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Chapter 6: Stress
And Atasi was having a good week too.
After she set up her manic observational network in her room to detect any supernatural intruders that
might be sneaking in and spying on her she had slept like a baby. Then over the next week of classes at
work, while her detectors hadn’t seen anything, she hadn’t felt anything either. Whatever was following
her around seemed to have stopped. Or at the very least she had snapped herself out of the crazed idea
that a ghost was following her around and couldn’t be seen except by sonar. One way or another she
was significantly less stressed. She had even decided to hang out with her sister. Normally a great
source of stress, but now comfortingly normal. They shared a smoothy and were hanging out on the
collage lawn just fine when Alethea decided to pry into Atasi’s love life, or lack there of, again.
“Sooo whatcha been doing sissy” Alethea teased while rolling on the soft grass of the quad. Atasi was
sitting nearby and reading one of her textbooks while her sister goofed.
“I … normal stuff mostly, I’m sure you’d find it boring you little nut” She teased back. Alethea was
indeed a bit of a nut, not to mention a liberal arts major, the horror.
Atasi loved her sister dearly but being a hard technology major form a family of engineers make relating
to the theater kid of the clan a bit difficult. Not that Alethea was dumb, far from it, she just didn’t much
care.
Alethea pouted, “Oh no you haven’t. you have been extra weird, and looking frazzled, and tired, like
you’ve been having wild sex every night”
Atasi almost choked on her tongue, “Gah. Wha. no. NO I haven’t … what?”
“Hmpf” Alethea grunted, “Damn I was hoping it was that. You need a boy one of these days sis”
“No I do not”
“How about a girl?”
Atasi blushed, but tried to hide it, she hadn’t explored her sexuality much, not that she was a virgin, just
not that interested. Her sister on the other hand was trying on labels like costumes: Straight, bi, gay,
demi, semi, hemi, poly… Atasi lost track of what terms her kid sister used for her orientation at times
and just settled on ‘horny’ most of the time, “Alethea, I know you have a … healthy sex drive.. but I’m
more interested in pursuing my education right now, not finding a mate, of any gender or combination
thereof.”
“Ohh pfft” Alethea scoffed, “you and your books and robots, One of these days you’ll be so hard up that
those drones of yours will start to look hot and then what? hmm. I’ll have to explain why MY nieces and
nephews have propellers!”
Atasi was remembering why she sometimes found her sister stressful as she laid her head back against
one of the giant limestone blocks that seemed to find college campuses to be their natural breeding
ground. She briefly considered giving her sister a good bonk, but decided against it , “So who. or what
are you dating now? It is an adult and has a pulse right?”
“Hey I’m not THAT freaky, OF COURSE they’re and adult, and alive too!!”
‘They’ could mean ‘trans’ or ‘nonconforming’ or ‘the entire drama club’ it was hard to tell where Alethea
was concerned, Atasi decided not to press that point, “Well I’m glad you found, er, ‘THEM’” She said
simply, “I got a job so before you get in one of your ‘lets get me an SO’ moods, keep that in mind
“You mean your job working for Frankenstein?” Aleathea, gave an intentionally exaggerated fake
shudder, “Well I hope you enjoy that creepy lab”
“And I hope you enjoy. uh ‘them’”
“Oh I will.” Alethea smiled, “And do find a guy, or girl or whatever sis, I do think you could use it.”
“Thanks I’ll… Keep it in mind” Atasi said with little intention of doing so, “Thanks for your concern”
“Oh and if you forget how your parts work by the time you get a date, I’ll be happy to come over and
help you remember” Alethea winked.
That time Atasi did bonk her sister, though it was a mostly playful bap on the head with her fist before
they parted ways. It was about time for her to get to her job any way. She was away of her boss’s
nickname ‘Victoria Frankenstein’ instead of ‘Victor’ as it were. Not that her name was Frankenstein, but
working for Medical Mechanica mean working on both robots, and corpses. Her boss’s real name was
Victoria Edwards, went by ‘Vic’ or ‘Vikki’ and was renown in the medical field, working as a doctor, and
as a coroner, before moving to her present position as head researcher at MM in the cybernetics
division. Atasi was glad to work under someone like her even if she could get odd at times. And a
couple times Atasi got to ‘help’ out on things a bit outside her area.
Work was normal as far as it went. Atasi was mostly testing the cyber ware, or automail as some of her
coworkers called it, making sure the new designed worked right, and seeing if the connections were
both sensitive enough to pick up signals from cultured nerve cells AND to send signal back without killing
them. The cell goop was a little gross, but it was part of the job at was far less creepy than hooking
things up to actual severed arms, or heads.
Today would be weirder, Vic needed an extra set of hands, not too unusual, and since Atasi had been
working hard to be useful she volunteered. What she hadn’t realized at first was that what the extra
hands needed help with was a corpse.
Atasi winces as she entered the room and resided the situation. She go the notion that at SOME point
hooking this stuff up to real people would have to happen and cultures and corpses were the first steps.
The fellow in question was mostly just a torso though. Apparently he/she had had a run in with the
business end of a train and was in little position to be used for an open casket funeral. It, Atasi had to
think of it as ‘it’, lacked the to two thirds of its head, its right leg, most of its left, anything that Identified
gender, and bits of the arms.
The missing leg already had some sort of cyberware hooked up to it, and what drew Atasi’s eye, both as
an excuse to look at anything else, and as a slowly dawning realization. was the fact that a piece of
cyberware on the table, apparently ready to be hooked up now that Vic had secured some extra
assistance, did not look very much like the, arms, and legs that Atasi was used to seeing in this company.
This one looked a bit distressingly like a head.