Johnny has always been a bit of an extreme sports fan, and his company’s suites are heavily skewed towards the cyber-sports leagues. There are quite a few differ- ent models that often change in only a few key ways. He offers a basic suite and then offers customers cus- tomized setups for the sport they play. Some of the systems even crossover well into the shadows.
MITSUHAMA COMPUTER
TECHNOLOGIES
This is where you will see the street sammies getting their suites. MCT designs combat suites for a wide va- riety of applications and different levels of integration, from close-quarters specialists to long-range sniper suites and everything in between. MCT has a pitch out to several militaries and security companies around the world. Members of their own Petrovski Security and Parashield subsidiaries have been volunteering to test out suites for discounts and increased promotional considerations for almost a year now. The integrated systems have less of an effect on bio-integrity (Essence as the wizzers call it), so quite a few of Parashield’s Awakened staff members have utilized the program.
EVO
These suites are fun, but not necessarily functional. Following their very transhumanist way of thinking, the folks at Evo are using this technology to test the limits of what it is to be metahuman. They use implants to alter and create beings that few would be able to tell are, or once were, metahumans of any kind. Inspired by SURGE cases, Evo has made suites to make man into the maximum machine, animal amalgamations, and creatures of fantasy and mythology that even the Awakening has not yet brought to our world.
BIOWARE
The field of bioware has a lot of interested parties do- ing almost daily shadowruns to supplement their con- tinuous R&D in the one field that seems safe from the danger of CFD. Implants designed in Boston are being installed and field tested in all corners of the world, including their own backyard. The SOTA standard is constantly being pushed here, but there are some new developments that I’m pretty excited about, especially Doc Wagon’s TraumaStop organ replacement. The Trau- maStop is an organ replacement treatment designed to
deliver instant trauma relief and has become a select- able upgrade on all Doc Wagon contracts. At Gold level the surgery is free and the system can be bought with a discount. At Platinum, the whole thing is free.
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That sounds like advertising, Butch. Getting a check from DW now?>
Clockwork>
Just a small one for every system they install because I’m the designer. It’s about the only thing I’ve done in the realm of real medical science in the past few years. Especially this past year. I feel like I’m a character in some science-fiction trid trying to fight the invading menace, except I guess this story was written with the AIs as the heroes.>
ButchNANOTECH
A valuable field that once had limitless possibilities obliterated by CFD. I know the media spins that it’s all about hackers and technomancers and bad code, but we all know why this field has practically died in the last year. The only places that are still heavily using nan- otech are the orbital manufacturing plants, and even those have changed a lot in the last year.
Here in Boston, research continues on ways to pro- duce clean nanites that aren’t susceptible to “Temporal Code Degradation,” as the media refers to it. This re- search has been a roller-coaster ride for the labs that per- form it. They exist under strict containment and wireless restriction protocols, and whenever a run penetrates the lab it’s washed out of whatever program it was part of and a new lab has to be built to replace it.
One of the biggest impacts the nano-scare has had is tech regression. Most folks don’t realize just how many things nanotech builds, especially in the cyber, medical, and computer industries. Our devices and tech are actually starting to get bigger instead of small- er for the first time in this century. It’s not a full-blown dark age of tech, but until the nanofabrication issue can be fixed we are definitely backsliding into some older building models. This new trend has had some inter- esting effects in the shadows; as we get hired to grab stocks of older and smaller tech, we make runs on old plants and firms that haven’t been SOTA in over a de- cade to grab programs, equipment, and data files on the next big thing.
This has also meant a major upswing in the market for pre-Crash 2.0 data and information. We’re seeing a lot of digging into old systems at the research labs around Boston. The labs hire us as security and to get to these old systems in the first place. Techheads have been getting snagged and swapped all over Boston in an effort to get the most secure integration software and tech between the old systems and the newest decks.
Speaking of cyberdecks, that’s another victim of the nano-scare. They aren’t quite the big bulky monsters of my youth, but they are definitely not as small and sleek as they were before CFD.
And now I’m way off topic. Told you, scatterbrained. Not much else I can really say about nanotech other than it’s a victim of CFD that’s going to need a lot of time and effort and probably luck to ever regain its status as a trusted tech.
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Not Boston related, but there have been a number of runs heading off-world to check out how the nanomanufacturing plants are coping, and rumors even say a few out to Gagarin to see how they are dealing with the nanite failure, what with survival pretty much dependent on nanotech. We all have our suspicions as to why they’re doing okay, but that also means they may have developed some way of keeping their nanites from getting glitchy.>
FianchettoGENETECH
Though I had foreseen this field taking more of a hit with its connection to CFD, in the world of public opin- ion it is still mostly positive. Genetech companies still advertise becoming the pinnacle of you with just a few minor treatments. Other than Shiawase having some troubles with their Léonization procedures, most of the news and PR coming from this field is positive. The in- dustry’s still thriving because the media has not blamed genetech for anything, and there have been very few reports indicating anything wrong with genetic manip- ulation or relating genetech to recent incidents. In fact, certain areas are growing fast here in Boston.
The genetech we runners are most familiar with to help us gain or keep an edge on the competition is still holding its own in corporate labs and research facilities even though somewhere up the executive chain some- one must know the connection to speeding up the CFD process. It’s not really a growing field but it’s still an op- tion. Where genetech is really growing is in relation to food sources and agritech.
Animal species are genetically modified then raised in the waters all around Boston. Most of the modifica- tions are intended to increase the growth rate and size of food species. Competing firms go for data first, but they’ll often hire runners to steal a specimen from a ri- val’s facility so they can analyze where the manipula- tions went on and see if they can use it in their stock. For us the problem comes in with the most common defense mechanism the companies have created, the rapid DNA decay that occurs when the species dies. This means we need to bring in live subjects and that can be difficult with a 130-kilo salmon. The companies will also manipulate the species’ junk DNA code in order to throw off other science labs. Not an issue for us, but I just thought I’d mention it as an interesting fact.
AGRITECH
This field has rocketed to the forefront of the scientific research and development in Boston over the past year and a half. Less than a handful of firms were doing re- search in this area back at the beginning of ‘74. Then Sirrurg decided to blast NatVat, everyone started wor- rying about worldwide famine, and firms started really pushing for alternative food sources. Now Boston is home to over three-dozen agritech firms that are look- ing into alternate and custom-bred plants, bacteria that transform dirt into something really close to food, and algal species that are not only edible but enhance plant growth around them.
Most of the megacorps have at least one subsidiary in the mix and a lot of small A and even some AA-rated corps are playing in this field. The smaller corps are of- ten targets of the bigger fish. If it looks cheaper to pull an op and steal all their research data, that’s preferred over an expensive buyout. I’ll link up my little list of some of the big players and the areas I know they are playing in, but remember, playing in that area doesn’t necessarily mean they have it right.
The Boston shadows are an interesting field for these guys. Big breaks are often kept as quiet as possible, and failures are sometimes leaked as big breaks. Nothing better than to get your rival to release a product you already know causes severe allergic reactions in twen- ty-seven percent of your test pool. These corps play games all the time.
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These places are going to be targets inside the QZ. I’m sure if they aren’t warzones yet, they will be soon.>
NephrineBACTERITECH (ARES)
This is where I got word about the bacteria that trans- forms dirt into a sterile, relatively nutritive paste. The current problem is the paste is only one component in a complex toxic glop. They’re working on ways to fil- ter out all the undesirable compounds without ruining the nutritive paste. No word on their progress, but oth- ers are definitely interested in getting their hands on a sample of the paste and the bacteria. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending—these guys have some primo security from Hard Corps.