Carl woke up in a hospital bed. He felt IVs attached to his arm. He could tell it was daytime, but there seemed to be bandages over his eyes. Everything felt a bit fuzzy. Had he been in an accident?
His memories were not sharp, but Carl was pretty sure the year was 1988. He knew he was a student at Texas State University. Crap did he have homework due? Had he been in a car accident? He was having trouble remembering who his teachers were.
“Hello Carl. Nice to see you awake.” A pleasant, Asian sounding voice greeted him.
“Was I in an accident?” Carl tried to ask. Wow, his mouth was really dry. It sounded more like “Waffy in a askin?”
“Hold on a second.” He felt a squirt of water in his mouth. It tasted really good. He swished around a bit and swallowed.
“Um, was I in an accident?”
“No, you had a brain tumor. It was considered inoperable, but our lead researcher had some rather brilliant ideas for fixing you.”
“Oh, I guess I have brain damage. Probably why I can’t remember my teachers' names.”
“Teachers? Oh, well Ms. White said she thought you might have significant permanent memory loss. What is the last thing you remember?”
Carl thought for a minute.
“Um, I drive an Acura Integra, it’s pretty sweet. I’m a student at Texas State, I think I’m studying business. I remember all 3 Star Wars movies, but they were out a while ago. Um, this is hard.”
“OK, take it easy. This is going to be a bit of a shock. It is 2022. I don’t know all the details of your personal life, but you’ve been homeless for a while.”
“What? I’m a bum? And I’m like 50 something years old?”
“Yeah, it’s not polite to call homeless people that anymore.”
“Who cares what I call myself? I’m kind of freaking out now.” Carl pulled at the bandages on his face. The light was really bright, so he closed his eyes quickly.
“Careful, we performed some surgery on your eyes. You are still recovering so we have the lights dimmed and you need to keep the bandages on.”
“The light isn’t dim. It’s like the sun is glaring in my face.”
He felt the bandages getting put on his head again but didn’t fight it.
“It’s actually quite dim here. Your eyes should adjust in a few days.” The voice said kindly.
“I’m going to give you a sedative so you can rest some more.”
“Wait!” Carl protested.
“Relax, you are recovering much faster than we expected.”
That was not encouraging, but Carl fell asleep before he could respond.
----------------------------------------
“How is he doing?” Melinda asked over the chat program. She was labeled
“Extensive memory loss. Doesn’t remember much past the 80s, but his speech is fine. He’s probably going to struggle with being politically correct, “Nittaya Chaikhot replied.
“Don’t we all?!” Melinda asked. “I am never hiring an HR director if I can help it!”
“OK, well his eyes were very sensitive even with dim lighting”
“Yeah, we’re regrowing some of his optic nerves. It took a few tries to get the cybernetic surgery right.”
“It is fascinating how you are able to regrow brain and nerve tissue. This will be able to help a lot of people who are paralyzed.”
“Yes. You’re going to have to take the credit for that since I’m not really a doctor. They’d arrest me for all kinds of nonsense. Practicing without a license, nonconsensual brain surgery, genetic engineering on humans. That’s not even counting all the cadavers I stole to practice my surgical techniques.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear all that.”
“Yeah, good plan.”
“What exactly did you implant in Carl? The surgery was fascinating to watch, and it is quite impressive you didn’t kill him.”
“Thanks. I’ve known Carl for a while. He doesn’t look like much, but he is a tough old dude. Anyway, the device I put in allows us to show a heads-up display into his field of vision. It also allows mental commands to interact with certain features. Most of the processing is done on the unit at the back of his head which has similar computing power to a traditional cell phone. Currently we still have to charge lithium batteries and swap them out when his power gets low.”
“You broke countless laws and invented groundbreaking technology so Carl can have a built-in cell phone?”
“Well, it sounds kind of stupid when you put it like that. Basically, he can communicate and run apps without holding a device. Maybe it doesn't sound that great, but the exciting part is how his brain developed a whole mass of tissue which self-trained to interact with the tech.”
Melinda continued. “At first, we thought it was just his tumor growing back and cut it out a couple times. Eventually we realized the new brain cells we grew had the plasticity that you find in a baby’s brain. They were learning how to interact with the device!”
“I admit it sounds interesting. I’m sure if I had the technology you developed, I would have gone in a different direction.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m an odd person.” Melinda continued.
“I didn’t mean it as an insult. I think you’ve advanced science more in 6 months than most research labs achieve in decades. What kind of features will this device have? I assume you didn’t build so he could watch cat videos.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Well, my boy Scotty is working on the most exciting thing you can imagine.” Melinda gushed. “A new version of our human resources software!”
----------------------------------------
After a few fitful days, Carl woke up again. He remembered a strange dream about all his teeth falling out. His teeth felt strange, almost like they were just a bit different shape than what they should be, but they were all there. The bandages on his eyes were gone. The light in the room was comfortably dim. He opened his eyes.
The hospital room was sterile white. The only furniture was an uncomfortable looking couch that could slide out to a bed that looked even less comfortable than sleeping on the floor. There was a flat piece of what looked like dark glass high on the wall. He was still attached to a stand with IVs, but he also noticed a cord attached to the back of his head.
A device with some buttons and a cord was sitting next to him on his bed. He pressed some of the buttons. One of them turned on the piece of glass which was apparently some futuristic television. Some people on the TV were sitting around talking about some lady who didn’t know which of five guys was the father of her child. They were going to reveal it with something called DNA. What kind of demented game show was that?
“I see you are awake.” An older asian woman had entered the room. Was she older than him? He wasn’t sure.
Name
Nittaya Chaikhot
Role
Senior Medical Technician
Company
Genysis Biotech
Age
34
What the heck was that?
A floaty box had appeared in his vision. Carl started freaking out and rubbed his eyes.
“Careful!” Nittaya rushed over and tried to restrain his hands.
The pop-up window had disappeared.
“I saw this box appear in my vision. It said your name was Nitty something.”
“OK, calm down. I’m Nittaya, I’ve been supervising the nurses here and helping with some of your surgeries. I believe what you saw is called a pop-up window. They are very popular in certain types of stories, but you may be the first person in the real world to have such a system installed.”
“What the heck? Am I some sort of guinea pig?”
Name
Carl ??
Role
Cybernetics Guinea Pig
Company
Genysis Biotech
Age
53
“Dammit!” Carl cursed. The “pop-up” disappeared from his vision. Somehow he had absorbed the information even though it only appeared briefly.
“Why doesn’t it know my last name? My last name is ???” Oh, he couldn’t remember it either.
“Do you need another sedative?” Nittaya asked.
“No! Don’t drug me again.” Carl insisted. “Wait a minute, I'm a Cyborg now? That’s actually kind of awesome. I am looking for Sarah Conner!” The last part was said with a lame Austrian accent.
He felt the plug at the back of his head.
“Oh no, do I have to stay plugged in all the time? Why couldn’t you guys have waited until you invented fusion batteries or something?”
An old woman entered the room. She smiled at him. It was kind of sweet like he remembered his grandmother. Also kind of scary, like he was a delicious steak. Who was this woman… Nope! Nope! Don’t want the pop-up. It had flickered on, but he shut it down instantly.
She was looking at some device in her hand. It looked about the size of a deck of cards. She seemed to be pretending to press buttons on it, but it didn’t have any buttons he could see.
“Argg!” Carl yelped. “Another pop-up just jumped into my head.” It took him a few seconds to settle down. He made the box go away with a thought.
“Did you just send a telegraph into my head?” Carl said. He reached up to the wire that was attached. “If I pull this out, will I shut down?”
“It should be OK. We were just charging the battery. I bet you can see what your battery level is at.”
Battery
100% (12.3 hours)
Carl reached back and pulled the cord out of the back of his head. He noticed there was some kind of round plastic plate about 3 inches wide with a couple small ports. He really was a cyborg!
“So, do I have super strength or armor or anything?” Carl asked.
“No, right now we figured it would be enough to start with a highly illegal brain implant before we started replacing body parts.” Nittaya said, somewhat amused.
“Oh, cool. Is that old lady Doctor Melinda?” Carl said.
“She’s about the same age as you, Carl.” Nittaya laughed. “Yes, she is
“Can you try to respond to her text message? What you called a telegraph.”
To
Carl the Cyborg: Hi stop Hope you are getting this stop I am a robot stop
“OK. Gotta ask. Do they have flying cars?”
“Sort of. They are not that great, and you aren’t allowed to fly them because the government thinks terrorists will crash them into a building.” Nittaya said.
“Terrorists? I really need to read some newspapers to figure out what has been going on.”
“Yeah, they don’t really have many newspapers anymore. We get news on our phones or the internet.”
“Someone calls you and tells you the news? That’s messed up”
Carl discovered the internet. He sat there staring into space with a big dopey smile for about 10 minutes. Finally, he was interrupted.
Oh wow! Carl was now a cyborg, and his mission was to save the world! Carl was actually surprised the Soviets hadn’t already started WW3. Reagan must have scared them off with his space lasers. Right, he really needed to catch up on the news during his plane trip.
Carl attempted to get out of bed. He had old man skin, but he was actually kind of ripped. He didn’t remember having so much muscle. Maybe in the future people just took a pill and they could look like Arnold in Conan.
“Take it easy. You are on a lot of pain killers, but you are probably going to be very sore for the next couple days when the meds wear off.” Nittaya said with some sympathy.
He didn’t really pay attention to her warnings, because Carl was feeling good. They had rebuilt him better, stronger, faster just like the six million dollar man. He was ready to go save the world.