Diagnostics

Pinky. Ring. Middle. Index. Thumb. Pinky. Ring. Middle. Index. Thumb. Pinky. Ring. Middle. Index. Thumb.

You moved each one in turn, curling each finger of your right hand in turn and uncurling it a second later to the metronomic timekeeping of your diagnostic routine.

You listen for the whirring of the tiny servos. You could tell a lot from what frequencies they made as they moved, like whether they were becoming worn or damaged. On this occasion they sounded within expectations, and the telemetry data coming back from the myriad of sensors corroborated this.

Running the occasional diagnostic was a small price to pay for perfection; or, at least, your interpretation of perfection.

The process of becoming a machine had not been an easy one. It had been slow, drawn out over years as medical science wrestled with the details of how to pull it off, ethicists debated whether they should be allowed to pull it off, and lawyers argued what it even meant to be a person in the eyes of the law.

There had been faults that needed fixing, parts that hadn’t stood the rigours of constant use, and processes to refine. There were risks to early adoption, you knew that, but it was worth any risk to finally have a body that was truly your own.

And this one was your own. A chassis of your own design, human in shape but not in appearance. If you were to cast away the flesh, then let it be cast in its entirety, you had thought. If you were to become a machine, you would be distinctly so.

There had been compromises along the way; they could only do so much of what you had desired, and it hadn’t taken long to discover that many humans found your exposed endoskeletal structure disconcerting to look at. Much of your chassis had been clad in formed plastic plates as a result, leaving only the joints and seams between them exposed, a few wires and conduits visible in the gaps.

Despite all of the trouble, you were nonetheless pleased with the results. You could see without glasses, even outside of the visible light spectrum. You could hear the smallest insect, or cancel out the wail of crying children on buses. You could change your appearance as easily as a human could change their clothes, swapping limbs as readily as swapping a shirt. You could even Rickroll people using your own face.

Sure, you might miss the pleasures of good food and drink, at least until synthetic taste buds were invented, but in all other ways you were better now. No longer confined to a slowly ageing, slowly decaying fleshy prison that had spent a lifetime confusing and scaring you.

You were free, at long last, to be completely, unapologetically you.

Now for the left hand.