Untitled Document
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Beginnings and Ends
written by: adam mcnicol
 

 

 
 
 
10:sept//2K - beginnings and ends

 

Start-up Sequence

Jadzia peered into the mirror, starring back instead of the beautiful young woman that should have been there was a hideous assortment of mechanical implants and dying tissue. Where once she had soft pinky-white skin, there was now a rough pale grey covering with blueish areas where her veins were.

The drive to improve oneself had reached insane proportions, no one; well no one who could afford it had any bodily systems that had not been improved in some manner. Jadzia herself had had her limbs removed and replaced with stronger more adaptive arms and legs. Her memory was now completely contained within a removable mass storage device (MSD). She would never forget anything; in essence she had a photographic memory. She did not require any nourishment in the usual sense - Jadzia absorbed energy through a node in her alcove, which was then altered into the required states by an implant, for distribution throughout her body.

Moving away from the mirror Jadzia felt disgusted at what she had become, unfortunately for her, once an implant was installed in to her body there was no way to remove it without endangering her life. As she headed out of her room a beam passed over her - the implants made showering impossible and this was the only way to clean yourself these days. Having taken all the nourishment she required for the day while she was regenerating, Jadzia headed for the exit of her habitat. Unlike the habitats of just fifty years ago this was a dreary place - a standardised box, there were no personal possessions, these were considered irrelevant in the new order.

Stepping out onto the street Jadzia could see several others, like herself, heading for the transporter station. Each had implants throughout their bodies and without close inspection it was impossible to tell one person or one gender from the other. The humming sound that many of the implants made created an annoying din that Jadzia had become accustomed to. Like fifty years ago no one every talked but today even the transfer of messages between people was uncommon.

Jadzia had no friends, in fact she could not remember a time in which she did. To her it seemed an outdated concept that a few, mostly degenerate people, still practised. She only knew a few peoples' names and even then the database contained mostly names of important people such as the president or her superiors at work.

As she continued to walk down the street towards the station, Jadzia glanced around at the architecture of the buildings that surrounded her. Most were modern entanglements of steel and other metals; few had windows and in fact they reminded her of some of the circuit boards that she had embedded in her body. The door automatically opened as she approached the station. Inside it was not much changed from when it was originally built, it had an antique look that most of the city lacked. Jadzia was grateful that the transporting technology had advanced to such a level that, instead of being a copy of herself when she rematerialised at the other end, the matter that she was comprised from was sent with her data pattern and thus it was her original self that arrived.

Jadzia stepped onto the platform that would take her to work, the length of time she was kept waiting depended on how many people were travelling to the same destination. The city's main computer would only initiate transport when at least one hundred people were waiting. This irritated Jadzia, as she often found herself walking to work as her work place was not on one of the major routes which were always crowded. She suddenly felt herself starting to dematerialise and soon she would arrive at work.

Materialising at the other end, Jadzia continued on her journey to work. This took her through one of the degenerate areas of the city, the buildings were of an older style, people laughed and talked freely. Almost no one had any mechanical implants - a sign of the poverty they were living in. Jadzia felt sorry for them, it was unusual for her to show emotions, yet something about the way in which these people lived caused her to. They never approached Jadzia; they were all to frightened of her - and her implants.

Within a few minutes she had arrived at the courthouse where she worked. Unlike in the past when courthouses were usually in the centre of towns, today they were located where the crime was. It was supposed to intimidate would-be criminals. Jadzia had her doubts on whether it worked, but it did not really matter. There was not much crime, but what there was was usually committed by degenerates stealing implant technology for sale on the black market. Sentences for such an offence were harsh - execution. There were no appeals, no retrials, all sentences were final. Jadzia had a gut feeling that this should bother her somehow, however she never gave it much thought.

Today things were quiet, there were no scheduled trials, only a few executions. Jadzia had been to several but in recent years their appeal had waned. So she decided that she would spend her day catching up on the backlog of death certificates she had to fill out. The task was simple enough - call up the record from the computer and merge it with a standard certificate, Jadzia wondered why they had not automated the process, she could see no reason why a computer would not be able to perform the task - then again she had nothing better to do.

"The time is twelve p.m."; the office computer always beeped out the time, every hour on the hour. To Jadzia time had no meaning any more, her days were filled doing the same task continuously. Why anyone would need a clock when they had no schedule to organise was a mystery but perhaps there were still some things that required clocks - degenerates for example. She decided this must be why they still had a clock in the office, it would make more sense to pre-sentence everyone beforehand instead of holding trials. Nevertheless if you were having trials then you needed to have times for them. Jadzia when back to filling out the forms, every so often someone would enter the office to get something and then leave, still, no one spoke to her and for the most part she was alone.

Jadzia felt a shock come up from her lower spinal column. Startled, she got up and plugged herself in to the diagnostics console at the opposite end of the room. The diagnostic confirmed what she had suspected; the implant which suppressed her immune system had failed. This on its own was not a major problem; it would just have to replaced. However, the cost of such a replacement was prohibitive and Jadzia did not have the credits to paid for it. Without it her immune system would reassert itself and start rejecting the implants - since she could not function without them, the condition was life threatening.

This conclusion produced the first real emotion Jadzia had felt since she was a small child - fear. She could not understand why she felt like this, it had always been made clear to her before any of her implants had been installed that they would eventually require replacement. However she had always put off setting up an insurance policy against such an occurrence, as she required the money to improve herself in other fashions. It was only now that she came to realise how illogical it had been to act in that manner, but for Jadzia the time for making decisions had passed, there was no room for imperfect beings in the new order.

Jadzia felt giddy as she watch her grey skin start to regenerate, the time in which the grey cells were shed for her body was remarkable small. Suddenly she could not feel her legs - the lengths she had gone to get those enhanced limbs did not seem as worthwhile as they had only minutes ago. Jadzia wished she had her original body back, the one she had been born with - it appeared a much more advanced technology now. Jadzia fell to the floor; the electric shocks she was receiving from failing circuits were overloading her re-emerging nervous system. As she uncontrollably jerked about on the floor, the price of progress became apparent to her but the advantage she had gained in her short existence from technology meant that she would never blame it for her current predicament. Finally the connection between her MSD and her brain collapsed and Jadzia when blank - she was there but not there. For a few moments she continued to twitch and then even that ceased.

 

Part Three - Collective Notions

 

//agi. [agi@fsmail.net]