Some Time Away
06 June 06 - 08:52 am
Jerk slouched slowly into his room, exhausted after dragging himself up the three-storey climb up the wide, spiral staircase of the old mansion that held the co-op he was part of. Normally, even the weakest ork would have no trouble navigating even five times as many steps, but today was different. Today was the day that Jerk got back from the former-shadowrunner-turned-street-doctor known as Hippocrat. The surgery had been extremely invasive, but worth it to Jerk's mind; the new sleep regulator would quadruple his time spent awake, precious time that could be used to write the terrabytes of code required for modern Matrix-capable programs. For now, he was healed, sewn up, and sent home to convalesce.
The room's lighting system inquired whether it should be turned on, and Jerk reflexively dipped into full virtual reality for a split second, just long enough to tell the lights to remain off. Normally he would have done the task in the augmented reality that was displayed in his normal vision courtesy of the MCT SixthSense ImageLink hardware in his cybernetic eyes, but he did not have the strength to lift his arm high enough for his AR-capable gloves to register the command.
He slunk through the darkness to his bed, a futon on the floor, but a king-sized one. He collapsed into it, wondering whether his roommate was all right. They had met once when he had first moved into the co-op. They had both been cordial, but reserved; they had not even exchanged names. It was rather obvious to each of them that the other was a shadowrunner, and only slightly less immediate was the realization in each that the other knew. Since that time months ago, they had never been at home at the same time; Jerk thought it an odd coincidence, but gave it little further thought .
He stared at the peeling, yellowed ceiling, alternately trying to coax his new wetware to send him to sleep and waiting for it to come naturally. Neither worked. Slowly, he became aware of a cause: something was wrong. Pushing through the pain of the surgery and the haze of what anesthetic hadn't yet been collared by his excretory system, Jerk slowly looked around the room. Lolling his head to the side (and welcoming another surging headache for his trouble), he saw an enormous troll lying in the bed across the room, still and silent. His roommate.
He just stared for about ten minutes. Or perhaps he was slipping in and out of consciousness. The troll did not move or even breathe, but the body was still warm, according to the thermal imaging option in Jerk's eye. Finally, Jerk spoke.
"Dat you, roomie-mon?"
The troll shuddered and exhaled. "Yeah, roomie. It's me. Didn't say nuttin' before cuz I wasn't sure if it was you. You ain't never here when I am."
"Ya, mon, I and I know what is. You hold your breath all dat long?"
"Internal air tank. Null perspiration, omae."
Jerk paused. "You okay, roomie? You don' sound fit."
The troll hesitated, then spoke. "Got inna vuttin' big grumoge. You don't sound so great yerself, roomie."
"Mi gat new wetware in da head. Mi haffi satta bit."
"You an' me, both," said the troll, drifting, "Looks like we gonna be chummers for the next couple days."
"Ya, mon," was all Jerk could muster, and dreamily at that.
Jerk wasn't sure which of them fell asleep first.
Ω
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