Shadowrun Legends: Tails You Lose by Lisa Smedman

Author:Lisa Smedman [Smedman, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Published: 2016-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Dr. Silverman leaned an elbow on her desk as she studied the three-dimensional rendering of Alma’s brain that hovered in the air above the projection pad. With a slight frown, she sent a signal along the fiberoptic cable that connected her to a cyberterminal on her desk, commanding the projected image to rotate and sectionalize. Like pieces of sliced bread falling away from the main loaf, slices of the image separated, fell to the horizontal plane and then vanished, allowing the cybersurgeon to look deeper into the brain.

“I don’t see any evidence of chronically dysfunctional tissue,” Silverman said. She pointed with her finger, and a glowing red dot materialized inside the left half of the image, which had been coded yellow and green and blue to differentiate between the different regions of the brain. “I would expect any tissue damage to be localized here, in the precentral gyrus, or here, in the premotor cortex, but both of those regions appear healthy.

“This is your move-by-wire system.” The glowing red dot drifted toward a boxy, black shape at the base of the brain and then followed the tendrils of black that stretched down from it. The display shifted to show a marquee of alphanumeric code and what looked like a circuit-by-circuit diagram.

“It seems to be functioning within normal limits, and all of its synaptic and neural connections are intact. I don’t see any damaged tissue—nothing that would induce temporal lobe epilepsy.”

Alma was reclining on the examining couch with a diagnostic probe plugged into one of the chipjacks at the nape of her neck. The news that her tremors weren’t TLE was reassuring and frightening at the same time. It was a relief to know that her brain tissue wasn’t deteriorating and that her central nervous system wasn’t about to be thrown into a permanent state of seizure. But it was unnerving not to know what was causing the tremors—not to have any data on how severe the problem would become.

Dr. Silverman turned to face Alma. She looked young: she had the muscle tone and smooth skin of someone in her early twenties, but that was probably due to age inhibitors. A gold wedding band with Native totems confirmed her citizenship: only Full Bloods were allowed to wear jewelry or clothing that depicted a clan animal.

“Have you experienced any feelings of alienation or depersonalization?” she asked.

“No.”

“What about perceptual distortions? Any difficulty in determining distance or locating the source of a sound?”

“No. My cyberears and eyes seem to be in perfect order. Why? Do you think they’re the source of the tremors?”

“No.” The doctor shook her head. “Those are just symptoms that can crop up if the move-by-wire system creates a secondary focus in the motor systems. Other symptoms include impotence, incontinence—”

“No,” Alma added quickly. “Nothing like that.”

Dr. Silverman turned back to the brain scan and centered the glowing red dot on a black shadow inside the pons region. Alma recognized the cyberware as the REM inducer. It had the same diameter and thickness

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