The next day I woke up and hit the shower, got out and get dressed and read to go before Lla was even awake. I was putting on my boots when she wandered out of the spare room wearing green pajamas and a big brown fluffy dressing gown.
“What are you doing awake so early?” She asked as she walked over to the coffee pot. I didn’t like coffee much but even though Lla was the same age, or near enough, she seemed to not function without the stuff.
“I’ve got a cyberware thing this morning. In about fifteen minutes actually. So I’ll be heading down there to get my new face along with some other stuff.” I said.
“Oh, the faceplate thing. I’d forgot. I wouldn’t get cyberware as young as we are. It’ll make me grow weird. At least your an operator, you can probably afford the surgeries to fix all the growth problems as they pop up.” She said as she waited for the pot to warm up.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. You should consider the operator thing. You’ve got an in already seeing as Marchand knows of you and your brother. You don’t have to be a shooty gun operator, there’s lots of roles out there. You could be a fence or a face or a fixer or a press or whatever. Depends on what you enjoy doing. I think you’d make a good face. You’re confident.” I said, fixing the laces on my boots. Most people used magnets but you needed the reliability and simplicity of laces in combat gear.
“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” She said as she turned to me and framed her face with her hands.
“You’re pretty enough, and you talk well. That’s what you need to be a face, they make good money from what I’ve heard.” I said.
“Eh. Maybe I’ll talk to Marchand, I don’t know yet. I’m kind of mad she won’t save my brother. But I’m also sort of understanding he’s been gone a while now. Just still living. I haven’t even spoken more than two words in a sentence to him in four months. I’ve had to catch news of his activities from his mechanic friend who only gets the occasional bit of communication from him. Even that I haven’t had since I’ve been here.” She said, sounding very defeated. The pot finished heating and she poured a mug of coffee for herself.
“Marchand will likely be able to get a message to him somehow if you ask. If you do sign up to do some work for her though try to get yourself a place on the street up front, she’d usually make you jump through hoops first but your brother used to work for her and you’re already living here with another of her operators. She’d probably agree. That way you’d still be safe and have your own place.” I said, standing up ready to go.
“You don’t want me here anymore?” She asked with mock sad face.
“If I wanted you gone I’d just toss you over the railing outside. You can stay here for a while longer, but you should consider the future as well. At least for your own sake.” I said resolutely, I needed to think about my own future too. I was avoiding doing so as much as I can but it was creeping into my mind as time went on.
Lla sat on the sofa looking contemplative as she sipped her coffee and I left her to it and headed off down to the clinic.
When I buzzed the gate it took a little while for it to unlock and I walked over to the clinic door and buzzed that, the doors opposite the clinic were sealed with no handles. Obviously the rooms inside was converted into storage for the clinic. Or maybe storage for Marchand’s collection of rare cyberware models or whatever she collected. Skulls of her enemies, rare old alcohols, pre-nuclear antiques, cursed dolls. It could be anything with her really.
The clinic door opened and Dr. Wood was there with all her tools fitted to her weird surgical apron. Dr. Nguyen was visible through the opposite doorway to the surgery room working on some of the machinery with a cleaning tool.
“Good morning Mal. You excited for your new face today?” Wood asked as she gestured inside the clinic.
“It’ll be nice to get back to not looking cleaved in half I suppose. Even if it’s metal and synthskin.” I said walking into the clinic and then into the operating room. Wood followed behind me and led me over to the surgery chair where I sat down.
“And ceramic, plastic and a lot of rubber usually. Lots of other stuff too. Cyberware gets very complicated once you get past the medical grade and even that takes a lot of studying to be able to install properly.” Wood said as she pulled a rolling stool over from behind her and sat down in front of me.
“I’m hoping for it to take a better machete hit than my head did last time at least.” I said.
“About that. Marchand actually got in touch with us when she received word that you were having a faceplate fitted, well actually she contacted us when she found out how much you were looking to have fitted. She’s provided a piece of cyberware as an option to use if you’re interested in it.”
“She mentioned something, no specifics. What kind of piece has she offered? I’m assuming a faceplate from her collection? I’d rather not have Marchand’s face, no offense to her but I like my own face more.” I said warily.
Nguyen huffed a giggle from across the room and then went back to using some sort of small air hose to clean tiny seams in the machines between parts.
“No, she’s offered a full head basically. It’s a skull that’s just a little worse than your current braincase but the whole skull, jaw included. Then it’s got musculature for everything down to your neck and then a few in there too. Finally it’s got a full set of subdermal plates for your face, scalp, jaw, neck and the top of your spine.” Wood said as she pulled down a vid screen that hung from the ceiling on an arm and connected to it so she could show the parts.
I blew out a whistle looking at the cyberskull, cyberhead. The cyberware head collection thing. Whatever it would be called all together.
“That’s a lot of different pieces to offer, especially all at once. The subdermals look upper milspec from what I know of, I don’t know about the rest but I know synth muscles aren’t the most expensive thing but can be when you’ve got a lot of the specialized ones like the face needs. Not like it’s a bicep or whatever.” I said as I looked over the images.
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“There’s even a set of synthskin that’s quite advanced to go with it, the surface is high integrity and flame retardant. The under layer for the skin is a bit trash in my opinion, very dated but it does have some reactive restorative tech in it that’s rare to find in new skins because it needs to have the nanite canister refilled. It can be expensive. Not very market friendly these days.”
“What color is the skin? Marchand is more Asian than anything, and old, I’m white and young. Is the skin going to look odd on me?”
“It’s not so old that it’s not colorable. You’d have to go way back for that. No, we can make it your natural skin color or whatever you want with our synthskin kits. Seen a lot of bright primary colors these days, I could see you pull off a bright orange.” Wood said with a grin.
“I’d rather keep myself recognizable in the mirror. I’ve heard a lot of people go cyberpsycho when they swap their face.” I said with a grimace.
“Yeah, I was just kidding really. We can give you any color, but we’d always recommend your original skin for the most part. There is some stuff to talk about with Marchand’s offered piece if you’re going to take it. Well, pieces.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. We were going to suggest that if you do take them, that you keep your current braincase and leave that part of the new skull out of the installation. There’s also some adjustment that would need to be made with the dermal plating to fit the sensory suite you’ve requested as well. Also, you said to Nguyen that you wanted to make all the synthskin and the faceplate you were having fitted matte black. This set up would have that as an option too but with the plating being subdermal instead of superdermal you wouldn’t see the armor itself with this. Do you want it all matte black?”
“I wasn’t that attached to the idea, I just wanted something simple and separate from what was left of my flesh. With this, it’ll be my new flesh. Better for it to look like the old flesh.”
“Healthy thinking. Good. There’s also hair, but that’s more of a cosmetic thing. How do you want to approach it? You’ll be bald after installation unless we put something in.”
“Hair? I haven’t had much cosmetic cyberware experience. What are the option there?”
“Lots. Assuming you want combat grade at least then you ditch a lot of the club stuff and move straight to the expensive catalog. There’s your typical polyethylene hairs that are great for strength but you need to keep them short or be careful of fire. Cheap and effective with close shave styles. Then there’s carbon fibers, more fragile but doesn’t burn, still pretty cheap. Then there’s the various techhair designs that are much more expensive but let you recolor as you like while being strong and inflammable. Finally theres the top of the pile which is monofibers, nanofibers and lastly mechweave.”
“Not heard of the last three.”
“Expensive. We only have a little of each of them and only really for Marchand to be honest. Monofibers are monofiliment hairs that shed the outer layer of carbon to expose a very tough monofiliment. You could pluck a long hair from your head and cut something in half with it. Or someone. More of a operator thing than other hair.”
“Sounds sketchy, I’d likely cut myself with it.”
“Not for the untrained and unprepared. Users usually have a resistant coating on their hands or resistant synthskin. Even that gets broken down by a monofiliment after a few passes so you need to be very careful. I think the filaments are made from nanostructures of holmium and yttrium that are made in a way that really causes the structure to collapse in on itself and make it little chains out of them. Not too sure of the details really, just read that they aren’t magnetic despite the metals involved and that was good enough for me as far as cyberware goes.”
“Right, yeah. Metals.”
“I forget your a kid sometimes you know.”
“So do most of the people that hit me with machetes and knives. I’m hoping that after today it’ll be less of an issue.”
“Well, anyway. Nanofibers are super tough and fire retardant but both of these are a big step up from carbon fiber. Very hard to break them and basically they won’t burn, nothing you’re likely to see anyway.”
“That one sounds like the good choice.”
“There’s also mechweave which isn’t so much hair as it’s a cyberware of it’s own. It’s a tube of nanofibers with an internal chain of specialized motor nanites that allow the user to control the hair, to a degree. The actual control depends on the supporting cyberware or exterior hardware. Each hair has a tiny factory at the base to replace worn out nanites.”
“That does sound expensive.”
“You pay by the hair, and by the millimeter. Also you can’t change the color like techhair, you just get the ability to move it around and it’s not very strong alone. I’ve seen Marchand wear it longer in the past and I saw her pick up her cig pipe with a loose lock at her temple but that’s about it. I’d have to look up the actual specs to know the details. If you wanted to weaponize your hair you’d probably need a long braid.”
“I don’t think I need dangerous hair. Although the image is interesting. I can imagine an operator with a deadly beard or something.”
“So you want to fork out for Marchand’s nanofibers? It’s what we have the most of from those last three and it’s the cheapest of them. It won’t off a lot of ballistic resistance but it also won’t get torn off by shrapnel, fire and will survive along with your braincase.”
“I think it’d be a good choice to go forward with, I don’t wear my hair long anyway.”
“Alright, I’ll message Marchand to let her know you’re buying some of her hair.”
“Please don’t say it like that.” I said with my face screwed up in disgust.
Dr. Wood just giggled and Nguyen just laughed openly as he seemed to finish cleaning the machines and pulled off his gloves.
“Alright. I think we’ve squared away everything now. Got your opinions all lined up on the choices. Time to get your new head on. Are you ready now or do you need some time to prepare? We’ve got some time today if you need to enjoy your current face a bit more, maybe go find someone to get your first kiss with your natural skin?” Dr. Wood said with a wink.
“What? No. Gross. Let’s get this done, I’d rather get my brain protected more than worry over the naturalness of my body. I’ve never seen cyberware as a major thing like you hear about with the purist groups.” I said, waving my arms in defense.
“Ha. Alright. Lean back in the chair and we’ll get rolling. Marchand just got back saying it’s fine to steal her wigs as long as you pay for them. I’ll send you a ping now for the sensory suite, everything else is on Marchand’s account for now. She’ll take her pound of flesh from your paychecks like usual.” Wood said as she stood up from the stool and softly back kicked it to roll to the corner of the room.
A payment request for two thousand six hundred aura popped up on my banking app. A huge cost but also a huge investment, hopefully one that would pay for itself when it save my life. I accepted as watched my savings drop down to a few hundred and some change.
“You know, I was going to get some cyberlegs to start with as my first big thing. That was my plan a few months ago. Now I’m going to have a whole chrome head. Will there be any meat in there apart from the brain?” I asked as I sat back and the chair buzzed softly as it slowly transformed into a surgical bed.
“Hm. Well, let me think. What we have here will leave… Brain and… Nope, I think it’s just brain then. The sensory suite will take over the tongue, the ears, inner ears and nose. You’ve already got cybereyes. All the skin, muscle and bone will be cyberware. Nerves will be wired instead. Congratulations on your newfound borg life. At least down to the neck. Then you’re a fleshy meat bag like the rest of us. Apart from some netrunning cyberware internals.” Dr. Wood said as she stood there checking her tools while she looked at the screen around here and spoke to me.