Chương 169: Book 3 - Chapter 16 - Shaky Foundations

"Why the hell did we take the marsupial out today to do the checks?" Nora asked, rotating her chair away from the console she was sitting at. When she'd arrived to continue our inspection this morning, I suggested we take the massive ship out for a joyride. There was a moment of panic when it rose out of the undercity exit, I saw a number of law enforcement vehicles rush towards us, but they backed off once Nyx transmitted out that I was a samurai.

"Because it's been sitting in my garage for several months now, and I haven't had a single chance to use it," I replied as I leaned on one of the bridge bears, and stared out of the front window.

"So it has nothing to do with the fact that you were at the table, moaning about how Jane was a tyrant when I arrived?" Nora smirked.

"Absolutely not!" I insisted.

"I certainly didn't want a place to hide, and do work, without her nagging me." I watched as the marsupial slowly came to stop over the southern part of the city. The doors at the back of the ship, a pair of doors, which normally acted as docking ports for Kodiaks, slid open to allow our complement of squirrels to flood out and glide to the city below. Within moments I had a dozen notifications that a squirrel was ready to proceed. I sighed and pushed off the bear.

"Sounds like it's time to get to work. I'll send your share of the feeds to your console."

"Appreciate it," Nora mumbled as she turned back to the console.

"Not as much as the chair though. Why the hell didn't this thing have chairs before today anyways? Seems uncomfortable."

"It was designed to be completely crewed by bears," I told her.

"They don't get tired, or need breaks, so chairs just take up extra space. It could either fit one extra bear, or a chair. I was satisfied with my choice."

"Right up to the point where you had to ride the thing. You changed your tune really quick, didn't you," Nora replied. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear the smirk in her voice.

"Shut up," I muttered as I slipped onto my chair and shut my eyes. I sent out a couple quick commands, connecting the beavers to our feeds, and routing a couple to Nora's monitor, before I pulled up the nearest squirrel. The little critter crawled all over the anti air emplacement, stopping at each joint and vital components until the beaver gave the all good signal.

"This is going to take forever," I whispered to myself.

"There are ways to accelerate the process," Nyx's voice echoed out right next to my ear. I jumped, nearly falling out of my chair, before whirling around to look at the bear.

"You did that on purpose!" I hissed.

"Maybe," the bear smiled.

"But since you wanted a way to accelerate the process, I thought I'd inform you that you could finally purchase the next tier of command and control implant."

"Why now? You were against investing in the implant after the Tunnel disaster," I growled.

"And that's because you were against injecting nanites directly into your brain to ensure everything was fine after you practically burned out," Nyx snapped back.

"You had to rely on the slightly accelerated healing provided by your synthetic implants. Not exactly optimized for basic human anatomy, but they got the job done… eventually. You may have wasted most of your remaining points on upgrading Bandit, and most of your tokens on your undercity project, but you have enough of each to pay for the upgrade. Since you've discussed mobilizing a large percent of your forces, it would be prudent to upgrade. Avoid burning out like that again in an emergency."

"So why did you bring this up with me now?" I asked.

"I'm not exactly controlling bears right now."

"The Class II Command and Control Implant has vastly improved multitasking, and cloud processing functionality over the Class I version. Instead of watching a single squirrel work, and complaining about it, you could be doing ten at a time," Nyx told me. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. I was quiet for a minute as I thought about it.

"How much will it cut into my funds? I've only been pulling in the daily stipend for awhile now. I don't want to drop too low."

"You didn't seem that concerned when you bought Bandit's upgrade," Nyx replied.

"I was pissed off at the time. That asshole beat me, and made fun of my hoodie! Numbers!" I snapped.

"All your purchases over the last few months have left you with just under four thousand points, and two tokens," Nyx reported.

"The upgrade will put you back five hundred for the class II Command and Control implant, and five hundred more for the upgrade."

"And you think now is the best time to do this?" I asked suspiciously.

"It'll be much faster than you and Nora checking each position individually. Believe it or not, even I get bored sitting around for several days straight. It's a win-win situation," Nyx explained. I stared at the bear for a moment, a little thrown off by Nyx's comment, before finally shaking my head.

"Fine, if we can get this process over with, and increase my control of the bears, I'll do it. I honestly probably should have done it awhile ago."

"The caves were the first time you tried to control such a large group of bears at the same time, up to that point you stuck with smaller squads," Nyx said as a box appeared on my chair. I flipped it open to find three small silver disks.

"Similar process as last time, two on your temples, one on the back of your neck. They're labeled." I nodded, taking the disks one by one and placing them where specified. Once I was done I just stared at Nyx.

"Now what?" I asked.

"You might want to lay down for a minute," Nyx said, stepping closer.

"Why whatlthsdfsd…" was what I got out before the room flipped upside down. I was so surprised I almost fell out of my chair. I felt Nyx's hands grab my shoulders and push me down into the chair. I idly wondered how they were managing to stand on the ceiling, when reality reestablished itself. My center of gravity, and senses returned to normal.

"What the fuck was that Nyx?" I yelled.

"The implant needed to connect to more of your brain, which I've been told is very disorienting. Now that it's completed, you should start seeing a marked improvement in your multitasking and command capabilities."

"Wonderful," I muttered.

"You okay over there?" Nora asked. I guess she'd turned around when I was having my episode to see what was going on. I could see concern in her eyes.

"Nothing to be worried about, just trying out some new tech," I replied with a small smile.

"The startup was just a little rough but I'm perfectly alright."

"Right…" Nora replied quietly.

"Look, if you don't believe me you can ask my AI," I said, patting the bear on the shoulder.

"Perfectly safe!" Nyx chirped.

"Fine, but I'm going to keep an eye on you for a while, just in case. That wasn't normal," Nora said. She crossed her arms, and stared at me.

"Understandable, I guess I'd be concerned if I witnessed something like that too," I said, glancing at the bear.

"Never mind experiencing it." Nyx didn't say anything back, so I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, connecting to the nearest squirrel. The bot scurried about, but surprisingly I didn't have any problem following what it was doing. Instead of requiring my full attention, it felt more like an idle thought, or background task. I pulled up another squirrel, and another, until I had five different squirrels going at the same time, each perfectly monitored, but not requiring any of my attention.

I opened my eyes and sat forward, "This is awesome!" I declared.

"I thought I'd have to apply my full concentration to every task, this is so much easier."

"So you're fine?" Nora asked.

"Apparently. I'm currently monitoring five different squirrels at once without any issues," I replied.

"That will definitely speed things up," Nora said, finally cracking a small smile.

"What's it like?"

"Strange… like I'm participating in several conversations at the same time, but without needing to actually concentrate on them. It's a strange sensation," I explained.

"Apparently the implant is still making connections, so it'll probably even get easier…" I paused, squirrel number four had paused in it's inspection, and was looking at a lump of clay-like substance wedged under the ammo feed of the cannon. I probably wouldn't have had a clue what it was, if it wasn't for the little electronic device with a couple wires leading to the lump.

"What? Issue with the implant?" Nora asked, sitting up.

"Nope, it's perfectly fine," I replied quietly.

"I may, however, have discovered a slight problem. You wouldn't happen to know how to disarm explosives, would you?"