(Woman to Varying Levels of Cyborg)
Paige looked to Nicole anxiously, wondering where the woman was going with her current train of thought and realizing that the engine had started before any tracks were laid. Training with the witch was always a novel experience, namely because of the fact that she, surprisingly, was a massive nerd.
Case in point: today’s exercise. Nicole grinned from ear to ear at her friend, watching the woman shift a little uneasily. “Today, we’re going to teach you a little thing about cyborgs in the forty-first millennium.”
“Oh, great.” Paige muttered, distinct thoughts to her last time spent as an alien from Nicole’s evident favorite universe. “So, what’s the plan here?”
“The plan,” Nicole beamed, waving her hands, “is to broaden your horizons. And the reality of that begins now.” She lanced her arms forward as she spoke, and Paige felt an invisible wave of magic course across her body.
Her eyes squeezed shut, then as quickly as the sensations had begun, they’d ended. She opened her eyes, hearing a faint whirring, clicking noise and seeing a new world before herself. In many ways, it looked much as the old world had—for a few moments at a time. Whenever Paige wanted to focus on something, it grew hyperdetailed in her field of view, and excess information spilled into her mind.
“Whoa…” She gasped, looking around the room in awe. “It’s like I can see the code…”
“Nice reference.” Nicole smirked. “Today we’re going to be taking you down the path of the Cult Mechanicus, one step at a time. This is your first entry: basic optic augmentics. What do you think?”
“It’s… Trippy.” Paige admitted, shifting her gaze from the sunlit window to the television. Now that she was looking at something mechanical, she could see far more data than she thought possible, identifying every component, its place of manufacture, and how to repair it.
“You have a dead micropixel one thousand and six pixels from the right edge, and five hundred sixty-five pixels from the top.” Paige blurted without meaning to, a small flush crossing her features. “Sorry, that kind of caught me by surprise.”
“Well, when you know everything, it’s hard not to share. Let’s continue with some other basic augmentations.”
Paige shuddered as more magical energy enveloped her body. Her lungs seized, then ceased to function. Part of her panicked, though a new side of her brain remained utterly detached from the sensation. She could feel her body stiffening, changing in some locations, while others remained woefully human.
Or… Just human. She didn’t quite know where that thought came from, but it was a strange one. She’d need to analyze it later. Paige whir-clicked her eyes shut and open again, an old habit. “So… What now?” She asked, curious.
“I don’t know, you tell me.” Nicole grinned, allowing the transforming woman to better concentrate on her form.
Paige sighed at the woman’s attitude, inwardly grating at the inefficiency of needing such a self-discovery. She looked to her feet to find they now looked more like splayed, metallic claws, akin to a large wolf’s. It made sense, because she had always been a dog person.
No sooner had the thought passed through her mind than she flexed her air intake, breathing in a wealth of scent from the surrounding area. Though the woman lacked lungs, she was able to still simulate breathing through a concealed vacuum tube within her nasal cavity. This had the added benefit of allowing neutral scents through the area to register within her augmented olfactory node.
“You are amused.” Paige said at length, a smile breaking across her features. “I suppose you didn’t expect me to take this long to discover I’d enhanced my sense of smell to far exceed my favorite breed of dog. Also, given your additional response, I can only assume these transformations are based on those I would take naturally, given the proper mentality.”
“Right in one.” Nicole flexed her arms, before beaming widely. “Now, let’s get crazy.”
Paige could detect the magic this time, and she shuddered as more of her organic form was replaced by circuitry. This time there was something more, a new addition to her body. The base of her spine was heavier, and she leaned forwards instinctively to compensate.
“This is what I call a full tech-priest package. Somewhat. It’s all very basic, but I’m sure you can appreciate it for what it is.” Nicole explained slowly, and Paige felt an uncommon surge of arrogance rise to the forefront of her mind.
++You think that you can lecture me?++ She challenged in Binary, a tech-blurt of sound erupting from within her throat. It didn’t elicit a response, and she glowered at the witch, realizing that the woman still expected her to speak in English.
Enginseer P4-1G3, ‘Paige’ to her friends, felt a clicking in her throat as her internal microphones switched for the clumsier language, and her pretty face scowled. “Why have you not suitably enhanced yourself to speak with me? You should know for a fact that the Binary of Mars is a far more efficient means of communication than English.”
It was true. A single line of binaric code could convey a paragraph, complete with not only emotive intent but also physical stimuli. P4-1G3was fully capable of exloading a treatise in seconds that way, rather than the minutes of dialogue that would be spent otherwise.
Her tail thumped on the ground behind herself agitatedly, and she turned to investigate it curiously. It was long and segmented, a pleasingly symmetrical rhombohedral array of panels shielding the coiling and cabling within. It moved as surely as her other limbs, though they were just as enhanced.
Her legs had taken on a far more lupine appearance, as had her arms. They took on the double-jointed appearance many mistook for reversed knees, rather than enlarged tarsals as they were. Her hands appeared to be little more than paws, though with a single thought she could split them into no less than twenty component fingers at a time.
Her face was still human, a private vanity that she afforded herself in spite of the otherwise mechanical nature of her body. Despite that, P4-1G3’s senses were capable of counting the hairs on Nicole’s carpet—nine million, two hundred thousand, seventy six and a half thanks no doubt to a rogue vacuum—at the same time she identified the make and model of every passing vehicle.
“More.” P4-1G3turned to Nicole, greedily thirsting for further sensation, further knowledge. She wanted to rise above her humble station of Enginseer, and was not disappointed.
Another pulse of magic, and Rho-Alpha-63 found her processing power reaching new heights. She leaned back on her tail contemplatively, working on seventy-six theses to later describe such a sensation. Two pairs of servo-arms whirred impatiently at her sides, eager to interface with a computer.
She uttered a string of higher Binary, one that could not be defined in words. Were Rho-Alpha-63 pressed to lower herself to the thought speed of others and convey what she’d said, it would be a lengthy discussion as to the inferiority of flesh and blood, held within a warm pool beside a crackling fireplace. Her hexamathmatic processors were more than capable of inloading such stimuli in addition to the information of speech.
“Well? Do you like it?” Nicole asked needlessly.
Rho-Alpha-63 couldn’t afford the time spent to address the insipid question, so she allowed the unaugmented human a small wave of one of her mechandenrites. She unfolded her arm to expose its interior camera, and played it along herself to view her form.
What she saw would have shocked the human who’d walked in, which was an almost laughable concept. To think that she’d once have turned down such a blessing of intelligence, such a boon of knowledge!
“Hey. I’m talking to you.”
The witch spoke, and was duly ignored. If she willfully chose to ignore the advantages of augmentation, she was as base as the apes in the zoo three-point five zero zero six seven one eight repeating kilometers away.
“Well, if you’re going to be uppity… I guess I could show you what happens to people who misbehave.”
Rho-Alpha-63 leaned back idly on her regal form, curious as to what the mortal meant by that. She amused herself in the interim by toggling the television wirelessly, additionally fixing the faulty pixel with a string of code.
Then the magic washed over her, and she realized the depth of her mistake.
It wasn’t a punishment as much as it was a lobotomization. The delicately crafted augmentics of her body were reduced in seconds, her organic form returning only to be clumsily replaced by simple tools. Her arms now ended in buzzers, and her brain was slowly shutting off, replaced by invasive machinery that left her dumber than the average modern phone.
Words wouldn’t come to Servitor P3’s mouth, and it struggled to remember its name. Then it struggled to remember its gender. Its supervisory master relaxed upon a couch, and P3 dipped towards her, activating the gentle buzzers on its arm.
Drool trickled from a mouth that had fallen slack, but it did not know how to address that. Instead, the servitor continued its preprogrammed task, massaging its owner’s feet. Thinking was harder, but P3 was programmed to massage so it did.
It massaged because it was. Programmed and it program. Massage.
To. Massage. Program. To.
Owner.
Massage.
Massage.
Paige blinked as a rush of magic coursed over her, and she squeezed Nicole’s feet tighter. Her heart hammered in her chest as she realized what a dimwitted machine she’d become, and she soundlessly worked for words that her heightened form of a few seconds ago would have no trouble finding.
“So, how was that for broadening your horizons?” Nicole smirked, curling her toes in Paige’s grip. “I think it’s good you got to experience every end of the spectrum, though it’s a shame I had to cut your massage short. Unfortunately, I didn’t want you to drool too much over my carpet. Not as a human, at any rate.”
Paige thought long and hard over the woman’s words, debating asking for more time as a hypergenius with the processing power of countless supercomputers. Then she recalled the canine inclination of her body, and the qualifier Nicole had tacked onto her last station.
A small, hopeful grin played across her features. “Does that mean you’d like me to drool as something else?”
Nicole leaned in close, cooing. “Good girl.”