CYBERPUNK

They said that it wouldn’t hurt; of course they would lie. Every cut and scar invisible on the outside is there on the inside; I can feel this false, corded muscle tightening around each steel wire inside of me, the charge of every pulse moving through my wire nerves, the chill of my plastic flesh, all of it I can feel, but no one on the outside notices until they look at my eyes.

They couldn’t get the eyes right. Each eye is so different, they tell me, the parts inside are too complex to replicate with synthetic parts. I have camera lenses for eyes. They are good ones, the state-of-the-art, of course. I can zoom in and out, I have night-vision, all of the things your eyes can’t do. It all looks so flat and fake, like a bad movie. The eyes are the only thing I wanted them to correct and they can’t.

I want my eyes back. I miss tearing up at a sad movie, I miss the swirling uncertainty of the morning before I put my contact lenses in, I want the strange little spokes that come out of streetlights when I pass them in my car. I miss being able to imagine things in what I see where they are not. My mind has changed because of these damn camera lenses, I can’t pretend that his shirt is pink or she’s falling over, I can’t see it unless it’s happening, just like real cameras.

Little heaters keep my skin temperature realistic, each follicle of falsified hair is carefully placed on a small spool in my head that winds it out with time, realistically growing, I even have nano-machines grow me stubble at a normalized rate. I can’t turn them off, believe me, I’ve asked. I still have blood, my brain in its steel shell needs that, I have a stomach-like organ that digests the food I eat, destroying the waste and only giving me the nutrients. Robotic lungs and heart keep the blood full of oxygen and movement.

It is my only weakness. The blood. The last normal person thing about me is my weakness. You see, blood spoils eventually, it’s why we replace it naturally with new white blood cells made in the marrow of our bones. My bones are micro-titanium struts and springs for support. I need to have my blood replaced every so often, changed out, and each time more of my original blood is washed out. I’m slowly losing another part of myself.

The blood, it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I can feel it running through my veins, but I know it’s not mine. I asked where it comes from, the blood that isn’t mine, chilled in order to prolong its shelf-life, ice cold as it flows through every veins and capillary, every crevice in my brains chills with every swell of this red falsehood in my body.

I can’t trust any of the people around me; even my body is a traitor. It works for them, the men behind the one-way mirror. They watch as I fight and do the dirty things they send me to do and I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. That’s where the hypocrisy comes in, I guess. I want to be normal again, but I love this new body. If I had the balls to run free, I would, but I’m not sure how everything works yet. When I find out how the pieces and parts all function and how to repair the new pieces of me, they’ll know how badly I want to be free. No one of these fleshy normals will be able to stop me.

It’ll be so much fun.