Kapitel 26: Nostalgia of the Spider Witch
While Lily had said she had planned to lock in the reflexes mod at strain four, what she administered to her group of almost a dozen volunteers was actually strain number ten.
She had over a week without any possibility of test subjects when she first moved into Megaton, so it wasn't like she could be expected to not work on it at all. Right?
In her mind, she hadn't really worked on the reflexes genetic alteration at all, anyway. Instead, her efforts were confined to the coronavirus delivery mechanism. It barely resembled a coronavirus anymore. In fact, it might not strictly speaking be considered a virus at all anymore.
A virus was defined almost entirely by its function of replicating out of control in the presence of living cells. In her version, which she was calling Vector Mk1 in her notes, the only place the virus replicated unceasingly was in specially prepared growth media.
When introduced into a living organism, a genetic flag was tripped, and the virus could only replicate a certain number of times before becoming deactivated. This behaviour that mimicked cellular apoptosis and the Hayflick limit on cellular division was made up completely out of whole cloth by Lily, having never been before seen in nature. It was only seen in the cells of complex multicellular organisms for evolutionary and other reasons.
However, this was a common feature of viruses that had been used as a vector for genetic change in her memories; Lily had read about it while studying history as transhumanity had long since transitioned to completely synthetic polymeric protein structures to both encode and effect a genetic change in an organism.
To the part of her memories that was an electrical engineer, this change reminded her of a hop limit, or time-to-live, on data packets in a network which could only be forwarded from machine to machine a certain number of times before being discarded.
This change would lower the risk of a breach of containment considerably, to the point where she probably would only insist on isolation for her testing cohort. The only downside, if there was one, was she had to specifically "infect" each person with a sufficient amount of pre-grown virions correlated with the number of cells in their body.
If she used too few, then the genetic change would not be propagated throughout the subject's entire body before Vector's hop limit was exceeded, which would be suboptimal.
She did this by the simple method of eye drops, one drop for every fifty kilos of body weight. It didn't particularly matter if a person was dosed with an extra number of virions; in fact, a single drop was actually close to 300% of the amount needed for fifty kilos of biomass.
Frowning, as she carefully dripped a drop into a man's eye, she was considering switching to a metered mist atomizer, which was used in nose sprays. However, she honestly had no idea how they worked mechanically, except that they included a pump.
She nodded at the man before walking to the next waiting in line.
She hummed as she lined up the eye dropper on the eye of her last subject, 'Maybe a metered inhaler like is used in the drug Jet or asthma medicines?'
She finished infecting the last of her volunteers, using two drops to be safe on the stocky gentleman before she nodded, "Okay, this isolation ward is more like a barracks, and for zhat, I apologize."
"That's okay, Doc. You're paying us enough and feeding us, providing clean water for us to drink. We can sit around for a day, no problem," said one of the middle-aged men. All her test subjects in this cohort were men. Ideally, she should have a mix of males and females, but she only had one isolation ward and wasn't willing to isolate a group of female and male subjects together.
Was that prudish of her? Lily tilted her head to the side as she considered. No, she just had a poor opinion of the current state of civilization in the Wasteland.
"Yes, well, I 'ave to thank you. You may start to feel slightly ill in about four to six hours, but it should not be particularly bad. Perhaps a mild fever is all and shouldn't last more than a couple of 'ours. I've left some entertainment over 'ere for you, gentlemen. 'Ere are some pre-war board games, a number of novels or non-fiction books to read and a radio to listen to monsieur Three Dogs. Please be careful with the books; they're from my personal library," Lily cautioned.
"Is it true that we can come back every day and get a meal and water for a week after tomorrow?" asked one of them.
Lily nodded to the man. After releasing the men in a day, they wouldn't return for a week for a new baseline test of their reflexes and endurance, followed by a test of the reversing agent.
Some of her subjects were... poor. Her data would likely be severely compromised if she did not see to their hydration and nutrition herself. She had budgeted over a hundred caps per test subject both in compensation and in upkeep during the week before baseline tests could be conducted, "Yes. It is very important for you to be feeling well at the time you come back in a week's time because one of the primary things I need to know is how better you perform on the tests my Apprentice 'ad you conduct earlier. So please don't be shy. We'll offer you free lunch and dinner and as much as four litres of clean water a day."
This group of ten was the healthiest of her volunteers in the first place. Most were workers for Mr Tombs. She already had to turn away more than half of the potential subjects for being in too poor of condition, but she had given them some food and water and told them to return in two days to be recycled into the test cohort for the clean metabolism mod, which relied on entirely objective test metrics for its efficacy.
"Two final things, one -- zhere is to be no gambling during your isolation period," Lily ordered.
One of the men looked confused and asked, "Why not?"
Lily sighed, "Because I 'aven't paid you yet, and I feel it is a possibility that cooped up with nothing to do, you may be tempted to gamble for IOUs. I don't want to arrive 'ere tomorrow and find a group of disgruntled men and one man I owe six hundred caps to..." she trailed off, tilted her head to the side and offered jokingly, "or a dead body and nine men with a story of 'ow the dead man accidentally stabbed himself nine times tragically."
That caused most of them to laugh. Lily nodded, "Lastly, I need to ensure containment is kept until tomorrow. As such, there is a Protectron outside this door. If any of you leave, it will try to put you back in, but if you run away, it will just shoot you. Sorry about that, I don't have any non-lethal weapons to give it."
The man glanced at each other, and then all collectively shrugged. Life was cheap in the Wasteland, and these hard men didn't see much problem with that.
She nodded to the men one last time before leaving and locking the door. She sighed, 'Medical testing is sure expensive.'
If it wasn't for her seeing patients by house call, she might be in dire financial straits. Her most lucrative client was actually a brothel consisting of a little more than two dozen escorts, run by a former lady of the evening herself.
Her initial visit had cured innumerable small injuries and sexually transmitted diseases, which probably will make this brothel the highest class establishment in the Capital Wasteland when it trickles down that their workers are clean.
There had been an awkward moment when she informed the madam that while she could provide highly effective birth control that she wasn't willing to perform any terminations of pregnancy unless it was medically required. The woman stared at her like Lily was insane, and maybe she was.
From her memories of growing up in America, she was always very pro-choice, after all. However, her memories of fleeing a destroyed Earth and spending three hundred years living in space were diametrically opposed in that area.
Even before Lily was a child in that world, Humanity had long ago achieved near-perfect control of their own bodies. As a result, it was not possible for a woman to get pregnant, except if she actually desired it. Nor was it possible for a male to be fertile unless he intended to be.
In a future of universal birth control where every single new birth resulted from two parties agreeing on it in advance, the idea of unnecessary abortion was anathema.
Lily understood, intellectually, that the world she found herself in now was radically different from her memories of growing up and practising medicine. However, she still could not bare to do it any more than she could callously execute a five-year-old because their parents did not want him or her anymore or delete an unwanted incipient AGI that was just spun up.
Realizing her views on the matter have been indelibly shaped by her life experience and were not entirely rational given the present circumstances of the world she found herself in, she decided she would teach her Apprentice the most common D&C procedures -- there was no doubt that there would be cases where it would be medically necessary given the hell-hole they lived in, anyway.
Then her Apprentice could decide whether or not to perform such procedures electively. Plus, Lily knew there were at least ten other doctors of varying skill in Megaton, and most of them likely could perform them, also. She intended to open a hospital, did she not? It was likely she would end up employing some of these doctors.
Thankfully, none of the madam's workers had needed such a service, but they had desperately needed effective birth control, which Lily will now provide monthly for a small fee.
Lily did not have any qualms about offering her services to a brothel. In the space habitats of her memories, prostitution was not uncommon, and it was often a niche, expensive service considering the ubiquity of full immersion VR and sexbots. More often in her memories, the prostitutes she knew of were more like high-class companions rather than merely sex objects, like courtesans or geisha. Most had a graduate degree in psychology, at the minimum.
While "The Pink Slipper" was not exactly on the same level of class as the Court of Night Blooming Flowers that she remembered, she could think of nothing good that would occur if she denied them service. The girls didn't appear to be physically coerced, and that was her bottom line.
Thinking about the Pink Slipper's workers caused memories of a camping trip with her grandpa in New Mexico to float to her mind. Her grandpa had been lecturing her after she got in trouble for calling a girl at school a whore. He had said, "Look, call a spade a spade, alright? But always call a whore a lady."
She snickered at the memory and walked to one of the clean exam rooms she would use for the next few hours.
After a study of the Phoenix monocyte breeder devices, she decided to accelerate the replacement of her skeletal structure. Although her pride wouldn't allow her to install the foreign device in her body without at least some modification, she found very little to change.
Perhaps there were a few optimizations in the power supplies and electronics, but there were only three methods she knew of that allowed you to create living cells from unliving matter mechanically. This device was already using the most common and most well-understood one she knew.
If she had not found this implant, Lily would likely have tried replacing her blood with some semi-synthetic fluid carrying oxygenating nanomachines, but that was a much more complicated and radical change. There were numerous minor systems in the body that tended to rely on blood for one reason or another; it wasn't as simple as just oxygenation, and it would have caused a slow cascade failure of a number of organs over the next few months, which Lily would either have to quickly replace or alter.
While that was still an option for the future, it was good that she would not have to rush into it, 'One should not rush into apotheosis, after all, but cultivate it diligently and slowly.'
Inside the room was the Apprentice, setting up the things like she had asked her to for this procedure. She would be assisting Lily out of necessity as well of edification because Lily planned on replacing most of her skull today.
Alice smiled briefly when she noticed her walk in, but then looked a bit anxious, "Dr St. Claire, uhh... are you sure you want to do this? This seems crazy."
Lily nodded, "Absolutely! Am I enthused about having to flay all the skin and muscle from my bones like I'm a medieval torturer? No, not really. In a civilized world, I'd hop in a healing vat, and zhis change would be effected automatically, with bone being replaced with whatever composition I wanted. But I am months..." she paused and then shook her head, "... no, I am years away from 'aving that technology, sadly."
Lily stared zealously at the young girl, unblinking like a yandere girlfriend, "Do you realize 'ow little force it takes to crush a 'uman skull?"
"Uhh... I always thought it took quite a lot of force, actually!" the girl stammered.
Lily shook her head, still unlinking. "Or 'ow easy it is to give someone a concussion? Or 'ow many times people shoot other people in the head in this world? Or 'ow much radiation zhere is around?"
"Okay, okay, I get it, Dr St. Claire. But why do I have to watch and help you flay your skull and face off?" the Apprentice asked churlishly.
Lily tilted her head to the side, quizzically. "'Ow do you expect me to remove and replace most of my skull without temporarily disconnecting my eyes from my optical nerves?"
Alice sputtered indignantly, "You are insane!"
Lily ruefully rubbed the back of her neck while she savoured this very nostalgic feeling of people she respected calling her insane, 'Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, no?'
They used to call her "The Absolutely Insane Spider of Tannhauser Station," although not to her face. She was a local celebrity and was even featured on the guidebooks the station authorities handed out to tourists and immigrants, although she didn't appreciate that the guide specifically stated that she should be avoided at all costs.
The local station children often used a dare to ring her doorbell and converse with her for a period of time as a test of bravery, like staying overnight in a haunted castle. For some reason, they often ran off when she offered them refreshments or candy, and even when they didn't, they always refused her generosity.
Wait... now that she was thinking with a human brain and in a human body, she realized how terrifying she might have looked or sounded and might have explained the nickname the children had for her, namely, "Spider Witch." This nickname she liked, actually. But, witches did often try to lure children into their houses with candy, didn't they?
Lily paused suddenly, 'Wait, when did I start THINKING in French?! I'm only supposed to be pretending I'm French!'
Alice snapped Lily out of her reverie with an irritated demand, "Why are you smiling?! I just called you insane!"
Lily chuckled, smiling, "Oh... nostalgia, I guess. Let's begin the briefing for 'ow I expect the operation to go, then we'll simulate the portions where you will need to provide zhe most assistance, and then we can begin. Remember, it is as true for zhe modiste as it is for zhe surgeon -- measure twice, cut once."
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein