People Like Us [Open]
One of the cold facts of life is that it was temporary. Medical science was an amazing thing. Where once the smallest scratch or sprain would fester and become fatally infected, now even failing organs could be replaced. Everything was artificial, fake, and what kept people alive was no longer a flow of goodwill and the trickle-down hand of god, but the flow of money.
Of course, Motoko had known that her entire life, as far as she could remember. It had been explained to her in detail, when she'd been still a child, still learning to walk again in her new body. We've put a great deal of money and time into you, miss. You had better not fall and ruin everyone's hard work. When that had failed under her growing frustration, they had bribed her.
It was easy to contemplate the happy unhappiness of the past when you were reduced to picking the droplets out of your joints by hand.
Motoko was standing, leaning on a fleshy wall because none of the furniture she might have dragged over from engineering would have held her weight. Every seam and panel in her right arm was popped open- the joint had come up warm. It needed lubrication and Stacy's humid interior was playing havoc with her success rate. Back home, she'd have shrugged and paid a small fortune for a replacement, but here she had no such luxury. Her buffer of safety was gone. So, she awkwardly held her own arm to the light, fragmented from wrist to elbow in pieces like the ruffled feathers of a bird and examined the coverage. Good enough.
Of course, Motoko had known that her entire life, as far as she could remember. It had been explained to her in detail, when she'd been still a child, still learning to walk again in her new body. We've put a great deal of money and time into you, miss. You had better not fall and ruin everyone's hard work. When that had failed under her growing frustration, they had bribed her.
It was easy to contemplate the happy unhappiness of the past when you were reduced to picking the droplets out of your joints by hand.
Motoko was standing, leaning on a fleshy wall because none of the furniture she might have dragged over from engineering would have held her weight. Every seam and panel in her right arm was popped open- the joint had come up warm. It needed lubrication and Stacy's humid interior was playing havoc with her success rate. Back home, she'd have shrugged and paid a small fortune for a replacement, but here she had no such luxury. Her buffer of safety was gone. So, she awkwardly held her own arm to the light, fragmented from wrist to elbow in pieces like the ruffled feathers of a bird and examined the coverage. Good enough.