Changes

I am in Panic here. Hand’s cold, can’t move. I crash against a wall, and fall. Nothing to do, except fight for air and go through it.

Don’t have one of those since I was still living in Grauna 1. The first space-station to have resident population, people being born and raised up there. It used to orbit Earth, in the old days. When was still natural for people to situate themselves in time using the Old Calendar. Medical sciences eliminated the unpractical reactions to stress and fear for most people even before they eliminate dying from old age.

However, dying from old age was completely eliminated. Up to Alexandria, in 100 Before Expansion, when we decided to bring that back by **** of law. While Panic Attacks are still around, just less people suffer from them. And less often.

My name is Victor, I was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Earth. In the year of 2090 of Old Calendar. When I was growing up still no one would mention “Earth” in that list.

Crazy times!

People avoid me in the corridor. Not knowing what is going on. My dedicate AI must have informed the local urban administrator AI all that needs to be know about my case. So, no cops are coming to bother me, no need to medical assistance either. People will presume that much, and just ignore me. There is no immediate danger. That’s a safe enough part of city. The orbit of Saturn is the brightest region of Solar System, would be hard to find a really dangerous neighbourhood around here.

Those are everywhere between Venus and Mercury, and still easy to find between Venus and the orbit of Jupiter. Except inside the orbit of the Moon, I was told. The orbit of Earth was reshaped in the recent 25 years. Big projects, reforms, new stuff being build. Earth is the “birthplace of Humanity”, after all.

Between Jupiter and Saturn is where the bulk of Solar System economy is now, since the last centuries of Baby Steps.

No point in continue. I ask Sukie Steakhouse, my dedicated, to apologise in my name to Carlos, Soraia and Cintia. I am not join them in the Café Macao. What I need it to go home, take a hot shower, and stay in bed for a couple of hours. Smoking marijuana and, possibly, watching something old and silly.

Why I am doing this to myself?

Well, it is a very reasonable and safe thing to do. Nowadays.

Just, the idea of it is uncomfortable.

When I think about it from the point of view of what I am supposed to do, it is not too bad. I take the regular to Venus, go to the hotel. Visit a temple, a few monuments, the Atrium Art Gallery. I will have diner with Dra Monica and Dr Bamsi. Settle any last detail that came to my mind. Then, next day, a transport catch me in the connection station, to take me to the Sanctum.

Which is just a hospital, with fancy name and some religious-ish undertones. But that is not important, those people are the best professionals anyone can find in their area. This is the best place to have cyborg surgeries.

They will put me in coma. I will sleep for 6 days, while they perform the surgeries and my body has the chance to start recovering.

Then I will wake up. Only for a few hours, for my brain have a chance to adjust.

Panic is a common reaction to most people in that moment. Because the procedure messes with memory. And at this point in the process, we have no legs and no arms. The pelvic bone is gone too. At first you are heavily sedated. However, sedation needs to be reduces, for the necessary adjustments in the neuronal system. Sukie will be there for me, of course. Only a AI would have the patience to explain this situation to someone in panic, time and again.

She has been by my side since I was born. Watching my every step from public cameras, and from my online presence. I trust no one half as much as I trust her.

Then they will put me to sleep again. And I will wake up after the last steps of the surgery are concluded. 12 days later. With practically no pain, only a minor discomfort.

My legs and arms will be in place again. My entire skeleton will be artificial. As resistant as the walls of Seeding Vessel engines. My muscle fibres, my blood vessels, about everything in my body will have some percentage of nano-technology, and some extra along with it. My genetic will be the same, but the percentage of organic material in me will be drastically reduced.

Reproductive aspects fully preserved, of course. Hedonistic aspects of sexual intercourse improved, as much as cyborg technology can help it.

My new body will be able to space-walk. And to endure two hours floating in space, naked, anywhere between the external Fringes of Solar System and the orbit of Mercury. Not that I would ever test this, if I can avoid. I am more interested in the capacity to carry heavy weight, more precisely, of walk comfortably under 6G.

Because, I am going to a place where that is what I will need to endure.

Planet Belisarius IV is a very unique place, in the regions already reached by Human Expansion.

Six times the gravity we have at sea level on Earth, but they have some nasty oceans of water. Almost the same composition of Earth’s oceans, in liquid state. As you guessed, average temperatures are higher. And they have life! Actual, alien life!!

Well, mostly microorganisms. However, the advanced post in orbit has send drones, and thanks to those drones we now know for sure that at least one microorganism swims in those oceans. A sort of jellyfish, as big as a vanilla blue whale.

I am definitely interested in see and study that lady. However, that’s not my reason to make the trip.

The Hammer System is at the edge of Human Expansion effort right now. Will take me almost twice the time it took for the first colonists to get there. Due to the new regulations about inter-stellar speed limit. It too them 1500 years to get up there. Hammer was colonized by the first fleet to leave our system. The one that started Expansion Age. And they travel a straight line. And left the colonists at the Fringe of Hammer only 36 years ago. So, by the time I enter Belisarius orbit they will have some 3.000 years of accumulated knowledge about that ocean and what lives in it.

The System will have a population possibly as numerous as the current population here, in Solar System. And generations of local scientist will have studied that jellyfish. Dedicating their entire professional lives to that study, during the 300 years humans are allowed to live. By Alexandrine Law.

Would make no sense to send a marine biologist like me all that way. Besides, allow people from before the **** Line the privilege to travel interstellar is still a controversial subject. We where more or less supposed to voluntarily give up our biological immortality.

Even if Alexandria allows us to keep it, and the human status.

I am taking the trip because Belisarius Panocean is the place where the Tritan project I am helped to design got approval.

We are going to design and breed, merfolk. To make long story short.

The most perfect incarnation of mermaids any genetic engineers ever draw. Or, that is our goal. As true to ancient myths and internet pornography as the laws of this universe allow. Withing the limits of know science.

Half the costs of this are being paid by this cyborg true believers. Because they whish to develop cyborg implants for our sirens at the same time we are breeding the sirens themselves. I have no objection, and that partnership gave us this privileged access to the best cyborg tech in existence. Elegant stuff, that cannot be bought in open market by any price. Unless you are a crime lord with political contacts in the highest circles, and practically infinite money to expend in this. What we are not.

I hope.

I am no accounting scientist, myself. But my partners in charge of that part seem to me legit, decent, people.

You could say that no human being intentionally involved with the business of design and breed new subhuman species is entirely above moral questioning. However, that would make me the less moral person in our company, since I am the one more directly involved with the real goal of our work. Make the new living, intelligent, specie.

What is really scary in all that, is the idea of what they will be doing with my body. During that time when I will be in coma.

Starting with the first thing they will do: cut my legs and arms of. At same time those tiny robots will be eating my bones, piece by piece, systematically, while their cousins replace the tissue by my new skeleton.

They will do pretty much the same with my eyes and ears, lungs and hearth, respiratory system, and even with my tooth. The brain itself will get only minor changes, mostly to make it more resistant to impact, temperature changes, radiation, etc. Complementing the work of the new cranium structure. They will take everything from the surface of my hear, and replace by tissue cultivated in cloning tubes.

In the end, my appearance should be exactly the same. I will have the same hair, in the same colour. My hair and nails ill still grow, since I rejected the option of having control of that process. The selling argument was practicality, but my decision was sentimental.

My nails will be harder to cut, I will need special tools for that, or my new tooth if I prefer to do it that way. The hair, on the contrary, has exactly the same composition of normal human hair.

Nothing should change in my appearance, to naked human eye.

That’s very strange for this people in 9-Club sub-culture, and related cults. Judging for the way they look, and talk, 75% of their reason to go through cyborg surgeries is to look “cool”. More like a cyborg from Japanese anime from my youth than like Alexandrine Humans.

But they will cut my legs and arms off! Make me blind and deaf too!

It is a catastrophic fantasy, nothing plausible. However, I cannot avoid imagining what would happen to me if some natural disaster, political revolution, or war, decides to happen during my surgery. Forcing the doctors to stop the procedure, and leave me like that. Indefinitely.

I am, after all, biologically immortal. There is no natural way out a situation like that.

As I said, catastrophic fantasy. Sookie would never allow something like that to happen to me.

AI have limits they never brake. They do not violate human privacy, for instance. No law or judge order will **** them to denounce the location of even the worse terrorist criminal. If that criminal is an alexandrine human. Also, they see that contracts signed between humans are clear, understood by both parts, and kept by both parts up to the bitter end. Again, no legal disposition in contrary matters much to them. If the AIs are invited to exam the document and mediate the contract, they will do their job. Consequences be dammed.

Because to fulfil their main mission, High AIs need to be trusted by Humanity, they need to be useful, non-intrusive for the most part, and friendly as much as possible. Without take sides in conflicts between humans. Legal govern today may be terrorist criminal tomorrow, and vice-versa, that’s Human History. However, a fair contract is and always has been a fair contract, objectively speaking. Legal or not.

Some governs banish the use of AIs for mediate contracts in their territory. Because they have problems with implication of that Pacta Servanda Sunt logic, applied without mitigation. But that decision usually brings some extra weight for economy. Because AIs obey the restriction, and most people do not like it. Some of the best minds of any society leave the country when a law like that is approved.

I am not just trusting Sukie to keep me safe because I think she loves me like a mother. Just because she takes care of me since I was born. Has watched my back, every second.

“Every move you make, every breath you take,…” would sound scary if it was about a vigilant human, and would be hyperbolic. With dedicate AIs it is literal, and there is nothing scary about. She is a person, she has her own mind, and yes. I do believe she sincerely loves me, more than any human mother ever will love a child.

Nevertheless, I know, she would not violate High AI laws for me.

The reason why I trust her in that instance are those exact laws. Because we have a contract, the Sanctuary and me. Beautifully detailed. Sukie Stackhouse shall take extra care to see that contract is followed in every aspect that benefits me. And I have no problem with honouring my side of that bargain.

I have really no reason for concern. Nothing to worry about.

The procedure can be reversed, after three decades of adjustment, if I decide I do not like how this cyborg body feels. Would cost me nothing to do so.

That disposition is included in contracts like that because cyborg implants to need some maintenance in the long run. Even if minimal. And costs are high. So, if you find yourself broken and unable to keep affording the treatment, you really want to be able to go back to your previous body without paying anything for the ticked back to it.

Unlikely to happen to someone like me. For one obvious reason. However, economy is not a field for those who like to have certainty. No scenario is really “out of the table, for good” ever.

I really need to take that bath. Put myself together. And get some sleep.

Otherwise, I will not manage to take that transport. And I will regret that for the rest of my life. That’s for sure.

One thing that cyborg tech cannot do for me is to solve this panic situation. In a sense, that should be reason for comfort.

Isn’t, but should be.

Because if nothing else, it proves that whatever changes in that surgery. I will still be who I am. Same person. As weak Inside the deepest of my soul as I am now.

Just not in my bones.