'2028AD'
Standalone story
The common cyborg
This is a short stand-alone sci-fi story from my near future book universe 2028AD. You can read it as is, a short near future sci-fi story, served in a perfectly delicious coffee break bite size to entertain and brighten your day. Or you can read it as a slice of time picked straight out of the bigger story that is the shared book universe 2028AD.
It is however, capable of standing on its own exactly as it is, but like life itself, it is also just one little photon that connects to all the others swimming in the one vast ocean together with each other :). Giving meaning and context, life and transforming movement and energy through its own ripples. And perhaps one day you will find out that this little snippet is very much a meaningful part of the bigger story that is waiting to unravel. And perhaps this story will reappear again, with a beginning and a continuation.
music of the day while you are reading our article
Blood Orchid by Netherbird
The common cyborg, a story from my near future book universe 2028AD.
She had been almost dormant, for 12 years. Locked down inside a sheltered room in New York's most respected private hospital.
But last night she finally opened her eyes again.
Not the way you and I open our eyes to the world each morning, not with pupils dilating as they let the streams of light inside our synapses and wondrous neurons.
Light from artificial screens and windows bursting with luminescence from the sun outside did not touch her mind and eyes in that way.
No, her eyes did not even open, not just yet.
Not the way you imagine them to open.
Her body would keep adapting for years to the shock of being jolted back to a conscious waken state from its dormant veggie like dwelling.
But she did see the world now, her mind was clear and wide awake, oh the sounds she could hear for the first time in so many years. They pounced against the finer strands of hair on her body, head, and ears.
And the things her mind was flooded with, the visuals of an entire world came rushing against her like a torrent of white waters hurling down the greatest fall.
Sensors from the drones and the phone that was now all hers, and all the smart wifi-enabled gadgets in her vicinity already communicated directly with her brain. The damage done by the combination of her accident and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was now gone.
And so, she was seeing the entire room, and all the people inside of it.
Goodnight my love
[ "do not let
the bedbugs
bite
Sep 5, 2028AD" ]
The Neural Engineering System Design kept feeding her synaptic nerves with strikingly vivid visuals and her entire surroundings lit up like a Christmas tree inside her neurological pathways.
And on the down low, behind it all, words kept whispering to her, words and videos, a stream of media from the hospital network kept being processed by her own digital AI assistant, laid out like a perfect dish in the sparse and rustic kitchen only she could see inside her own mind.
She was making tea with her assistant now, splendid, gorgeous tea. And the scent of it wet and teased her taste buds, and she knew without a doubt that it would taste utterly divine once it was done.
But the world was silent, she tried to get her assistant to turn on her favorite Spotify playlist, but to no avail.
The people in her room kept pointing to the digitized floor to ceiling wall where the OLED tapestry slowly displayed a walk through a lush, arctic landscape. A woman to her right touched the wall and said, 'can you hear us'?.
'If you can, can you say hello. Or something.'
Minutes passed as the assistant kept talking to her.
Informing her of her own medical situation, the rejuvenating work the 're-youth' blood plasma breakthrough had started doing on her liver, mind and lean muscle mass, and how the neurons that had failed her 18 years ago would continue adapting and integrating her entire body with her new and connected life.
It talked to her about the weather, her extended family, the hospital and DARPA, the neural cyber network implant inside her mind which translated the visuals and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and every connected technological device in her own vicinity.
It talked to her about the hospital she was staying at, the team of doctors that had worked on her. She got to know them all, even neuroscientist Andrew Schwartz from the University of Pittsburgh who had pioneered some of the breakthroughs that had led to this day.
The AI gave a brief description of how Trump had derailed the world's climate change work with global catastrophic results as the outcome, and it talked to her about the bio-organic WiFi and nanobots inside of her.
And beneath the woman's fingers, the arctic walk came to a halt in front of a majestic emperor penguin.
Characters slowly typed started to appear on the wall, right to her finger.
"I..", was followed by a several minutes long pause, before in a fluid stream the font changed in both size and type and place as it simultaneously spat out.
.... "Spotify, they, you, god damn, unblock the firewall, I want my music!."
The entire room started laughing, 'welcome, welcome' ' oh my god, she is awake', laughter and a bubbly emotional wave raptured inside the room, someone cried, someone laughed, someone almost collapsed into a chair from the immense relief.
They had made it.
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