the issue is that the clinic's too popular on the Mesh. We set up a site for people to sign up for operations. It crashed because too many people were applying. We're way too popular."

"How many applicants?" I asked.

"Thirty thousand, last time I checked," See-Three said.

"Fuck," I muttered. "How many operations can you do in a day?"

"That really depends. Yesterday was our most productive day yet, but keep in mind we're still setting up. We got through twelve, but half of those were single and partial replacements. Like what I just did. We did a four-limb replacement job this morning, on one of those people the Sewer Dragons messed up. It was a nightmare. Took three solid hours."

Assuming twelve a day, thirty thousand... uh, that was a lot of days. And while See-Three was sure news got around, that was in the body-modder community. There would be others. I wasn't even sure if we had gotten in touch with all of the former Sewer Dragons and their victims yet. That alone could take a few weeks since most of their operations would be on the more complicated side.

"Shit," I said. "I... don't know what to do. We could expand some, I guess."

See-Three shook her head. "You could turn this entire floor into one big hospital, hire half a hundred techs and doctors and nurses, not to mention additional staff, do a hundred ops a day, and you'd still have a backlog going back years."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"That's not as comforting as you might think," I said.

She shrugged. "You're doing good here. Don't beat yourself up because the good you're doing isn't fixing everything for everyone all at once. We're putting together a sort of lottery system that's mostly fair. Sewer Dragons have weighted results, so we'll get through them faster. The rest of the world will have to deal."

"So you don't want to expand?" I asked.

"I didn't say that. But I also don't think we can handle a whole hospital. There's room for a second operating room here, and the rest of the facilities can work to support two ongoing ops at once. That's a nice level to aim for, I think."

Shit, someone being reasonable? I wasn't used to that, and frankly had no idea how to handle it for a moment before I realized that... yeah, there was nothing to handle about it. "Okay then," I said. "Any other issues?"

"Your cat drones scare some people," See-Three said. She grinned. "But I don't think it's too big of a problem. It keeps people on their toes and might make some idiots think twice before messing around."

"You've seen a lot of them around?" I asked.

"They come out of the elevator, walk around, sometimes scratch themselves like real cats. One of them fell asleep on a vent for a while. Or... went on standby? They don't have organic components, do they?"

"Not as far as I'm aware," I said.

"Oh, okay then. I guess it's just mimicking cat behaviour. Cute," she said. "Anyway, they wander around. Then go invisible when no one's looking. I only caught on because my eyes are broad-spectrum and can see into more bands than you'd expect." She tapped herself on the side of the head.

"Heh, alright. I'll keep an eye on the dumbasses. Uh, that's their name," I said at her confused look. "At least, the smaller, chonkier ones? I don't know if we ever named the ones that look like tigers." I gestured at about hip-height. There were a few of those around guarding Lucy and the kittens and I supposed this floor too.

See-Three stared. "I didn't see any like that."

"Huh, well, they do have better stealth tech, I think."

She nodded slowly. "I'll let the others know."

"Alright, cool. I'll be pretty busy for the next bit, but swing me a message if anything happens. I'd rather find out early rather than have to come around and fix things later, you know?"

I extended a hand to shake, realized that her hand was... not in a condition to be shaken at the moment, and let my arm drop awkwardly by my side.

"You busy for the rest of the day, then?" I asked as See-Three started to escort us towards the lobby.

"Nah, not with this work. Got a buddy that's a tech coming in for a few easy switches. Got some folks here that need repairs that aren't full replacements, but I think with your name and rep attached they find it safer here? Anyway, it's small stuff that just needs someone who knows what they're doing to look at it. Like doing an oil change, you know?"

"Sure," I said. "So heading home?"

"Nah. Got to do a mental defrag on my augs. That'll put me down for a few hours and I'd rather do it in a clinic than alone at home. If something goes haywire I have a few friends that know what to reboot. I lost a couple of friends to bloatware and more friends to poorly sanitised clean-up jobs with prosthetic software. It's a dangerous hobby sometimes."

"Not sure I'd just call it a hobby when it's this... severe," I said. "But you do you."

With that, I said my goodbyes to See-Three, then elbowed Rac to do the same. It was only polite, and I was nothing if not polite.

We left the clinic, and I noticed Rac staring in the middle distance for a while, at least until we reached the elevators. "You're helping," she said.

"We're helping," I corrected. "This shit's helping a lot of folks, but I just spent the points. You did more here than I have, trust me."

Rac glanced up at me for a moment, then nodded. "You're more humble than I expected."

"Damn right I am." I patted her on the back. "So, next stop is... the Family. They're a weird bunch. Just keep eye contact to a maximum and try to project the thought that you could explode all of them and they'll be easy to handle."

"I'm not feeling so confident all of a sudden," Rac said.

"Nah, it's fine. They love me!"

***