If Zax hadn’t already seen someone literally melt in front of him, he might not have managed to keep his stomach’s content where it was. He already knew medicine was a hard and difficult field, but surgery was something else entirely. He couldn’t fathom integrating such a practice to the already exacting syllabus of medical schools.
Zax would venture in that path later. Way later. All three gladly put the topic behind them and moved on to games. This evening’s choice was a quiz about current news. It was a ludic way to get Strange Girl levelled with the current events and dotter culture. As usual, the game quickly derailed in loosely connected queries, as she had her own questions that were more interesting and even granted new hindsight to what they thought they knew.
Her reactions to specific topics weren’t as subtle as she believed, though. Zax made it a personal game to try and piece it out.
From then on, Zax forced himself to spend an hour daily to study the theory of surgery and what it could do. He didn’t want to get blindsided again. That field was gross and as tedious as studying nanotechnology had been, so the habits and methods he had developed were plenty helpful.
Fortunately, I only need enough to see what to look for if my scans fail again.
Nevertheless, while it explained the issue, it didn’t give him a solution. The templates were designed around the idea that bodies were a single, complex, muti-part object, and he had no idea why a grafted organ would break the algorithm. They may need to be reworked, which meant commissioning a specialist; he was inadequate in that department.
The only positive news was that pushing themselves to their limits did help to get more precise and accurate partial templates, making extrapolations of the not-actually-missing piece more reliable. Which didn’t make any more sense, the grafted organ was used as much as the rest, and just as functional. In the case of Strange Girl, her regular exercises also provided a stable reference for her brain scan. Zax estimated it wouldn’t be long before they were ready to reconstruct memories with enough accuracy for a testimony to the Enforcers.
What she would do after was still unclear.
He posted the details of his commission for customising his algorithms in the network and only had to wait. He would be informed when someone picked it up, he would pay part of the agreed amount at that point, and the rest when it was done.
With no immediate progress forthcoming on that front, the programmer turned back to his other project. He was done analysing the recordings of the… the Core’s sentence, and he had started on the relationship between acupoints and the 3G activation’s volcanic veins. After that, he would come back to finding more application for the swarm. He shamefully admitted he had forgotten about it. With everyone busy with various tasks, several days had passed in a blink.
It was time for Zax to go back to school.
He had left early so he wouldn’t have to go straight to the presentations. A tour of the place came first, to see the changes since the last time. The former student fondly reminisced about his own childhood, the stunts he did with his friends in the hallways, meeting Quinn in the cafeteria, his ex-girlfriend and roommate. He wasn’t surprised to see his former guardians and his teachers. They greeted each other, introducing their new colleagues and listing the retired ones.
Time truly spares no one except the old canine caretaker.
Eventually came the main amphitheatre. Most careers in every field would be presented one after the other to the masses, mostly younglings unsure about the future they wanted, with the occasional adult looking for a new horizon.
They kept the most popular jobs for the end, so his ‘multi-purpose handyman’ presentation was fairly early, but he didn’t plan on getting back before the evening. He liked to see the other presentations as well, to watch for old and new faces, and maybe the occasional evolution of some fields.
No such luck yet though, it was all standard lectures.
He usually came for the following days of the event too, with gradually more specialised experts, but this time it would depend on the state he found his home and his roommates in when he was back. He would try to come again for his second presentation, about nanotechnology specifically, but how long he would stay was still in the air. He’d have to warn his roommates too, he had totally forgotten about that. Maybe he was more stressed than he thought by the recent events?
When it was time for his own presentation, Zax was relaxed and ready. It wasn’t his first rodeo:
“Do you like wearing clothes? Do you like having clean water? Clean running water? Do you like it when doors don’t collapse on your when as you pass through? You’re welcome.”
Handyman wasn’t a glamourous job, but it was undeniably a necessary one. The human liked to see it as the varnish-lube that kept the machine of society running, and that was how he presented it to his young audience.
To catch and keep their attention, he changed his tone and posture over a wide spectrum of emotions. He displayed pictures and videos of old and recent real-life examples and personal anecdotes. Large and smaller scales of work were used to catch more eyes. He mentioned the many fields required to be qualified for the many applications, the variety of tasks he was entrusted with, the pleasant and less pleasant people he met and interacted with, with the occasional satirical and self-derisive joke to boost the morale some.
He was successively inquisitive, smug, afraid, annoyed, languid, proud, hurried and more, moving left and right, pointing to the relevant parts of the presentation screen, with or without flourish, depending on what the presentation and audience attention called for.
And he quickly had to reach past his limits and keep going. It was so hard to do it all manually.
Stars, I miss my HUD.
“Don’t forget: we don’t make tomorrow, we make sure today keeps running to it.”
He already knew a presentation for that scale of audience was an ordeal in its own league, but he had pushed through and it was finally over. If the applauds at his parting words were any indication, he had succeeded in making most listen until the end. It wasn’t a rousing excitation, but it was more than the barely polite claps usually heard this early in the event.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Early lecturers often forgot, but the point of the event was to promote their job and their fields in general, not themselves or their companies. Zax didn’t, and he didn’t expect anyone to suddenly dream of being a handyman, but there might be a few with a newfound appreciation for the work behind their clothes, their furniture and… anything they used daily, really. Maybe a few would even pay attention to the coming specialist’s presentation in a field he had expanded on.
The rest of the presentations went by, the programmer ignoring the glare of the lazier, less applauded lecturers. If they wanted advice on how to improve, he would give it freely. As it was, he simply left after a round of goodbyes to his acquaintances, and after a detour on a hunch, he was home.
When the door opened, he was almost surprised at the state it was in:
“All clean and ordered, and nothing broken. I am impressed.”
“How are we supposed to take that?”
Aran’s curt reaction was punctuated with a flat stare. Strange Girl hid her amused smile behind a wing, but she couldn’t hold back the cute chuckle at the comment. The competitive Tetris above the kitchen bar had been put on pause when they heard the door open.
“I didn’t have any hidden meaning, and I wouldn’t dream of infringing on your freewill.” The programmer claimed, looking seriously in her eyes. “Take it as you will, I shan’t stop you.”
The unexpected seriousness threw the foxy girl off, but she didn’t let it stop her:
“My, you’re awfully chipper today. Did something good happen?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” He broke his façade with a wide smile, moving to the couch. “In one go, I proved I didn’t need nanites in my brain to be effective, and that I wasn’t addicted.”
He flopped on the soft furniture with a relieved sigh. A forgotten holo-screen and two pairs of raised eyebrows made him continue:
“You know how I’ve had nanites in my brain for years, and many programs to help me in many tasks, but I recently removed them and didn’t put them back to see it there were side effects?”
A shiver and two nods confirmed it. They had already told Strange Girl, although the actual reason for the removal hadn’t come up.
“A few of the programs help me gauge and react to an audience’s attention, interest, emotions… Well, that kind of thing. It helps for many things: negotiation, lie detection and, in this case, making a presentation more compelling.”
“A charisma boost?” The tailed gamer’s back straightened.
“I guess?” An exasperated but amused smile escaped him. “Today, I did a presentation in front of a huge audience, I did it without help, and more importantly, it was a good one. It was hard and I regretted the absence at every step of the way, but I did it. Longest thirty minutes in a while. I know I made several mistakes, and I had to improvise a few times, but I made do. It shows I can function without nanite support.”
“Still creepy, but kinda reassuring.”
Strange Girl didn’t say anything, but her wince concurred.
“Rude.” An exaggeratedly affronted face was all the reaction they would get. “Anyway, on the way back I went to a neurologist and they confirmed I don’t have any sign of withdrawal or addiction. My brain is as healthy at it gets for a non-mutated organ. So is the rest of my nervous system, but it’s not important.”
He concluded his declaration by knocking on his skull like a door.
“That sounds more than important.” Aran replied flatly.
“Not relevant for the conversation, I mean.”
“Okay, that’s great, but are you going to…”
“Of course.” He nodded. “I already fixed the programs, but I have several ideas on how to use the swarm for better results than before. I just need to attach them to specific parts of neurons. Nono, don’t worry!” He hurriedly added at their shocked reactions. “I asked the simulator for the best results. I’m not crazy.”
The dot didn’t have expendable animals for live testing, but the main computer could simulate anything, from behaviours to mechanisms to environments, down to a sub-atomic scale if required. It could be highly energy consuming, but a simulation of one organ with a molecular scale of resolution was not an issue. It only needed a clear set of parameters; variations up to all extremes would be easy. His query was already in the queue, but as a low priority personal project, there was no telling when he would have the results.
“I’m not going through trial and error.” Zax closed the topic. “I am fully aware of how brittle my body is; I won’t risk it for fun. Now, what have you been up to?”
The women didn’t think any less of it, but they agreed to let the matter go.
“I introduced SG to the wonderful world of online gaming.”
“Didn’t you do that long ago? Also, SG?”
“Short for ‘Strange Girl’.” Aran shrugged. “It’s the online name she chose. It feels more like an actual name, so it stuck. And I only introduced her to mute co-op games and flashgames before. Now she feels safe enough to try and communicate with strangers. Progress!” She punctuated with a double thumb-ups.
It dawned on Zax that even if she appeared so casual about it, the foxy girl was serious about helping others. She too tried to reassure and open their roommate up, in her own way. For some reason, the realisation warmed his heart.
“That’s so you.” He smiled, shaking his head. “Had fun?” He added to the first interested.
“Hm!” A strong nod answered him. “There really are all kind of people in the world.”
“Haha, that’s one way to say it.”
“Not that scary from behind a screen, uh?” Aran and Zax chuckled.
They spent a quiet evening, making small talk. Aran knew many virtual board games. She mentioned how working out with Strange Girl had proven surprisingly not-that-boring.
“Really? I’ll have to give it a try. So is it the best time to tell you I have to leave again?”
It wasn’t, but Zax still explained the rest of the presentation event and the second presentation asked of him. Two days later, he would have to leave home for more than an hour. He had been reluctant, but considering the massive improvement displayed today, going as far as discussing with strangers without issue, he was willing to try and leave his winged friend alone for that long.
He might have overstated her fragility, possibly due to her stress and its fallout at the time. Still, better safe than sorry.
SG was proud and flattered at his increased faith in her. He too had adopted the nickname without realising. They didn’t hold back on teasing him about his lapse either, but it was all in good fun.
The next day was back to the grind, but it ended with a pleasant surprise: Zax received the results of his simulations. Not only was it unexpectedly fast, but it gave him everything he lacked to efficiently use the swarm. He started his reprogramming right away; the new scale didn’t appear that different, but it changed many requirements in the programming language and made the old one inefficient at best and obsolete at worst. That was a nice problem to have, as far as he was concerned.
The language update was quickly done, but adapting his existing software would take a while. Fortunately, they could work as they were, more wastefully. Zax would only update his infusion software before actually infusing his brain. He would change the other programs over time, and decide later if he wanted to invest more of the swarm in his own body.
Naturally, he restocked it in ordinary nanites, but he wasn’t sure the swarm would be an improvement outside the more precise and complex applications in his grey matter. An interesting question for later.
He was barely done with that first update when it was time to leave again. He didn’t have time for his first infusion, but he hadn’t expected to.
His second presentation went by normally, with a lot of excitement from the youngest audience. Live demonstrations were always captivating, and who wouldn’t be fascinated by a metallic snake jumping, changing in a swarm of flying moths, and softly falling as leaves and giant snowflakes? There was not much interest beyond that, especially once he mentioned the extreme sensitivity to the disruptive fields, but that was expected. Childish or casual curiosity was objectively the best he could hope for.
What was not expected was the woman who came to him afterwards, a Resident with few visible mutations, trying and failing to pass for a dotter.