A long night in Toronto....

And that brought up something by the name of Note. In fact, she appeared on the screen...

... and almost deafened the operator running the AI bank search engine with fun and a cheery jingle, akin to what one will usually hear in a supermarket. "It's my turn, right? Please say it's my turn, Danny!" Note's childish face beamed as logically possible at the screen. "C'mon, I saw your search phrase! MUSIC, right? I fiiiiiiiit the bill!" she giggled.

Oh sweet lord it was a female AI.

Gritting his teeth, he figured this was enough, and managed to grumble out, "Yes, I'll be transferring you to a Dice-111 NCS; standard Locke-Kampff human companionship contract. I don't think I need to give you the details, you AIs all already know that fuckin' noise. I'll need your consent signature data before I lock you in for transfer." His hand hovered over the red button on the touchscreen console he was operating, waiting for it to turn green at Note's behest.

Note spun around on one foot, clapping her hands in childish delight as she reached out a finger to tap at the monitor screen, acknowledging her consent in digital form. "Anything for youuuu, Danny boy~" the AI commented, humming an unknown, but jolly, tune. "Whomma I be looking after?"

Daniel's eye twitched very visibly at Note's attempt of a playful call, having been called that before in a situation he'd rather not recall. Tapping the button for transfer, now green from Note's consent, he saw the progress circle fill up nice and quick.

"Don't know, don't want to. I'll still find out, probably, though, considering these kinds of stupid 'premium' orders and their tight-ass details and whatnot."

He disconnected the control unit from the console after a little less than a minute, which made its way into his briefcase. Daniel headed towards the elevator yet again, tapping the button for the employee parking floor. His gleaming red convertible accepted his key, and soon, he was well on his way out of the building and towards Sunnybrook Hospital.

---- Sunnybrook Medical Science Center; Toronto; Friday, February 2nd 3:30 AM....

Daniel arrives at the hospital.

Now bleary-eyed, Daniel left his car, and approached the receptionist's desk, flashing his Laplace ID impatiently as he got there. "Nerve control unit, rush order. Dice-111, AI preload," he spat out.

The receptionist typed a few quick commands into her terminal, then looked up and said: "One moment." The receptionist then held up a device, and pressed a button on the back of it. It made a camera sound effect, and she set the device back down on her desk. Daniel had just been 'signed in'. "Room 119. Follow the red line." A couple of taps later and a line on the floor glowed red, leading Daniel to his destination.

Glad that it was looking to be a nice and smooth transition to his eventual pillow, Daniel dragged himself and his briefcase along the gleaming red line, which made it easy to traverse the sprawling hospital. Not that it was that hard, Room 119 was apparently pretty close by. A simple knock on the door, and Daniel waited.

Cassidy could have entered the operating room covered in muck, after a dive into sewage, or having gargled radium-water. It wouldn't have made any difference to Art.

She wasn't even in the same room as Adrian Tremblay.

Cassidy flicked her hands through the air like she was trying to dry them off.

Adrian Rogers Tremblay's unconcious body flickered into a simulated view, the haptic-tactile controls of the room Cassidy stood in moving the surgical automachines into their ready positions. Telemetry was a wonderful thing.
She moved toward the simulated 'gram, placing a hand over his chest, snapping the fingers upward. Art's simulated body twisted 180 degrees, revealing the swollen skin around the splenicus capitis.

"Ugh. Dirty, dirty. Mneme, isolate, scan." Cassidy's fingers sketched out an area, detailing it out for her AI as she looked Art's body up and down.
The skin at the shoulder blades to neck went transparent, Cassidy reaching over the muscles and continuing to shake her head before stepping back.

"Mneme, Music. Playlist, ahhh- random."

"Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago,-"

Cassidy droned out, falling into her work. She idly hummed along once in a while.


"Hmmm-mmm, Clavicle, Scapula, cold hard ground, intact." She slowly dissected the pieces of the previous implant out, prepping for the new one and-


Knock, knock

"Intercom, on." A small 'gram would be appearing outside, complete with all the sound in the room.

"Button next to door. How can I help you?" Cassidy's face bore the same smirk it always did when focused.

"Button next to door. How can I help you?"

The intercom inside responded as quickly as he expected, though with a little bit of music blaring out as well. Normally, he wouldn't mind; remote ORs often had that sort of thing, and he'd often heard the odd death metal blare out before being muted. No big deal.

"'Cause I knew you were trouble when you walked iiiin~♪"

Except this one.

"So shame on me no-ow, flew me to places I'd never beeeen~♪"

Cassidy's smirking face, combined with the vocal "assistance" from the famous singer, caused him to swallow hard; his verbal inhibitions were getting difficult to handle. Just get this over with, he told himself. He could be home pretty quickly, and it'd be over, maybe get to wake up at 10. Quick exhale, just press the button.

"Here with the new NCU."

Of course, knocking was really just all the courtesy Daniel was willing to offer as he let himself in and glanced about the room. With the most stoic face he could muster, enduring the music in the room, he popped his briefcase open slightly and took out what he was there for.

The little device then sat in his hand, an artificially intelligent management program in hibernation inside of it.

"Thanks a bunch!" Cassidy glanced over, the grin still on her face. "Whatcha think of the operation so far? I've extracted most of the defunct implant. Does that look like a hack job to you or what?" Her voice cut through the music, which she didn't bother turning down at all, the door sliding shut automatically behind Daniel like a sentence to spend some time with the chatterbox surgeon.

"Did you get a chance to look up who did the previous work for this poor guy? His name is Adrian. Nice abs. Shame about his CNS. And the name." She paused, tilting her head, then flicked her hands sideways, upward, then made a "cut" motion through the air.

You're droooowning~,

The room's lights dimmed slightly, and the holograms froze.

"Alright. I think he's ready. This'll have to go through sterilization and through a 'lock. Put it through there, would you?" Cassidy motioned at what looked like a closed hole in the wall, which irised open.

And then I reeaaalize, the joke is on me- hey!~

"I'll start prepping the procedure to get it in-"

"Adrian Rogers Tremblay is being maintained in his medical stasis."

"Thanks, Mneme. Ah, right. Where are my manners? I'm Cassidy Adler. I run the place. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to stick around after the operation. We have to check to make sure the AI is running properly. Sorry about the inconvenience." Cassidy's voice never deviated from a cheerful, upbeat tone as she continued to flick through operating procedure, not even when apologizing.

So shame on me now~

All Daniel could muster was a single grunt and nod as he tried to block out the annoying music over Cassidy's voice. His head throbbing with physical and mental tiredness, the engineer-turned-technician did as he was told and let the control unit pass into the little hole in the wall.

Till you put me down, oh, I knew you were trouble when you walked in~♪

There's one peppy little shit I won't see again, he tried reassuring himself, as he watched it disappear to be installed to interface with some random stranger's spine. Adrian... what a kind of name to be stuck with.

Now I'm lying on the cold hard grooound, oh~♪

He grumbled at Cassidy's request. "Dan. Do I have to stand around here or what, I'd kinda like a power nap or something if I'm gonna be here longer than right now."

Trouble, trouble, trouble~♪

He massaged his right temple, trying to keep himself both awake and composed. If only that blasted speaker with that awful music would play something else. Something else besides this... thing that was currently hammering at his patience.

"Oh, I don't think you should. Should at least record the presence of the implant to the point where it's embedded in the subject." Cassidy paused, then started moving the instruments once again, humming.

"The implant should be surveyed as part of the proceedings by you, as a representative of Laplace Industries, Daniel Shields. I, Mneme, apologise on behalf of my partner, Cassidy. She is engrossed in her surgical proceeding. Hopefully, this should not take much longer than a few hours."

The music finally switched.

On a dark desert highway-

Cool wind in my hair-

Warm smell of colitas-

"A... few hours," repeated Daniel.

Up ahead in the distance

Restricted from his usual tirade of sailor talk, the sleep-deprived engineer let out the most drawn-out groan he'd groaned that night, and the overtime had given him more than enough.

I saw a shimmering light

Stupid music was also just pretty much lulling him along...

My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim

He was about to protest, but all that came out was random murmuring. Leaning against the wall, he tried to fight the lyrics of the song currently trying to cast him off to dreamland.

"Okay so just to lay out the double cores into their respective bits. Mneme, give me some new cutters and get ready to do some suturing with me. Going to need to make these nice and perfect after all that."

"Your guest, Daniel Shields appears to be falling asleep. Shall I wake him?"

"No, leave it. We need to focus, anyhow." Cassidy posed her hands, beginning surgery once again on Art's back, which looked as if the upper half and his neck had been flayed. The skin, removed entirely, portions of muscle and bone lifted out in virtual holographic squares, looked at, examined, then put to one side or the other. The cores were inserted without complications, and began a diagnostic check.

Cassidy didn't show a single sign of worry, beginning to sew up her patient already, creating micro-sutures through the flesh made of bio-artificial replacement. There was a slight spray misting over the barely visible stitched up wound, limiting both swelling and creating an artificial covering for Adrian's still-sensitive "replacements".

The heaviness in Daniel's eyes gave out after about five seconds or so, and he disappeared...

"Wha--"

Daniel jerked awake to some unknown stimuli, and shook his head. The HUD on his glasses indicated that it was... about a three-hour nap against some wall. Damn, how'd he nod off so quickly. Glancing over at Cassidy, he murmured, "Done yet?"

"I've been done for ah- two hours? Two hours, six minutes now. Just waiting for you to wake up while going over the documents I'll have to read. His previous implants were quite a hack-job. It's almost like they used a mishmash of unshielded tech. Kind of like cobbling together a car out of other cars. Not good cars, either. Sure, it'll run, but it's like an accident waiting to happen. I actually had to go in and extract some of the "artificial nerves" that were branching out onto other nerves." Cassidy rapped the holo-sheet the room had projected into her hand.

"The Dice-111 on the other hand is much better. Almost even affordable. Much less destructive, much less of a mechanical monstrosity but needs an AI-level intelligence to monitor and compensate, otherwise there'll be significant delay, making it all kinds of useless. Wonderfully shielded, also subcutaneous. Could have subvocalized commands to the AI as well, or would specific muscle group movements be easier? Depends. Some more efficient in other areas. Er. Sorry, talking about irrelevant things. I apologize." Her voice cheerful, indicating no sense of remorse whatsoever as she offered a hand to Daniel Shields.

"Mneme is currently tending to Adrian's vitals and the AI within. I believe you have to activate it? We should go to the recovery room to do that. Then there's forms I-35b and c, and the Therapeutic Specialty Care form. I imagine you can get them done within an hour or two, at least."

Exhaling audibly, he jabbed a couple of fingers at his eyelids to try and jerk himself awake a little more, cursing himself that he didn't wake up at least a little earlier. Sleeping while standing did not do well for his joints. Waving off Cassidy, he gave her no response except a murmured "All right." He was glad to be having even a small walk, at least, doing a light stretching.

"If you could put your stuff on those forms so I could go over 'em in the other room, that'd be killer, then."

Afterwards, opening the door, Daniel was about to let himself out, before realizing he didn't know where they were going. Not in his current state, anyway.

"Ladies first," he gruffly stated, offering the exit to Cassidy with a half-awake look.

"Why thank you, Mister Shields, for your courteous gesture." Cassidy said earnestly, leading the way but continuing to talk. "Can't suggest sleeping upright for too long. It makes you shorter because of the discs in your back. Compression. Also bad for circulation. Could cause a tophus, gout, miscellaneous other issues."

She passed through a couple of doors, sliding her card through two sets of doors, one set of double-doors and then into a recovery room. "He's stable."