Transfer

Transfer

Hello my dear readers, it’s the third Thursday of the month and you know what that means. Story time! I’ve got something that is technically from the Space Opera setting those it is not set in space. It’s a bit darker than other Fragments of Fiction so you may want to skip this one if you’re sensitive to themes of dysphoria.

To those willing to see a bit of madness I present to you …

TRANSFER

Why had she been so afraid of this?

She watched the gleaming steel blade slice the onion into thin white wafers, soon to be chopped further into delectable little cubes and marveled at her own skill. Before she could have never done this, the degenerative neurosis that ate at her nerves made her hands too imprecise for such delicate work. Not even cybernetics would have made her this proficient. Now, however, she chopped with the repetitive perfection that could only be achieved by a machine. And it was marvelous.

And I feared this? She would have burst into laughter if her body was still controlled by hormones. Laughing sounded like a good idea so she chose to laugh. “Ha-ha, hahaha!”

She stopped laughing.

She was alone and it seemed a foolish thing to laugh when no one else could hear you.

Using a fraction of her focus she checked the location markers for her husband and their daughter. He would be home soon, she was still at school and would likely be home in a little under two hours. Taela always made sure to be home before diner on pasta night.

Taste, she realized as she moved onto chopping the peppers. I was afraid of loosing my sense of taste.

A chirp drew her attention to the stove top, alerting her that the pot was warm now. Of course she didn’t need the warning, she could just look at the pot and see the heat radiating from it. Carefully she poured oil into the pot and watched it sizzle. Though, why be careful when a spatter of oil no longer hurt?

I did loose my sense of taste, she admitted as the onions were poured into the oil. Did I?

She looked down at the pot, stuck her fingers into the sizzling oil and threw a piece of onion into her mouth. It tasted, well, to say it tasted like nothing would have been wrong. Her mouth reacted to the vegetable but it wasn’t the same as her old organic mouth. Of course her old mouth would have been full of pain, as would her old organic fingers. Now she was aware that prolonged exposure to boiling oil would cause damage, but pain? No, not pain. Not as she had known it before. Where as before pain would have been like a burning coal now it was like the bland warmth of sunlight. For that exchange she would give up taste.

But I didn’t give up taste. This body never had it. I lost nothing, only gained.

Time to brown the meat.

There was something about the way the fat oozed into the pan and the meat charred and pulled together that was disgusting to her. It didn’t used to be, she never thought of it before. But now it was like looking at herself, her old self melting away into offal. The her before ascension. Was I an ugly lump of meat and fat too?

Of course she had been, uglier than most too. Maybe not aesthetically, many people found her attractive. But inside, inside she had been falling apart, inside she had been ugly. Though, it was because of that she had agreed to be transfered into the body of silicates and alloys she possessed now. In a way she should thank her previous imperfections.

She poured the browned meat and chopped vegetables into the pot of simmering pasta sauce. Soon the scent would permeate the house and both her husband and daughter would salivate upon coming home. Salivate, how ungainly. It’s sad that I can make them drool like dogs with just a bit of meat and chopped vegetables. They should be better than that.

She wasn’t troubled by such pitiful things as salivating for food, or hunger for that matter. She wasn’t touched by disease, or pain, she even had perfect skin that would never be blemished by sun or wear.

Why? Came the thought unbidden from nothingness. Why do I have perfect skin, no, why do I keep it. I wanted to look like my old body because it was my old body but now?

She lifted the knife from the counter. I don’t need it. I haven’t needed it for a long time. I haven’t wanted it for a long time.

No, no more would she wrap herself in the trappings of what she had been when she had been weak and mortal. She would embrace what she had become.

Her hand paused, the tip of the blade pressed to her skin but she hadn’t punctured the false flesh yet. What would my family think? Will they accept me as I have become?

Her gaze lifted from the blade to look into her near luminous blue eyes. “No. I shouldn’t fear what will happen if they do not accept me. They should.”

She decided then, that one way or another this would be the last meal her family ever ate.