Mature Content

[gif] Proof of Concept - 2 [dad to secretary] by Transviscera

Take Your Father to Work Week. The worst public holiday ever invented, concocted by some government bright spark to keep retirees engaged with the world of work and combat loneliness in the aging population. It was a noble intent - terrible in reality. As if I didn't have enough on my plate with a floundering biotechnic firm without having to babysit my aging father.

Dad loved it of course. It was his chance each year to roll back the clock to a time when he was the boss and I was a kid. He'd swan through the doors like he owned the place, wave away the mandatory hardhat with the nonsensical boast that "they kill more people than they save", then march around the factory floor, thumbs tucked into his suspenders, chest puffed out, barking orders at my employees on the logic that I was in charge and, since he was my father and in charge of me, that meant he was in charge.

We made medical devices. We were a small team of quiet engineers utilising the latest 3D fabricators. He'd been a foreman at a steel foundry and he behaved as if he was still there, as if we were the same testosterone-soaked environment, and I'd frequently find my poor introverted employees crying over their CAD software from his ear-splitting bellows.

"People work faster when ya yell at 'em," he'd explained when I challenged him. "They need to man up, that's there problem."

This year, things sounded to be going remarkably well. There was no shouting. In fact, the factory was quieter than usual. He entered my office looking proud of himself and marched over to the coffee machine. He picked up a mug... held it... looked around expectantly. "Where is she?"

"Where's who?" I asked.

"The woman who makes the drinks. Don't you remember me telling you last year to get a coffee girl?"

"Oh, for God's sake, dad. It's not the 1970's. We have a coffee machine."

He regarded the coffee maker with abject suspicion, and jabbed at it, pressing precisely the wrong button to cause a hatch to open and the machine to vomit two dozen coffee pods onto the floor.

He scoffed. "Pah, computers. What's the point of a machine when you can have a pretty assistant around to do everything, eh? You know men work better with a woman around. It gets the blood flowing, makes them want to compete with each other. That's science, that is."

"This industry is competitive enough, thanks," I muttered, staring at a finance spreadsheet, wondering how I was going to make the company's outgoings match its incomings for another week. I tried to look on the bright side - at least I wouldn't have a company by the time the next Bring Your Father to Work Week rolled around.

He gave a satisfied grunt of imparted wisdom and scoured the office for something else to moan about. There was plenty to go at - the office was a cluttered mess of circuit boards and wiring. Another thing that he insisted needed a 'feminine touch', by which he meant a maid. His scowl focused on a mirror on one of the desks. Wires led out of the back of it, across the office to a gun-metal-gray booth wedged between two file cabinets. The mirror had a noticeable lag, the reflection moving a full two seconds after a person did. Dad poked at it, and, two seconds later, his reflection poked back.

He clucked his tongue. "Your mirror's broken. You know, in my day, mirrors reflected things on time. None of this slacking off."

"It's not a mirror. It's a digital visual interface." I gestured to the cabinet. "It's for the prototype. It fabricates real-time images of how the patient should look once the AutoDoc has finished with them. It helps doctors prepare their patients for surgical outcomes. Unfortunately, it's the only part we've been able to get working right so far," I sighed. "All the test animals we sent into the thing came out like thin-sliced bacon."

"Huh. You should sell it to abattoirs."

"Don't be daft, dad," I said, shaking my head, while quickly scribbling the idea down on a pad of paper. Hell, whatever would keep us solvent.

I demonstrated with the device's remote, flicking through a series of pre-made templates. His reflection flickered, becoming taller or shorter, shifting his skin tone lighter or darker to reflect different skin graft types, narrowing his figure to show the estimated effects of liposuction. I even switched the preset from male to female patients, much to his shock, as the devices rendered how he might look as a perfectly healthy young woman. With a final confirmation press, the desired template was transmitted to the AutoDoc, the door of which thunked open to reveal a cramped interior bristling with gleaming surgical instruments like some futuristic iron maiden.

He gave an unimpressed harumph. "Can it cut hair?"

I rolled my eyes. The device could work on the microscopic scale, able to distinguish between and operate on individual cells. "It does everything," I said simply.

"Good. You should use it on your staff. A lot of long-haired sissies working out there. Don't worry," he smiled. "I sent them home to get haircuts. God damn hippies."

"You did what?"

I threw open the office shutters and looked out over a deserted factory floor, the machines sitting idle. So that was why the factory was so quiet! I couldn't begin to calculate what he'd just cost us in lost earnings. I snatched up my coat and ran. Maybe I could still catch some of them in the car park.

In retrospect, knowing his relationship with technology, leaving him alone in a room with a wide-open AutoDoc was probably a bad idea.