Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Five - Zooted

  The doctor said something to me, but I was a little zooted, and didn't really pay attention.

  When I left the surgery room, I was escorted over to the auto-van, and then I mumbled an address to the driver. The doors shut, and it took off.

  I... wasn't feeling so great. The new cyberware seemed to be working just fine. I had new readouts on my vision that I'd have to take some time to customize. The most important of those, though, was from the bio-monitor. The monitor had an in-built potentiometer. It wasn't going to be the most accurate thing, but like... damn, was that ever a nice feature.

  Leaning back into the seat, I closed my eyes and just listened as we rode along. I could make out a fair bit more noise. The car's wheels spinning, some electronics humming, the world just outside, with advertising jingles and honking horns and shouting people.

  That would take some getting used to. All of it would.

  The van came to a slow stop next to the curb and I got out without saying anything. I was in front of a rather nice shop. This was in the centre of the city, not too far from that nice apartment that Fran lived in, and only a block over from the Seraph HQ that I'd snooped in on the other day.

  The building I was standing before was tall and narrow and entirely windowless. The only signage on it was a mono-font band with the name of the company written on it. Ex Y Defense Industries.

  I'd considered some of their cyberware, but that shit was expensive.

  I stepped into the lobby and wobbled my way over to the front counter. The operation on my ear hadn't really touched the little vertigo doohickeys, but the way sound happened around me had changed, and my eyes seemed to focus differently. It all added up to making me feel a little nauseous.

  It took three minutes of talking to the woman at the front before I was brought before an expert salesman. Then I explained my situation. Or at least, the story I made up.

  I had just purchased some cyberware from a competitor, and wanted to make sure it was all legit because I was feeling a little ill.

  Yes, it was a fresh install. Yes, I didn't mind paying up-front for the procedure. Yes, I did have people who knew I was here, thank you very much.

  It took a solid hour, and an extra two thousand paid for an 'emergency visit' fee, before I was brought into the back and was sitting in a surgical suite yet again.

  This time, things were a lot colder, more professional, and a lot less glamorous.

  If the Orchid Lux treatment had been a stay at a nice five-star lodge, then this was popping into a budget dentist for an emergency visit.

  The people that came in next started by asking me questions. A lot of them. Intrusive ones. Unlike Orchid Lux's very quiet and professional and rather... lax way of doing things, these people were insistent on a lot of things. And it wasn't just the usual 'are you pregnant... are you sure?" type of stuff.

  I gave blood, peed in a cup, waited another two hours, and finally had someone run a full diagnostic routine on my cyberware, including a quick MRI.

  The techs seemed annoyed when everything came back clean.

  I Reloaded soon after getting the results.

  And that put me back before the operation to get my new cyberware. Snapping back to my old hearing and vision really made it clear how much worse it was. It had felt like a subtle improvement, but my 1.0 body was clearly a downgrade, and I'd only had a few hours to get used to things being better.

  This time, if anything, the operation and the whole show was worse. Not because I had the jitters (I was way less stressed having gone through it all before) but because it was so damned boring.

  Hours of laying there, hearing people mess with my body, experiencing the same weird pulls and sensations, and I really wasn't a fan of having my eyes messed with a second time.

  Still, other than being unbelievably boring, it passed as easily, if not easier, than the first time.

  This time, when everything was done, I sat on the edge of the operation seat and actually listened to my doctor.

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  "The general anesthetic will wear off in the next six to nine hours. You will feel a certain amount of discomfort, especially along your inner arm and near your armpit. I'd advise, strongly, against scratching or pulling at the sutures there."

  "Got it," I said.

  "I would suggest taking it easy for the next three to five days. A week or two would be best, honestly."

  "And if I don't?" I asked.

  The doctor sighed. "Then at least keep exercise to a minimum. Light jogging and lower-body exercises should be fine. You must not drink alcohol for the next two days, at least. Also, the medications we gave you will cause constipation. I'd suggest drinking lots of water and eating a fibrous meal. Actually, drink more water in general."

  I blinked. "In general?"

  "We took your bloodworks during the operation. Take this as unsolicited advice: you need to drink more water. And you might want to look into your diet overall. The amount of plastics in your blood almost outweighs the amount of nutrients."

  "Noted," I said. My diet had been a little... bad. I'd been trying to eat more protein here and there, but I supposed it wasn't enough. "I'll see to it that I eat better."

  He nodded along. "Talk to your GP, they might have a good diet plan for you. I'm not one to upsell people, that's not my job, but Orchid Lux does have some decent nutrition supplements available."

  That might help. There were some with magical produce in them that were also decent-ish.

  The doctor gave me a small jar of Orchid Lux branded salve to put over any itchy skin from the operation, then a small bottle of eye-drops. "Don't use more than one drop every three hours per eye. You don't want to strain your tear ducts, but some degree of itchiness is to be expected."

  "Okay," I replied. "Anything for the ears?"

  "No. If you take a shower tonight, wear a shower-cap and don't let water into your ear canals. Cover the new interface port."

  I unconsciously reached up and touched the little metal port at the back of my left ear. It was just a thin metal strip, maybe half a centimetre wide and an inch long? It was one of those contact plates that could transfer data without having to have a port actually inserted. It was pretty subtle, as far as cyberware went. Fran had a lot more cyberware that was a lot more obvious.

  Was she going to be picking up more upgrades as we went? Hmm... probably. It seemed like something she'd consider.

  Becky, the other member of our fledgling little team, didn't seem the sort, mostly because I wasn't sure she could afford it.

  I thanked the doctors and the nurses, figuring that there was no harm in being polite, then I headed out.

  The van brought me back to where my bike was parked.

  I got out, wandered around the block, trying to get a feel for the slight swimminess of my enhanced vision, then I returned to my bike, grabbed some stuff from the bags I had on it, then went and got changed.

  Dressed for riding, I set a new Save. I was pretty sure that Orchid Lux' entire privacy thing would hold up.

  The ride back home was a little iffy. The new eyes, or rather, the new stuff in my eyes, made focusing on random passing details so much easier that things were a bit distracting.

  Also, the sound of my bike felt off. The noise was different, I could better hear each click and thump of the cylinders, and the rattle the bike made was... more precise? It was hard to put to words.

  I made it home, then went up to my apartment, allowed Mister Couchtop to take over my lap while I turned on my laptop and started to look into some things. My eye augs, the VaxOptic "Eidolon" Mk.IV Retinal Overlayer, had a small heap of features that I could unlock and fiddle with.

  There was a range-finder, a zoom feature, some anti-glare stuff, low-light vision... a lot of those features needed some way to be turned on, and then they needed a bit of adjusting. I didn't want to blink twice and accidentally turn on nine different features with no shut off option. That was a quick way to give yourself a seizure.

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