It is 2016, and I am trying hard to [[Be Myself]].
I have a wardrobe I’m fairly happy with. I dye my hair regularly with [[colors]] that have become my signature.
I try my best to be an outspoken feminist, to tell people my feelings, and to take up my own space in the world, to varying degrees of success.
I also am a [[Cool Cyborg]].
The pink and blue color combo become associated with queer digital art and later co-opted by heteros until eventually they become the Pantone colors of the year in 2016. I go on to allow the assumption that my signature hair colors are part of some larger queer art movement and not that I based them on the Taco Bell from my hometown that hadn’t been renovated since the early 90s. In high school, my dad takes me and my girlfriend there on the weekends. We’re a happy normal family.
Sometimes I tell people this, the history of pink and blue as a queer aesthetic but how I really just like 90s taco bell, and they will think //wow, she’s just so darn quirky//. I used to be nicer and gentler and have more friends, but now I am “funny” and “interesting” which is another way of maintaining friendship.
[[back|Be Myself]]
The [[magnet]] implanted in my finger vibrates near electricity. I run my fingers over my laptop and I feel its heartbeat.
The first time I touch fingers with another cyborg, I have to remind myself that the feelings under my skin aren’t love, they’re same feelings I get from my microwave.
I have a [[chip]] in the back of my hand that you can scan with your phone.
I count my [[IUD]] as a cyborg implant, too.
[[next|Cyborg2]]
The magnet implanted in my finger vibrates near electricity. I run my fingers over my [[laptop]] and I feel its heartbeat.
The first time I touch fingers with another cyborg, I have to remind myself that the feelings under my skin aren’t love, they’re same feelings I get from my microwave.
I can also pick up paperclips and other small metal things, which is a neat party trick that I don't have any ~deep emotional feelings~ about.
[[back|Cool Cyborg]]
A single piece of me is programmable. For all the failures my body has, all the hormone imbalances and anxiety disorders and weird occasionally failing organs, a tiny part of me has written rules and does exactly what it is told.
I use it to open the Pizza Hut app on my phone. I’m not as deep as I pretend to be.
[[back|Cool Cyborg]]
It’s a pretty cool little device hanging out in my uterus that makes me mostly no longer have periods and also not have babies and also keeps my hormones from getting too out of line. Plus, when Tech Bro Disruptor Shitlords TM want to talk about implants being the future and I bring up this one they get HELLA [[weird]] about it. which is ideal.
[[back|Cool Cyborg]]
You wanna get weird about it though? Sometimes if I don’t adjust the little metal wires beforehand, they’ll stab anything that is, ahem, in their space. I’m always apologetic like, hey sorry for having robo parts and stabbing you in the dickhole, but let’s be real this is very on brand for me. Feature not a bug etc. etc. [[back|Cool Cyborg]]
I run my fingers too close to one spot on my laptop and it triggers the mechanism to put my computer to sleep. Sometimes I don’t expect a strong magnet to be somewhere and I’ll feel like my fingertip is about to explode. Not that I don’t still love this cool cyborg lifestyle, but y’know, it’s not all shiny cyberpunk clothes and being able to see the matrix code everywhere, you feel me?
[[back|magnet]]
I love what I’ve been becoming, which is some weird broken grammar I’m gonna use to get out of saying I Love Who I Am because I am a woman not currently in a Dove commercial and thus my self esteem is a roller coaster of external circumstance.
But I’m comfortable with this [[trajectory]].
Sometimes I wonder [[what if I was more robot?|Future]]
Because I remember what it was like to be [[not robot at all.|Past]]
It is 2026 and I am less human than I have ever been.
At 9 AM sharp my work programs begin. I do my required tasks with focus and enthusiasm. At 5 PM, they end. I receive payment for the work I have done. I have the evening to myself, which I fill with productive hobbies and media consumption and self care routines.
The efficiency of my work allows me to bring home a healthy salary. My apartment is minimalist and cold and full of marble and steel. I have the nicest kitchen of anyone else I know. I don’t use the kitchen. I eat a lot of Taco Bell. I can finally afford to eat something else, but I do it because I like it and it reminds me of home.
[[next|futurenext]]
It is 2011 and I am a Regular Human Woman.
To be a human woman is to be beautiful. After all, it’s important to respect yourself and everyone around you. I’m 18 and my human skin is very flawed. I don’t leave my dorm without makeup.
To be a human woman is to be warm and kind. It is freshman year and I have so many friends. I never eat a meal alone. They say I’m so easy to talk to. They come to me with their problems. They invite me to every party. We don’t have much in common but I don’t mind. They think it’s cool of me to play smash bros and talk about hot girls and always be down to party.
To be a human woman is to make sure your boyfriend is always happy, so everyone can see what a [[good couple]] you are.
It’s Friday, so his friends deliver him home. Alcohol impedes humans’ motor skills. His eyes can’t pretend to focus on me. I tell him, again, I don’t want to be responsible for him when he’s like this. He doesn’t hear what I’m saying, just supports his weight on my own and tries messily to run his hands through my hair.
I’m angry. I tell him to leave.
His grasp tightens on his fistful of my hair. I’m too confused to react before I real. Some synapses fire. Primitive human functions that cause my body to jump away. In the future, I will have programs that run when this happens. Failsafes. Some kind of self preservation functions.
scream()
run()
fight()
Event listeners for danger that say [[Don’t. Let. This. Happen.]]
But I have none of these programs yet.
My eyes just go blank [[too.]]
[[I let him stay.]]
[[I let him stay for two years.|trajectory1]]
I am supposed to love being a Human Woman. I am supposed to find external reasons to cherish my existence I am supposed to fix broken men and give them every inch of myself so they may become whole I am supposed to have children and want them to become better than me in every way but I don’t. There is nothing here for anyone else anymore. I patch up my being with new and better parts until I am the future I’m looking for.
[[Any part of me that has been taken is just outdated hardware.|endFinal]]
I don’t love like I used to. That’s supposed to be sad. I am supposed to have no failsafes and love unconditionally and give every inch of myself so others may become whole. But there is nothing here for anyone else anymore. I patched up myself with new and better parts and upgraded until I could be a future I wanted.
Human Me is outdated. [[I love me so much more now.|endFinal]]
The End.
[[Back to Start|First]]
[[A human, more or less|Start]]
By Rachel Stine
Content Warning: alcohol, abuse, sexual things
I remember what it was like to be [[not robot at all.|Past2]]
Sometimes I wonder [[what if I was more robot?|Future2]]
At 9 AM sharp my work programs begin. I do my required tasks with focus and enthusiasm. At 5 PM, they end. I receive payment for the work I have done. I have the evening to myself, which I fill with productive hobbies and media consumption and self care routines.
The efficiency of my work allows me to bring home a healthy salary. My apartment is minimalist and cold and full of marble and steel. I have the nicest kitchen of anyone else I know. I don’t use the kitchen. I eat a lot of Taco Bell. I can finally afford to eat something else, but I do it because I like it and it reminds me of home.
[[next|futurenext2]]
It is 2011 and I am a Regular Human Woman.
To be a human woman is to be [[beautiful.]]
To be a human woman is to be [[warm and kind.]]
To be a human woman is to make sure your boyfriend is always happy, so everyone can see what a [[good couple|good couple2]] you are.
It’s Friday, so his friends deliver him home. Alcohol impedes humans’ motor skills. His eyes can’t pretend to focus on me. I tell him, again, I don’t want to be responsible for him when he’s like this. He doesn’t hear what I’m saying, just supports his weight on my own and tries messily to run his hands through my hair.
I’m angry. I tell him to leave.
His grasp tightens on his fistful of my hair. I’m too confused to react before I real. Some synapses fire. Primitive human functions that cause my body to jump away. In the future, I will have programs that run when this happens. Failsafes. Some kind of self preservation functions.
scream()
run()
fight()
Event listeners for danger that say [[Don’t. Let. This. Happen.|happen2]]
But I have none of these programs yet.
My eyes just go blank [[too.|too2]]
[[I let him stay.|stay2]]
[[I let him stay for two years.|end1]]
After all, it’s important to respect yourself and everyone around you. I’m 18 and my human skin is very flawed. I don’t leave my dorm without makeup.
[[back|Past2]]
It is freshman year and I have so many friends. I never eat a meal alone. They say I’m so easy to talk to. They come to me with their problems. They invite me to every party. We don’t have much in common but I don’t mind. They think it’s [[cool]] of me to play smash bros and talk about hot girls and always be down to party.
[[back|Past2]]
//”Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”//
-Gone Girl
I frequently tell people I love Gone Girl. I don’t say how much. I don’t say that it is one of the only things that makes me feel safe and powerful in a world where I am neither. I don’t tell them that I have this speech memorized, that I put on this scene every time another man touches me on the subway or messages me what he’d do if we met.
“haha I just really like Fincher movies, y’know?” see, I’m not a bitch. Not a sociopath. just a cool girl with good film opinions. guys love that.
[[back|warm and kind.]]
My body is now full of lights and wires and gears and perfect flesh-like silicone. I don’t look like a woman enough to get attention from men. I feel safe in public for the first time. I am intimidating and inhuman and strong and beautiful.
My huge living room windows look out over the cool neon future city we live in, in this distant future of 2026. I wear long fur robes and eat fast food and watch people, alone.
I am always alone when I think of my future.
Which is not to say I’m always alone. I have friends in the future. I date people. But my identity is me, singular being.
[[back|trajectory2]]
My body is now full of lights and wires and gears and perfect flesh-like silicone. I don’t look like a woman enough to get attention from men. I feel safe in public for the first time. I am intimidating and inhuman and strong and beautiful.
My huge living room windows look out over the cool neon future city we live in, in this distant future of 2026. I wear long fur robes and eat fast food and watch people, alone.
I am always alone when I think of my future.
Which is not to say I’m always alone. I have friends in the future. I date people. But my identity is me, singular being.
[[next|end2]]