My father was a preacher. After the crash, after I had lain in hospital for days slowly dying, he and my mother decided to save my life by handing it over to the Corporation. They spent millions saving my life, and I was indebted to them for the rest of it. When my parents came to say goodbye, my father couldn't look at my new robotic half – my face plate covering one eye, my new arm, my new leg. He couldn't accept that part of me. The general consensus is that borgs are too much robot to have souls anymore. There's no ghost in the machinery here. My father could no longer see me as human.
Perhaps if English wasn't their second language, they might have realised what they were doing in time to say no. But I was dying – supposedly – and my mother was upset. My father was trying to console her while at the same time dealing with the Corporation's recruitment agents. They were no better than pushy second hand car dealers – desperate for another indenture, another commission to their wages.
And then I was contracted to be a slave for the next twenty years of my life.
I believe I have a soul, even as a half-robot. I still remember, I imagine, and I dream. I remember my former life, and the hopes and wishes I had for my future. None of them involved becoming half machine. All of them involved life and creation and love and splashes of colour. But no one cared what I thought or wanted anymore. No humans ever concern themselves over cyborg well-being. We're advanced robots. Emotional, intelligent, capable of intuition and imagination. We're so much more valuable than robots ever were.
Robots wore out eventually. They were incapable of thinking and learning. They couldn't adapt and adjust. Faced with certain challenges, they'd plow on regardless of their own safety, often destroying themselves in the process. As for cyborgs, well: Every organism living in a hostile environment gradually develops survival strategies. Cyborgs could think for themselves. They could develop beyond artificial intelligence. They had a certain flexibility granted from the human brain. That's what made us so valuable.
I once heard that hundreds of years ago, gay couples weren't allowed to get married. There was a distinct streak of discrimination based on a person's skin colour or accent. Border security was much tighter. I couldn't help but wonder how cyborgs would have been treated back then. As it was now, we were the last great minority to be discriminated against. I guess haters just have to hate.
I wanted to go to University to study art. I wanted to be a famous artist, a famous painter. I would wow the world with my colourful creations and I would grow rich and fat with contentment.
Then the war hit Old Earth, and dragged us along with it. Millions of citizens died while the combined governments desperately tried to salvage their space vessels. For a year I walked the streets afraid that an Authority would snatch me up and carry me away.
Turns out I didn't need an Authority to change my life.
There was a crash. Twisted metal and burning rubber, smoke and fire and pain.
I was injured. I was dying. I remember my mother sobbing over my broken body while I struggled simply to breathe, my limbs in agony.
And when I awoke, I was half-machine, stronger in arm and leg and more powerful in mind. Possibly able to live forever.
And expendable. Not applicable to human laws, for I was no longer entirely human. We are none of us human.
The woman in my daydream had cropped, thick black hair. I am lucky in that I do have hair, and it too is cropped short after the surgery. I see numbers on the chest pieces of others, corresponding to brandings on the flesh beside. My own numbers match as well: X-445, both on my left chest piece and as darkened skin on the right over my breast. My human fingers, the side that can perceive the lightest touch, traces the puckered edges of the branding. It appears I have been matched up. My human half has been claimed by this machine that keeps me alive. I have been matched and melded, branded and built.
I sit alongside others I do not know, but although we are all close, we are not together; I do not sit with them. None of us speak. None of us touch. None of us look at each other. The only sound in the hall is the occasional knocks of plastic against metal against flesh. It is quiet and still. It is routine. It is mechanical.
After clearing the meal there are silent instructions to head to our solitary quarters to sleep. The commands are sent through the computer intelligence embedded in my head. Noiselessly we rise as one, turn and march. There is no sound from any of us save the pounding of simultaneous metal and flesh feet. We file down the corridors and turn into our quarters, peeling away from the line when the number matches the door. Before I close it I glance at my peers. There are still hundreds filling the corridor, turning into their own rooms.
Once I am past the threshold my door closes itself and the lights dim. I am given precisely five minutes to settle before the light goes out, and I am left in total darkness and total silence. The only light for my left eye comes from the glowing red orb of my optical right. I close my eye and turn off my optic. Internally, my computer is slowing down, preparing to hibernate. My body temperature is dropping as I enter static sleep.
I sleep for approximately five hours before I go back to the assembly line. The man in the white coat is watching us. I watch him with my human eye as my optic concentrates on the endless line of hands before me.
Who are you? A voice in my head asks. The machine ignores such thoughts. The human wonders infinitely, never ceases questioning.
Creator?
I was sent to work in a factory. Cyborgs can last longer shifts than regular humans, and we don't need wages. We're not citizens. All we need is to be nourished and sheltered. It was a cybernetic parts factory. I was an inspector on the long assembly line, checking for defects. It was tough on the human part of me, but the machine could have gone all day. Eventually we would retire to our bunks and rest for a set amount of time before getting up, refuelling for the day and getting at it again. We worked in shifts, with others working while we slept. The human in me screamed with boredom. The walls of the factory were drab and grey. The assembly line before me was black. The other cyborgs were a mixture of silver and flesh, and sometimes we were granted clothes to wear because it was cheaper than turning on the heating.
I was desperate for the colours that I saw in my dreams.
They didn't tell us beforehand who was going where. They collected up the remains of the dead and loaded them in massive crates for recycling. Those of us functioning enough to be considered mobile moved out of their way before we, too, could be considered scrap.
We were rounded up according to our brandings. I was X-445. Ethan was R-658. That meant we weren't going to be together on the long journey home. I tried to find him in the mass of limbs and robotics, but we were herded too quickly on to the mini ships. I couldn't find him, and I began to panic. I pushed against those borgs packed tightly against me, but we were too close together. I barely had room to move my feet. All I could do was grab hold of those next to me as I was swept along the ramp.
As we boarded, we were injected with a little chip under the skin on our forearm, or the closest point to it if we had both arms as robotics. The chip was a hardware and software update, allowing us to communicate wirelessly with the Authorities and each other. The first update was our bunk locations. Before I boarded, I tried to reach out to Ethan, but he must not have had his chip yet – or he was too far away.
I didn't even get to say goodbye.
My thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumble and the mini ship started to shake. The countdown was in my head. We were lifting off. The borgs around me flailed to find their balance, me alongside them. We were packed in to this tiny mini ship like sardines in a can. I'd seen that, once, back home. So many tiny little insignificant fishies, all squashed into a tiny little tin can.
The flight to the transport ship hovering above us in orbit wasn't long. It was exasperating being so close to another cyborg. How long had we been told it was forbidden to touch one another? And now, completely ignoring the proximity warnings, here it was the complete opposite. Someone was pressed against my back, another against my chest, a third rubbing against my thigh. I raised my arms to help keep my balance, and felt suffocated by the sheer mass of bodies. A mixture of sweat and fear leaked from everyone's pores. We were excited to go home, but we were terrified of the method.
Finally we docked with the transport ship, and were herded out once again and sent to our bunks.
The ship was huge, seemingly as big as a planet. It took three thousand of us and was called the Eden. Some Eden, I thought to myself as I boarded. How could it be paradise without my beloved Ethan?
Once we were boarded we were sent to our bunks. Finding it was an endless march through a maze. It was a tiny room with one small, hard bed, a toilet and basin and – to my complete shock – a mirror!
A mirror! Why would they install mirrors on a cyborg transport ship? It seemed ludicrous to me. Those of us still human enough are sensitive about our appearance. I looked at myself long and hard in the mirror. I was still young, and my black hair was now long and lank and dirty. I rinsed it in the basin as best I could. The right side of my head was covered in a face plate, and my cybernetic eye glared red back in the mirror. My left arm was also robotic, as were the left side of my lungs, and my right leg, grafted mid-way up the thigh.
It was something I did not wish to see, not ever.
I punched the mirror with my robotic hand. It cracked but did not shatter. The cracks distorted my already distorted body. It was a hideous sight. I closed my eye and turned my optic off.
What kind of a life was I to lead on this ship? What was my purpose? Who had come with me? Had anyone I had known at all managed to find their way on to the Eden?
The lights in the bunk switched out and the command to rest flashed up on my internal optics. I settled on the hard bed to sleep and listened for the engines to fire up. I didn't hear anything, but the command came over the wireless that we had detached from the mini ship and were now set on course to Old Earth.
The long journey home had begun.