Chapter Eighty-Five (2/2)
...freeing.
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Victor-998146 watched as the Klark's memories, desires, personality, everything that made him up was slowly error checked. There was a ping of someone breaking the IR beam at the doorway. When he looked up his blood ran cold.
Massive, grey skin, red eyes, bone spurs punched through the skin.
Victor stood up. ”This is neutral ground! No fighting!” he said. His fingers went under the desk to the button that would force a SUDS into a hard reset.
The creature looked down, realized its sash had gotten twisted, and untwisted it. The action revealed the hologram over its head that had gotten obscured by the hanging sign.
OOC - MEDICAL EMERGENGY
”I apologize most profusely, gentlebeing,” Victor said, spreading his outs in a soothing motion.
”You have a hero doing a transfer?” The massive scarred and dangerous looking Doomsday rumbled. It had an odd lilting exotic accent.
”Yes.”
”Well, I wouldn't want to be attacked during a transfer,” The Doomsday said, giving a chuckle that sounded like gravel being crushed. ”I'm a customer.”
”Well, how can Clone-My-Shit-Up help you?” Victor asked.
The wafer-case was inside a larger case, made so that the Doomsday could hold it easily. The outer case was of durasteel, the inner one of plas. Victor took it with a smile, sitting down. He motioned at the chair as the computer went through the files on the wafer, handed the wafer the medical code for the clinic, and began decrypting them.
”The chairs can hold your weight. We sometimes deal with Mechanex,” Victor said.
The Doomsday chuckled again. ”Yup, them 'Necks can weigh a lot,” it slowly sat down.
”Let me just check the files. Feel free to browse our options. We have the latest ladder-rank Doomsday options, some of the best,” Victor said.
The Doomsday turned the monitor carefully and delicately used one massive fingertip to begin perusing the options.
Victor blinked and double-checked the file header.
Two almost identical files in the same day. Hellscorch, SUDS drift, neo-cancer, personality implant leakage, memory degradation, nerve fiber unravelling, dendrite snaps. The body initial specifications were labeled medical necessity just like the other.
Unlike the other one, the baseline genome file was complete. It had a Terran Space Force Marine Corps lock on it but Victor scanned it just in case. Another Ancient. Over five hundred years, but he could see that some correction had been done by the Marine Corps, some enhancements.
The medical chart necessitated that those be removed.
”Problem?” the Doomsday asked.
”No problem. Your baseline genome is your old Corps one, and your medical file requires me to remove some of your allowable decommissioned military mods,” Victor said. ”It will just take me a few moments.”
”As few mods as possible, please. As close to Pure Strain as possible,” The Doomsday said.
Victor nodded, getting to work. Switching out sections of the genetic code. Unlike his peers, he always ran a compile before adding more, as well as doing an error check. It slowed him on easy cases but prevented problems with more complex cases.
”You're careful,” The Doomsday said.
”Yes. You have to live in this body,” Victor said, not taking his eyes from the screen.
”I appreciate your attention to detail,” The Doomsday answered.
Eight times he was forced to find and use alternate gene sequences when the compiling and error checking threw out errors. The Doomsday would have gone blind in six months by one, developed pancreatic cancer with another one, sprouted feathers in their armpits after two years in another.
Finally he was done. He knew he had been perspiring from the concentration, a slight flaw in his own genetic sequence that made him different then the other ten thousand clones of his batch that he refused to remove. It made him different and he had found out long ago that he liked that.
”All right, here's how your body will look. I readded pubic and other hair, removed the neural bioware for a direct linkage neural jack since you won't have that,” Victor said, tossing the 3D model of the Doomsday's human body on the screen. ”I, of course, repaired the genetic malady you had been suffering from before you joined the Corps.”
The Doomsday nodded, staring at the image. It reached forward, touching the hologram almost gently.
”I forgot that's how I used to look,” it said.
”Now, there is a genetic quirk. I am unsure if you wanted it restored or repaired. The old method of removing it was superceded about two hundred years ago by repair,” Victor said.
”Quirk?” the Doomsday asked.
”The... um... sexual arousal amplification trigger synapses,” Victor said.
The Doomsday somehow managed to look embarassed. ”Oh. I had forgotten about that. What are the drawbacks to repairing it. When the Corps fixed it I found out that taste and smell as well as tactile pleasures were all reduced slightly.”
Victor nodded. ”There will be some reduction to tactile pleasure responses, but only by roughly 18%. Probably 12% in your case according to my simulation.”
”Leave it as is. I'll just learn to deal with getting turned on by a warm breeze,” the Doomsday said.
”Excellent. Excellent. That actually reduces the amount of adjustments needed to be done. Do you have any preference for hair and eye color? Skin color? Mood reflecting fingernails?” Victor asked.
The Doomsday shook its head. ”No. Let's just go with the old skin.”
”I've ensured that your strength, reflex, and dermal enhancements will degrade over time until your at Pure Strain Human normal. It will take approximately two years, but after that, you'll be a healthy close to your original genome,” Victor said.
The Doomsday nodded. ”Thank you. And thank you for understand that I don't want any additional mods and not trying to upsell me.”
”Of course. This is a major transfer, let's not increase any risk or uncomfortable feelings. All right, I've ordered the clone banks to go ahead and start. Normally it's only about fifteen minutes to do the SUDS transfer but I would recommend the newer system. It's slower, but it's used by the Marine Corps and the Clone Worlds Military Cloning Authority. It has a lot of error checking, SUDS template rebuilding. You'd be asleep the whole time, of course,” Victor said.
”That sounds good. No dream generator. Just take me offline,” the Doomsday said.
”All right. Let's go ahead and go to payment,” Victor said. He punched it up, applied veteran, civil service, Citizen, and medical necessity codes and presented the price. The Doomsday looked at him.
”Is that right, it seems a little low,” It rumbled.
”Due to your genetic damage as a child a new skin is free of charge. The additional mods are all you are being charged for,” Victor smiled, standing up. The Doomsday copied him, following him into the transfer room.
”Oh, I see why you were worried,” The Doomsday said when it saw the Klark sleeping.
”Again, I apologize,” Victor said.
”No, no, your responsibility to your patients comes before hurt feelings,” the Doomsday said, chuckling again. It laid down, letting Victor strap it in.
”See you on the other side, hotshot,” the Doomsday rumbled.
”We will meet again,” Victor answered.
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”John Reginald Dix?” the gate attendant asked, looking around. Boarding for the shuttle had already completed but they were missing a passenger and there was a lone man sitting in the lounge. When she had queried his implant it had just replied ”UPDATING” without throwing out any additional information.
The man kept reading the magazine.
She reached out and touched his shoulder. ”Sir?”
”Huh?” the man looked up.
”Are you John Reginald Dix?” the attendant asked.
”No. I mean, yes. Sorry. I had a personality matrix repair,” Klark/John said.
”Oh. You should have said something. We would assigned an attendant like we did to the other person. Did you have it done by Victor?” The attendant asked.
John nodded. ”At the Clone-My-Shit-Up shop.”
She smiled and held out her hand. When John took it she helped him up, then put his hand in the crook of her arm and started leading him slowly to the shuttle. ”He does good work. He used to work for the Space Force in SUDS recovery. I had to go to him after a sky-surfing accident. A newbie hit me right in the SUDS pack with the leading edge of his board. My SUDS tried to upload a damaged template right as I hit the pavement.”
John nodded. For some reason her arm helped him feel less shakey.
”It scrambled my SUDS but Victor was able to clean out the damaged template and I only lost about a day, which probably would have been therapied away anyway. My counselor told me I was lucky it was Victor who did it,” The attendant said, more to keep John moving than anything.
She understood being shocky after a personality repair.
”Here we are,” the attendant said. She pinged the Chief Flight Attendant. A blue and pink bipedal wolf in an attendant uniform came up. ”This is John Reginald Dix. He just had a personality repair done. He's going to need a little assistance on his flight.”
The wolf nodded, holding out an arm. ”If you come with me, I'll take you to your seat.”
John nodded and went along. When he was seated he looked around as the wolf motioned over a green skinned human woman with long silver hair dressed in an attendants uniform. The shuttle was almost empty, just another passenger sitting with an attendant that he couldn't see over the seat and a family of six. The green woman sat down next to him, patting his arm.
”Where are you going?” The attendant asked. She noted how shaky John was, how even simple questions took him a moment to answer.
”Evixta 279, a colony out in the Long Dark,” John said.
”Ah. Answering the volunteer call?” The attendant asked.
John nodded. ”I used to be a mechanic. Used to teach too.”
The attendant nodded and smiled. ”Wow, a real life teacher. I've never met one before.”
John smiled shyly.
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The trip had taken nearly three weeks. John had slept most of it, his brain slowly decompressing the template and applying it to his neural tissue. He had chosen that version instead of the instantaneous upload at Victor's recommendation.
By the time the ship reached the colony he felt much better. He'd requested that his time as a Klark be largely put in deep storage memory, the slow access part of long term memory. It had been fun, it had been exciting, he had good stories, but that part of his life was over now.
When he stepped out of the spaceport's concourse and lounge, which consisted of all of one room, he stood in the light of the bluish white sun, blinking. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, something he wasn't really used to.
He found himself standing next to a short, attractive Pure Strain Human female, who was holding a small bag in her hands, with no other luggage, the same as him.
”Hi,” she said, smiling. Her accent was lilting and exotic.
”Hi,” John said. ”John Dix. Here for the colony stabilization program.”
”Samantha Krikaktak Woolvet, same here,” the woman said. She frowned. ”You know, you seem familiar for some reason.”
John laughed. ”Doubt that. This is the first time I've been Pure Strain in long time.”
Samantha chuckled. A gravelly sound that didn't fit a short woman like her. ”Same here. What were you doing?”
John smiled. ”I was a ladder ranked LARPer. A Klark.”
Samantha laughed. ”I was a Doomsday. So that's what a Klark looks like without the glasses.”
John laughed with her. ”So that's what's hiding inside a Doomsday.”
A hovertaxi pulled up and Samantha nodded toward it. ”You OK with sharing a cab with a Doomsday, Klark?”
John nodded. ”Yeah, I am. And call me John.”
”Call me Sammy.”