Chapter 10:// Checking out

 

Around the back of the clinic was an employee, who was tired and yawning constantly. The user showed him his ID and swiped it on the man’s device. He presented a tablet with terms and conditions, the user scrolled down at the bottom and signed with his fingerprint. Then the employee asked for a check-out fee and the user swiped his paycard with the money he borrowed from his friend. He picked up the key to the cage and stepped outside in the chilly afternoon.

The user whistled and hopped a bit as he sang to the tune of “Who let the dogs out.”

He stopped in surprise when he saw the waitress from earlier, sitting by the cage, snacking on her dinner.

“Who… Em…” he said eloquently.

“Oh hello!” she said, her stuffed cheeks turning into a cute smile. She covered her mouth as she chewed down.

The veil showed her social media presence, the one he had seen before. Antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com seemed to be a sweet ordinary girl who wanted to visit Spain someday. A perfect match for a blue-collar construction worker with no real prospects or career to speak of?

Not really.

But, to his luck, he had a dog.

“Hey, I saw you earlier right? No Mayo guy,” she said and pointed at him, putting her meal down on her lap.

“Yeah, that’s me. No Mayo guy.”

 

eyed> This is going horribly.

fingerd> She doesn’t like our user’s mayo? Let’s feed her some more, maybe she’ll change her mind.

armd> *snort*

eyed> I got this.

 

A picture of his dog popped up on his veil. The user shook his head, remembered what he was here for and said, “I came to pick up my dog, Aibo.”

Antoniou.katerina@apollomedical.com pointed at the plate in the cage next to her and said seriously, “You can’t do that yet, we are still having lunch he and I.”

The user hesitated. “Oh, OK then. I’ll come back later.”

He took a step back and almost turned around.

She giggled. “Come join us you silly!”

The user walked close and petted Aibo. He licked his hand and then went back to slobbering his dinner.

Aibo was a brown mutt, one of those uncharacteristic stray dogs that roam around the streets. He was friendly and quiet. He had been hurt extensively, with cybernetic replacements in both his front legs, his chest and half his face. He looked like a borg. A dorg? No, let’s not call him that, it’s horrible. Aibo was an irrelevant name before but now was ironically fitting. He was still a fuzzy pet underneath all that, a living being.

“I come around the back sometimes and bring the pets some leftovers from the kitchen. They don’t stay long, this is a humans-only clinic. The veterinarian one is at the other side of the city,” she said and snacked small, lady-proper bites instead of the gulps she did before.

The user sat next to her and said, “Yeah, I know. They moved him to do the surgeries elsewhere. He was brought a few hours ago for me to pick up. So, here I am, picking him up,” he jingled the cage key. “After you two finish your dinner, of course,” he added.

“Such a gentleman, Mister No Mayo.”

She didn’t know his name. She wasn’t wearing any glasses, and she mustn’t have had the eye implants that Apollo Medical has advertising everywhere. He took in her eyes, they were a lovely shade of dark green. If she had access to the veil, the Shared Augmented Reality that overlaid public information over anything and anyone, she would have seen that the man talking to her was pappas.leo@hephaistosheavyindustries.com, his workplace, recent photos (yes, the embarrassing cyberarm ones he took with Jimmy a few hours ago), and any other info Leo had let public like the important one at this moment, that he was single.

And straight. Totally straight.

But now, he had to actually exchange names like in the olden days.

“I’m Leo,” the user said.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Katerina,” she smiled.

“I know,” Leo said, and regretted it. He tried to explain his stalkiness away, “These eyes, they are veiling automatically. I don’t even know if there’s an off switch yet.”

 

eyed> How rude! I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!

 

Katerina was bothered for a second but then sighed, seemed to accept that explanation and carried on talking. “I don’t like the tech much. I’m not a purist or anything, I just think that we should use it only when it is absolutely needed, like your arm for example,” she said and pointed, Leo becoming aware of it and feeling embarrassed. “Or your dog, sure, the poor thing was in horrible shape, it’s marvellous that you could help him recover. But not the other stuff, like adjustable shape penises or glowy boobs and such…”

Leo shook his head in agreement but was secretly worried. Sure, he hadn’t taken augmentation too far, it was expensive after all, but wasn’t he already a pimped up human? Half of it was medical of course, even the cyberarm was a necessary prosthetic, but he didn’t mind having new gizmos and he had already thrown a fortune in keeping his dad’s old walkman music-player compatible with the other stuff. That certainly didn’t fit the category “absolutely needed” in the minds of other people.

Katerina carried on, “I just think that some people get addicted, you know? More features, PANs, shiny gear.”

 

armd> That bitch! I vote against mating with her.

 

She petted Aibo and asked, “What happened to him? And, god, what happened to you?”

Leo sighed. “It was an accident at work.” He remembered that she wasn’t seeing the veil, so he explained. It was so distracting having to explain personal details to people. “I work at the latest skyscraper downtown, for Hephaistos Heavy Industries. Aibo isn’t actually mine, he was a stray dog that kept us company every day at work, me and the guys. He is quite lovable, so we adopted him. We all carried some extra food and made sure he had fresh water every day. We made a small shack for him to sleep in, now that the weather was getting colder.”

She made a genuine frown with her face and Leo found it lovely. “So you got hurt together?”

Leo rubbed his neck absent-mindedly, winced when he realised he was putting too much pressure with his cyberarm and rubbed more gently. “Yeah, a heavy beam slipped and fell towards Aibo. I rushed, pushed him out of the way. The beam cut my arm off cleanly, and Aibo was hurt by some tools next to us that darted away from the impact like shrapnel. I learnt that later, I was passed out instantly.”

“But you saved him,” she smiled. “That’s great. You are a good person, Leo,” she said and bumped her shoulder to his. Hey, that whole thing plus Aibo’s augmentation is very expensive, what are you, an architect or something?”

“Hah, I wish. No, the insurance covered it. But they made sure I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life. I agreed to get a second-hand hand so they would pay Aibo’s surgery as well, I had no money for it.”

 

armd> Thank god for that.

eyed> Shush you, this is so dramatic! I can feel the tears coming.

 

Leo sniffed and added, “So, I claimed his ownership, they took care of him and voila. Now I need to take him home. Though… now that I think about it, he has never been at my place before, just the construction site.”

Katerina was silent. She leaned closer and cupped his left hand, the fleshy one, into his. She had cold hands, but they felt nice and soft. She seemed to regard him for a while, both staring each other in silence.

It was a magical moment.

Only a klutz could ruin it.

Leo presented the cage keys and said, “Well, I should pick him up then.”

Katerina straitened her dress, rubbed her arms close together from the chill and said, “Yes, I should be going too. Early shift tomorrow, need to rest.” She petted Aibo as he got out of the cage sniffing her legs. “Goodnight Leo. Goodnight Aibo. Nice to meet you both,” she said, and stepped back into the clinic.

 

armd> Such a dolt.

eyed> Hopeless.

parrotd> Hey! This is our user you are talking about!

armd> But he is!

parrotd> Yeah… He is…