The Doktor's expression brightened up. You see, there was something about scooping customers' eyes that really made him feel fuzzy and happy deep down inside. "Why yes, those are state of the art cybernetic eyes that can be linked to your ships' systems, give infrared and heat vision as well as possibly withstand a pretty serious kinetic hit, though that would just send them straight into your brain which will probably kill you regardless." Realizing his mistake in sharing the last bit of information he quickly turned to Alina. "Don't you stand there, open the box and let our customer choose his set of new eyes!"
His brainwashed and disturbingly cheerful for the setting assistant quickly obeyed the others and moved the crate to the operating table, where the guest could inspect the eyes more closely. Before moving out of the way she turned to the customer and with a warm childish eyes uttered the creepy words - "Such pretty eyes you have, mister, the Doktor would love to have them in a jar." Joseph nervously signaled her from behind aerelm's back to stop talking. He knew that while collecting eyes of customers was perfectly normal for him, some of the customers felt worried hearing such things, especially from a sweet assistant such as Alina.
"So do you see anything you like?" he hastily tried distract the customer from what was recently said.
Indifferently scrolling through the 3D scan of of cybernetic eye models, paying little to no attention to most of them, aerelm continued,
"If I wanted to look like some hideous thing right out of old Earth classic horror movies, I would've sticked to one of those standard issue visors you can get at any accessory shop. Subtlety is the key, Doktor, and these are not. I expected more than removin' the eyeball and stickin' a whole mess of lenses and wires and whathaveyou in its place when I walked in."
Then throwing an unimpressed glance at the two over his shoulder, he added,
"Let me put it this way - I came here because I heard some interesting hearsay about your past work, but I haven't seen anything even slightly interesting so far; So why don't we stop wasting eachother's time, and either cut straight to your 'one of a kind' pieces, so to say, or call it a day and each move on to our more interesting matters."
Krieger frowned at the insult. He never liked being compared to a shady merchant on a Junker base selling visors and other cheap accessories. But at the same time showing his real work to everyone who had interest was dangerous. After all the risk of being raided by a BDM squad wasn't low, given he operated on a Freelancer base in the middle of Rheinland. He measured aerelm up and down before deciding that a person with such ego could never work as an BDM agent. Joseph leaned back on the operating table, resting his hands on the edge of it. "Very well, I might have something more suitable for you.", he smirked, "An iris implant - barely noticeable. Allows visual zooming and can connect to the Neural Net and display information similar to a ship's HUD. It has a few more extras which I doubt you'd be interested to hear." The Doktor never liked putting all his cards on the table, I mean what's a story without a surprise or two? Plus getting on his customer's nerves had already turned into sort of a game.
You know the feeling when something's taking just too damn long and all you can think of is wanting to be done with it already - not unlike that gut wrenching feeling when you find yourself helplessly and hopelessly clenched to the toilet rim, praying to every deity you don't believe in to help you hear that relieving splash noise already - and the thought creeps so deep you find yourself incapable of thinking about anything else, even what you might be able to do to wrap up the damn thing already. Though your mind might wander off toward all the unintentional puns in that one last sentence alone for a second or two, but it snaps back to that feeling eventually.
There are men who at times like this just get up, after not having let out anything but a disappointed sigh, and those who are man enough to lock their jaws sore and their knuckles pale until they have to flush, victoriously. Even if it takes two damn years.
"Y'know doktor... There are still people who think cybernetic enhancements are essentially mutilating one's body. Not saying I agree with them, but don't you think if that was the case, something this trivial would sure as hell not be worth it?"
Smugly staring at the offended expression on the doktor's face, aerelm added,
"Maybe you misunderstood me. I don't care about the aesthetics of your products that much. Utility's much higher on my priority list, long as it's not a total eyesore. What's the point of wiring up my body if it ends up being just an expensive eye, barely better than the one I got for free? Stop kidding around and show me something I'd be willing to tear my eyes out for. Pun intended, you sure should hope so."
You ever have this feeling that now is the correct time to do something? Me neither, but the Doktor did. He knew he toyed and was toyed with long enough, there was nothing more to be gained from wasting aerelm's time. In fact Krieger was getting dangerously close to that point where he was actually wasting his own time. And Krieger never liked wasting time, being a man of scientific principles and all.
"Perhaps I could interest you in another project of mine? Two microchips, one in your visual cortex and one in the motor cortex. They can be configured to both receive and transmit information to the Neural Net. Perhaps if you're interested I'll tell you more about it?"
The last sentence was actually a rhetorical question, or at least the Doktor made it so. He cared not what his customer's answer to that question was, because he was certain that this offer was exactly the thing aerelm needed.
"With them you'll be able to do all the iris implant could, but the action would be in your brain, so you'll keep your eyes intact. Also the complexity of the data you could work with would be much higher than that of the iris implant. You could for instance control your ship with your thoughts no worse than as if you were flying it directly with your own two hands."
