2024 June Post 03 - Synergy 01

Since I'm making this up as I go, I'm not sure how I really want to do this story. I have the basic plot in my head but I'm not sure if and how I should introduce POV characters, or if it should be a sequence of vignettes.

***

Chapter 1 – Investment

Two men in suits stand in darkness, in front of an internal glass wall; on the other side a creature sits on a plain medical bed. The creature is black and roughly humanoid, with large clawed feet, a bear’s head, and a long thick tail. Only its head and neck have fur, the rest is smooth hide. The creature is sitting still, holding out an arm while a person in a hazmat suit keeps a close eye on the intravenous line feeding something from an unmarked metal cylinder into the creature.

One of the two men, an older man with short grey hair and no hint of a smile, lights a cigarette and pulls out a datapad. He peers over his glasses while scrolling casually with one finger, and starts speaking without looking at the other man. “Department of sequencing and synthesis, gamma lab, one week, plus consumables. Twenty-five million eight hundred and fourteen credits. Nanites, proprietary, no cost. Unsanctioned replication technology for nanites; eighty thousand credits allocated for potential fines. Computer says only 5% likelihood it’d get to court, but it still represents lost revenue.” The man breathes out some smoke, scrolls down a bit further, briefly makes eye contact before finishing. “Synthetic organism. No cost?” The old man looks at the other man, slightly confused.

The other man, middle with short curled red hair that seems to defy gravity, grins. “Combat biosynthetic. Decanted fourty-two years ago, decommissioned and wiped two years later. Auctioned off to tritium mogul, where they served as private security for nine years. The records get a bit fuzzy but they ended up at a sleazy bar where they spent at least the past eight years as both waitress and escort. Law enforcement raided the bar and seized the synth. I pulled some strings and got them to donate them to us.” The red-haired man chuckles smugly at the bemused smoking man. He resumes. “Responds to ‘Nikki’. Early model, so no trackers or markers. Not the cleverest synth ever made, but more than good enough for our purposes. Picked up god knows what habits and notions in the fourty years after they were decommissioned – definitely picked up some odd behaviors from their time in that bar.”

The older man frowns and in a data field enters a ‘0’ on his datapad. “So it’s old, what does the maintenance and life cycle cost look like?” He types, making a new entry in his list. The younger man shrugs. “It’s a biosynth. Not a lot of conventional maintenance you really can do on these. It’s all biological materials when you get deep down. We’re just going to have the nanites maintain it. We need the nanites to rewrite its DNA anyway in order to insert the fusion sequence – it’s the only cost effective way. It doesn’t need to last long anyway, it’s just a technology demonstrator – once it’s served its purpose we can move on.”

The old man appears satisfied and writes N/A in the ‘maintenance’ entry. “This makes it the most expensive synthetic by unit cost in official company inventory. It better pay off.” The younger man smirks. “It will. I have a good feeling about this.”