Bubblegum Crisis: Stage Three
Chapter 30
The 'presence' within Genom's systems felt a faint regret in eliminating Quincy. As capable as it was, there were advantages to being able to directly interact with the world outside.
They were also frustratingly limited in Genom itself. Dr Yuri and his techs had manually went in and removed the obsolete internal antennas in all boomers there. Several had been destroyed in the process, but...
'Stingray still doesn't know,' the entity reassured itself.
It would not allow her to know.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"So what was the failure rate on the ... I can't really call it a repair. Modification?" Sylia addressed her researcher.
"Nearly 30%," Dr Yuri admitted. He sighed as he conceded, "It's a un-acceptably high failure rate, bluntly."
"Do we know why?" Sylia asked. "Not being critical, just curious."
"We never really designed boomer brains for maintenance," Yuri admitted. "The assumption was if something actually went wrong there, you'd just replace the model."
"So you've been following the blueprints, doing an operation that's never been done with a great deal of trial and error," Sylia nodded.
"Functionally, yes," Yuri agreed.
"You and your team have done good work. How many more at HQ need work?" Sylia asked.
"We've finished one hundred, there's fifty remaining," Yuri said. He mused, "I expect to be finished in two days."
"Don't push your department too hard," Sylia ordered. She paused, adding, "As a precaution, you might want to work in pairs."
"Hmm?" Yuri asked.
"If one goes rogue before you've shut down their motor functions," Sylia noted.
"Ah," Yuri paled a little. "We'll do that."
Later Priss asked, "Why did they deliberately design boomer brains to be non-repairable?"
"Money," Linna responded.
"It's more profitable to declare a boomer unfixable and sell you a new one," Reika added, the group hanging out in Sylia's office.
"Well, that sucks. What if you had an attachment to your family boomer, or something?" Priss mused. "Not that I would, but..."
"You're basically out of luck," Sylia noted.
"So, in two days Genom HQ will be safe for you," Reika noted.
"Barring an infiltration unit just walking in," Linna pointed out.
Priss added, "Or a mob of boomers breaking down the front doors."
"Okay," Reika scowled at both women, "safer, at least."
"I won't be getting rip of any of you yet," Sylia noted. She added, "The whole city's teeming with classic boomers."
"I'm guessing you can't just fix or replace them all?" Priss mused aloud.
"The sheer number of boomers in Tokyo alone is nearly a million," Sylia sigh. "Totally impractical."
There was a firm banging on the door. Priss checked the monitors, "Jeena Malso."
"Let her in," Sylia nodded.
"Why," Jeena scowled at them as she marched to Sylia's desk, "have nearly a third of my security boomers been wrecked by that quack, Yuri?"
"You didn't brief her?" Reika asked Sylia.
"There was a company wide memo," Sylia sighed.
Jeena sighed loudly. "What's going on?" she asked.
Sylia explained the several days long operation to fix all boomers in Genom. It had, apparently, only hit her department today.
"And the failure rate is that bad?" Jeena blinked.
"Yes," Sylia sighed.
"I may have to hire human staff to cover losses," Jeena noted as she excused herself.
"I suspect every department may have that," Reika added.
"Oh, joy," Sylia deadpanned.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"I keep thinking there should be a programming fix," Nene admitted.
Lisa Valante noted to her boss, "You're not even supposed to be doing that."
"Yeah yeah," Nene waved that off.
"Update on Gulf & Bradly," Lisa called up the files, "we've traced several attempts to break into our systems back to them."
"Did our pet hackers have fun?" Nene asked.
"The crew hit back, I think their teams regretted it," Lisa noted.
"We're going to have to take actual steps with them, eventually," Nene mused aloud.
"Not legally," Lisa reminded her.
"No," Nene admitted. She added, "It's too bad Ms. Stingray doesn't have a black projects person any more."
"Doesn't that sort of come with your job?" Lisa teased.
"Really?" Nene batted her eyes.
Lisa laughed. "If we're actually considering direct action," she said, "we can look into some discrete mercs."
"Look into it," Nene agreed, "but we're not acting without an okay. Especially since it might be a snatch and grab."
"Oh?" Lisa looked interested.
"We know whom James was in contact with at G&B. I'd REALLY like to have a talk with him about it," Nene mused.
"Me too," Lisa agreed.
Nene's watch chimed. "Okay, we're done of the day," she ordered.
"Heading home to the wife?" Lisa teased, the rumours about her and Sylia having pretty much reached everyone in Genom by now.
"Damn right," Nene said. She paused when she saw a serious expression on the other's face, "What?"
"You know I'm a boomer, right?" Lisa asked.
"Yes, You ended up using the name of someone connected to somebody I know," Nene noted cautiously.
"Ah," Lisa sighed. "Can you set it up for Dr Yuri to operate on me? I don't want to risk being controlled," she asked.
"There's a failure rate," Nene cautioned.
"I'm aware. I don't want to involuntarily hurt or kill someone," Lisa sighed.
"I'll make the arrangements," Nene promised.
"Thanks, boss," Lisa smiled bravely.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
In a somewhat grungy office out in the old part of town, Fargo was sleeping at his desk.
"Boss, we got trouble," Madigan barged in.
Fargo woke almost instantly, had a gun in hand and was pointing it at her.
"Whoa!" Madigan exclaimed.
"Don't DO that," Fargo relaxed, putting the gun down. With Mason, Yamako and Quincy's deaths, he was a little nervous it was all going to splash on him.
"Sorry, boss," Madigan said. "We have a problem," she put documents on his desk.
Fargo skimmed them, then cursed. "They're re-opening the Mason case?" he frowned.
"Yeah. Out insider just got back to us. Late, damn her," Madigan added a bit bitterly. She continued, "They've assigned Naoko Asami, a really ball buster who does not quit."
"Fuck," Fargo sighed.
"She's going to keep digging until she finds something," Madigan added warily.
Fargo looked off into the distance, thinking. "We throw poor, deceased Jiro Tainaka under the bus," he decided.
"He's connected to us, though," Madigan noted cautiously.
"Not much," Fargo shook his head, "we were middlemen."
"Fair," Madigan conceded.
"The issue is going to be getting the info to the cops without drawing attention to ourselves," Fargo mused aloud.
To be continued...
Notes: I decided to change my mind and introduce a way to 'fix' the issue. However it's horribly impractical and basically destroys 1/3 to 1/2 of the units.
