At the end of the day there is always a pecking order. It can be mitigated by appointments and scheduling but some people are always ahead of others. Some people always wait. I suppose I will always be some people. However, it can be a good thing. The time I spent in the waiting room gave me plenty of time to understand how the system here worked. Take away the fancy AR overlays and pretty desk staff and the EBE operation ran like a clinic. There was a woman at the front desk who looked like she did this job between model shoots. The security, so visible at the entrance was invisible now that I’d passed through the gauntlet. As I waited I pretended not to notice the others going in for work. Most were unknown to me; people higher in the lattice work of corporate life and politics. There was a trid star who came in just before everything went to hell. Him I did recognize, which made what happened later all the more hard to digest.
The trouble started not long after I was let into the back. My appointment was set for 15 minutes before my target. Enough time for me to get in and start to be processed, but not enough time for the real work to happen and in that me be incapacitated enough to not be able to do my part. I went into the back area and was led down a corridor where the AR disappeared only to be replaced by art and photo prints of clients with high grade visible or not visible cyberware. The nurse led me to a small room where she weighed me, took my vitals, and several other tests focusing on my eyes. Afterwards, the nurse took me to meet Dr. Haresh, a reedy man with a thick beard showing more gray than black. We sat in his office and he began to ask me about the eyeware I was going to receive.
That was when the commotion started.