Private The deal

[Shot Sutaz]

Location: Naboo, Locke and Key head office
Time: Noon

It was a sunny day on the planet of Naboo, as per usual. As she made her way through the brick laid streets and old architecture, her pure black eyes can't help but be enthralled by it all. This wasn't like anything she'd seen before. Nothing like the cities back on Denon, no. This place had bothered to preserve nature, to live in relative harmony with it. She was surrounded in the freshest air she had ever breathed since the day she was born. She was dressed in her usual attire. A short white jacket with skinny jeans and black metal toed leather boots. Under it all she wore a form fitting bodysuit, meant to hide the lines on her body that were the gaps between cybernetics and flesh, and to hold in moisture, as it was good for what real skin she had left. In her left hand, she carried a suitcase. Within it was the thing she had to wager would change her life.

She arrives at the entrance to the building soon after, head slowly tilting back to take it all in. It was prettier than any office building on Denon. Stepping through the doors and into the building, she speaks to the receptionist, showing her identification and sorting out any remaining paperwork. After that, she heads through another door, having been told which room her meeting was taking place in.

A purple nautolan peeks through the door, gaze darting about to make sure it's the right room. She then steps all the way inside. "Mr. Locke? I'm here for the appointment. Shot Sutaz, cybernetics specialist." She gives a polite bow of her head as she approaches the table, moving to take her seat. "Bear with me, this'll take a minute." She places her suitcase on the table, oepning it to reveal various tools and a pair of cybernetic hands. She then sits down in her seat, rolling her sleeves up. Her arms are covered in lines from the panels, revealing her to be quite the cybernetic user herself. Though, it gets stranger at a closer glance. The tentacles on the back of her head also has those lines. All of them. Just how mechanical is this girl? Either way, she's currently digging into her left arm with a screwdriver, undoing bolts and wires around the wrist area of her lower arm. "Though mundane, I designed my current arms to be able to withstand combat situations. So the parts are wound together nice and tight." She looks up from her work briefly. "In the meantime while I do the hand switch, feel free to lay any inquiries you have on me."

John Locke

 

[John Locke]

Location: Conference Room | Locke and Key Offices | Theed | Naboo
Tagging: Shot Sutaz

Locke and Key was a market leader in cybernetics, in fact, it was much of a stretch to say that they were the market leader in the galaxy. Everyday gigabytes of data, of research and proposals, came streaming across his desk. The result of a company that spent billions of credits in the development and use of cybernetics. It wasn't why John had started the company, he'd always wanted to go into droid production and maintenance. At one time the man had envisaged a series of small shops, much like a series of speeder garages spread across Corellia and the surrounding planets. A place that people could come to with their broken droids, with their appliances that needed repairs and they could find a friendly smile, a cheap fix for families that couldn't afford more than that.

In the end, reality had taken a spin that he hadn't expected, burying his plans under an avalanche of growth and expansion. Locke and Key wasn't a name that brought to mind the local shops and mechanics he had once envisaged. It was a galaxy-spanning corporation with fingers in more pies than he could have imagined. That reputation, that demand, required constant innovation, to keep bringing in new ideas and products to maintain that cutting edge. That's why he was here, in this meeting. The idea itself was novel, an interesting one, an innovation that was so simple in concept that he wondered why no one else had thought of it. Cybernetic or even droid limbs weren't limited in the same way that organic limbs were, they could be as wide and varied as you could imagine.

Dark eyes settled on the Nautolan, his eyes watching her thoughtfully for a moment as he considered the limbs before him before they lifted to catch the woman's gaze.

"You're obviously no slouch when it comes to Cybernetics, I've found that a lot of my best engineers are actually cyborgs themselves. Although I've rarely met someone who was as heavily implanted as myself."

Where the woman's cybernetics were all visible from the surface John had opted for a different route with his cybernetics. His implants were all primarily internal, hiding just beneath the surface of his skin. If you didn't catch his gaze, see the light shining out of his gaze you might never know that he was barely human.

"How capable are the digits? How strong? They might be able to use a keyboard, but how easily will they break when pressure is exerted?"

 

[Shot Sutaz]

"Never really wanted all these cybernetics. You can thank an accident caused by the disaffected youth program on Denon for that. Instead of fixing their mistakes, they left me in the hospital to die. I was too expensive to fix." An assortment of screws and bolts have been placed on the table now, and her left forearm comes off with relative ease. "Installing shouldn't take nearly as long, sorry for the wait." Her eyebrows raise a bit as she realizes her words sound strange out of context. "Denon is a corporate hellhole. The...disaffected youth program is.....At the front, it's a program to give orphans a home. and education, and a job so they can function in society instead of being street urchins." Her lips purse for a moment. "Truth is, those kids receive espionage and combat training, to serve as agents for their corporate masters. Kids as young as 15-17 serving as hitmen and bodyguards, their payment being a bed to sleep on, and the stuff they give you to do your job. Nothing more. After all, who is there to stand up for a barely known orphan? I was their slicing and hacking specialist. They picked me up off the streets, and I was just happy to have a bed." She shrugs slightly. "I got caught in an explosion on an op, legs, arms, spine, tentacles on the back of my head and parts of my brain, all gone. I was barely clinging to life. Instead of paying, they did what I mentioned earlier. Had to work for a year to pay off the debt that was dumped on me for the cybernetics the hospital gave me to keep me alive. Apparently the doctor hated the program, called in a few favors to at least keep me alive so that I'd actually get to pay off the debt."

With all the parts in place, she slips the arm on, and there's a whirr as everything connects. "I probably dumped more on you than I should have. But you seemed curious about the cybernetics I have." She once again looks up at him. "And you're the leader of a corporate beast. I'll admit to this being a secondary goal of the meeting. This program deserves to be vilified, and I'm going to put my story in people's ears until it is. Especially if it's powerful people. But the primary goal of this meeting isn't sob stories." She shakes her head. "It's profit, it's what we both want, and it's what we're both going to get if all goes well."

When he begins questions about the cybernetic itself, she nods, willing it to extend into all those extra digits instead of normal hands, like branches of a tree. "Quite capable and dexterous." She tosses a group of ten credit chips into the air, and reaches out the hand towards them. The fingers work at blinding speed, grabbing and wrapping about each credit like tendrils. She then proceeds to use different portions of the hand to juggle 2-3 credit chips at a time in the air. She speaks idly while the hand continues to do it. "Some modularity is capable. I've already sorted out specs for a mod that gives it the ability to deliver shocks. You could wrap the digits around someone's face in a grab and have them braindead in seconds. Though, there are weaknesses unfortunately." She sighs. "When unextended." She places the credits onto the table, and has the cybernetic retract back into a normal hand. "It's about as durable as the average hand, if not a bit more thanks to metal reinforcement. When extended, it can withstand some force, however they aren't meant to be used in full on hand to hand combat as a weapon. If they take a large blunt object, a hard sword swing, they won't hold. Perhaps they won't break, but there will be bending and denting. Due to the size and minor width of the digits....It's hard to make them completely structurally sound when extended. Point is, these are a slicer's tools, not a warrior's tools. Fighter's aren't the demographic I'm going for. Mind you, you've been at this longer than I. Maybe you know some techniques that I don't in regards to keeping the digits durable." She shrugs.

John Locke

 

[John Locke]

"I don't think there are many people who grow up wanting to be cyborgs, it's more like something that's thrust upon you and you learn to make the best of it."

The man's eyes glanced down at his hands, mechanical fingers bending and flexing, he knew that it was all in his head but he imagined that everytime his fingers moved they would make a creaking mechanical whirring sound, the sound of motors working. The sound of his very first prosthetics after the accident. The heavy prosthetics that had taken forever to put on, to modify, to do anything with. These days his prosthetics were cutting edge, even beyond the cutting edge but the memory of those early cybernetics continued to haunt him, to weigh on his memory and his thoughts.

"Trust me, I more than understand, take your time, I'm in no rush."

The man well understood the trials of dealing with changes in cybernetics, in trying to slip one set off to replace them with another. They had to be just tight enough to fit securely, which made loosening them even more problematic, an even greater issue. That the woman was capable of managing the alteration without any assistance was impressive in its own right.

Her engineering skill might have been impressive, but the words she spoke, almost off-handedly made a much deeper impact.

You often saw this kind of scene in movies, he would have been tapping his fingers on his desk, or rolling a coin between his fingers, something, anything to show a movement stilling, the coin slowing coming to a stop. Unfortunately, John lacked the foresight to pull a credit chip out of his pocket, instead the sign of his attention could be found in the way he slid forward in his chair, his eyes focused on the woman's face.

"Say that again."

The man's voice, was soft, cold, devoid of the emotion that normally animated him, that brought kindness to his voice and his environment. The jovial CEO had vanished, a mask drawn across his face. This was the face of the Exarch, of the man who had stood on the line and brought the Mandalorian Empire's vaunted fleet to death and ruin.

Cybernetics had been forced on John by his circumstances, but they had been circumstances that he'd chosen, that he'd stepped up to engage in, he'd run back into the building and the risks that that entailed. Sure, he'd gained some abilities, he was still alive but there was a cost to the implants too, a cost measured in his humanity.

"You're telling me that there are people on Denon who take perfectly healthy children and load them up with implants so they can turn them into soldiers?"

He'd known the planet was a cesspool before, but he'd never realised quite how far they'd sunk to, the depravities that had been played out. He was constantly worried about loosing his humanity to the dark, to the cold voice of the machine in the back of his head. But...they'd already lost theirs.

"You're going to need to tell me more about these people later. As for the prosthetic, we'd be marketing it to the office crowd primarily, to people who spend all day in front of a keyboard and could benefit from the increased utility of being able to type on multiple keys at once. However, they shouldn't need that enhanced durability, now if there were people who needed that."

A twinkle of his normal amusement danced in the man's eye.

"We could look into using stronger materials, but that would carry with it a significant increase in price...unless...we could pull from nature."

John reached for a datapad, drawing as he spoke, an image appearing in the air above him.

"It's like a bird's bone, hollow and reinforced with a honeycomb structure. We don't need so much metal, say Phrik, and we can counter the metal's increased weight by using less of it. THe structure will provide strength augmented by the metal's natural durability."

Shot Sutaz

 

[Shot Sutaz]

"Sadly, you need money to make the best of cybernetics. Hence why I'm making this business venture. Not to mention that I have some other goals." She states, seeming to agree with his overall statement about cybernetics being thrust upon them.

What she had currently in terms of cybernetics was remarkable on it's own. Her current fingers and hands were very dexterous. Even more interesting, while she's removing the cybernetic limb, the head of tentacles she has seems to practically come to life. Multiple tendrils reach down, opening up to reveal tools. In this case, screwdrivers to help speed up the removal process. A decent portion of her brain must be dedicated to just making those cybernetics installed atop her head work, yet she still seems to hold on to her living self tightly, seemingly not even effected by the machines, not even losing herself to them. She could be considered quite the impressive youth. Most in her situation would have lost themselves.

Then, he asks her to speak up again. It seems her talking about how she ended up with cybernetics had gotten his attention. Though, what he said next....it made her laugh. Though...it was a laugh of sadness and anger as she shook her head. The very idea of what he had said amused her. She waves a dismissive hand.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm not laughing at you....It's just....the idea of corpsec actually being willing to spend the money to put implants in us is....well. I grew up with them, so it's amusing in a...sickening way." Her expression once again changes to serious, those dark eyes meeting John's. "They're a bunch of credit misering cheap bastards. They wouldn't spend the money to load kids with implants." She shakes her head. "It's worse, honestly. They trained us...and sent us to handle their opposition, to beat protesters....to kill political opponents. Only ever given the bare minimum of gear needed to get the job done, and the only promise in return for our work being a slightly uncomfortable bed to sleep on if we survived the op...but it was a bed. And at least having a bed meant everything to us orphans. We thought it was the best option we had." She shivers slightly, gritting her teeth. "We weren't loaded with implants because we were meant to be as costless as possible. Were we up against people with powerful implants? Outgunned by technology? Constantly. But us ourselves? We had nothing. Honestly a few implants would have been a blessing on some days. The point I'm trying to get across is that we weren't elite agents, we were disposable pets with some training. They didn't drag us off the streets...."

The clear eye membrane slides over the nautolan's eyes, a sign of sadness amongst her kind. "It was a lot more sinister. They approached us...promising better lives, and we voluntarily walked into the jaws of the beast, and stayed because we had nowhere else to turn. They always aim for us orphans. Because there's no one to complain if we die. The point of the disaffected youth program isn't to create powerful elite soldiers, Mr. Locke. It exists to create expendable junk. In my opinion..." She gulps. "That is so much worse. They think no one misses those orphans, that no one will care that they died. But I remember their lives...I remember their deaths. If no one else makes corpsec pay, I will. No matter how long that takes." She shakes her head, taking a moment to compose herself as they get back onto the topic of the cybernetic.

"I have some stuff in mind later for the adventuring crowd. But for now, the office crowd was indeed my goal. There aren't enough cybernetics on the more physical side out there for folks like them, y'know?" She raises a hairless brow. Upon seeing the image of the honeycomb structure appear above her, she leans forward a bit to observe. "That would probably work well with the shock module." The nautolan states with a nod of agreement.

John Locke

 

[John Locke]

Shards of crystal, remnants of a whiskey tumbler fell from John’s hand like a gentle rain of ice, scattering across his desk and the floor as the tiny specs of crystal caught the light, transmuting it into a cacophony of sparkles that drew the eye away from the icy cold anger that had settled in the man’s eyes.

There were very few times in his life that John had been glad of his cybernetics, of the humanity that had been taken from him. Flesh hands would be bleeding now, shards of glass embeded in his flesh, but he didn’t feel the pain, the warmth of blood dripping. All that there was that anger that burned like a cold flame in his mind.

John’s extensive cybernetics had removed part of his humanity, had turned him into a monster but at least he tried to hold onto the remnants of his humanity with both hands. Grasping tightly onto those shreds of kindness, of compassion that were all he had left. The cybernetics that had become a part of him at time made him more like a machine than a human, it was so easy to sink into logic, to make decisions based on probability that he had to fight to remain human. But these people, people who didn’t have cybernetics, who didn’t have to fight for their humanity gladly gave it up. Chose to use people, to use children in the most cold inhumane way possible.

To throw people into a situation like that, to not even give them the benefit of the tools they needed to complete their missions spoke of a willingness to sacrifice others as mere stepping stones that was the antithesis of everything John stood for.

“They’re still doing this?”

The words were cold, clipped, the man’s normally warm expression veiled by a mask, the mask of the businessman, of the Exarch. The Mask of the line, the man who had faced the fury of the Mandalorian Empire and had come withing a hairsbreadth of wiping them out.

The face of the Monster.

Perhaps there were sometimes, that it was ok to not chain down the voice in the back of his mind. He’d have to learn more about Denon, about these people. See about making a trip there personally.

But that was tomorrow’s problem.

“It should work with the shock module, we can even enhance that, run veins of carbon fibre along the structure to carry a charge. Perhaps even allow the fingers to transmit data and allow them to use a droid’s communication port while we’re at it. We’d probably need to design some sort of interface while we’re at it, not everyone will have your level of comfort with handling multiple appendages or multiple levels of cybernetics at the same time, but that should be a fairly easy programming issue to handle.”

Shot Sutaz

 

[Shot Sutaz]

Sutaz simply watches as the glass shards skitter to the floor. The nautolan takes a datapad out of her pocket and types a sentence or two. "I might be trying to sell you an automatic debris detecting vacuum cleaner soon. Thanks for the idea." She says, nodding respectfully as she slips the datapad back into her coat. She idly watches while the CEO broods in silent for a moment. Sometimes people needed that, just a minute off quiet to comprehend what they were hearing or dealing with.

She herself didn't struggle with her morality like John did. The explosion took out the part of her brain that controlled her tendrils. Her logic and reason were able to be saved, though she still missed her flesh dearly. Because now, her brain was part of the grid. She could be hacked. She had to constantly evolve and expand her internal systems, or risk losing control of her own body. Functions existed allowing one to feel what they touch with their cybernetics, but she had never been able to afford them....and it wasn't the same anyways. She could never feel, embrace, or love in the same way that those around her do ever again. She looks at her hands, moving her fingers around slightly. How she missed when that movement wasn't artificial.

The nautolan looks up at him when he speaks, and nods slightly. "Yeah, they are. I have friends in that programmed, basically indoctrinated thinking there's no other path to turn. I'm going to save them. Someday." She states, steadfast belief in her voice. She doesn't linger on the topic long, moving on to the discussion of the tech.

"Oh! Thank you for reminding me. The program I run in my head to operate all my head tendrils is what I adapted to make the fingers work easier. Though it's currently fixed to work with nautolan neural pathways. I often have to make custom programs like that myself since most cybernetics are for humans or races with...much more humanoid brain functions than my own." One of her tendrils lifts itself op, the tip of it opening to reveal a usb port. She takes an empty USB out of her pocket and puts it in the port. The lines along her tendrils glow blue for a few moments, and the blue lines follow the path through her hair of tendrils like a river flowing until it all runs out, flowing into the USB that's being held by the tendril. The blue being gone signifies the end of the data transfer, and she pulls it out, holding the USB out to John. "You should be able to simply switch out neural pathways depending on who the hands are being sold to. The program will automatically adapt to the neural pathways afterwards."

John Locke

 

[John Locke]

A rueful smile curled up the corner’s of John’s mouth as he shook his head ruefully, dark eyes flicking down to catch sight of the crystal shards now decorating his floor.

“You know what, make one of those and I might just be your first customer, I can’t believe I never thought of that idea given how many of these I’ve broken over the years. Getting used to a new pair of cybernetics always has a…getting used to it period.”

The admission was followed with a small peal of laughter, the man’s lips curling up as he considered all the times that he’d lost control of his cybernetics, that he’d forgotten just how powerful they were when he first built them. The sight of builders and repairmen making their way through his building had become commonplace for a while, he was sure that he had practically kept that firm in business. These days his control was a lot better…generally.

The woman before him had no question in her mind that she could pull it off, that she would beat the enemy she’d set her eyes on, no matter what it would take. That was a resolution, a fortitude the man could respect, especially when turned on an opponent such as this.

The man’s eyes settled on the drive, forcing his mind back to the present as he considered the options.

“We might not even need to do that, a little bit of adaptive programming and we could pre-install the basics, at least at a humanoid level and then allow the limbs to learn their wearer’s characteristics over around a month or so. Most of the crowd we’d be aiming to sell this to wouldn’t have access to a clinic that I’d trust. Rather than have them risk using an underworld doctor who may or may not know what he’s doing we can make them easy to install and self-adaptive. Make it safer and more useful while increasing the desirability and chances of someone buying them. Gets the most bang for the buck while still protecting our users.”

Shot Sutaz