‘The Basics of Cybernetics - Juno Hall’
It was bound with a light brown leather, the letters of my actual name pressed into the cover–and repeated on the spine–while the book itself took up a good chunk of the desk’s surface area. There was a chair in front of the desk, made of the exact same leather as the fucking tome, which made a terrible scraping noise as I pulled it out to sit down.
There were a lot of weird variables I wasn’t questioning when I normally would, but I couldn’t find it in me to care about the strange way the inside of the tent stretched and how there were fluorescent lights inside of it when I’d died twice and was likely to die again soon.
I ran a hand down the cover, nearly flinching as my palm suddenly became aware of similar rivulets on it as the ones on the bark of the tree. I half expected them to start glowing, but they mercifully stayed benign. My eyebrow creased as I squinted at the book. The rivulets were not there before I touched the book, and now they were. I didn’t allow myself to question it, solid anger forming at all my unanswered questions.
I did take a moment to question the girth of the book, though. Half-tempted to use it as a weapon, I opened it and flipped through to the end to see if I could find out the number of pages. No such number existed, in the bottom-right or top-right–or any other–corner, and I sighed. I didn’t turn back to the first page however, my eyes dilating at the actual contents of the paper.
The entire surface was filled with script, and it was actively shifting, kind of like how the interface translated text, but distinctly different in the sense that it would never actually settle into anything properly legible. Numbers, letters, asterisks and tildes, I saw everything there and a headache was starting to pulse behind my eyes. I wasn’t supposed to read ahead like this, and quickly flipped back to the front of the book, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
The words stayed still on the first page, and there was a short preamble that introduced the rest of the book, and I slowly felt my headache return as I skimmed over it.
‘The Basics of Cybernetics -
To Juno -
It’s great to meet you! I’ve known you for a long, long time but I’ve never gotten the chance to introduce myself! So, hi, hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you!
Now- let’s get to the important part of this here book, we’ll talk more polite things and discuss the weather later. This is going to teach you the basics of constructing cybernetics and prosthetics, as well as improving your base ability to draw technical sketches and blueprints. In the room around you, there are a couple of machines to facilitate the creation of enhancements, cybernetic and otherwise.
There is a FABRICATOR to your left, and how you use it is simple. Take one of the blueprints you’ve made for INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS–please do not try to print out an entire leg or arm, please–and put it into the necessary slot after loading the fabricator with the necessary materials. You’ll get more later on, and it’ll be a bit messy then on, okay? For some reason they didn't give you a place to put biological waste, but I guess most of it just disappears after your death so it doesn't really matter.
It’ll be fine, just read, create, and you’ll get this done!
It’s going to hurt, but you’re used to that by now.
Stay safe!’
There were too many characters revealing themselves to me. The interface, whoever made that first message, the people behind the posts, and now whoever this was. I ignored the peppiness and the hinted at stalker behavior, and simply turned the page.
It was back to the scrambled letters; a little worm in the back of my head supplying their invisible meaning. I could almost taste the chalk and graphite of a collegiate classroom, an imaginary teacher introducing the course–syllabus included–before detailing why cybernetics are important. There were no actual words, or lessons, or syllabus, or reasoning behind the course, it was pure knowledge transferred with a scholarly filter.
But even then, that wasn’t the truth, as my body gained as much knowledge as my brain did. Technical drawing, forging, self-surgery, all of it shoved right into my myoglobin.
I finished the book in an hour, or at least something around there, as I still hadn’t figured out how to pull the timer up without dying. The memory of my body decomposing mentally flashbanged me, and I quickly picked up the book from the desk.
An absolutely furious headache was currently making its way about my skull like an angry typhoon. More than the pain, hidden between groans and the folds of my squishy gray-matter, were ideas. I had rough plans and drafts of how to replace my legs with hydraulics that would allow me to jump and kick with enough force to turn femurs into dust. I had some more about mechanical wings that doubled as knives that connected directly to my spine.
All of it required large quantities of materials beyond steel, and the designs that didn’t were fundamental changes to my body’s structure outside of simple cybernetics.
I froze. I wasn’t just considering replacing limbs, I was planning on actively doing it. Why… why? Because that’s what the interface gave me? I could find another way- use my knowledge to make some kind of weapon without permanent scarring myself.
‘Why does your body matter when your life's on the line,’ I questioned myself. I brought my hands together, closing my eyes and thinking. I couldn’t make anything life changing, and the actual know-how the book gave me was, despite the grand ideas, surface level. I didn’t think I would actually be able to make robo-legs or wings. But… what would it hurt to have a hand, that is a gun? Not a hand-gun, no, never. But a hand, that is a gun?
I desperately started searching the workshop for some paper, eager to start drawing up my ideas. Like everything else, I’d confront the oncoming body dysphoria when I had the time to look into a vanity.
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The first thing, of my many ideas to print, were tools. To assemble, and to cut. The interface didn’t supply me with any medicine, so the surgery would be raw, and due to the nature of the cybernetic–and my lack of resources–I would have to use my own flesh and bone as part of the mechanism.
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In my reading, I learned of an energy that was roughly juxtaposed over the human heart, and besides the giant warning signs that basically read ‘you will die if you modify the core,’ the basics also taught me of how to draw it forth with machinery and soul power. That's a joke, but I could kind of just push it around inside of me. If I had to roughly guess as to what it was, because The Basics never gave it a name, with the theming of the interface, it’s either mana or the soul. I was using it as both.
How the H-TIG–which stands for the Hand That Is a Gun–works, roughly, is using my flesh as a conduit for the energy–or mana. In the future, with mana conductive materials, I could have loop-de-loops of mana traveling down my body. Right then I had to rely on the natural lines and conduits in the human body, in this case being the forearm and palm. I was debating between having it poke through my palm, finger, or out of my forearm itself, but at the end of the day I thought it would be more useful to have more machinery in my forearm. It was easier to defend than the hand anyway, but I refused to change the name.
I would not have a significant amount of time to test out my aim with it. It would also be made of steel, rather than the traditionally used titanium for prosthetics, which meant it would be heavy as all-hell. Later, I would be able to make systems that would have the fired bolt track, but that was a way later thing. I would have to practice with the H-TIG while I walked to fight the Shade. I would figure out how to fire it at least once before I left, so I would know whether or not it would even work.
I already used an hour to read, and two to make the blueprints–just because my body knows how to draw doesn’t mean it can do it quickly yet–so I was finding myself running out of time. I bounced a leg anxiously as I watched the barrel print.
The fabricator was a fascinating piece of technology that, by itself, would have pushed humanity into the space age. Steel being deconstructed and rearranged to the exact dimensions and measurements of a piece of paper. A piece of paper. If NASA got a hold of this thing, we would have been on the surface of the sun in the seventies.
Retroactively, with time-travel, because why not.
Well- I didn’t actually know if it was capable of time travel. That was probably out of the interface’s range. Though… it was bringing me back to life repeatedly, so maybe?
I was pushing off the big issue. I did not want to replace the vast majority of my forearm–and the entirety of my hand–with steel. The thought of peeling back my skin and muscles, putting steel where once there was flesh, made my stomach roll. I was human at the end of the day. I ate, breathed, and slept, and I didn’t want to get rid of that. But the interface wasn’t giving me a choice.
The preamble of The Basics could not have been more of an understatement. It wasn’t just going to hurt, and I was not getting used to it. I would, eventually, as that’s what the system seemed to push. Replace a hand, an arm, a shoulder, both of my legs, my spine, my heart. It would not end until the blood from my body was replaced by oil, black and staining. How much of my body would be the same once the trial was over?
The fabricator let off a soft chime and I grabbed the barrel, quickly moving it over to the desk with the rest of the parts. I started assembling what little bits I could without having to cut open and rearrange my arm, maybe going a bit slower than someone with less than five days left before their soul collapsed.
Oddly enough, it was a hard decision to decide which arm to get rid of. The obvious choice was my right arm–my dominant arm–because it was my dominant arm. But also- it was my fucking dominant arm.
If I fucked it up, and my changes stuck between deaths–which everything seemed to point at–I’d be without my dominant arm which would make all other later modifications significantly harder. And I’d rather not basically sign my death warrant not even a day into the trial.
I wasn’t even a day into the trial.
The last piece clicked together seamlessly, and I brought the rest over to the operating table, not eager to get eldritch bacteria anytime soon. My tools were already there, sitting on one side of it, the side I would presumably not be cutting up my right arm.
Oh, fucking idiot. I would have to do the entire operation with my non-dominant hand. I couldn’t even go back, because the fabricator ate through over half of the rather small palette of steel the interface gave me. I let out an irritated sigh, swatting away the idle questioning of how long it would take until the interface gave me titanium, before gently setting down the cybernetic and its components.
I would have to just suck it up. And so, I picked up my saw, bit down on a cut up piece of my shirt, and began to cut out the rough home for my new arm.
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It was only after my body was permanently altered that I realized the interface hadn’t given me anything to clean up my own blood. Like the preamble had said, no trash can was there in the workshop. I never really considered it whilst I had to fight to stand upright, my legs constantly shaking from the pain. At some point, I spat out the cloth. The soft ‘tap tap tapping’ of blood against the vinyl floor as the pools that covered the operating table grew too large and began to spill over kept me sane. There was a trail of it from the table, the desk, and the fabricator, with the rest of my steel pile gone and turned into extra parts I didn’t foresee myself making. I ended up having to replace my elbow, and then I had to modify everything to replace my lower arm and hand rather than going inside of it.
It was a dark gray, almost blue, that you could see through in some places, the machinery mesmerising to look at and watch in action. A small button in between where normally the webbing of my index and thumb would be caused by the gun to pop out, but I didn't really have fine control of the motion. I couldn't connect the prosthetic with my nervous system, and instead had to practically try to explode the thing by forcing as much mana at the wall between my flesh and steel. With the size of it, it doubled as a bludgeoning weapon. The barrel, when up, stuck up high enough, with a sort of concave support, that no matter what my hand did the two wouldn’t touch. Aiming was as simple as raising my monstrously heavy arm. It was ridiculous how heavy steel was.
It was butt-ugly, unfortunately. There wasn’t any real cohesion between the parts, and it was something born of necessity. After the trial, I told myself, I would beautify it up. Maybe smack some flowers on it. A live laugh love sign would fit right in.
Actually firing the H-TIG, was something I had yet to really figure out. In a macabre way to try to get rid of some of the… waste, I spaced out my removed arm on the operating table while trying to figure out how to shoot my arm-gun.
The mechanical parts involved I could understand and communicate vocabulary to someone who doesn't care, but calling forth the magical ball hovering in my chest was beyond me. I tried to imagine it flowing down my body and into my arm, but that felt… wrong. Like the source was asleep. I could get it up to the wall where my actual arm stopped and turned into a prosthetic. The thing was burrowed into my flesh, but I couldn't force the mana into it.
Another goddamn hour later, where I tried to meditate, use the force, and even did Spider-Man hands, my patience was wearing thin.
“Fire, damnit!”
A horribly familiar blue-green light illuminated the inside of the barrel, before shooting forward quicker than I could follow, singing my long hair with its path, as I was angrily shaking my arm when I gave the command.
I nearly slapped myself before remembering the hand that normally does that was made of metal and had a gun attached. Instead, I grinned. My clothes were covered in blood, my skin was pale, my heart was light, and another headache started to form, but I smiled. It actually worked. And for the first time, I felt like my death might have been worth it.