D
Dumont
>IN, Once Osman Royal Hospital: Office of the Surgeon General.
"So, I have a question for you." Arccos asked.
The hospital was looking increasingly better these days. The squat wooden building now no longer a charnel house fit only for the dying. With Rip having worked through a significant number of those wounded from the war, the city had come to a point where it was only accidents and maintenance of the living population who came here. The local doctors and nursing staff had proven to be apt pupils, at least where they could come to the point where they could wrap their heads around some concepts which were completely alien to them. At least in a practical sense, things were getting better, even though resources were always bouncing somewhere between tight, and well supplied depending on the day.
In this instance however, it was just a checkup. Arccos needed a tune-up and now sat stripped to the waist; her clothing and synth skin neatly folded on a nearby shelf in the polished bloodwood office of the old Surgeon General; now belonging to one Dr. Rip D. Torr. An odd moment of quiet in the Thieftaker General's days, recently.
"If you could change something about yourself... Personality wise, I mean. What would it be?"
Rip's office where he was checking Arc's biometrics and cybernetics would feel and look tiny to anyone who was in it with him, the giant of a man always slightly hunched from his normally good posture, but it was also one of the most advanced rooms, as even now, anyone seeking more advanced or esoteric cybernetics had to be custom done by the now fairly well known "Doc Hardbody". He was delicately reviewing a set of cables and interfaces along her spinal unit when she asked her question, causing him to stop his work briefly, his cybernetic hand pulling away, and the pupils of his cyber-eyes expanding and rearranging themselves back to their normal size rather than the multifacetted plates they had been to work on such a small level. "Hmmm? That's a tough question... I used to have a lot of things I wanted to change about myself, back when I was first decanted, now? Not very much..."
He considers for a moment, his eyes refocusing back down to the tiny delicate work he was doing on her spine.
"That probably makes me sound shallow, like I don't think I have room for personal growth... but ehn, I'm happy where I am as a person these days, and if I notice something about myself I don't like, I try to work to correct it immediately." His tongue sticks out between his lips as he leans in, "one second, running a quick test." he releases a tiny charge through the spinal unit, "did you just feel the color blue on your left pinky?" he asked, the testing protocols for anything interfacing with the brain were always based around synthesieatic principles, as such things were generally impossible to experience without the mental illness, and thus impossible to mistake for anything except what they were.
"Very slightly more purple than blue." Arccos said, looking to her hand. Without her dermal layers, she tended to wear gloves. A little wiggle of a pinkie. "Adjust it by about point four."
Shifting to lean her arms on the back of the chair where she perched backwards, Arccos pointed over to her bag hanging on the neat hat rack in the corner.
"I have my next upgrade module over there for you to review for a neural patch. Problem is that it needs programming... These things can really screw with your brain though, so I'm considering how I might set it up to do just that. Some are known to change completely after you install that thing, but I have the luxury of choice... I'm considering that now I have a position of Authority if it might be prudent to make myself something like... More compassionate?"
Rip adjusts the wiring a bit more, as he considers her statement, "Hmmm... just in general? Or are you thinking of something more specific?" He asks, his voice in his doctor's calm where he's thinking about the question seriously. "I mean, in general, I always shy away from true neural patches, except as a counter-agent to mental illness of course, there's less intrusive ways, if slower, to correct one's personality... but there's nothing actually wrong with doing so if you know the risks, and I know you know those." He twists another wire, then pulses her spinal unit once more, "What color now?" He askes before changing his eye focus again, "but really, before I can say one way or another, I need to know what makes you think you need to be more compassionate? Compassion is a virtue, but not always one people in power can afford to have in abundance, even for people like me in something as small as my own clinic."
"So what would you think would be better to see in someone actually leading this planet?" Arccos asked, looking at her finger. Blinking a few times. "Blue."
"Good," He says, pulling his hand away, and starting to close up her spinal unit bit by bit, checking it over with one focused eye as he does so. "Compassion to a point, but good sense. What people want, what people need, from a governor, is someone who, well, lets people get on with their lives and stops random things from having too much of a bad effect on people... my political philosophy's a bit vague I know, but when it comes down to it, a good ruler sees to it that people's actions and the appropriate consequences match up, and do so as often as possible, so that some poor slob doesn't get stabbed in a back alley without some form of retribution, or that some one else doesn't work their fingers to the bone constantly and never see themselves advance in life." He stops himself, blinking a few times as he cocks an eyebrow at the back of Arc's head, then continuing to seal up the cybernetic spine "and you were getting me to speachifying rather than answering my question. What makes you think you need to be more compasionate Arccos?"
"You ever heard of Akemi Koga?" Arccos practically hissed the name.
"That yamataian defector who opened up those weird cannibalistic whore-house restaurants?" He asked, he had never been one to visit those places himself, he prefered burgers from things that weren't potentially sapient, he didn't know much else about the figure other than that. He'd played some role in the Yamataian war against the Freespacers he knew, but he wasn't too clear on exactly what. He'd been assigned on the far side of Nepleslian space at the time from the whole event, and had other concerns, though he couldn't recall off the top of his head what they were at the time.
"Uso struck a deal with him to diversify the diets of the locals." Arccos grumbled, flexing her shoulders to test range of movement on her cybernetics. A few little mechanical whines, but nothing too out of place. "So he turned up on the beach the other day. Came up to me talking some bullshit about wanting to be my friend, and then basically started humping my leg. I shattered his femur with a rivet gun on one of the Junker drones, after which he decided to kiss me."
The 'spacer turned on her seat and sat up, walking over to retrieve her skin and clothing.
"I didn't exactly keep it cool. Spoke some shit about cutting off his ears and selling them as war trophies to some IWL holdout collectors... But... I dunno. I didn't really think I'd be able to get that worked up to want to try and outright maim a person... I should be able to keep a cool head."
He lets out a short bark of laughter thinking that Arccos might have forgotten just where Rip was from. He cuts himself off, but there's a certain amount of vivre in his voice as he states "Okay, I know that's not really funny, but honestly? If he tried that on some girl back in Funky City, he'd be dead. That level of violence is pretty appropriate where I'm from for someone touching you when you don't want to be touched, especially for-" he pauses, considering, "Arccos, actually, I don't think I've ever heard of you going off that hard on somebody for just hitting on you, you don't tend towards that level of violence. Was there something else about the man?" He cocks his head to one side, his hands moving away from her cybernetics as he lays them on his knees, his tools slotting back into his cybernetic arm as his eyebrows knit together. Arccos wasn't interested in sex as far as he knew, but he really couldn't remember her ever telling him that she'd gotten violent with someone just over being hit on, even if it was some idiot who kissed a girl after having his leg broken... then again, considering the chain the man had opened, maybe the idiot thought of that as foreplay?
"He sung peppy tunes from the flagship which instigated the Halna massacre, and fought in the military campaign which wound up killing about three quarters of everyone I knew." Arccos almost snarled, the way she was carrying on and escalating this, it was something easy to see that she could actually get that angry and go off that hard. "Then he comes to me and says he's got no hard feelings and loves my people? I'd have shot his damn head off on the spot if Uso hadn't struck this stupid deal to get a pimp to feed the masses... Actually, no, the only reason I didn't was because I didn't have any bullets..."
A little throaty groan, scratches on her synthesised voice as she started the arduous process of pulling her own skin back on.
"It's like if a Misshuvurthyar came up to you and said 'hey, I love your people and actively participated in the campaign to exterminate them. I want to ask you out on a date'."
He sits stunned for a moment at the outburst, blinking a few times, then says, "Powers that be," possibly the closest thing to a curse he had ever uttered in her presence, "Arccos, I'd have strangled him on the spot." he pauses for a moment, "Technically that's still an option you know, if you need any help with that, just give me the word alright?" Rip did not offer such a thing lightly, he took his reputation very seriously, but he treasured his friends more closely. Nepleslians had a very clear sense of who you owed loyalty to first, and it was no stain on a Nepleslian's honor at all to help put someone down that had hurt someone close to them, if Rip bothered to think about it, it was probably the number one cause of gang violence, in it's way, in Nepleslia, at least when you got right down to it.
Everything else was just an excuse.
"Now, you flying off the handle? That worrying you I can understand, but that has nothing to do with a lack of compassion, just a lack of control." He growls, from start to finish his normally cheerful countenance had gone from blank shock to a deep, calculating anger. Even beyond the innate dislike he had for anyone who caused his friends pain or hardship, he despised those who acted as if their past was meaningless, "Though to be honest, if I was in your shoes I'd have lost control too."
"So... Restraint is the answer?" Arccos asked, a little exasperated. Her anger evaporating almost as fast as it had appeared. "Patience? Or... I dunno. I just feel like I'm not quite right the way I am. And I can't afford to fuck up what I've got planned for the future."
She didn't say no to Rip's offer. At the same time she didn't say yes. There was all sorts of different problems, advantages and disadvantages in store for that option.
"...Don't bother touching him, though. He's rich enough that the moment you kill him another one will pop out of a vat somewhere in Funky City and chart a crow-course right back here to plague us in perpetuity. Not worth the hit to Uso's patience with us all."
"Not restraint, patience would be a good one perhaps. Not too much, but control is more important I think," The large man sits back in his chair, making the back of it creak ominously as it bends ever so slightly under his weight. "What I think matters most, when I'm doing an important surgery, is control... especially battlefield medic duty..." he pauses, and runs his metalic fingers through his hair as he carefully puts together what he wants to say, his eyes closing. "Patience is important, but when helping someone like that, so is speed, urgency, even haste you know?" The large man nips down a bit on his lower lip, "Like, I can't rush the operation, not when a stray laser slice could sever a nerve, a tendon, an artery, especially given how big I am compared to most of my patients. But I can't be too slow either. I have to control myself, to decide exactly when to do each thing, to let my emotions motivate me without controlling me. Does that make sense?"
""Measure twice, cut once.'" Arccos stated the common adage of the Junkhead, "Exactitude and knowledge of what you're doing is more important than how you feel about it?"
"Exactly, like, the only problem I see with what you did, was that it wasn't controlled. You didn't really decide to beat the tar out of him, you just did it before you knew what you were doing from the sounds of it right?" He asks, hs eyes opening as he leans back down and forward, making eye contact with her.
Arccos sat back down, meeting Rip's gaze with her own. Partly to make sure she was being certain to get her point across, mostly because she was now basically sitting topless pulling the skin on her arms back into place. Amongst other things he was her doctor, and the one who had installed just about every physical endowment she had at that. But it never hurt to keep his mind on the job.
"Well I certainly did other stuff to undermine him deliberately..." She shrugged, a little hiss as the skin was repressurised against her internal frame. "And I don't regret that... So we're talking certainty and precision... Conviction, I guess?"
"Conviction is a double edged sword, how many people had such conviction that they ignored the flaws in what they were doing... but that's true of everything." Rip pauses, considering, "What I'd suggest is, now that you know what you need to do... is experiment some before the full upgrade. You can throw in some emulation software into your head, subroutines to encourage certain modes of thought right?" He doesn't wait for her to confirm or deny the specifics, he knew the equivalent of such software existed, even if he was phrasing it badly, "So why not run emulations on your own mind before the upgrade? Get specific tweaks, give the programs a hard shutoff point and a shutdown code so that you can uninstall them immediately if necessary. That way, you can, at least somewhat, experiment with the right mixture of personality traits, and also set up periods of time where you can sit back, and review them as you are now, unaffected by the routine itself, so there's no chance of it clouding your judgement. Perhaps a month for each tweak until you hit the right mix?"
Arccos listened with her eyes narrowed some. Pulling on the last of her skin, and starting to just get redressed. About halfway through the explanation, and halfway through buttoning up, she pulled one of her foul cigarillos from her pocket and stuck it between her teeth. Not lighting it, this was a hospital. But it was a good gesture... All the talk going on here started to sound increasingly less like she'd have any grounding in a normal physical sense sooner or later... Maybe a terrifying thought.
"I don't know... The gist of all this talk seems to boil down to 'every coin has so many sides it's a sphere.'" She gave a little bitter laugh, "Maybe I should just bite the bullet and admit that I'm probably fine the way I am..."
"I like you how you are, but that doesn't matter, what matters is how YOU feel. If you feel something needs to change, it probably does, but make sure you take your time and consider the options. Out of the two of us, you're the one most likely to see the end of this century, even the end of this millenium, you have the time to get things right on this," The massive doctor grins a bit, he knew he'd never truly be wealthy enough to afford the next best thing to true immortality, and it didn't bother him that much, but he knew bringing it up tended to bother others if he didn't show that it didn't bother him, "Look, whatever choice you make on this, I'll be there to help you for as long as I'm able too. It's your body, and your mind even, and while you'll never be able to make infallible decisions, that's not what this is about, it's about being comfortable in your own head space."
Arccos tapped her chin a couple of times in thought. Or maybe it was one of the key motionss for re-calibrating her sense of touch now her skin was back on.
"Well, you never really tell me what I want, but you always tell me what I ask for." She stood up, retrieving her hat from the stand by the door. "You've got a real gift there, actually... But. Thanks for listening, Rip..."
Dr. Torr smiles, and nods, "Of course Arc, keep me informed alright?" then walks over to his too small desk, "One second, you'll need some anti rejection drugs for a day or three, I know I didn't give you enough to last the full three days even if you have some left over from last time," he rips off a piece of the local equivalent of paper, derived from algea mixed with wood, and writes out a prescription, "how much do you have left from last time? I don't want you trying to tough it out, I know freespacers tend to do that, lack of supplies and some people need it far more than you probably do, but I don't want to risk you getting even a mild infection from your remaining biological parts being too exhausted to fight it off." He fills out most of the little chitty and leaves a space for the number of doses, waiting for her response.
"We're genetically engineered to accept cybernetics." Arccos somehow didn't so much roll her eyes, as she rolled her voice. The tone making a smooth bell curve in pitch. "Better off giving me something like antibiotics than anti-rejection drugs considering how long I've been dirtside."
"Oh that's right, I always forget," And he did, this wasn't the first time she had to remind him, but then, she was practically his only freespacer patient. He scratches out the words and replaces them with the antibiotic. To someone paying attention, the characters for the prescription were in common forms, where as the majority of the chitty were written in the local script in a rather stilted hand, Rip had simply loaded a simple translator into his personal data storage and copied the AR words that popped across his vision as he thought the commands.
Arccos' hand darted out to snag up the script. Looking it over and turning it a bit sideways to keep up with the slight italicisation of Rip's handwriting, she nodded. Hat atop her head, she walked for the door.
"Alright. That'll do. I'll contact you for the full reinstallation in a couple of days..."
"So, I have a question for you." Arccos asked.
The hospital was looking increasingly better these days. The squat wooden building now no longer a charnel house fit only for the dying. With Rip having worked through a significant number of those wounded from the war, the city had come to a point where it was only accidents and maintenance of the living population who came here. The local doctors and nursing staff had proven to be apt pupils, at least where they could come to the point where they could wrap their heads around some concepts which were completely alien to them. At least in a practical sense, things were getting better, even though resources were always bouncing somewhere between tight, and well supplied depending on the day.
In this instance however, it was just a checkup. Arccos needed a tune-up and now sat stripped to the waist; her clothing and synth skin neatly folded on a nearby shelf in the polished bloodwood office of the old Surgeon General; now belonging to one Dr. Rip D. Torr. An odd moment of quiet in the Thieftaker General's days, recently.
"If you could change something about yourself... Personality wise, I mean. What would it be?"
Rip's office where he was checking Arc's biometrics and cybernetics would feel and look tiny to anyone who was in it with him, the giant of a man always slightly hunched from his normally good posture, but it was also one of the most advanced rooms, as even now, anyone seeking more advanced or esoteric cybernetics had to be custom done by the now fairly well known "Doc Hardbody". He was delicately reviewing a set of cables and interfaces along her spinal unit when she asked her question, causing him to stop his work briefly, his cybernetic hand pulling away, and the pupils of his cyber-eyes expanding and rearranging themselves back to their normal size rather than the multifacetted plates they had been to work on such a small level. "Hmmm? That's a tough question... I used to have a lot of things I wanted to change about myself, back when I was first decanted, now? Not very much..."
He considers for a moment, his eyes refocusing back down to the tiny delicate work he was doing on her spine.
"That probably makes me sound shallow, like I don't think I have room for personal growth... but ehn, I'm happy where I am as a person these days, and if I notice something about myself I don't like, I try to work to correct it immediately." His tongue sticks out between his lips as he leans in, "one second, running a quick test." he releases a tiny charge through the spinal unit, "did you just feel the color blue on your left pinky?" he asked, the testing protocols for anything interfacing with the brain were always based around synthesieatic principles, as such things were generally impossible to experience without the mental illness, and thus impossible to mistake for anything except what they were.
"Very slightly more purple than blue." Arccos said, looking to her hand. Without her dermal layers, she tended to wear gloves. A little wiggle of a pinkie. "Adjust it by about point four."
Shifting to lean her arms on the back of the chair where she perched backwards, Arccos pointed over to her bag hanging on the neat hat rack in the corner.
"I have my next upgrade module over there for you to review for a neural patch. Problem is that it needs programming... These things can really screw with your brain though, so I'm considering how I might set it up to do just that. Some are known to change completely after you install that thing, but I have the luxury of choice... I'm considering that now I have a position of Authority if it might be prudent to make myself something like... More compassionate?"
Rip adjusts the wiring a bit more, as he considers her statement, "Hmmm... just in general? Or are you thinking of something more specific?" He asks, his voice in his doctor's calm where he's thinking about the question seriously. "I mean, in general, I always shy away from true neural patches, except as a counter-agent to mental illness of course, there's less intrusive ways, if slower, to correct one's personality... but there's nothing actually wrong with doing so if you know the risks, and I know you know those." He twists another wire, then pulses her spinal unit once more, "What color now?" He askes before changing his eye focus again, "but really, before I can say one way or another, I need to know what makes you think you need to be more compassionate? Compassion is a virtue, but not always one people in power can afford to have in abundance, even for people like me in something as small as my own clinic."
"So what would you think would be better to see in someone actually leading this planet?" Arccos asked, looking at her finger. Blinking a few times. "Blue."
"Good," He says, pulling his hand away, and starting to close up her spinal unit bit by bit, checking it over with one focused eye as he does so. "Compassion to a point, but good sense. What people want, what people need, from a governor, is someone who, well, lets people get on with their lives and stops random things from having too much of a bad effect on people... my political philosophy's a bit vague I know, but when it comes down to it, a good ruler sees to it that people's actions and the appropriate consequences match up, and do so as often as possible, so that some poor slob doesn't get stabbed in a back alley without some form of retribution, or that some one else doesn't work their fingers to the bone constantly and never see themselves advance in life." He stops himself, blinking a few times as he cocks an eyebrow at the back of Arc's head, then continuing to seal up the cybernetic spine "and you were getting me to speachifying rather than answering my question. What makes you think you need to be more compasionate Arccos?"
"You ever heard of Akemi Koga?" Arccos practically hissed the name.
"That yamataian defector who opened up those weird cannibalistic whore-house restaurants?" He asked, he had never been one to visit those places himself, he prefered burgers from things that weren't potentially sapient, he didn't know much else about the figure other than that. He'd played some role in the Yamataian war against the Freespacers he knew, but he wasn't too clear on exactly what. He'd been assigned on the far side of Nepleslian space at the time from the whole event, and had other concerns, though he couldn't recall off the top of his head what they were at the time.
"Uso struck a deal with him to diversify the diets of the locals." Arccos grumbled, flexing her shoulders to test range of movement on her cybernetics. A few little mechanical whines, but nothing too out of place. "So he turned up on the beach the other day. Came up to me talking some bullshit about wanting to be my friend, and then basically started humping my leg. I shattered his femur with a rivet gun on one of the Junker drones, after which he decided to kiss me."
The 'spacer turned on her seat and sat up, walking over to retrieve her skin and clothing.
"I didn't exactly keep it cool. Spoke some shit about cutting off his ears and selling them as war trophies to some IWL holdout collectors... But... I dunno. I didn't really think I'd be able to get that worked up to want to try and outright maim a person... I should be able to keep a cool head."
He lets out a short bark of laughter thinking that Arccos might have forgotten just where Rip was from. He cuts himself off, but there's a certain amount of vivre in his voice as he states "Okay, I know that's not really funny, but honestly? If he tried that on some girl back in Funky City, he'd be dead. That level of violence is pretty appropriate where I'm from for someone touching you when you don't want to be touched, especially for-" he pauses, considering, "Arccos, actually, I don't think I've ever heard of you going off that hard on somebody for just hitting on you, you don't tend towards that level of violence. Was there something else about the man?" He cocks his head to one side, his hands moving away from her cybernetics as he lays them on his knees, his tools slotting back into his cybernetic arm as his eyebrows knit together. Arccos wasn't interested in sex as far as he knew, but he really couldn't remember her ever telling him that she'd gotten violent with someone just over being hit on, even if it was some idiot who kissed a girl after having his leg broken... then again, considering the chain the man had opened, maybe the idiot thought of that as foreplay?
"He sung peppy tunes from the flagship which instigated the Halna massacre, and fought in the military campaign which wound up killing about three quarters of everyone I knew." Arccos almost snarled, the way she was carrying on and escalating this, it was something easy to see that she could actually get that angry and go off that hard. "Then he comes to me and says he's got no hard feelings and loves my people? I'd have shot his damn head off on the spot if Uso hadn't struck this stupid deal to get a pimp to feed the masses... Actually, no, the only reason I didn't was because I didn't have any bullets..."
A little throaty groan, scratches on her synthesised voice as she started the arduous process of pulling her own skin back on.
"It's like if a Misshuvurthyar came up to you and said 'hey, I love your people and actively participated in the campaign to exterminate them. I want to ask you out on a date'."
He sits stunned for a moment at the outburst, blinking a few times, then says, "Powers that be," possibly the closest thing to a curse he had ever uttered in her presence, "Arccos, I'd have strangled him on the spot." he pauses for a moment, "Technically that's still an option you know, if you need any help with that, just give me the word alright?" Rip did not offer such a thing lightly, he took his reputation very seriously, but he treasured his friends more closely. Nepleslians had a very clear sense of who you owed loyalty to first, and it was no stain on a Nepleslian's honor at all to help put someone down that had hurt someone close to them, if Rip bothered to think about it, it was probably the number one cause of gang violence, in it's way, in Nepleslia, at least when you got right down to it.
Everything else was just an excuse.
"Now, you flying off the handle? That worrying you I can understand, but that has nothing to do with a lack of compassion, just a lack of control." He growls, from start to finish his normally cheerful countenance had gone from blank shock to a deep, calculating anger. Even beyond the innate dislike he had for anyone who caused his friends pain or hardship, he despised those who acted as if their past was meaningless, "Though to be honest, if I was in your shoes I'd have lost control too."
"So... Restraint is the answer?" Arccos asked, a little exasperated. Her anger evaporating almost as fast as it had appeared. "Patience? Or... I dunno. I just feel like I'm not quite right the way I am. And I can't afford to fuck up what I've got planned for the future."
She didn't say no to Rip's offer. At the same time she didn't say yes. There was all sorts of different problems, advantages and disadvantages in store for that option.
"...Don't bother touching him, though. He's rich enough that the moment you kill him another one will pop out of a vat somewhere in Funky City and chart a crow-course right back here to plague us in perpetuity. Not worth the hit to Uso's patience with us all."
"Not restraint, patience would be a good one perhaps. Not too much, but control is more important I think," The large man sits back in his chair, making the back of it creak ominously as it bends ever so slightly under his weight. "What I think matters most, when I'm doing an important surgery, is control... especially battlefield medic duty..." he pauses, and runs his metalic fingers through his hair as he carefully puts together what he wants to say, his eyes closing. "Patience is important, but when helping someone like that, so is speed, urgency, even haste you know?" The large man nips down a bit on his lower lip, "Like, I can't rush the operation, not when a stray laser slice could sever a nerve, a tendon, an artery, especially given how big I am compared to most of my patients. But I can't be too slow either. I have to control myself, to decide exactly when to do each thing, to let my emotions motivate me without controlling me. Does that make sense?"
""Measure twice, cut once.'" Arccos stated the common adage of the Junkhead, "Exactitude and knowledge of what you're doing is more important than how you feel about it?"
"Exactly, like, the only problem I see with what you did, was that it wasn't controlled. You didn't really decide to beat the tar out of him, you just did it before you knew what you were doing from the sounds of it right?" He asks, hs eyes opening as he leans back down and forward, making eye contact with her.
Arccos sat back down, meeting Rip's gaze with her own. Partly to make sure she was being certain to get her point across, mostly because she was now basically sitting topless pulling the skin on her arms back into place. Amongst other things he was her doctor, and the one who had installed just about every physical endowment she had at that. But it never hurt to keep his mind on the job.
"Well I certainly did other stuff to undermine him deliberately..." She shrugged, a little hiss as the skin was repressurised against her internal frame. "And I don't regret that... So we're talking certainty and precision... Conviction, I guess?"
"Conviction is a double edged sword, how many people had such conviction that they ignored the flaws in what they were doing... but that's true of everything." Rip pauses, considering, "What I'd suggest is, now that you know what you need to do... is experiment some before the full upgrade. You can throw in some emulation software into your head, subroutines to encourage certain modes of thought right?" He doesn't wait for her to confirm or deny the specifics, he knew the equivalent of such software existed, even if he was phrasing it badly, "So why not run emulations on your own mind before the upgrade? Get specific tweaks, give the programs a hard shutoff point and a shutdown code so that you can uninstall them immediately if necessary. That way, you can, at least somewhat, experiment with the right mixture of personality traits, and also set up periods of time where you can sit back, and review them as you are now, unaffected by the routine itself, so there's no chance of it clouding your judgement. Perhaps a month for each tweak until you hit the right mix?"
Arccos listened with her eyes narrowed some. Pulling on the last of her skin, and starting to just get redressed. About halfway through the explanation, and halfway through buttoning up, she pulled one of her foul cigarillos from her pocket and stuck it between her teeth. Not lighting it, this was a hospital. But it was a good gesture... All the talk going on here started to sound increasingly less like she'd have any grounding in a normal physical sense sooner or later... Maybe a terrifying thought.
"I don't know... The gist of all this talk seems to boil down to 'every coin has so many sides it's a sphere.'" She gave a little bitter laugh, "Maybe I should just bite the bullet and admit that I'm probably fine the way I am..."
"I like you how you are, but that doesn't matter, what matters is how YOU feel. If you feel something needs to change, it probably does, but make sure you take your time and consider the options. Out of the two of us, you're the one most likely to see the end of this century, even the end of this millenium, you have the time to get things right on this," The massive doctor grins a bit, he knew he'd never truly be wealthy enough to afford the next best thing to true immortality, and it didn't bother him that much, but he knew bringing it up tended to bother others if he didn't show that it didn't bother him, "Look, whatever choice you make on this, I'll be there to help you for as long as I'm able too. It's your body, and your mind even, and while you'll never be able to make infallible decisions, that's not what this is about, it's about being comfortable in your own head space."
Arccos tapped her chin a couple of times in thought. Or maybe it was one of the key motionss for re-calibrating her sense of touch now her skin was back on.
"Well, you never really tell me what I want, but you always tell me what I ask for." She stood up, retrieving her hat from the stand by the door. "You've got a real gift there, actually... But. Thanks for listening, Rip..."
Dr. Torr smiles, and nods, "Of course Arc, keep me informed alright?" then walks over to his too small desk, "One second, you'll need some anti rejection drugs for a day or three, I know I didn't give you enough to last the full three days even if you have some left over from last time," he rips off a piece of the local equivalent of paper, derived from algea mixed with wood, and writes out a prescription, "how much do you have left from last time? I don't want you trying to tough it out, I know freespacers tend to do that, lack of supplies and some people need it far more than you probably do, but I don't want to risk you getting even a mild infection from your remaining biological parts being too exhausted to fight it off." He fills out most of the little chitty and leaves a space for the number of doses, waiting for her response.
"We're genetically engineered to accept cybernetics." Arccos somehow didn't so much roll her eyes, as she rolled her voice. The tone making a smooth bell curve in pitch. "Better off giving me something like antibiotics than anti-rejection drugs considering how long I've been dirtside."
"Oh that's right, I always forget," And he did, this wasn't the first time she had to remind him, but then, she was practically his only freespacer patient. He scratches out the words and replaces them with the antibiotic. To someone paying attention, the characters for the prescription were in common forms, where as the majority of the chitty were written in the local script in a rather stilted hand, Rip had simply loaded a simple translator into his personal data storage and copied the AR words that popped across his vision as he thought the commands.
Arccos' hand darted out to snag up the script. Looking it over and turning it a bit sideways to keep up with the slight italicisation of Rip's handwriting, she nodded. Hat atop her head, she walked for the door.
"Alright. That'll do. I'll contact you for the full reinstallation in a couple of days..."
