JК
Ribofunk :: Филиппо Пол Ди
Страница: 78 из 156) The Toronto HQ of the Protein Police had just received a month's worth of shipments of Fours from the Bangalore macqui of Segasoft-TogaiMagic, and these had been further distributed acrossthe continent.
The kibe cores themselves looked identical to and had the same dimensions as the old Level Threes, allowing for easy retrofitting: shiny featureless platters about as thick as a stack of a dozen ancient CD's. It was the newly evolved qubitic circuitry inside that raised their functioning to a higher level. As for the chassis that would carry the cores-well, the force's own crada had come up with several new models specifically designed for law enforcement.
So my new partner became a synthetic, syncretic personality in a mini-frisbee, capable of swapping bodies at will.
On top of this unsettling switch, the Swellheads had insisted that all the humans on the force go in for a somatic upgrade. The mucky-mucks were tired of losing officers to various preventable assaults. Baseline bodies were now considered insufficent to counter the moddies of the baddies. We had to meet them head-on, match them in the arms (and legs and brains) race.
Like most people in all walks of life, I had my share of implants and add-ons and upgrades already: simple things that had helped me in my work, like sharper peripheral
vision, stronger bones, voluntary pain shunts. But unlike some bodyartists and puzzlepluses, I had never gone in for radical modifications. What was good enough for grandpooh was good enough for me. Now I was being told that I had to change or be dropped from the force.
Swallowing my trepidations and instinctive dislike of being bossed around (after all, I wasn't an independent contractor anymore), I went into the bodyshop.
I came out sheathed in flexible imbricated skin like a pangolin's, its plates chamois-soft to the touch yet capable of turning aside sharp edges and low velocity projectiles. Additionally, my new integument from Calypte Biomed would react to the beam of a flashlight by instantly altering its refractive index. (I had once read that the quickest basal reaction in nature was found in the jaws of a certain ant, which could snap closed in a third of a millisecond. Science had considerably bettered that.) I had a paralymphatic system from Olympus Biotech that would aggressively react to micro– and nano-invaders. My arteries were reinforced with CuraTech's neo-goretex, my bones threaded with Innovir's stonefiber. My heart had an onboard Hemazyne assist, as did my lungs. I had Agouron hyperflexure in my fingers, increased haptic and proprioceptive sensitivity, and certain wetware enhancements from BioCryst not available to the general public.
The kibe cores themselves looked identical to and had the same dimensions as the old Level Threes, allowing for easy retrofitting: shiny featureless platters about as thick as a stack of a dozen ancient CD's. It was the newly evolved qubitic circuitry inside that raised their functioning to a higher level. As for the chassis that would carry the cores-well, the force's own crada had come up with several new models specifically designed for law enforcement.
So my new partner became a synthetic, syncretic personality in a mini-frisbee, capable of swapping bodies at will.
On top of this unsettling switch, the Swellheads had insisted that all the humans on the force go in for a somatic upgrade. The mucky-mucks were tired of losing officers to various preventable assaults. Baseline bodies were now considered insufficent to counter the moddies of the baddies. We had to meet them head-on, match them in the arms (and legs and brains) race.
Like most people in all walks of life, I had my share of implants and add-ons and upgrades already: simple things that had helped me in my work, like sharper peripheral
vision, stronger bones, voluntary pain shunts. But unlike some bodyartists and puzzlepluses, I had never gone in for radical modifications. What was good enough for grandpooh was good enough for me. Now I was being told that I had to change or be dropped from the force.
Swallowing my trepidations and instinctive dislike of being bossed around (after all, I wasn't an independent contractor anymore), I went into the bodyshop.
I came out sheathed in flexible imbricated skin like a pangolin's, its plates chamois-soft to the touch yet capable of turning aside sharp edges and low velocity projectiles. Additionally, my new integument from Calypte Biomed would react to the beam of a flashlight by instantly altering its refractive index. (I had once read that the quickest basal reaction in nature was found in the jaws of a certain ant, which could snap closed in a third of a millisecond. Science had considerably bettered that.) I had a paralymphatic system from Olympus Biotech that would aggressively react to micro– and nano-invaders. My arteries were reinforced with CuraTech's neo-goretex, my bones threaded with Innovir's stonefiber. My heart had an onboard Hemazyne assist, as did my lungs. I had Agouron hyperflexure in my fingers, increased haptic and proprioceptive sensitivity, and certain wetware enhancements from BioCryst not available to the general public.