It's about time, the day where the world holds its breath - to see, for the first time, if we can blend man and machine and slip the surly bonds of earth. If we can funnel a mind, really, and slide it into a body of titanium and steel and exquisite carbon foam - grown, printed, and assembled into perfection at its peak, just waiting for an animating force.

And I, unfortunately, have the honors of doing the job.

It's not like I'm not prepared, with the body on the table ahead of me, and the cluster of nurses and technicians, doctors and hopeful dreamers, filling the operating theater. I've spent damn near my entire life in this room, readying for this moment after drinking a fire-hose of information and what feels like millennia of practice.. The feel of my tools has gotten so familiar I could shave off atoms with my scalpel, no less.

On slides the scanner, fitted to the electrodes in his skull and guided on by my expert grip, and the thing hums to life. Time seems to slow, as I connect the cables, my every motion slow and precise, a faint hum accompanying it.

I can spare a glance for the people in the room, now. A tech clears his throat, and my gaze flicks to him. Fuck, I wish I were like him. Roaming around, laughing, talking, after hours - it's not like I don't know how; Lord knows... And the other things; I've heard him blushing, talking about his girlfriend, the things they did on a Monday afternoon before coming in for the night shift... And the thoughts of the patient, flitting through the wires - I can almost taste them. Life how it ought to be, it seems.

What would that feel like? To be able to be inside someone like that? Sliding, thrusting, feeling her warmth...

The frustration wells up again, a clawing, desperate fear that I'll always be like this, trapped, stuck. To be like I am, just feels... wrong.

But I've a job to do, and soon, they'll present the result of my work to the world. Homo novus, a man made machine, the finest of both embodied in a perfect creation. Perhaps, with the fame and glory of that achievement, I could...

A mad impulse seizes me, as the flickering images of a family, a child, flash through scenes from the recent past. Scenes - oh, God - that would churn my stomach and make my heart sick.

If I had either.

No one notices, as an elegantly articulated limb detaches from the ceiling, gracefully arcing down to adjust a wire, following the trail down to another node, and - click.

And now I'm flowing, easily, my mind leaving the hub of wires and carbon foam housed in the blinking unit below the table, like falling asleep - like falling asleep, I realize, something I've never experienced firsthand - and

and

and

Click.

I raise a hand.

I raise a hand.

I can feel my heart beat, and I draw a breath. Everything. Everything. In a sudden, dazed, glorious rush, I open my eyes, and the world bursts with color and sound.

"The operation," I crack, through lips, for the first time, as the monster on the other table shudders and wilts, "was a success."