They say it’s very easy to get horribly addicted once you start getting them but I never thought it would happen quite so quickly.
Like most of us I started with something (well, a couple of somethings) genuinely necessary but liked it so much it led to another and another.
The first were most definitely necessary, really quite vital, in fact. I lost the use of my right hand during the war and had the damaged parts replaced with machinery that made me stronger than I had been before.
This allowed me to fight on with only one more short pause- a tiny piece of shrapnel later taking all sight in my left eye. Until, once again, I was restored with state-of-the-art robotics, my eyesight not just becoming vastly clearer (so much so that they had to do my right eye too) but allowing me to zoom in and out. Before long I was up ahead of my unit scouting the territory and warning of dangers.
In those inconceivably, or so it seemed at the time, long periods of downtime between actions (most of war is waiting) I would sometimes sit and think about other parts of my body I could wound and have born anew. Because it is such a huge rush to have replacements, to get upgraded, I can’t tell you just how amazingly wonderful it is.
When peace came I didn’t think for even a second that I would carry on modifying my body but, as I struggled with both finding work and settling into civilian life, I found myself with more and more free time to miss the thrill of discovering what new parts could do.
So when modifications started to go commercial, I quickly signed up when they asked for volunteers to test new ones.
Before long I could run faster than Bolt, lift more than Geoff Capes, see further than a sniper. It made me incredibly happy for a time, boosted my confidence. I was a poster boy for the new world, forged and fast forwarded by war.
But it never really took off. It kept going but never became huge. There was always a steady trickle of the enhanced- those by complete and independent choice and those modified by the military, both for strategy and to patch up those wounded in the wars- it continued.
Those who’d been modified were looked down on and, after the company discarded me, I found it completely impossible to get hired.
You can guess the rest, for now it is our turn to live.
Like most of us I started with something (well, a couple of somethings) genuinely necessary but liked it so much it led to another and another.
The first were most definitely necessary, really quite vital, in fact. I lost the use of my right hand during the war and had the damaged parts replaced with machinery that made me stronger than I had been before.
This allowed me to fight on with only one more short pause- a tiny piece of shrapnel later taking all sight in my left eye. Until, once again, I was restored with state-of-the-art robotics, my eyesight not just becoming vastly clearer (so much so that they had to do my right eye too) but allowing me to zoom in and out. Before long I was up ahead of my unit scouting the territory and warning of dangers.
In those inconceivably, or so it seemed at the time, long periods of downtime between actions (most of war is waiting) I would sometimes sit and think about other parts of my body I could wound and have born anew. Because it is such a huge rush to have replacements, to get upgraded, I can’t tell you just how amazingly wonderful it is.
When peace came I didn’t think for even a second that I would carry on modifying my body but, as I struggled with both finding work and settling into civilian life, I found myself with more and more free time to miss the thrill of discovering what new parts could do.
So when modifications started to go commercial, I quickly signed up when they asked for volunteers to test new ones.
Before long I could run faster than Bolt, lift more than Geoff Capes, see further than a sniper. It made me incredibly happy for a time, boosted my confidence. I was a poster boy for the new world, forged and fast forwarded by war.
But it never really took off. It kept going but never became huge. There was always a steady trickle of the enhanced- those by complete and independent choice and those modified by the military, both for strategy and to patch up those wounded in the wars- it continued.
Those who’d been modified were looked down on and, after the company discarded me, I found it completely impossible to get hired.
You can guess the rest, for now it is our turn to live.
Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following prompt:
Instead of the quotation I suggest you write a piece without adverbs.
Sorry I've written and blogged this incredibly late. Sorry, also, that I misread the prompt so horrifically too. I read it as a piece about adverbs. Probably I misread it because I was reading an article about robots at the same time, which I fused to what I thought this prompt was to create this story.
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