Sheila wasn’t what anyone would call a “technofetishist”, but at first glance she certainly presented herself as one. That was only because there was no other point of reference for her style; to all but the most educated eye her disposition looked firmly entrenched in the silicone and circuit boards motif made popular by early 90’s cyberpunks, both self-professed and commercially manufactured.
To those who knew her intimately, though, Sheila was a purebred cyborg through and through. Her artificial limbs were nerve-sutured Kogami: hand-hammered titanium and vat-grown myo-muscle, not a single piece 3D printed. The portion of her brain that she’d given up to hardware was solid state mechanical-organic dataweave, painstakingly layered in cultures cultivated high in the Swiss Alps, in secret mountain bunkers that resembled doomsday hideaways more than they did apexes of neurological research.
Most casual observers assumed the various sockets that sprouted from her flesh were for show. The newer ones were still ringed with angry red weals that threatened, daily, to grow into infected nightmares. They were all functional, and she was constantly charging one or more of her peripherals from the bioelectric plug near her heart.
Exactly how much of her was still original parts was hard to determine but, as Sheila liked to say, none of us were original parts anymore, the endless cellular recycling saw to that. Sure, you could argue that the neurons were permanent, but even those were replaceable if you were determined enough.
And Sheila was very determined.
First draft: 141225
Published: 230727