Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 2.2

2.2

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I stepped out the tarp right as the trucks carrying the construction workers rolled into the side road next to the building, shutting it behind me.

It was, I noted, the exact same crew as last time, with the exact same vehicles as well. The only difference to last time was the fact that their vehicles had obviously been cleaned up and polished... probably yesterday, judging by the very minuscule amounts of dust that they had accumulated again just driving through the city.

I followed to the corner of the tarp, and watched them all get out of their vehicles. Predictably, the first one out was the foreman, who seemed just as grouchy and crotchety now as he had been back then.

He hit the ground, took a few steps, and then blinked, his expression turning into confusion as he looked down at the road underneath his feet.

His head tilted to the side, and he shifted his boot, letting the sole of it scrape across the ground.

“I brought it up to my standards.” I said, and the man flinched, his head jerking upwards in my direction.

A week ago, it had been cracked and damaged cement. Now, it was in perfect condition- better than perfect condition. The road, and every other bit of ground on the property, had been worked over by nanomachines, repaired, and then reshaped in their entirety.

The road no longer consisted of aggregate bound by bitumen and the blood of the working man. Instead, it was an engineered mass of various different materials, bound together in molecular chains that formed a massive latticework demonstrating exactly the properties that I wanted it to have. The surface was designed for grip, minimising risks of slips. However, it also contained micro-scale passages through it which allowed gasses and liquids to permeate. Vibrations were dampened, reducing sound and noise. It was even self-repairing.

Visually, it still looked like relatively smooth concrete, but what gave it away was the fact it was absolutely, utterly clean. That was not because of the material itself, though. Detritus simply didn’t last for very long in the face of the nanomachine network that swarmed underneath the surface.

The man has worked with enough types of building materials over the years to know that what I’ve is something weird. What’s getting his attention is the acoustics and the cleanliness, at the moment.

“Fancy stuff.” He said, shaking his head after a moment. “Alright. Uh, same deal as last time. Anything to say before we start?”

“No.” I said, before holding out the fob he’d given me a week ago.

He took it, and then turned around. I simply moved out of the way.

The construction crew got to work quickly, and the process was literally exactly the reverse of what they’d done a week ago.

First, they started with the tarp sections at the front and back, pulling them down. Most of them ended up pausing when they did, because it quickly revealed exactly how much the building had changed in the last week.

More than a few turned to stare at me after they took the sight in, confusion and caution readily apparent in their aura.

I ignored them, and the foreman got them back to work in short order.

The rest of the tarps came down soon after that, each section revealing more and more of the building to the outside world. Most of them were too close to see the garden on the rooftops, the angle just not quite working out for them, but that changed the moment all the tarps were pulled down and they moved on to disassembling the frame of the temporary structure.

Their bucket lift, after all, took them directly above the garden, surrounded by the field of plasma that looked something like a soap bubble without the iridescence but also a stronger-than-usual Fresnel effect. Looking at the barrier directly on, it would appear as only a slightly purple tint, but as the angle changed and the volume of plasma that light had to travel through increased, it became a much stronger colour.

It was slightly reflective, but the constant shifting of the plasma diffused light too much for it to really be noticeable. Either way, it did absolutely nothing to stop the deep green of the plants underneath it from being visible.

It took a direct message from the foreman to make the workers snap out of their stupefaction, and even after they did, their work was still a bit slower than they probably could have achieved if they’d been truly focused.

That was fine. I wasn’t going to blame them for it, I’d budgeted for the time, and quite frankly, maximum efficiency is some corporate bullshit of the highest order.

More than a few gawkers ended up watching from the other side of the street as the construction crew did their jobs, staring at my garden, my building, or the impossibly clean area around the entire place, every single one of which stuck out rather noticeably in Santo Domingo. They were usually fairly quick to get over it, but some of them stood by for at least ten minutes before life reminded them that there were other things they had to be doing.

It took a bit under an hour and a half for them to finish, but, inevitably, they did, and my building was finally left open to the city entirely.

It felt... nice, actually. The last week had been a sprint towards getting it ready, and seeing it now really drove home the fact that I was moving into something longer-lasting.

The foreman approached, drawing my attention towards him. “We’re done here.” He said. “Corporate wants me to ask a bunch of time-wasting bullshit again. Care to comment?”

“I would hire you again.” I said, in the exact same tone that I’d said it the last time we had this particular conversation.

This time, though, a smile did briefly threaten to twitch his lips. “Sounds great. We’ll be going, then.”

I nodded, and he turned around, heading back to his truck.

They started up again shortly, each one of them turning around before driving back out onto the road.

Not even ten seconds later, a car slowed down on the road, before turning into my driveway. It took an immediate left, taking the very first parking spot, before turning off.

The driver got out, and I looked him over.

He had a different shirt on now, but otherwise... he seemed a bit lighter than when I’d first met him three days ago.

That arm had been hitting him hard.

“Good day, Buck.” I said, as he came closer. “You’re just in time.”

“I saw the NightCo trucks.” Buck said, moving with a bit of pep in his step. “Gotta say, this is a nice place you got here.”

“I am rather proud of it.” I commented. “Far from my best work, but appreciable for the time constraints that I was under.” Among other things. “But, enough about that. I do believe you had an appointment.”

He smiled. “That I did.”

I turned, and- “Oh, of course.” I said, doing my best to inject some contrition that I wasn’t actually feeling into my voice. I raised a hand, and with as much theatricality as I could muster, snapped my fingers.

Holograms sprang into existence, shimmering just above the surface of the wall of the Bodega, facing the street. Two major pieces appeared, one line of text and one scannable image with an embedded link that would direct people to my online catalogue, informing them of exactly what kind of services that I offered here.

As for the text, it was a transliteration of Chozo script. ‘Lavin Tar Hundar’ is what it said. The actual translation of the original language would be most accurately rendered as ‘Place of Becoming’.

But nobody other than me knew that, and so Lavin Tar Hundar was what had been registered as the business name.

“And now, business is officially open.” I said, my hand falling to my side. “Please, do come on in. It’s best to get started as soon as possible.”

I walked to the entrance to the main building, the man following after me. I noted his head turning to look into the Bodega as we went past it, but he barely slowed down and so he didn’t really get a good look.

He did pause a bit as we came to the plasma barrier around the door, though, one hand raising to poke at it before swirling back and forth. Despite the appearance, it didn’t really feel like much of anything, the only sensation to denote its presence being a slight tingling and some vague resistance. As such, he shortly walked through it.

I went into the door on the right, and he followed. The door closed behind him, and the transparent parts of it tinted, darkening. On the opposite side, it transformed into a perfect mirror, but we could still see through it.

I gestured to the medical bed, currently configured to be more like a chair, and he obligingly took the seat.

“How has your limb been treating you since the last time we met?” I asked, as though it wasn’t obvious.

“Absolutely great.” He said. “I can’t believe how lucky I got going in that day. And you said it can be done better?”

I nodded, pulling my own wheeled chair over and sitting down in it. With a gesture, some of my bots activated, and flew over to move next to him. From the ceiling, an additional scanner activated, significantly more powerful and with a much higher resolution than most of the rest. Much like my Autgents, emitted a beam of light as it scanned across his body, and it was exactly as unnecessary, too. I just liked the theatre.

Buck, it seemed, appreciated it. His eyes widened as he took it all in, surprised by just how high-tech it all was. Certainly it blew the entire campus clinic out of the water.

“Cyberware-” I began, as the drones started to project a hologram of what the scanner was picking up in front of the both of us. “- both requires and results in alterations to the body’s homeostasis. Early generations of Cyberware were rather notably both intrusive, intense, and demanding. Time has since seen the continued advancement of technology to reduce the effects, but it has yet to be eliminated entirely.”

The scanning beam shut off, and the hologram zoomed in, exploding in size and highlighting the shoulder and arm, showing a shifting amount of blue and green.

“Almost all Cyberware takes a toll on the body. Nerves with too much information passing through them, feedback in excess of what the body evolved to handle, stresses one other parts of the body that aren’t augmented with Cyberware as a consequence of using it, the brain handling the asymmetry of appearance, weight, and capability poorly... Things such as that. When Cyberware is installed correctly and without errors, this toll is minimised.” I turned to look him in the eyes. “And when it is poorly installed, the problems are exacerbated dramatically.”

Buck leaned back, his organic hand briefly reaching for the shoulder of his cybernetic limb. “That’s what was happening to me?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Whoever installed that arm before I took a look at it did so in what was quite possibly the most inefficient manner possible. I would suspect malice, but incompetence is just as likely. If it had gone on for long enough, you would have started to see side effects aside from discomfort, both more numerous and more severe. Fortunately, you chose to get it looked at, and so you avoided anything that would require something drastic to fix.” Biotechnica advertised ‘Therapy’ for Cyberware installation, but the truth of the matter was closer to brainwashing than it was to anything respectable.

Fucking Corporations.

But enough about them. “Regardless, it is possible to further reduce the toll it takes. It will require modification of your arm to properly fit you, specifically, but that is well within my means.”

I splayed my fingers forwards, and the hologram in front of him split out into numerous different options.

“Or you could just leave it there.” I finished, leaning back in my chair, crossing my arms in my lap. “There’s no harm in that, after all.”

Buck glanced at me, before his eyes turned back towards the holograms floating in front of him. It only took a few seconds for him to speak. “How much will it cost?”

I smiled.