To Travis
-
IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3709
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
To Travis
What does augmentation imply on a medical level, in 2025?
-
IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3709
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
As Travis
"That's a pretty complex question. Not all of us get augmented at the same level, or for the same reasons.
Pick a factory worker. The guy, say, cuts off some nerves in his wrists while operating sharp machinery. The tendons are fine, but his motor control is FUBAR. You're not gonna chip a guy's brain for something so simple as that, right? In most cases, they stick the offending limbs in temp casts and use stem cells to regrow a copy of the damaged or missing muscle groups. A little surgery later, and the body treats the implant like a bruise. It's the guy's own DNA and blood type, after all, just grown in a vat instead of in his own body. No rejection, no drug treatments outside of painkillers, maybe a little rehab. That's all Factory Guy has to expect.
Let's go up a few notches. You get married, you and Wifey are expecting kids but oh snap, turns out an intra-utero scan shows the kid's Down Syndrome wasn't picked up during gene screening! Your kid is functionally fine, but his brain's connections aren't getting made properly. Either something else takes over for the essential stuff, or you abort. If you've got the money, you can splurge for a Neural Assistance Network, a base-level version of what's stuck in my own frontal lobe. A base board communicates with the corpus callosum and sends out Nanoangstrom-sized tubules across the noodle, connecting those areas that should be exchanging data in a healthy brain.
The problem is the brain needs to be physically mature, and the fontanel needs to be closed. That means sitting on your developmentally-challenged kid's potential for a little over a decade, watching him drool and shit and part with dopey smiles while he should be learning to kiss girls in high school. Then, once the implant's in place, you've got a year or two of watching the implant offload everything the kid should've assimilated into his brain. It's demanding, it's fast, it's overwhelming for some parents, and it's really fucking creepy. The kid you had to wipe down after every shit blasts his way through adolescent rebellion in a month, and goes from being brainlessly docile to having all the requirements of your average healthy Joe - plus a heap of remedial classes to handle and a fuckton of ignored talents that just push through after years of denial.
Past that, the kid's head is worth a fortune. Too much head trauma? Some tubules might get knocked loose or broken, which means parts of the brain stop talking. You're back to Square One if you aren't careful. A lot of former Downies get their brain cases augmented - those that can't go for titanium-grade skulls just settle with insurance. Money enough to have caregivers buy another neuro-net and start over, if possible.
Then there's Jameson's take on things, which is also pretty demanding and expensive. First, there's all the spinal replacements and assistive structures in need of being installed, so the exosuit ports and all the extra Gs you'll take don't crush you. Figure a year for surgery and recovery, then port calibration sessions - the docs figuring out where they need to stick the connectors over you, based on your unique muscle distribution. Add another year's worth of surgery, a few months' worth of a solid regimen of painkillers, and you're physically set for an Exo squad.
Then, well... There's me. Aldergard had temp implants put in place to shut off my pain response, or else I would've tried biting my tongue off to end it all. I was blind, mute, crippled and paralyzed for years, all while Kuhn paid to have folks load me in 3D scanners to map every inch of my nervous system and brain. First I had unconnected robot arms and a data spool for two cameras in the room - and I spent years stuck in sterile environments. Starr stood in for Tall, Dark and Scaly whenever he caught a cold or something, because an errant sneeze would've finished me. She had to kiss the Lawyer Chic goodbye, I rated sensitive enough for decon and sealed hazmat suits...
Twelve million dead presidents along my back, legs and arms, with a few set aside for my eyeballs and brain. The number shot up once Kuhn had my pain centers reconnected - my body more or less went Oh fuck, no!
Name a painkiller, I've tried it. Kuhn had me set up for some weird Karthian brain-scrambling, pain-negating procedure, and I jumped ship. Walked off into Renton, found my old guy, bought six grams of indica kush. Stoned myself out of my own fucking gourd for the last week before the end of my rehab period. Been managing the occasional flare-ups of neuralgia with cannabis ever since.
The thing is, I can't dwell on how fake my hands or my tail both are. If I do, neuralgia kicks back in. If I just accept things as they are, my nerves get spoofed into thinking they're sending electrical pulses to flesh-and-blood bits of me. If the whole Transhuman current sweeps me aside one evening, though, I'm gonna need to smoke a fatty..."
Pick a factory worker. The guy, say, cuts off some nerves in his wrists while operating sharp machinery. The tendons are fine, but his motor control is FUBAR. You're not gonna chip a guy's brain for something so simple as that, right? In most cases, they stick the offending limbs in temp casts and use stem cells to regrow a copy of the damaged or missing muscle groups. A little surgery later, and the body treats the implant like a bruise. It's the guy's own DNA and blood type, after all, just grown in a vat instead of in his own body. No rejection, no drug treatments outside of painkillers, maybe a little rehab. That's all Factory Guy has to expect.
Let's go up a few notches. You get married, you and Wifey are expecting kids but oh snap, turns out an intra-utero scan shows the kid's Down Syndrome wasn't picked up during gene screening! Your kid is functionally fine, but his brain's connections aren't getting made properly. Either something else takes over for the essential stuff, or you abort. If you've got the money, you can splurge for a Neural Assistance Network, a base-level version of what's stuck in my own frontal lobe. A base board communicates with the corpus callosum and sends out Nanoangstrom-sized tubules across the noodle, connecting those areas that should be exchanging data in a healthy brain.
The problem is the brain needs to be physically mature, and the fontanel needs to be closed. That means sitting on your developmentally-challenged kid's potential for a little over a decade, watching him drool and shit and part with dopey smiles while he should be learning to kiss girls in high school. Then, once the implant's in place, you've got a year or two of watching the implant offload everything the kid should've assimilated into his brain. It's demanding, it's fast, it's overwhelming for some parents, and it's really fucking creepy. The kid you had to wipe down after every shit blasts his way through adolescent rebellion in a month, and goes from being brainlessly docile to having all the requirements of your average healthy Joe - plus a heap of remedial classes to handle and a fuckton of ignored talents that just push through after years of denial.
Past that, the kid's head is worth a fortune. Too much head trauma? Some tubules might get knocked loose or broken, which means parts of the brain stop talking. You're back to Square One if you aren't careful. A lot of former Downies get their brain cases augmented - those that can't go for titanium-grade skulls just settle with insurance. Money enough to have caregivers buy another neuro-net and start over, if possible.
Then there's Jameson's take on things, which is also pretty demanding and expensive. First, there's all the spinal replacements and assistive structures in need of being installed, so the exosuit ports and all the extra Gs you'll take don't crush you. Figure a year for surgery and recovery, then port calibration sessions - the docs figuring out where they need to stick the connectors over you, based on your unique muscle distribution. Add another year's worth of surgery, a few months' worth of a solid regimen of painkillers, and you're physically set for an Exo squad.
Then, well... There's me. Aldergard had temp implants put in place to shut off my pain response, or else I would've tried biting my tongue off to end it all. I was blind, mute, crippled and paralyzed for years, all while Kuhn paid to have folks load me in 3D scanners to map every inch of my nervous system and brain. First I had unconnected robot arms and a data spool for two cameras in the room - and I spent years stuck in sterile environments. Starr stood in for Tall, Dark and Scaly whenever he caught a cold or something, because an errant sneeze would've finished me. She had to kiss the Lawyer Chic goodbye, I rated sensitive enough for decon and sealed hazmat suits...
Twelve million dead presidents along my back, legs and arms, with a few set aside for my eyeballs and brain. The number shot up once Kuhn had my pain centers reconnected - my body more or less went Oh fuck, no!
Name a painkiller, I've tried it. Kuhn had me set up for some weird Karthian brain-scrambling, pain-negating procedure, and I jumped ship. Walked off into Renton, found my old guy, bought six grams of indica kush. Stoned myself out of my own fucking gourd for the last week before the end of my rehab period. Been managing the occasional flare-ups of neuralgia with cannabis ever since.
The thing is, I can't dwell on how fake my hands or my tail both are. If I do, neuralgia kicks back in. If I just accept things as they are, my nerves get spoofed into thinking they're sending electrical pulses to flesh-and-blood bits of me. If the whole Transhuman current sweeps me aside one evening, though, I'm gonna need to smoke a fatty..."