Wait Your Turn - Dr. Aslan, Independent Ripperdoc

Everybody thinks they're the only gonk in this town with an emergency. Didn't used to be like this.

My regulars? I knew their chrome. Knew their skeletons better than they did. Factory joints giving out after twenty years on the line. Worn synth-lungs. Kids scraping together eddies for secondhand optics so they can land a better job. Honest biz. Honest enough.

Now? Every day, its some highrider bennie rolling in from somewhere I couldn't point to on a map. They blow through my door with military catalogs and stupid BD fantasies.

"Doc, I need a Militech-spec neural processor."

"Doc, can you source Zetatech prototypes?"

"Doc, I heard you've got access to black clinic stock."

Yeah? You heard wrong. I tell 'em the same thing every damn time: if I had hardware like that sitting in the back, you think I'd still be patching dockworkers and replacing jammed knees on random joytoys? They never listen to me, they just try to bargain.

"I'll pay double."

"I'll pay triple."

As if flicking over some eddies magically makes the chrome appear. Doesn't matter how much scratch you wave around when the supply chains are choking on themselves. Half my distributors have gone dark, the other half keep saying, "Next shipment. Maybe." Nobody knows where anything is anymore, and here you are asking me for something that would have Arasaka fire-bombing my office by sun up.

Something's wrong. Everybody feels it, but nobody wants to say it out loud.

Corpo dogs are buying up every crate before it hits the market. Convoys are getting snatched up en route. Warehouses get cleaned out overnight. Clinics with better connections than mine are suddenly "waiting on inventory."

Meanwhile these out-of-town mercs keep pouring into the city like somebody flicked a switch. Same questions. Same shopping list. Same desperate look when I tell them no. Same anger when they realize that I’m serious. It’s like they think I can just throw up a hand sign and make Zetatech works drop out the damn sky.

Hell, I had to reschedule Mrs. Alvarez's spinal actuator replacement today because some annoying bulked-up hustle wouldn't take "can't get it" for an answer. Burned forty minutes explaining basic economics and supply chains to a walking pile of titanium. Forty. Damn. Minutes

Mrs. Alvarez's legs lock up if she's on them too long. That's who loses while these tourists chase ghost hardware. If this keeps up, I'm hanging a sign outside.

NO EXPERIMENTAL CYBERWARE.
NO MILITARY IMPLANTS.
NO, I DON'T KNOW A GUY WHO KNOWS A GUY.

And if you ask anyway, you get 5 seconds to walk out before I’m selling your cyberdeck to a Black Lace addict for 50 eddies. But it makes me wonder… What’s coming that all these tossers are THIS desperate?
