I don't think I'm a cyborg anymore.

[joysweeper]

I am diseased.


Caught a fever Saturday night after seeing Monsters versus Aliens, which was a pretty decent flick.  I also shouldn't have eaten what I ate; it had been out for a couple hours.  On Sunday I felt it in the afternoon, had a total coordination loss, but I felt better in the evening and went back to college.  Watched a Let's Play of System Shock.

It seems like every time I catch a nasty fever my mind goes after whatever I'd been doing before it got bad.  The first time, I don't know what spawned it but I had dreams that continued when I woke and went back to sleep.  The second time, it was Hey You! Pikachu.  I lay in bed and literally couldn't stop thinking about it asleep or awake, and it got nightmarish.  The next time was, ah, after I found a cache of weird semi-furry pornography which I have disliked ever since.  Same thing.  This time, you guessed it.

I dreamed that I led a resistance in a labrynthine space station far above the Earth, and me and my people fought a malevolent AI with a female voice, and aspects of both GlaDos and SHODAN.  I was repeatedly injured during this and had cybernetic replacements each time, which didn't work as well as flesh.  I think I was justifying why my body ached all over.

At one point we won, but I knew it wasn't over.  I woke up then, really shaky and dizzy, and went to the bathroom and drank, but it seemed like the hallways were tighter and dingy.  Back in the dream, enough of me had been replaced that I decided to just plug into the station and become the new AI.  My followers were sort of unhappy about me staying there when some of them were heading back down to Earth to fight more evil AIs, so I gave them a chip or some part of me.  On Earth they found that it was worse than they'd thought, so they stuck the chip in a new, mostly human subject and our psyches merged.

And then it was human resistance time, though as time passed it became more cyborg resistance time because new-me was still getting hurt.   I was scared because I wasn't sure if I could live up to Original-Me's ability, and Original-Me sometimes talked to us but was always cryptic.  And neither Original-Me's nor new-me's community would accept me, there was only my resistance and sometimes the people.  But they were suspicious, because we were getting less human all the time.

And then I woke up, and the dream didn't quite end.  I very specifically remember thinking 'No, I can't be the head of a cyborg resistance, I've got no experience,' and then 'Oh, the chip.  Right.'  I kept having delusions about it.  The reason why I had trouble eating and kept stopping myself from throwing up was because the replacement stomach was new, and the replacement lung system - I also remember noting with irritation that when you don't breathe, everything you usually do by blowing on something, like clearing dust, has to be done with your fingers - had all this buildup.  The reason I had balance issues was because they'd never made a good inner ear.

The fever came and went through Monday, and I'm a little afraid of what I told my teachers when explaining that I was feverish and too sick for class - my flesh was trying to reject some of the implants, you see - and what I was like with my group from Least Favorite Class.  Tuesday it was mostly gone, but someone asked me if I was still a cyborg.  Today, Wednesday, I apparently just have a pleghmy cold.

My immune system is usually pretty good, but when it fails, it fails spectacularly.

ETA:  Aaaand now it's back.  My snot is thin and runny and tastes like either oil or motor lube, not sure which since I've never actually tasted either.  Maybe mentioning my immune system brought it back.  My mouth is wet and very, very hot, my eyes are burning, and I can't let go of the cyborg thing, so that's it, from now until I forget, when I am ill it is the Cyborg Flu.
Now is the point where I would type in binary if I wasn't going to head into my bunk and switch off right now.