I’d been told that if my goal was to establish an unconventional training regimen in regards to my piloting, that a fairly accurate modern simulator game with realistic physics might actually be a better outlet than the cold, hard training simulations I’d been using. As I lay awake in my heart, watching Mouse reinstall the controls to the core module, I flipped through to the sandbox tutorial of the video game. I immediately found the control system lacking. It presented things in an unrealistically user-friendly fashion. I supposed it had to. It was meant to be played by human beings, after all. I supposed this was how normal people would approximate the controls that a ship core used.
Having a menu and controls that performed apparently simple functions that were actually much more complex under the surface could be something I could try to program into my own interface with the ship, but I felt like it would be a crutch that I already didn’t need, and would limit my capabilities to a narrow series of functions. That absolutely wouldn’t do in a real-life scenario.
But I supposed that I wasn’t using the game as a way to learn how to perform basic piloting functions anymore. The training simulator had already more than prepared me on how to control the various systems independently. I was playing this game to learn tactics. Poor as the realism of controlling the ship was, it was hard to deny that it presented an accurate understanding of physics, and the starships programmed into the game were based off of real publicly available designs. Even system damage of a ship was simulated very realistically, though obviously without the psychic feedback that I would experience in real life.
For now, though, it was time for bed. I was eager to let the night slip away so that I could pass the hours and then get back into my core module. I’d been able to keep myself occupied through my forced break. Thanks to the new hardware helping mitigate some of the mental strain of having a ship computer in my brain, I’d managed to stay sane. And while I conceded that maybe taking short breaks from the core module to return to my human body wasn’t as bad as I’d made it out to be, I could still feel the strain threatening to overwhelm me. I needed to feel that void again, and soon. Sleep wasn’t going to help me, I needed that nourishing nothingness to feel right again.
I briefly wondered if one might consider me an addict. Or at least medically dependent on the device. “Hey Mouse.” I found myself calling to the boy who was working on reinstalling the mechanism for opening and closing the core module, putting my arm down to my side and relaxing my body in preparation for sleep “Do you think it’s weird for a person to want to become a machine? Am I taking this whole thing too far?”
Mouse turned to look at me, a puzzled expression on his face “What do you mean?”
I thought about how I might be able to relate my feelings to the child, and happened to notice the glimmer of one of the metal pads on his hands “I mean, like… you’re part machine too. Do you ever feel like maybe that’s the best part of yourself? That you could just let yourself be… all mechanics and computers?”
Mouse stayed silent for a moment, his gaze returning to his work. I wondered if I’d upset him by bringing his prosthetics up again, but then he asked quietly “I never told you how I got like this, did I?”
I shook my head. Was he ready to share? “I never knew my parents. They could be dead. Who knows. I never really had them, so it doesn’t really matter to me. But there were these people. Some medical company. They were trying to come up with body replacement cybernetics. Ones that would never have to be replaced. Ones that are actually a part of a person, not just a tool you attach.” He flexed his hand a few times as if showing me how smoothly it worked. It really moved like a human hand “Not only that, but it had to grow with a person. It’s not really a machine, but it’s not flesh either.”
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“That’s amazing.” I muttered. I knew his prosthetics had looked advanced, but something that could actually grow and develop alongside a living human being, that was different “If you don’t mind me asking, how did it happen? A genetic disease?”
He shook his head, starting to look distant “No. There was nothing wrong with my arms.” He declared. Now I was confused. If he had had perfectly good limbs before, why had he been given prosthetics? He didn’t seem like he was okay. His hand was clenching the screwdriver in his hand a little bit too tight and it shook slightly. He finally spoke with a quivering voice “But I didn’t have any parents. And I lived alone. So no one else cared what they did to me.”
I was starting to get the picture, and I gave a sympathetic frown. He had been a victim. “I’m so sorry, Mouse, I-“
“Don’t!” he shouted at me, turning to look with a fierce glare that I hadn’t seen since my first day on the ship, where he’d initially been too cross to speak to me. It was no wonder he hated corpos so much. “Don’t do that. Don’t go feeling sorry for me or anything! I don’t… like that.” He seemed to be having trouble finding the words for what he meant. “They did that too. They… made me feel weak. Like I needed help. And then when they told me that they could help. They offered me a place to go. They were nice to me and almost treated me like I thought someone should be treated by their parents. Then they had me sign things and… and then I woke up and my arms were gone. And they stopped caring. They stopped treating me nice. They only cared about testing things. They kept reminding me about the stuff I signed, even though I didn’t know how to read any of it yet.”
He’d set his tools down for now and just had a distant expression on his face as he stared at the floor “Then the project went under. And I was thrown out. Back onto the street with nothing again, just… these.” He looked down at his hands and then held himself tight, “They’re useful. They helped me get work. But if they ever break, I don’t know what I’ll do. Try to fix myself, I guess. That’s why I got into engineering in the first place. Then I learned that I just… like it. Machines make sense to me.”
“So… no. I don’t think I’d want to be all machine. There’s more than enough of me that already is. I just want to be Mouse.” He said quietly, picking up his tools and returning to work. He didn’t cry. He didn’t seem sad. Instead he was barely holding back an ocean of seething anger.
I still wanted to tell him how sorry I was to hear about what he’d had to endure, but I knew now why he didn’t like being patronized. Why he acted so independent despite his age. Why he doesn’t trust easy. I opted to let the subject go. He’d been tortured enough about it. “Well… what do you think I should do?” I asked, trying to move the conversation forward.
He took a moment to think “You’re smarter than I was. So I guess… do what’s best for you. But don’t let someone else take your body away. It’s precious.” There was the faint sound of straining metal as he tightened the panel back onto the controls of the core module “All of it. You’re fascinating because of how human you are. That’s why I wanted to know what it’s like for you, being a machine, but psychically instead of physically. So don’t let anyone take away any more human parts than you have to.”
I had initially been angry that I’d had cyberware installed without my consent, but it had ended up quickly working out for the better, so the topic had been abandoned quickly. I didn’t resent the changes made to my body, and in fact, I was happier than ever that I’d been made into a cyborg. In that we differed greatly, it would seem.
“I’ll… have to think about that, I guess.” I laid back to rest my head on the pillow while he picked up his tools “One thing’s for sure though. I can’t wait to get back into that tank.”
“And I can’t wait to work with you as Theseus again.” He said as he stood back up with his collected tools “Seven more hours. We already loaded the cargo, so we should be able to take off as soon as you’re ready tomorrow.”
“Believe me, the moment Doc clears me, I’m getting in there and we’re going. I need to feel the vacuum across my wings again.” I smiled a little bit at the thought of soaring through space again, brief as the trip from Luna to Earth would be.