—Nineteen Years Later—

Deckard flexed his latest hand, watching as the synth muscles flexed and twisted in response to his thoughts. The model was the latest one his mother had designed for him. It was still bulky but was a far cry from the clumsy prosthetics he had worn as a child, which had no semblance of natural movement. Those limbs hadn’t even possessed any sort of synth-muscle. Everything had been servos and motors back then. Inelegant, crude, heavy, and chunky, but designed to work with what they had.

He owed everything to his mother, who had sacrificed her own body to save his life. Without hesitation, she had chosen to transfer her brain into a metal canister and been connected to a network of computers and machines, all for him. She had given up the warmth of human contact, the sensations of touch and taste, the joys of laughter and tears. She had become a disembodied intelligence, a proverbial ghost in the machine.

Deckard had never known what it was like to hug his mother or to feel her kiss on his cheek. Not that he would have been able to feel the gestures even if she had been capable of them. He had grown up without the sense of touch. Until a year ago, when a breakthrough in biotechnology had enabled the creation of synthetic skin. It was a revolutionary invention, one that promised to restore the feeling of being alive to millions of people who had lost their limbs or organs.

Pain, pleasure, touch - suddenly all of the senses normal people took for granted were within reach.

It still wasn’t perfect. There were reports of some people finding the skin too sensitive, or strangely muted. Others said it felt unnatural, giving them an uncanny and off feeling. Deckard had no way of comparing it to the real thing, since he had never experienced it before. He had no frame of reference. He had missed out on so much, growing up in a mechanical body.

Saying his life had been anything except normal would be putting it mildly. He was the son of Meredith Koarden, the mysterious and reclusive owner of Koarden Enterprises, a leading corporation in the field of cybernetics. He was the first and only person to have a fully cybernetic body. The circumstances and his extremely young age were speculated to have played a large part in its success. He had inherited his parents’ brilliance, but also his mother’s new curse.

He had to deal with the challenges and dangers of living in a body that was stronger, faster, and a mind that was smarter than those around him. Others needed to sleep, whereas he rarely did. He was always thinking, talking to his mother, and being taught something new.

He had learned to control his strength the hard way, by breaking countless toys and objects in his childhood. He was forced to monitor his energy expenditure levels to his individual joints and adjust his movements accordingly. The rudimentary sensors and visual cues helped him gauge everything as well, though they were less helpful in the beginning.

Spending time with other people his age was never even an option, not for someone like him.

He couldn’t even count the number of items he had broken growing up during that time. Just learning a modicum of control had been a noteworthy affair, one that was constantly disregarded whenever he grew distracted, or excited, or annoyed. Really anything, control required constant focus, which a young child, no matter how smart, simply didn’t possess.

There were constant mistakes that needed to be accounted for in one fashion or another. He was the first of his kind, and that meant learning as they went for nearly everything.

In many ways, young Deckard was a mostly living science and medical experiment. There were constant experimental adjustments to the blood formula they fed his brain. It was a mixture that was thankfully based on his own actual blood and DNA. There were a few important items like that they had kept from his old body. However, despite being in a cybernetic shell, his brain was still growing and developing. Though not, in entirely normal ways.

The stem of his brain had become intertwined with parts of the electronic hardware they had stuck in there when he was a baby. They could no longer safely remove those pieces, as they were now a part of him.

Instead, a new computer language for the cybernetic portions of his brain needed to be developed as a result. A language that would allow them to communicate with the tech his brain had taken over. Once that was accomplished, the team found an almost seamless connection between the computer and Deckard’s mind.

It might have been an accident, a unique modification of a developing mind, but the knowledge they wrought was priceless. As a result, entire industries took a giant leap forward.

His life growing up had been filled with accidents such as that. There had been so much for everyone to learn, and while they treated him well; his childhood had definitely not been normal.

There was no chance his mother would ever have let them abuse him in any sort of way. The fact of the matter was though, that she was also a scientist and one who had permanently lost her body. That said, being stuck as a brain hooked up to an entire company’s network kept her busy, at least for a while.

Deckard wasn’t the only one growing and changing during his developing years. His mother had been as well.

It was because of her and her efforts that he now had the body they had just slipped his hardened braincase inside.

She was spending ever more time researching and getting lost in her various projects. Without a physical body to keep her grounded, Meredith was slowly forgetting the things that had made her human. At the present time, the sole thing that seemed to keep her grounded and invested in humanity was her son.

A young man who struggled to connect with people due to his own issues.

Gradually, taking it slow at first, Deckard tested his new body, exploring its range of motion and capabilities. His arms had been redesigned to be more compact and slightly more aerodynamic. They were also a couple of inches shorter than before. The joints in his wrists allowed him to rotate his hands around in a full circle now as well, which was a completely new feature. Flexing his fingers, he felt the smooth metal against his sensitive synthetic skin.

He liked it. Everything was so much more responsive than before. More tactile.

Then there were his legs. They had also lost a few inches in height, and no longer resembled massive metal monstrosities. This latest major overhaul had slimmed them down and given them a more realistic shape and texture. He could see lines of hydraulic veins and synth-muscles under the artificial skin.

He knew his body was still far from being a perfect replica of a human one, but it was closer than ever before. He felt nothing but gratitude and awe for his mother and the scientists and engineers who had worked on the refinements. Each of them working toward the goal of giving him a chance to experience something resembling a normal life.

He had a routine for adjusting to his new body, one that he had followed countless times before. Every time he received a new body or a new part, he had to relearn how to use it, and how to adapt to its strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes he had to do it almost every day, as his body was constantly being upgraded or repaired. Other times, when he was luckier, there were longer breaks in between the new sessions and he could truly settle into his body.

Either way, it was an exercise that was simply designed to familiarize him with the limits of his body. Whether it was an entirely new one, or simply a replacement limb, he needed to know the information on his new body. That meant how all the little changes and improvements they had made affected its useability, performance, and handling.

The routine was designed to push him to his new limits and familiarize him with them. It told him how much weight each limb and part could hold, the max force they put out, along with their max extensions. It was an overall improvement of his awareness of his new body or limbs and its limits.

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The exercise was largely based around four separate exercises that his mother had bundled into one thirty-minute exercise. There were parts from Tai-chi, Yoga, Capoeira, and Krav-Maga mixed in for good measure.

If Deckard still had the flesh body he had been born with, the exercises would have been exhausting and sweaty, pushing him to his physical limits. But he didn’t have to worry about things like breathing, sweating, or fatigue. He didn’t have lungs, sweat glands, or muscles that could tire. He only had a brain encased in a durable, hardened braincase that provided it with nutrients and stimuli.

He didn’t suffer from dysmorphia, and the same was true for phantom limb syndrome. He had lost his original body when he was too young to remember ever having it and had never formed a stable self-image.

Since then, he had gone through so many bodies, so many changes, that he had no idea what he was supposed to look like. The only constant in his life was his braincase, which had been upgraded several times as he grew older, but always retained the same basic shape and function.

It was the only thing that defined his identity.

Whereas other people had biological factors to help guide them toward identifying as male, female, or something else entirely depending on their personal feelings. He had nothing. Without a proper body of his own, the most he could say was that he had been born male. That was all. However, there were no hormones or body parts associated with that particular gender.

The entire concept of gender relating to the emotional aspect was a foreign concept for him. Without the proper hormones, he didn’t feel any attraction, desire, or identity related to his birth gender. He was simply a brain, a mind, a consciousness.

Deckard was, for all intents and purposes, genderless.

At times, he wondered if he was missing something, if there was more to being a human that he was somehow unaware of. He had grown up in a sterile environment and had skipped out on many of the human experiences that shaped the doctors and researchers he interacted with.

He knew that the scientists and engineers were trying to recreate the human body and its constant need for different chemicals as faithfully as possible, all to give him a chance to feel what they felt. But he also knew that they were still far from achieving that goal. There were still many mysteries and challenges that they had not solved.

Maybe someday they would succeed, and he would be able to comprehend what he had been lacking. But that day was still in the distant future, at least according to his understanding of their various projects.

His musings were interrupted by the voice of a nearby technician. His name was Max, and he had been working at the facility for a couple of years by that point. He was holding the latest model of ink-sheet as he speedily took notes with the special pen that allowed him to interact with the thin screen. He was taking notes on Deckard’s performance, along with that of the new equipment, recording every detail and measurement.

“How does this iteration feel?” Max asked, looking at Deckard with a friendly smile.

Deckard paused and scanned his body for any anomalies or discomforts. He found none. The new body was in good condition, with no hitches or obvious problems. It had made it through the earlier exercise with flying colors.

“I like it, so far at least,” he replied. “It feels good, and everything moves even smoother than before.”

This was another part of the tedious maintenance routine they methodically carried out after every limb or full body exchange. Deckard was responsible for providing detailed diagnostics and performance reports to the engineering team on how each item held up and operated. It was tradition that the first exhaustive evaluation commenced immediately after each newly installed cybernetic component was installed. It was followed by subsequent check-ins after one week, one month, and additional intervals, depending on how long he actually kept whatever it was.

He never seemed to retain the same cybernetic limbs or full cyber-body for more than six months. They were always improving something and swapping out one part or another.

His mother, Meredith, was constantly pushing their various specialized research groups. Each team was at least partly responsible for the constant state-of-the-art upgrades to her son’s cybernetic physiology. Over the years, Deckard’s control had improved. However, technology hadn’t kept up with him, and each body, while better than the last, was still clunky.

No matter what he did, something always ended up broken. Whether it was a limb or a simple actuator, the team would inevitably decide it was time to replace the entire piece. Not to mention the entire world was hot on their company’s tails in terms of research. They refused to be left behind and were doing their best to cover every section that Koarden Enterprises was not actively involved in researching.

It was true that many of the initial developments had been done by his parent’s company. However, after that, they had begun to concentrate their efforts on items that Deckard used and abused the most.

Without the need to sleep, Meredith led many of the projects herself. Her mind was constantly active, researching, learning, running simulations, and controlling projects that only she knew about.

Max plugged a thin cable into a micro-port on each of his limbs and then his torso as he went through the specs and information it had gathered in the last few minutes.

It was all information Deckard could see through his own HUD, but that he typically ignored after going through the process so many times.

The tech copied the information over and speedily scanned it with his fleshware eyes, before frowning as he came across a line he didn’t like.

“Can you pull up the setting for your right ankle? It looks like you currently have a little too much roll right now. We need to stiffen it up, otherwise that joint will start giving you problems before anything else. I’ll add a note to the file, so this becomes hardcoded into the next iteration as well. We don’t want to keep messing with it every time.”

That was another item they had been gradually adding to each of the limbs as well. Hardcoded settings for the proper limits on each item. There had always been limiters in the settings for them, but they had never been hardcoded before and it was all too easy to stress them past the setting limits.

Deckard worked with Max for a while longer before he was finally able to excuse himself. He would have liked to say he hurried off to his next meeting, but the truth was, his new body was still a tad awkward to use.

Instead, he took his time walking back to the section of the research facility that belonged to him and his mother. This next meeting was one he had set up on his own with his mom for a project that he had been tossing around in his head for a while.

Whether or not it was feasible would depend almost entirely on her. His own efforts in working on the project had reached several different blocks that he had been unable to work through, no matter what he tried.

While his mother no longer had a body and existed solely as a brain with a damaged stem, that was constantly learning. He wasn’t much better. The main difference between them was that his brainstem hadn’t been damaged during his surgery.

However, even with his body, it was still artificial, and he found himself with a lot of downtime that a normal organic human wouldn’t. That meant Deckard also spent much of his time in the same manner as his mother. Learning, researching, and even occasionally running simulations, though those required far more computational power than he currently had access to on a regular basis.

Regardless, his efforts at constant learning had resulted in a project that he at least believed had the potential to change everything. In theory anyway. Despite doing his best to learn everything he could to handle it on his own, in the end, all he had been able to do was create a bare framework. Part of it was a matter of resources -since he was trying to keep the project private- the larger reason was simply he had underestimated how complex certain portions would be. And by a very significant margin.

It was why he needed this meeting with his mother. He needed her help, and he wanted to do things properly. This wasn’t something that would be completed in a short amount of time, even with her help. If she came onto the project, then it would be able to reach entirely new heights. With that in mind, he had approached this meeting as an official one and set it up through the official channels. This was not something to be discussed over the proverbial dinner table, least of all, since neither he nor his mother owned a dining table.

Meredith’s office had a special hologram projector built into the chair and all the walls and ceiling. They allowed her to sit at her desk and walk around the room as needed whenever she met with someone. The facsimile of a physical presence calmed people down, even when they knew she wasn’t really there.

The projection of his mother was all Deckard had known until he finally met her ‘Spark’ when he was ten years old. That had been when he was fitted with his first ‘NetConnect’ for visual and audio net interfacing.

That experience had been interesting and completely changed their relationship. On the net, his mother could have a body, and they could feel each other. At ten years of age, he had gotten the first hug from his mother that he could remember.

It was little wonder that since then the item that had seen the most upgrades and advanced the most was his NetConnect. What had started out as a somewhat low-resolution experience was now almost indistinguishable from real life for him. He’d been told it wasn’t quite there yet for everyone else. However, the latest version of the NetConnect was now able to draw on the image processors inside his eyes to make everything look the same for him. The only difference was a small, hardcoded watermark in the upper right corner.

In the net, where Meredith could touch her son, was unsurprisingly how she preferred to interact with him. Which is why his desire to have this meeting in her office instead caught her by surprise. Sure, she knew about his special project, if not the exact details, but that was his project, and she gave him his privacy.

Deckard sat down in front of her desk while the projectors flickered to life. He had a binder and an ink-sheet in his hands, not that he needed them. He simply felt that they made him look more professional for the meeting.

Meredith appeared with a burst of light, her fingers steepled together, and a look of solemn amusement dancing in her eyes. It was the only sign of emotion on her otherwise blank face.

“Alright, Deckard, I am here, and thirty minutes have been set aside for this meeting, as you requested. Let’s get started. Show me what this mysterious project you’ve been working on for the last little while has all been about.”