Chapter Seventy-Four - All Ears

Chapter Seventy-Four - All Ears I could tell that Baker was tired of my shit, but I really didn't care. I had him pull out the best he had and open it up. It really wasn't as bad as I feared. The cochlear implant was in a nice case. I wasn't sure if it was the one it was originally sold in, but it was clean enough. I looked it up, of course. Implants had serial numbers on them, and there were forums where you could post a pic and some nerd would ID something. The trick was to post it with a plausible but incorrect name, and then someone would get all hot and bothered and give you the exact name, make, model, and the names of the people on the factory line when it was made. In any case, the cochlear implant wasn't bad. The Atyacus model F1R3 had a good rep and was considered pretty sturdy. Brand new, they went for fourteen grand. Baker here was selling these for six. No outstanding issues on the installation and the operation was considered a one-and-done kind of thing. A good shop could have them installed in under an hour. They were semi-popular with PMCs for being a step above the military-grade hearing protection that the army handed out to its soldiers. Military-grade often meant lowest-bidder grade, and no one wanted to go deaf because of bad implants. I was interested. The filters were some no-name brand. Well, no, not quite. They were made by some Chinese company, knock-offs of a higher-quality bit of cyberware that was made by a bioware company. They were a lot more complex to install, requiring a special surgical suite for internal operations. Basically, they were attached to the collarbone by a set of rings, with a port right below the neck. The port led into a tube that went all the way down to the base of the trachea. There, the trachea was opened up and a space was made for the filter. The port allowed one to slide the filter out, and slide a new one in. It looked rather annoying, honestly, and reviews online suggested that even a clean filter made breathing just a little harder. The upside was that the non-knockoffs were better than any disposable mask on the market for respiratory protection. The downside was that it made coughing less effective. I... decided against it. Honestly, this was almost a wash, except for one thing. When I turned to Baker and started to grill him, he folded quickly. I got his number, and knew what to say. In a few days I'd call him up and warn him of the incoming raid. In exchange, he'd be setting those cochlear implants aside. Honestly... I was partly tempted to just not bother. I could buy good stuff now, without jumping through hoops, but this might be free if I played my cards right, and free was tempting. That, and Baker wasn't a bad egg. A bit uncomfortable with me, but I actually looked into his records--while he ran off to get his guards--and the good doc did really, really cheap operations on kids and sold some things at a loss for people that needed it. I Reloaded before I could get into too much trouble. I'd help. Not just because Baker wasn't a terrible sort, but also because it was sticking it to the man, and that was punk as fuck. With the Reload, I was back home, which meant it was time to get to work. I had a lot of stuff to train, and unlimited time to do it. Of course, the power went out around eight. I blinked, then swore as I remembered that this had happened last time too, when I took my week-long loop to scout ahead. Fucking Brightbarrow messing with the power. I never did figure out how and why the power cut, but it was annoying as shit. It made my training loops a lot shorter. Oh well. It wasn't like I needed power to practice on the guitar, or train up my magic. I had the spells downloaded onto my laptop, and this was my new one, with a solid battery that would last the three-ish hours that the power was out. So I trained. First a guitar loop, jamming out to a bit of Nirvana (not my all-time favourite, but they had a few bangers that weren't too hard to follow) then I did some French practice, unable to forget how Louise had shot me down. I'd show her. Next time I'd be faster, without as much of an accent. Of course, I remembered what I'd said to her, and cringed when I realized that my grammar had been ass. Unlike English, where wording in the order rightly was goodish enough, French was a very careful and deliberate language if you wanted to speak it correctly. Damned annoying to learn, though. It had too many rules and exceptions to those rules. After a half-dozen loops mixing French and guitar lessons, basically spending a solid nine-to-ten hours on both, I got to practicing my magic. I carved out the shape for Restore Stamina, which took two loops to figure out. It was just a level one spell, but the shape of it was three-dimensional compared to the much flatter cantrips I'd picked up so far. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Still, by the end of the second loop, the shape looked correct, and I just needed to figure out the casting of it. I had... a fair bit more magical energy now than when I'd started. Probably like, a solid twenty-percent more over three weeks, which wasn't nuts, but it gave me more wiggle room. No wonder people were encouraged to learn spells in order. I don't think I had the juice in the tank to cast third-level spells yet. Not consecutively, at least. Restore Stamina was a spell linked with Pensiveness, which was... a weird emotion. I read up on it, and it mostly boiled down to that feeling that came from being in your own head. Yeah, I was good at that. I was constantly in my own head. I could spend a full day doing nothing but worrying, plotting my own future, trying to figure things out, or lusting after some hot lady. It wasn't hard to get that emotion right. It was hard to get it right and then cast with it, because the emotion didn't lend itself to activity. Weird dichotomy there. Maybe that was why mages along the Nature axis weren't considered good front-liners? I could see an Anger mage having no difficulty casting mid-combat, but when the emotion you needed was 'thinking too hard?' yeah, that was going to require practice. Anyway, I launched the spell, and then waited to feel it. And feel it I did. It was like downing an espresso, then taking a pull from a cigarette all at once. A hit of energy that coursed through me all at once. "Woo," I said, letting a single breath out. That was a lot. It was a good lot, though. I was pretty sure that my carving wasn't perfect, but whatever. I'd show it to Dharti next time, and she might be able to help me refine it, lower the magical energy cost, and make it easier to cast. Next, I Reloaded, and even if I lost the carving, that was fine. I had it down enough that I knew I could recarve it in under an hour. Exhaust Senses was next. That one was a bit more and less complex to carve. The biggest issue, of course, being that I didn't have a target to practice it on. Well, there was Mister Couchtop, but I wouldn't hurt him, even in a loop that I didn't intend to keep. Hell, I'd Reloaded once after stepping on his tail because I didn't want to live with the guilt. Ah... wait... there was me. I bought the spell off of a guild site, carved the spell out, selected the 'vision' component, then tried to get into the right mindset for it. Exhaust Senses required Boredom. Damned easy emotion to get, that one. I just stood there, watching the clock on my wall switch. It was a digital clock. It took ages to switch. Once I was considering clawing my face off, I cast, and then blinked. The room was blurry. It was like opening my eyes after a good nap. Everything was slightly off-focus. Not in a way that would stop me, but it was annoying. Interesting. I tried again with 'hearing' and this time it felt like I was listening to everything with fingers in my ears. Muffled, but not deafened. Reloading and recarving the spell let me test out 'touch' and 'smell' and 'taste.' Basically covering the basic-bitch senses. No proprioception, or like, sense of time or direction or whatever. Touch made me feel slightly tingly, like I'd slept on all of my limbs at once. Smell... made me smell like my nose was blocked by a cold, and taste made things taste less. I'd probably only rely on sight and sound, then, in a fight. The spell could be targeted to myself, but also to others. The interesting part being that it was fairly short ranged, but entirely invisible, and didn't have any physical impact. So, if I was in a fight, I could make someone see less well, and hear less well, and unless they were very well attuned to magical senses, they might not notice at all. The better version of the spell, at higher levels, simply cut those senses out, but that was... interestingly non-viable for stealth. People would freak out at going blind or deaf. They wouldn't at having their vision go a bit blurry or getting their ears muffled. In my last loop, I carved Exhaust Senses from memory, then Restore Stamina, and then crashed into bed, low on magical energy and mentally exhausted. Tomorrow was Tuesday the 24th of September, and two Luna Corp employees were going to die if I didn't do anything, so it was going to be a busy day. ***