Stolen symbology pervades deeply throughout our culture as we dress in costumes made from the corpses of old ideals, perverting them further with our every step. Some lean into this more than others but none more than the synn-smith sixers. The heretical smiths in charge of the profane forges, making a mockery of the human form as they seek to enhance us to some new distant perfection that is forever beyond reach.
The flesh of our birth was once thought to be a reflection of the gods we worshipped and it is thus only appropriate that we sacrifice that form just as we’ve sacrificed the gods. The flesh of our birth is replaced with synns realised by human minds in the name of the new divines, but what nature of mind can think to reshape and evolve upon what was once deemed perfect?
“A spinal-trap and a logic core transplant,” the sixer smith waits for me to nod before moving his unnervingly long fingers about as if grasping at something between us that I can’t see. His eyes have long since been replaced by an advanced scanner-set that protrudes from his eye sockets. Seven reflective lenses shift about on metal limbs, capturing the moment in higher fidelity than bio-sight could ever manage.
“This transplant is one of the most intensive upgrades that we perform here, I must reiterate the consequences of this procedure,” he explains in a cold, business-like manner. “Though the metal will be fully implanted within half an hour, it will be 20 hours before its systems fully spread throughout your nervous system and reach full functionality, so expect no immediate changes to perception. Rehabilitation can proceed after the spine-trap has fully activated, but the time to recovery is dependant wholly on your efforts and ability.”
“I understand,” I provide formal permissions via the nearnet as I look about the shop side of his forge. The BTR—Better Than Real—skin samples show off a variety of feature sets including subdermal anti-kinetic armours, electromagnetic shielding, heat dispersion systems, acid-resistant insulators, and radiation deflector plating alongside many others. Yet what sets this store apart is the near unlimited aesthetic options. Some samples even functioning as complete displays or hologram emitters which may function to enhance or replace clothes, while altering one’s appearance with a moment's thought.
Most of the affordable forges focus on what’s practical, while this level of aesthetic customisation is limited to those at the top of society where a refined appearance is an important aspect of one’s position.
Mom is sitting to the side quietly lost in her feeds, though her fingers do occasionally twitch to prove that she hasn’t just fallen asleep in her chair. She’ll be looking after me while I’m in recovery and I was hoping that it could be a chance to try and get closer. She’s been falling deeper and deeper into her feeds and I don’t even know what’s taken her interest.
It’s starting to worry me.
“Please, head inside,” the heretical smith waves me into the back room after all the forms and agreements are processed. His long metal fingers twitch as various tools are bolted into place riding on the backs of his fingers or passing all the way through. I see needles and saws among other things that I can’t figure the purpose of.
Inside the working area of his forge, I find none of the ordinary mechanical braces meant to hold a customer still during surgery, in their place is a long white bench that looks to be made of soft rubber. On a smaller table of the same material rests the metal that I’m to have installed. A long, black spine with purple highlights and a small grey orb barely larger than the tip of my thumb.
An apprentice, wearing a face that’s nearly human, is already here waiting for me, smiling in welcome as she waves to the bench with her long-fingered smith’s hands.
“You will need to strip and lie face down right here, if you could please,” she tells me with a kind smile. “This transplantation will temporarily strip control over your bodily functions, but the operating table will keep the working space clean of any expulsions.”
Even though I know that I’ve never had any real privacy in my life, it’s still somehow embarrassing to strip naked in front of strangers. Of course, I don’t let it show, keeping my stance neutral even though my hands naturally move to cover myself.
The apprentice’s gaze flows along my form, not seeing what I am so much as what I could become. I am but a stone in the hands of a sculptor, waiting to see how much of me will be chipped away.
Resting face down on the soft operating table, the spongey material sinks under my weight flowing around my limbs and locking me in place. I can’t keep from taking a sharp breath at the surprising motion but restrain it quickly. My back is pressed upwards as everything else is consumed by the operating table to prevent me from moving.
“Are we ready?” the smith asks, and I can hear him moving closer from the gaps in the white table around my head. His metal fingers are clicking through a selection of gadgets.
“We’re ready,” the apprentice replies.
“Good, then we’ll be finished inside of the hour,” he stands by my side, his metal fingers trailing over my exposed skin, sending cold shivers down my back. “Artemis, you can access the visual feeds observing our work through the nearnet, I’m sending you the access code now.”
“Thank you,” I reply, pulling at the data and opening up the visuals in my feed. Instantly my oculars reveal the world through the smith’s eyes, staring down over my neck and upper back emerging from the smooth white table. The apprentice places the new metal on the table beside me while the smith sprays a frosty mixture over my exposed skin.
“I’ll explain some details as I work, as there is a 12% increased adaption rate in persons that properly understand the functions of this particular synn before completion of the transplantation,” the smith lectures me, setting a blade through his forefinger and a strange gadget on his second finger, which he connects via a hose to a reinforced bottle by the side of the table.
He neatly slices through my skin without any hesitation, the pain of it mostly suppressed by my logic core, but not entirely. The tool on his second finger paints and seals the cut with a metallic rubber composite keeping any blood from leaking out of the wound.
“Today we’ll be removing a significant portion of your spinal column and to a lesser extent your brain stem, exposing most of the nerves which the spinal-trap will be interacting with and eventually replacing,” he explains, cutting around a long segment of skin covering the back of my head down the length of my spine.
With casual ease, he runs his blade along the inside of my skin, flaying me. The metallic-silver rubber that lined his cuts now splits in two as an edging to both panels of skin. The apprentice sprays the internal side of the peeled skin with a bright yellow tincture to contain the bleeding, following her master’s movements closely until the skin is entirely removed. She sets it aside for further processing.
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Though there is little pain, a deep irritation consumes my guts and cuts into my consciousness, demanding that I escape before it’s too late. I force the unsettling emotions down, but my bio-mind remains tense.
“The spine-trap synn, once properly fitted, will grow throughout your nervous system, consuming and replacing your nerves with a network of enhanced light-speed nodes. Similarly, it will consume and replace the logic core roots that are spread throughout your brain, improving nerve responses as a whole,” he explains as he switches between a saw and a blade to cut into my back, removing bone, cartilage, flesh, and more.
My ribs and muscles are severed as he works, much of it discarded but that which is not is painted in the same metallic rubber used in the border of my skin panels. Metal components are carefully seated into the freed space, the ribs remaining loose for no longer than a brief moment before they’re joined with the new metal instead.
“These enhanced systems will eventually mimic the connections between synapses, copying the memories and personality data stored within, as the software mimics hormonal influences. This means that the data that comprises your consciousness and personality can now be altered and edited to a more considerable degree.”
He saws deep into my body, perfectly cutting only what needs to be cut as each segment of the new synn is transplanted into the place of discarded flesh and bone. Each metal component locks perfectly into place with the last, more beautifully crafted than the biological components could ever be.
“The synapses will remain as an emergency backup system, but will constantly lag behind your new mental network. What you’ll need to achieve to return to full mobility, is to take the movement programs that are copied from your bio-mind and convert them to fit with the faster messaging systems of the spine-trap. Your thinking will be ten times as fast, so you’ll need to order your body to move ten times slower or the message will be misinterpreted. You’ll likely experience damaging fits until you’ve fully adapted your movement code to your new situation.”
I can’t even reply, watching his bloody work as he encases my brain stem in shimmering black metal. Before the final pieces of the trap can be set into place, he pries open a panel in the back of my skull, the hinges set into a metallic rubber lining just the same as used in my skin. An access port installed as part of the logic core suite.
The skin disguising it is still scabbed over from last night.
My stomach twists as I watch through the heretic’s eyes, his long prying fingers opening the hatch in the back of my skull to reveal the networks of synthetic wires tying knots through grey matter. A parasitic clutch of worms, slowly writhing as they consume me; become me.
The devices pinned to the back of the heretic’s fingers wind loose with a loud whirring of metal components, driving back on rails before settling inside hidden compartments on the back of the man’s hands and wrists. New devices rise and run along the same rails before bolting themselves into place inside his long fingers.
With experience, he slips his devices into my head, caressing the grey orb that rests at the heart of the networked wires. That single tiny synn contains at least half of who and what I am.
His specialised tools open an access port at the rear of the orb before connecting it via a thin wire to the new replacement. We wait for only a few passing moments before that half of me is cloned to the new synn.
“Shutting down your logic core now,” the smith says as he presses a new device into the access port. The mechanical functions take a few moments to fully shut down, but when they do it’s as if the entire world shifts underneath me.
My thoughts are slow and thick, but my heart blossoms in my chest, finally free of the cold logical rule of the machines binding it. It’s like I’ve been dragging around heavy iron chains my whole life, and finally, they’ve fallen loose. A hesitant laugh bubbles up inside and I lick my lips, ready to call an end to all of this madness.
The words die in my tightening throat.
This is all just chemicals in my mind. It is not who I am, and I will not let my biology consume me, or have me act the fool. I just need to hold out for a few minutes at most and I’ll have a new cage to bind these rebellious emotions.
The newly freed metal orb is set aside as the new synn is transplanted into my mind and spun up. The orb whirs to life inside the socket, relinking itself with all the loose wires left behind. It still takes a little while to fully warm up all its internal drives, reconnecting me with a clone of the half that I lost moments ago.
I relax, as my rebellious biology is forced properly back into submission. The comforting chains settling back into their proper place.
There’s little noticeable difference from the old core, the cloned data can’t be told apart from the last, and most of the device’s improvements are in back-end systems; security and performance upgrades.
Finally, the synn smith places the last panels of the spine trap in place, activating a series of components as he goes. There is a slight vibration running through me as the mechanical processes begin their work, my body tingling with discomfort as if I’m immersed in a bath just slightly colder than I can bear, yet also somehow heated on the verge of boiling.
With the metal installed, I try to distract myself from the discomfort by watching the last of the heretical synn-smith’s work.
Cutting outwards from my spine, the synn-smith creates new panels of skin to peel away, before applying a thick gauze-like material to the inner side of the exposed skin. It sinks into the flesh absorbing the blood and redirecting it to where it’s needed.
The peeled skin, once fully prepared, is hooked back into place atop the metal component through countless little clasps artfully sewn into place with the smith’s many long fingers. The final product leaves me looking no different from how I was outside of the thin metallic seams between panels of living skin. Seams that can be unzipped and easily opened by any smith needing access to my insides.
“And we’re done,” the heretic nods in satisfaction, denying any further access to his vision. “You’ll be paralysed until the spine-trap is finished adapting your nerve network, when it’s finished you may start with rehabilitation. You’ll find a series of guides to assist you in your feed alongside the contacts of a trained professional who may assist you at an extra charge.
“I wish you a swift recovery. Please return for all your future purchases. We have a good selection of BTR skin that can be adapted to all your professional or personal needs.”
His assistant transfers me into a wheelchair, pushing me out of the theatre.
Mom says nothing as she takes me back home, I couldn’t say a word if I wanted to. The silence draws me away into a dark sleep that I cannot refuse.
--- --- --- --- ---
A cold, sharp awareness steals away my pleasant dreams and leaves me stranded in a plain white room with a faint whining scream echoing in my ears. I can’t quite find the source of the sound, it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating in my mind and causing a painful headache.
I recognise this place even if I haven’t visualised it like this before. This white room would seem empty simply because everything is stored away neatly. Everything is in order, and under my total and complete control, even shallow thoughts are silenced when I will them gone, or highlighted if they are valuable.
Ever since I lost my first friend, this has been the place where I’m most comfortable, yet now a deep cold consumes everything, spreading from my freezing spine. The screaming grows louder, more desperate, as the cold spreads, though I don’t understand why.
A deep rut forms in my gut and my throat clogs with unspoken worries but I don’t know why my body is suddenly so terrified, let alone what I can do about it.
I seek answers in my memories but there is nothing there to be found. No answers to this strange dream.
The longer that I search for answers, the less demanding the search seems. The cold that spreads through me from the new metal becomes a comforting blanket, numbing the panic that was driving me, and stifling the screams that were once so painful and distracting.
I’ve just lost something important.
I just don’t know what it is.
Slowly my awareness slips and I let myself rest properly as my new metal runs its background processes; drilling its fingers deep into my mind.