Originally posted here - remastered for tumblr.

Looking Forward
‘So why the hell did it take that long?’ Doug said with a quizzical look on his face. Doug was the only friend Geoff knew with any power; he was a logistics manager.
‘It was just nuts’, he replied, referring to time the writers were at his home, compiling the half page feature on him.

He had made the second page, “The First fully Bionic man”. His article was the third most bought and viewed around the planet. Since electronic newspapers became common, actual newspapers were infrequent and heavily priced.

‘So, ‘ Taking a further sip of his coffee ‘I have a bit of fame, but I want to .. ‘
‘..make some money off it’ Doug concluded.
‘Yep.’
‘Well, you are moderately unique,’ Doug remarked lazily, stretching his arms, ‘so you could make a moderate amount of money. What do you want to do?’
‘Well, that’s why I asked you - how can I make this work for me?’
Doug scratched his head, ‘Well, there are so many things - Public speaking, talk shows, radio - all short term. Movies, management, counselling, peace keeping, science..’
‘What’s peace keeping?’
‘Well, diplomtic stuff, between robot and human unions, you could be quite an ambassador. You would need to be taught Robot logic.’ Doug feigned expertise,
‘mm, what do you think I could do? Should do?’ Geoff softened reluctantly.
‘Make the most of it short term, don’t wait. That will buy you time - you’ll have enough credits for year, maybe two if it goes well.’

‘And then…’ Geoff interrupted eagerly,
‘Well, I’d say your best bet would be a professional position, one of the major hospitals. You’d have to look really switched on in your press stuff. You know, human/robotic relations. Do some reading, I’ll hunt around, but you know I am busy, it will take a while.’
Geoff sat, he looked intently with his bionic eyes.

‘ I will pay you, based on what happens.’ Geoff concluded,
‘ I will need some start up capital, if you’re serious, you know that.’
‘ Yeah, I know’, he looked around slightly aggrieved, ‘OK, thanks, look I got to go, thanks for talking.’ They parted ways, dawn was now fully fledged daylight and he had work.

Geoff sat, the incessant hum of the robotics began, as work started for the day. He worked in a robotics factory - a long slender building with a production line running its length. They produced robot arms, for one specific type of window cleaning robot.

Geoff sat, quite accurately, half way between both ends of the assembly line. To his right, the first part of assembly, robots, different kinds of robots, assembled various parts of the robotic arm. Geoff hadn’t ever noticed any irony, he wasn’t particularly bright.

He retrieved the half assembled arms, checked the robots job and then passed it on to his left. Here, a line of humans assembled the finer parts of the arms; humans were cheaper than robots for this job. Geoff had never noticed anything particular about his circumstance, as he gently scratched his right ear with his metallic finger.

Geoff had a bionic little finger installed on his right hand. However, much larger limbs have been implanted with varying degrees of success. The titanium core mimicking bone encases complicated bio-electronics that helps control muscle movement. Rehabilitation lengths can vary, and relate closely to the size of the implanted limb. Geoff’s pinky worked well.

Fame
‘The real problem, with having all these bionics, is that I need regular servicing.’
‘I see’, the beautifully constructed robot returned purposefully.

Nobody caught his joke, he continued under some pressure, ‘you know, from like a mechanic, I get my vehicle and me done at the same time.’
Silence surrounded him. He felt betrayed, nobody had told him to refrain from jokes.

The lady continued, ‘Your mechanic services you?’ In a quizical sounding voice, quite human. Speech production in robots had improved exponentially since the development of quantum processors.

‘No, not really, look, it doesn’t matter, …’
‘Ok, some publications are calling you more robot then human, is that something you are comfortable with?’
‘Well, ’ comforted that the topic was serious, ‘I don’t actually have any robotics, and moving metallic parts, I just..’
‘But you couldn’t live without most of your bionic’s?’ the interviewer interrupted aggresively, taken aback Geoff stuttered,
‘Well, no, you’re right, but people think of robots as moving machines, I just think I am human, assisted by bionics.’
‘I see, what do you feel about the rumours linking you to high profile diplomatic positions?’
‘well, …’ The interviewer continued through his interruption,
‘because, as you know, it is a hugely difficult job, which requires specialist robot logic training.’
‘I know that, ’ he replied, trying to assert some control, ‘I think the people who have talked to me are impressed by how much I know, they think I am a natural.’
‘But you’re a not a robot?’
The interviewer had pushed Geoff into a corner. Before he could reply to her rhetoric, it was over.

It was suddenly very dim,
‘What’s going on?’
‘We’re finished for today, thanks, that was good.’ the interviewer disappeared.
Geoff felt his lunch at the back of his throat - he didn’t have a bionic for raw fear.

Counselling

‘So, as you can tell, I just don’t know what is going on.’ the softly spoken elderly woman complained, gazing at the floor.
‘I see, ‘ Geoff’s mind wandered. It was his first day, and he really had no clue what these people needed and no tools to help them. He was to help outpatients
at the largest Bionic clinic on the continent and there were many of them. The gentle lady had bionic retinas, however, she couldn’t get passed the red glow. More precisely, she couldn’t get passed the red glow others saw when they looked into her eyes. Her vision was quite exceptional. He continued,

‘So how are you seeing?’
‘Really good but..’ He couldn’t understand what the problem was. She jabbered for minutes, essentially she once had no sight, now her sight was brilliant, yet she couldn’t step out the front door.
‘… and so its just so hard, how did you do it?’ she concluded, rather meekly.
He had heard the question before and had no idea what the question meant, ‘what was there to do?’ he thought. After some consternation,
‘I just feel they are assisting me, not taking me over.’
‘But people act differently, they can see it in my eyes, and of course, I can’t wear glasses, so what am I to do? They make jokes, that I am sure of.’
‘Vitreous Humour?’
‘What?’
‘Well, no, thats ok,’ he had a habit, a bad habit, of ill-timed humour and overt subtlety that confounded everybody else, he continued staring intently at the woman,
‘Have you been to the support group?’
“I went, there were only three people there, it helped a bit. But even I feel a bit ill when looking into their eyes.’
If they hadn’t been deactivated, at this point, the lady’s eyes would have swelled with tears. It wasn’t going too well.
‘You have to take some pride in them rather than pity the issue.’
‘I know.’
‘Its quite a gift you have been given.’
‘Well I’m not so sure.’

Realisation

Months later.

The visiphone was not being answered. Geoff sighed, leaning his head into the wall, as an automated device answered his call,
‘Bionics advice line, how can we help?’
‘I don’t want…!’ he hung up, grimacing at the thought. He knew full well that his bionics couldn’t be removed; he had been told many times.
Yet he loved his bionics, but now he didn’t want them; like an ill-advised tattoo.
It all descended a couple of weeks after he started working at the clinic. He never thought himself different to any other human, but then similar people and their problems starred him in the face, and now, he did. Geoff had never noticed it before, but humans did treat him differently. Despite decades of robotics and AI, there was a subtle bias, a subtle division.

Everywhere he went, he felt obtrusive and minimal, as opposed to equal; as the world had become, or at least, thought it had become. It had crossed his mind that it was, perhaps, a fleeting perception that came with his vocation. But he feared it wasn’t. He was actually human; that’s what he couldn’t comprehend.

So he sat back down, exhausted from mere thoughts and ideas, unable to sleep. He poured himself another glass of Trabspor, a nicotine infused alcohol from South Asia, that carried a heavy after taste. He knew that both the alcohol and nictoine had no effect on him, his bionic took care of all blood bornes, but he still drank a bottle a night, slowly sipping like any regular alcoholic. It still made him feel better; it slowed his thoughts, cleared his mind, like it used to years ago when he did get drunk. He reckoned it must be the mere action that relieved him these days.

It was better than his nicotine patch addiction, he figured. After the banning of cigarrettes in 2015, nicotine patches became the new cigarette; and the companies did quite well off them. The only issue they had was creating non flammable patches, as people began lighting them and inhaling. There are no health bodies to stop profits in nicotine these days.

Late in the morning, four, perhaps later, spuriously drunk and ill at ease, Geoff had a moment of clarity. He had found the way forward; he knew what to do.

He stumbled to the kitchen, stubbing his toe on a corner shot pain all through his body. Swearing intolerably, he groped blindly in the top drawer and found the handle of his kitchen knife. It seemed all too clear what he wanted to do; this is where the pain ended.

Brie

Cheese always settled his stomach for things he didn’t want to do.

‘mmmm’ Geoff sighed with profound pleasure. Cheese, old reserve Brie in particular, ‘that settles the stomach.’
He cut himself another slice, enjoying the full flavour on his tongue before he steeled his resolve. But, out of pure habit, he went the sharpen the knife, it wasn’t cutting through the cheese quite so smoothly.

Dawn was approaching when he picked up the visiphone. He commanded, ‘Clinic.’
The phone rang once and went straight to the automated service. The animation concluded, ‘… please leave your message clearly after the prompt.’
‘I quit!’ and with that he concluded the phone call and the unfortunate part of his life.

He slept angelically, knowing he had earned enough credits to last him indefinitely, all was not lost.

Bionic Man

He sat back down, the chair still had his presets loaded and at a touch of a button, it moulded perfectly to his back.

The monotonous noise of the robotic arms to his right felt rich and alive; like a 20-something year old discovering tinnitus for the first time.

Similarly to his left, the idle chatter warmed his spirit. He was back where he belonged and it didn’t bore him. ‘Everybody belongs somewhere,’ he thought, ‘but there no shame in having a shot at more.’

The arms arrived from his right, he checked that a certain wing nut was tight and passed it on to his left. About 1 in a thousand nuts were not quite so tight. It cost the company less to hire him to check it rather than fix the problem, a software glitch it was believed (diagnostics predicted it to be a misplaced ‘/’ in the code).

Opposite him, a small office door opened and a display became visible - it showed a news station. He tuned into it, despite that being against regulations.
‘..and in further news of bionics and biologics,’ the reporter continued, rather exubrantly, ‘a russian robot is claiming to be the first to have all current biologics intalled, after recieving a biologic penis.’ It cut away to the robot, some distant voice asked,
‘So do you believe that this will open up any opportunities for you, BIE- 1275 version 1.3 Service Pack 11.3?’
‘Yes?’ BIE- 1275 replied, quite humanly,
‘And what made you choose the male form?’
‘Well, I was told that it is immensely more simple to code a male sexual orientation, both physically and mentally; just logic apparently.’
‘Did you…’ but the robot continued,
‘I believe they are still working on the female form, but are still some way off…’
There were hushed remarks in the background,…
‘Sucker’ Geoff whispered under his breath. He liked it better like this.