Port Casper

Chapter Nine

Raj's security recognized Grace's ptenda and let her into the apartment. She avoided a pile of mechflesh components strewn by the door. She liked Raj, but after living an academy life, the disarray of Raj's home was already getting to her. She couldn't wait to get into her own apartment. Her own apartment! She'd never had her own place. She wanted to shout out her success, but stopped short when she heard an unusual voice wafting out of the workroom.

Grace walked over and listened in the doorway. Raj was apparently finishing up a contract with a surgeon on the Moon. He was reconstructing the nervous system of a steelback roider. The roider had, against good advice, used a makeshift power cell to finish a contract faster and garner a bonus. She'd heard Raj talking about this before--it must be a common problem. She knew that even with upgrades available, mechflesh relished operating outside their designs. Four out of five times a steelback lifted more weight without being caught, but the fifth time often proved fatal.

"You have to be extremely cautious of the voltage level as you reset his neural network, Manuel. In any other reset, it doesn't have any bearing, but in this case it's a prime indicator the reset has gone wrong. He'll die if the current spikes."

"Understood. I'll reconnect with you later, Raj."

The connection terminated. Raj swiveled in his chair and raised his eyebrows at her. "Well?" he asked, giving Tim a playful scratch behind the ears.

"Go figure, Raj. I start in forty-eight hours."

"Where?" Tim and Raj said at once.

Grace frowned at Tim. "Your toy is programmed to be inquisitive?"

"Yes and no, Grace. Just a gadget, remember?" Raj said. "What company? Did you get housing? You're still welcome here, if not."

"ITB. Security Specialist II. Paycheck, housing, operating stipend, auto extend three-and-three with a six. Mango, or what?"

Raj slouched into his chair and looked at Tim, who returned the stare. Grace glanced from one to the other.

"What?" Grace asked. "Something wrong?"

"No, it's good, Grace. ITB is a large, profitable and ambitious company," Raj murmured.

"Congratulations, Ms. Donner," Tim said.

Grace ignored the PodPooch politeness. Hearing words from the device made her uneasy. She had a dog when she was a little girl. Back on the ranch. She could tell anything to her Sport and get nothing but love back in return. The PodPooch creeped her out.

"ITB is giving us trouble, Grace," Raj said.

"What sort of trouble?"

"That company has an eye for new tech," Raj said. "They'd prefer to steal it rather than acquire it legally. How'd you think their profits are so high?"

"That's ridiculous, Raj. ITB would need the smaller operators to be healthy."

Raj shook his head. "No, Grace. I've had to develop decoy tech just to keep ITB at bay. They just swiped a muscle design I put out there to keep them away from the important stuff."

Grace's head started to pound. Had she made a mistake? Or was Raj stupidly anti-corp?

"Come on," she said, "Wyoming Compstate wouldn't let that nonsense go on. The Americas Commerce Agreement stipulates that each tech has a price and all are licensed. New technologies, absolutely new ideas, are protected for ten years."

"Stealing is profitable and least detectable before the initial licensing," Raj said.

"So get a patent, Raj," she said.