Cyborg,..(a character sketch)

The stars call to each other in a twinkling Morse code, trying, even as does man, to broach the distance, the deep cold distance of space,..

It makes me think of the last time I saw this vista,. Which should have been the last thing I ever saw,..
The fates work within the realm of men, but they have their own rules,..

My friends, few that they are, call me Tinker,... Tink for short,... When you’re one of a kind, and can’t seem to die no matter how hard the universe steps on you,.. it’s hard for people to warm up to you,...

It’s been almost 800 years since a mars expedition consisting of an unmanned robot exploration device spent an unremarkable time making tentative tracks in the layers of dust, that for the most part seemed to promise yet more lifeless space debris,.. the premise was to seek signs of past life forms, or the markings of water, the chalice of potential life ,...

What they found turned the tides of the world powers inside out, it wasn’t water but the signs of technology, not buildings lamenting the past in silent shadows, or fragments of documents proclaiming the presence of the spirits long lost, or even the decaying remnants of machinery,.. well, not the kind you would think, the patterns of gears and clockworks,...

The robot was armed with the most advanced research gear available at the time of its launch,. Equipment to test chemical composition,... Sensors to scan the frequency bandwidth for any sign of intelligible signal indicative of the mutterings of life,.. an arsenal of feelers and computation capabilities which would reveal any secret the long dead red planet hid under the quiet drifting veil,...

Picking a likely spot that was registering enough background radiation to possibly reveal mineral deposits, the quiet little probe set about the hours into the repetitive tests, spewing a stream of data homeward, enough boring data to anesthesize an army of technicians, one of the more insomniac of the lot, on a hunch or boredom or something, did some cross correlation’s and came up with a startling hypothesis, the silicon spectrum was demonstrating strange radio noise,.. on a whim taking the microscope images and processing the living shit out of them , something came into view that left most viewing the evidence white and chilled to the marrow,.. only one voice said what was on the minds of all there. " those are machines... "

Of course the media was far too involved in the program to cap the information,.. and it ran trough the press like piss trough a cloth diaper,.. it would have been a miracle if the world would have done the sane thing and pulled together to send men to mars as a unified expedition,.. yeah,, right,.. amongst all the battles and throat cutting someone from earth got there,.. and the rest is history.

The caches of technology were worth the years and lives ,(and of course the money, but that came back in spades), materials spawning fuel systems so efficient that they could demonstrate almost zero loss in energy, materials that astounded the engineers looking at them, along with the drive just to acquire the stuff, all together made the leaps and bounds of improving space industry to the point that colonization projects were just around the corner,..

That’s where I came in,.. one of the amazing finds of the mars era was all kinds of nano-technology,... nano as it was commonly called , ever notice nobody likes using the long names of things,.. I don’t either,.. the boon to space work was some very neat nano there was the type they wove into cloth that when exposed to hard vacuum it would transmute the material into a impermeable bubble around any living flesh,.. this in conjunction with an injection of nano virus that would super oxygenates the blood , and make the possibility of a cargo pod breach survivable,.. as long as someone found you within an hour or so,.. and as valuable as the cargo was, someone would be along well within that time,..
the biggest worry was that , sometimes ,oh call em opportunists or even more romantically, pirates,.. would get to the site first,. Deploy a non reflective membrane over the pod, and "salvage" the cargo,... Though a survivor having the likely hood of identifying the pirate ship (the life bubble was usually opaque) they would fry all the bubbles,.. humanity’s come a long way .eh?,...

So what the hell is my story, well shut up and listen,, I got forever, or so it seems,.. I started out the way most spacejacks do, I got busted dirtside running bootleg nano into depressed subnations,.. as was common, got a choice of working for the Mars Mining Consortium (MarMinCo.)a subsidiary of Macrosoft Inc.on one of their outboard mars sites , or icetime to a longhaul colony project,.. not being fond of the concept of being a popcicle , I opted for the spacejack work,.. this is the grunt labor that was too menial for an expensive robot to do,.. most penal labor lasted from a year to four, before some mishap or other closed their dossier,.. of course the average sentence was five years,.. as was mine,.. talk about statistical disadvantage,.. I was working well into my fourth year , only one event with the cocoon, so I was always kinda looking over the shoulder as the odds were really not in my favor,..

Of course I had full plans of surviving the time, ego is something that shouldn’t be discounted, since I planned on being free eventually, I was creating a nest egg of stashed gleanings from shipments I’ve worked on,.. Not knowing anything other than much of the stuff coming trough was more tech artifacts from the now extensive mars dig, I would snag anything I could conceal on my person that was small enough to hide in my berth, till I could transfer it to a more permanent hidey hole,..

Yeah, I’m still a scumbag, so tell my mother,.. oh sorry she’s dead going on 160 years now so that’s not an option,.. the major change in my life came at the end of shift, I was concealing a vial of silvery metal shavings in my pouch I got from one of the cargo bins,.. Oh,.. one of the things I forgot to mention, how they kept us from stealing a single flyer and running off,.. you got It,... nano,..

Upon arrival we were injected with a nano virus that in 24 hours would devour our bodies leaving a plastic compound that no one had really found a use for yet,.. but burned really well,.. as we went off shift we were given a shot that reset the clock on the nano,.. considering earth was a week away the likelihood of escape was pretty slim,. This was the reason we had so much freedom around the complex,.. on this fateful day little did I know that this nano keeper would save my life,. And change it in ways I don’t think anyone will ever understand,..

The routine was as the shift ended most guys would go to the mess (aptly named), before showing for their booster, some guys got nauseous with the shot so we were given leeway on that ,.. as I was walking across the deck to stash my new grab,... The "deck" is a force field contained air envelope that connects the sections of the complex , it only a slightly more comfortable environment to hard vacuum so no one tended to hang out "outside".

I was about halfway across the open way when behind me something exploded, the shock wave caught me off guard and launched me off the deck , the nano did its thing,.. blooming bubbleville!,.. shit,.., should you wish to live the experience of the cocoon have someone wrap you in a floor mat, then duct tape it tight to you , and then drop you in the pool,.. of course I wasn’t suffocating cause of the oxy-nano , it still doesn’t feel good,.. trying to get my bearings as much as I could, I could see a bit, but other than the flashing of other blasts I had no clue, all I could do is wait for someone to gaff me and reel me in,.

I wasn’t sure it was pirates till I felt the heat of a laser cutting through my life support,... being semi transparent the rays were cooking me even as the bubble tried to repair itself, not how I planned on going out, but I was left little say other than the beginnings of an outraged scream,.... Suddenly the world did a flip flop and I don’t remember anything but lots of blue flashing,.. then a long sleep,.. perhaps I was dead,.. perhaps not I only call it sleep because of the pain of awakening.

I woke in the bay of a medivac unit,.. at least a dozen people huddling around me, I did a mental check on myself,.. no pain,.. I actually felt better than I had in years,.. a guy in scrubs gets in my face and says relax were gonna take care of you,.. yeah ,... right,.. okay I’m alive,.. they rush around and in noticing I’m cognizant, most move on to the next bubble,..

"So what happened? "I ask ,.... "Someone raided the depot" came the reply,.. "No shit,".. says I, then a light came on ,... "Hey! I haven’t gotten my booster yet today!" ,...he comes back with,... "That’s the least of your worries, we cant figure it out, it looks like the conversion already started, but your body is somehow countering it!",... I drooped back and went huh?, then I got mad !,.. I didn’t realize I was held down by straps till they ripped off the gurney as I sat up, in a slight daze I was sitting there feeling shocked,... Till I looked up and saw six pair of frightened eyes looking at me,...

People started to scatter, ...I got off the gurney and before I could get my bearings a security guard was on me,.. I shook him off just as his partner rounded the door pistol drawn,.(laser , you don’t shoot projectiles in space) , and fired at my chest, and I watched the grim look on his face melt into one of shock,.. these weapons have a wide dispersion beam and there should have been a hole the size of a softball where it hit, but to my surprise I looked down and saw what looked like black plastic,.. slowly diminishing as flesh replaced it, looking up I saw my surprise mirrored tenfold on the guards face,..."just stand still! ",...he said, with a not too convincing authority,.. having no real game plan I just stood in a puzzled stupor.

At that point a guy I took to be the head medic stepped into the room looking me up and down and putting his hands in a raised position showing me he had no weapons ,..he said "we need to talk, can we be calm about this?",... I merely motioned at the two guards, guns drawn, standing as if to fend off an invasion of bug eyed monsters, nodding he addressed the Gestapo,.. "You boys can go.",.. said the boss, and they left somewhat warily and thankfully from their expressions,..

Gesturing me into a side office,. the doc. broke into his explanation , seems like I had received several doses of laser fire, and that the normal reaction of frying seemed to be mitigated by the plastic reaction I had just witnessed,... He had no doubt it was due to the nano in my system, before my waking they had attempted to draw blood only to have the needles apparently absorbed by my body as soon as they broke the skin,.. not knowing what else to do he was making inquiries into some specialized equipment, he had no idea why a system that had been working one way for fifty years suddenly would do something so unprecedented,..

Then he asked if I was carrying something metal as they had seem traces of silver coloration on the original burn before it began to disappear,.. in an act of protective paranoia, I told him "no", as I wasn’t about to admit anything that could cause more trouble,.. Unless I thought it was in MY best interest,.. and since I was alive and feeling better than I had in a long time I was going to look out for any opportunity to fluff my way through the rest of my sentence and get home,..

I spent almost another year in that hospital , playing guinea pig for the researchers visited from time to time by the chief provost of the prison system,, telling me I was doing a service for mankind and other calculated crap,. To keep me mellow,.. I was eating better than anyone else on the rock, and I was clean and warm , why rock the boat,.. In all this time no test had proven to be of any value, or provide the puzzling minds of the guys in white, some of them the most eminent names in the nano industry,..

I had my own theory, I think the metal that was in the vial ,was something the nano needed to become self replicating,.. All they were doing was protecting their domain,(my body), and they had proven very effective at what they were designed to do, I was still feeling no adverse reactions to my new partners in life and didn’t mind their presence at all, one day the provost came to me and said that my sentence was up and that while they were obligated to set me free on earth they would like me to continue the research with their company at a very healthy salary,.. through the course of the research I learned many interesting things, the most amazing being that I don’t age, and I have found that forever looks quite intriguing,..

I work now when I feel the itch,... I can go anywhere, even hard vacuum and function as a thinking agent ,.. This has brought me some lucrative jobs, not like a really need any more money, mostly I do them because they interest me, .. I still give the research center time, but after a hundred years they haven’t any better idea than they did at day one,.. I don’t age, and I seemingly can’t die,. This could prove to be very interesting,..