Apparently a good way to summon Ed way to break the gym equipment because he came running out of some back room I hadn’t noticed when I was getting to me feet.
I was still a bit shocked from the blow even if I wasn’t in pain or really harmed. My head might be hard to break and my brain hard to shake but a heavy blow still took a moment to recover from.
“Mal! You alright? What happened with the machine? Did it hurt you?” Ed asked worriedly as he took over checking me for injuries from the ganger guy. I was on my feet now but Ed was still looking at my head, my face and my neck while softly squeezing my neck and shoulders to check I hadn’t broken anything small and not noticed.
“I’m alright Ed. Sorry about the boxing machine, I set it up high and then when it cornered me I ended up headbutting it to stop it hitting my ribs. I didn’t think it would break.” I said lamely as I looked at the broken hand and wrist of the boxing bot machine.
Ed walked over to the machine and checked the hand and so on. Then read the readout on the screen of the machine.
“It shouldn’t have broken with just that… The logs say the maintenance is up to date. The parts must have been faulty.” Ed said as he confusedly poked at the menus on the screen and on his interface as he tried to work out what had happened.
Likely he doubted I could have driven enough force at the right moment to shatter the hand. I wouldn’t have been able to do that at normal speed, I’d have messed up the angle and force and such if I’d even thought to do it in the moment. The most likely scenario was just get punched hard in the ribs and fall over coughing blood as Ed told me off for using the machine on too high a setting for a kid.
“Nope. No idea. The parts look fine visually so it must be a manufacturing thing, weak metals or something with the cyberarm. It might just be a boxing bot but it’s high medical grade, it can take a kids headbutt during a locked in punch. Your head doesn’t have any fancy reactive defense right?” Ed asked as he brushed his hands clean.
“No. Just a braincase and synth muscles here. Hard to break but it doesn’t do anything special. It’s why I used it to save my ribs, be a bit stupid otherwise. I set the machine too high anyway, I could keep up but I couldn’t take the hits if I needed to.” I said, giving some ground for Ed to blame me a little.
“We get people setting them too high all the time, I’d shout at you if you got hurt. This machine snapped like it punched a wall. That’s not on you Mal. No, I’ll just get the whole arm swapped out and get the rest of the batch the arm came from checked over. If the metal is bad in one then it’s bad in all of them, I’ll be getting hold of the supplier as well.” Ed said, crossing his arms.
[User profile updated.]
[Improved Attribute: Presence. User Value: 2]
Oh, thanks Sanctum.
My current cyberware can keep up in slow time even at the fastest I can experience but my flesh is being left far behind, when I think about it it’s being left behind even in normal slow time as my changes in desired direction cause my skin and flesh to lag behind the muscle anchors changing direction.
I’d need to totally borg out if I wanted to fight properly at those speeds, full chrome from head to toe like Marchand. I could likely keep myself alive by getting some cyberlegs to start, even if the rest of me gets whiplash I can still jump away from some danger or another. I can’t just throw my head at the danger every time.
A cyberspine would likely safe me a lot of pain if I got cyberlegs, although my sensory suite takes up a few vertebrae so I’d have to look for a modular model. Then I’d need a proper mounting point so a pelvis would likely be needed, either carbon threading the bones or swapping it out for a ceramic version but if I was going to go that far then I’d be better just swapping out the whole abdomen, get digestion and waste handled by a cybergut. Be good for on the job.
If I wanted to really keep myself mobile in the slowest time I’d need a full core set of synthetic muscles and a cyberspine and pelvis to anchor them at least. My ribs would probably shatter like glass at those speeds so I’d need a set of ribs or even a full vitalcase. Same as a braincase these were a set of synthetic heart and lungs wrapped in layers of armor plating and a frame of semisolid gel that simulated the shape of your ribs to the outside while also providing some kinetic protection.
Arms would likely let me attack back or defend myself in a moment but it wouldn’t actually keep me alive, it’d just ruin plans to kill me. Plans could be remade or reattempted. They only had to get lucky once. I needed cyberware that was actually going to keep me alive, it was the main thought that kept my big spending nerves at bay so far.
“You okay there Mal? Drifted away on your feet. You sure the head hit didn’t rattle a screw loose? Like, literally in your case.” Ed said. He’d walked over while I was thinking about cyberware for a moment.
“Huh? What? Yeah. I’m fine, just thinking about how to not have this happen again.” I said distractingly.
“Well I’m going to likely change the supplier, or at least put the new models we put in here through some actual testing and not just trust the sticker they come with when they turn up.” Ed said as he glared at the idle bot.
“Right. Well, I’m going to head back home. Maybe visit the clinic and talk to the rippers.”
“That’s a good idea, you should always get checked out after a head injury. Even if your head is steel and rubber.” Ed said sagely.
“I’ve got more than rubber on my head you know, this hair cost a lot.”
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“I was talking more about that rubber lump you’ve got sitting in the middle of your skull. Who tries to defend themselves by headbutting the attack? We should spar again soon, I can run you through some reaction training and get some good programming training set up for you so you can build your defensive reactions.”
“Didn’t even know you could train reactions. That’s preem.”
“You’ll find soldiers who hear a cover call out all do the same twitch, its a different twitch than the grenade call out. It’s the left over programmed response that kicks in before we even know what we’re doing or what the context is. You can train a good amount of defensive measures into your fighting ability, it’s mostly about repetition but there’s a good bit of brain wrangling to stop it trying to undo the training. We’ll mostly be focusing on that.” Ed said as he toweled himself off a bit.
“What’s up with the sweating? I didn’t see you out on the floor when I came in? You doing some training in another room?” I asked.
“Yeah actually. I’ve been working on my zero G skills for an upcoming trip to a station around Mars. Most of the family lives there these days, we’re just the failed off-shoot venture from a few generations ago really. They buy me a ticket to visit every few years if something big is happening, apparently my great aunt is finally getting married at the age of seventy so it’s big enough to warrant sending me and my dad a ticket to visit.”
“Wow, that’s preem as hell. How do you train for zero G on Earth though? There’s a G here, I mean we’re in gravity.”
“I’ve got a zero G belt system in the back, it’s used in a lot of different things. Acrobatics, athletics, military, emergency and space training as well as some therapy I think. We picked one up cheap a few years ago so it’s not a recent model or anything but it’s enough to sharpen up my old reflexes so I don’t panic too much between station rings.”
“Could I give it a go at some stage? I’d love to experience zero G.”
“Hell yeah Mal. As long as you don’t throw up all over the room you can have a go whenever really. It’s mostly just gathering dust. I’ll be away for a few months in a couple of weeks but I’ll add the ID you give to the desk to the machine so it’ll turn on and stuff. I’ll be having a friend of mine some in and look after the place while me and my dad are gone, he’ll show you to it if you need.”
“I’d love to give it a go now but I should be getting back, plus I think I’ve taken enough blows to the head for one workout session.” I said, picking up my duffel bag and dropping my current water bottle into it.
“Very fair. Have a good one Mal. I’m going to go make some calls about this machine.” Ed said as he threw the towel across the hall and right into a box of other used towels.
“See you.” I said as I headed out of the gym and back out, past the ganger guards into the street and headed home.
-
I was sitting in the living room quietly with Lla as we both worked on stuff on our interfaces while some muted television program played in the background. Mom was asleep after eating dinner with us previously.
Working out how to make my chain defensive program wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Looking through Marchand’s notes and documents had a lot of information about writing defensive programs that acted as shields at different layers of the user and acted defensively at different parts of the attack.
The chain program needed something that was more than controlled crashing like it had right now. I’d considered turning each link of the chain, each part of the program, into a shield of it’s own and make it actually hard to break by implementing firewall elements into it but the problem was the RAM cost of it. Putting complicated code into single parts of a larger script that would then be duplicated throughout the chain would put the RAM cost of keeping it running very high.
Some of the notes mentioned running ICE through the core of the program and allow each part of the chain to call on the defensive elements of the larger script before implementing their own controlled crashing defensive behavior. This would mean a single instance of ICE scripting running through the chain and then each link calling on it as needed. That would keep the RAM cost lower.
Outside of that the chain also didn’t have any offensive power outside of the simple digital physically of it’s chain avatar. I didn’t want it to move away from being a defensive tool but defense wasn’t all about getting hit, sometimes you needed to break attacks. I was looking through the documents for ways to strike at attacks before they hit me, whatever layer of my digital presence they were going for.
I found one strong method that might work for me, hitting the data inside the packet of whatever attack was trying to hit me. If I could alter the data inside it then I could either scramble it’s position and momentum coordinates which would send it off randomly, or I could make it aim for something else by changing it’s targeting data. Actual attack scripts rarely had built in ICE to defend their effects, at least at the lower end, it was expensive on RAM.
If I was going to build in this kind of effect then the best way to do it would be a trigger effect that only happened when the chain hit an attack script vector that was aimed at me. That way I wouldn’t need to keep the thing loaded all the time and make it lighter on RAM, it would already make it more expensive but for now I had a small toolkit so I had some room to work with. After these upgrades I’d likely start seeing heat problems during cybercombat situations as I would be leaving myself a lot less buffer to work with, I’d have to let myself cool down when I pushed myself too hard.
Working away for the last few hours after dinner but before bed time I managed to get the basics of some of the changes I wanted to get done on my netrunning tools when I had a notice on my interface, Lla who was nearly asleep on the other end of the sofa also had a notice from hers from her reaction of sitting up at the same time I’d got mine.
The massage was a simple one, a short massage from Marchand. Again with no address or ID attached.
[Come and see me, we have to talk about Lla and her brother.]
I looked over to Lla and she looked back at me and I nodded at her so we both got up and headed out the front door together across to Marchand’s place and through the open front door and headed through into her parlor, there were two chairs instead of one like usual although the second guest chair was identical to the normal one. Did she keep spares or were they a set? How many did she have? I briefly imagined a warehouse of identical furniture found in Marchand’s home in case it got damaged throughout her long life.
I sat in my normal seat and Lla quickly followed in sitting down in the other, Marchand herself was operating as she normally did and was into her old lady act sitting there with her cig pipe while staring blindly into the empty air.
“Good evening Lla, Mal. I have made some relevant discoveries this evening and have just verified them enough to bring them to you both. They effect you more than Mal, Lla, but both of you will find your activities effected by the fallout of the information I will share with you.” Marchand said as we sat down.
“What do you mean? Is it my brother? Is he dead?” Lla asked with a reluctant note in her voice.
“You brother’s operation to strike at the central headquarters of Amdian Synthetics began around three hours ago and it still ongoing. Currently his squad is on the tenth floor of the building attempting to break into a data vault while several other teams secure other areas throughout other floors. That isn’t the immediate issue. The issue is the fact that several corporate assassins are attempting to secure entry and exit points into the street.” Marchand said before taking a long pull on her cig.