Freud and Friends

The morgue hallway was eerily dark, and the smallest sound would echo back with a harshness that set your nerves on edge. Your own breathing became ominous in such a space, and the air was heavy with the scents of powerful chemicals and a hint of decay.
 
Approaching the bank of lockers, Astrid pulled it open to find a non-descript body covered in a hazy plastic sheet. In the low lighting, it was hard to tell much more. Another medtech was there, and from the uniform Astrid thought she must be back at Rushlight.
 
Together, they heaved the body onto a gurney, and rolled it across the hall to an examination room. The lighting here too seemed fuzzy and dark… normally they are uncomfortably bright as if the lighting consultants wanted to make sure not a single shadow could exist in the room. Here, nothing seemed clear except where the work lights shined down into intense pools of white light.
 
The body was on the examination table, and Astrid busied herself with arranging the tools she’d need for the procedure: a mix of her own gear as familiar as the back of a hand, and a few items that belonged to the hospital, the autopsy saw in particular. It was a dangerous looking, hand-held tool: a ceramic cutting blade imbued with heaters to cut through bone cleanly, cauterize blood vessels, and non-metallic to avoid the dangers of hitting an unknown cyberware power-element. It was a little too small a cutting blade for the job, intended instead for limbs, but it would have to do.
 
Calmly, with the lights showing only on the pale neck, she rolled the body over to start the cut just above the back of the neck, and smoothly rolled the body back and over slowly. The head was held in place by the spinal column until the cervical vertebrae are sliced cleanly through somewhere between C4 and C6. There was a tiny spark as service lines for the neural interface link were cut, and the head fell cleanly back into a waiting specimen tray.
 
The other medtech quickly moved it into a waiting cold-chest, and as the head was arranged onto chilled plastic with clouds of dry-ice swirling underneath, the face fell into the beam of the work light: Thea’s face. Astrid was shocked, looked back to the body which was clearer now. The body was horribly bruised and slashed, a victim of so much violence. Astrid felt tears welling up in her eyes, and a scream building in her throat that was unable to escape.
 
The medtech pushed the lid down tight, and while picking up the chest turned and grinned at Astrid. It was Threshold, it’s all black eyes locking with Astrid’s for a moment. “It’s all your fault she’s dead,” it whispered matter-of-factly as Threshold retreated into the darkness that lay beyond the work lights.
 
The chiming sound grew louder inside her ears, gently growing with each pulse. Astrid gasped and felt hot tears in her eyes rolling down the sides of her face, briefly still paralyzed as her mind and body quickly rose to consciousness. The picture-in-picture of the chryon in her right eye was displaying another sleep report from the biomonitor. She’d had another rough night, and her internal Agent was noting that the alarm she had set had been going off for several minutes.
 
Taking a few deep, shaky breaths, Astrid dried her wet cheeks and face on her sleeve. She reassured herself it was all just a dream, and after a few more moments the adrenaline of “fight or flight” started to fade way. She shut off the alarm, and reassured her Agent that everything was fine so there was no need to call for help. The biomonitor showed her antisympathic pathways were bringing her heart rate back down and her breathing slowed back to normal.
 
“Another glorious morning in D-Town,” she murmured to herself, followed by a heavy sigh.
 
Astrid rolled out of her bunk, did a series of quick morning stretches, and then started making herself some coffee and heating up a protein pack in the galley microwave. The slightly cramped space of the old trawler cabin was cozy and felt safe, so she settled down on a bench and swung down an old table to eat. She considered firing up her local data feed to check on the daily news and social feeds, but after a moment decided instead to be quiet with her thoughts for a change.
 
There had been a time when therapists had therapists. While apprenticing these days you still observed other sessions for practical training, but the field had long ago decided that pharmaceutical solutions were just too cheap, quick, and profitable not to use. Back at Rushlight, Astrid like most of the staff were on regular mood stabilizers and hormone balancers, encouraged to use Surge for long shifts and sleep meds afterwards. Pills, air-hypos, and implants did the job that a "head-shrink" used to do. Mediation, visualization, and self-awareness practice were all still routinely employed to help cyberware users and stressed corps get through their day, but old-school talk therapy or dream analysis was left to spiritual advisors and the local yoga studio.
 
Astrid had read a lot of the last-century material in the past year. It’s easy to find online, and there were plenty of chatrooms full of debates and pho-VR therapy sessions of people cos-playing Freud or Blechner. Astrid knew she was deeply depressed, wrestling with her own demons and past, but really didn’t have a clear idea of where to go from here. The loss of her mother, the memories of her childhood and her mother’s strengths and failings as a parent, knowing now more than ever the pain that her street kid orphans felt, it was all too much. That’s probably why she’d fallen so hard for Chryz. She was like a collage of everyone she had loved in her life assembled in a beautiful package. She had wanted to fill her heart with her, and instead ended up with a bigger hole.
 
Rushlight’s answer worked only as long as it was all fully funded, and as evidenced by the past year of having gone cold-turkey on the corp firmware maintenance regimen, it clearly hadn’t actually fixed a damn thing. Their plan was to just keep using the products until you die, which is what most people did one way or the other.
 
was an enigma pretty much of its own choice, and Astrid respected the bravery that choice took every day. It still scared the hell out of her at times, and the ghosts of their childhood were still very much in the room. That intellectual knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less.
 
Wrapping up her meal, Astrid debated crawling back into the bunk and spending the rest of the day crying, but she didn’t have the luxury to indulge that urge anymore. She had bills to pay, people to patch up, and friends who needed her to make it another day under the highway.
 
Heading out to the Triangle was the order of the day. had been uncharacteristically quiet on his social feeds the past few days, so Astrid was keen to see how he was doing. Besides, he had a few ampoules of synthetic precursor she needed. Compared to the liters per hour that Rushlight’s automated labs could turn out, it was practically artisanal pharmaceutical making but even a few doses of the stuff could come in handy. Hopefully, he’s also heard from Box and Mikos recently. Those guys were both tough as kids and are tougher now, but still be good to check in on them too.