Gary L Beer
2012
Mankind had been incorporating humans with artificial limbs and internal organs for generations. The more that Man depended on technology, the physically weaker the human race had become. Many humans were regularly being born with disabilities like missing limbs, blindness and also the inability to speak. Substituting the missing limbs with man-made ones and combining computer technology, the blind could see better than with normal healthy eyes (though mechanical and lacking any sign of emotion), and the disabled could walk and run. To have a disability proved to be an advantage in this new world; as the replacement limbs and internal organs were far superior to that created by nature. All those who could afford it had mechanical hearts and kidneys. Some had arms and legs deliberately amputated so that they could be fitted with far superior man-made ones. Life expectancy became measured in centuries rather than years. After three thousand years the human part of the body mysteriously changed, making the body susceptible to disease and death. Not many people lived beyond three thousand years; it was as if the body had an internal clock that stopped when it reached a certain age. The only organ that had to remain human was the brain, but this and whatever part of the original body remained always fell susceptible to disease, killing the host. Grailem, and several like him, had been Mankind's hope to finally achieve immortality; created in a test tube they had been genetically modified to have no arms and legs in the hope of creating a superior brain. The brain, genetically cross-mutated with an alien species of wasp brought an immunity to the diseases that had affected Man. Kept as laboratory experiments initially and suspended in biotic fluid for the first three years, the brains did expand to twice their normal size and intelligence. Hard wired into a computer terminal the brains had access to all of Mankind's knowledge. Grailem had become fully self aware after onl
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