all in the name of scientific progress

CURRENT PROJECT: Eyes in the back of your head

[doc--frank]

morgcna‌:

“It’s…not the money.” She had too many memories wrapped into the messy of wires. There was something quite painful about letting go of the wretched broken thing. Now, there was a hellhole that Morgana didn’t want to unpick. She exhaled slow, through her nose, as Zina started her work once more. This was familiar. This was safe. Zina wasn’t going to make a mess of this. It was hard to believe. Everyone was trying to earn a living. Even if it meant stepping over each-other. Morgana couldn’t count the times she’d been screwed over. But wasn’t that what the reapers were for. Protection. Family. Somewhere and someone to belong to. She thought of Jakov but, it wasn’t really as if they were close. He was admirable. There was an edge to him that no-one else had. After all, he was the chosen one. Morgana glanced at Zina. Her head was bowed. Attention honed into the wires. She liked these moments. When neither of them spoke and Morgana could observe. As if this was the most natural thing in the world.

Working on this for a few weeks. Why did that bring such great relief to Morgana? The weight she had been carrying about her shoulders lifted by the sheer knowledge of coming back for more. Maybe she didn’t want to leave. The comfortable silence of sitting in Zina’s warehouse as she busied herself with work, usually Morgana’s faulty limb but oft times Morgana brought in other work too. It was a ritual. Morgana’s divine worship and her communion. Every wire undone and metal sheath replaced another note of silent confession. She flexed her good arm, in the absence of her right it felt strong, safe, and at the very least it responded as it should. Organic limbs didn’t have the same woes as metal. It was too late to regrow an arm now, too expensive. Only the elite could afford to look natural.

“I won’t change my mind,” she said, slight twinge of a smile at her lips. With a hum she nodded. Of course Morgana had a pain-modulator. She blinked through a list of neural commands. Switched on the processor and leant back with gritted teeth. Hers was heavy, clunky, it made her feel like a rag doll with limbs that were disconnected to her. If she could flex freely a moment ago now it took concerted effort, her hand didn’t feel like her own. “Fine touch sensations?” Morgana’s smile escalated at the thought of fine touch. How she’d longed to have sensation back in that hand. It was functional. She could hold a glass, rev the engine of her bike, and more or less fight with it when it didn’t hiss at her. But touch? Morgana hadn’t had the pleasure of holding someone for a long time, but knowing she could brought a small heady thrill of its own.

“You’re looking awfully cheerful for someone that’s about to cause me a great deal of pain,” she teased. Morgana leant forwards to rest her elbow on her thighs. “Going to find me a wicked metal arm? Not sure I fancy the new models with their faux skin.” Despite her initial hesitation, Morgana couldn’t help but be excited for what was to come. It was hard not to be when Zina looked at her like that. “Just bill me like usual.” She pursed her lips, not sure whether to tell Zina about a certain delivery. It was going to end up here anyway, so she might as-well. “I managed to pick up a new synth, well not new new but you wouldn’t believe who it is. Zodiac that singer everyone was obsessed with.” It had been hard to go anywhere without hearing one of Zodiac’s songs blasted through cheap speakers. “Not the usual synth I know, but figured it might draw in crowds. Just might be…more difficult to modify. But I assumed you’d be up to the challenge.”

Zina watched as Morgana switched on the pain modulator, bringing a pair of tweezers up to a live wire to test that they were working. Sure enough, Morgana didn't even yelp. Zina had flicked down her eyepiece, ready to get back to work when she caught Morgana's growing smile at the thought of fine touch. "It's not 2020 anymore, Morgana, fine-touch sensation in augments is the norm." Zina snorted, biting down on her bottom lip. It was only when there was wiring as bad as this that fine touch was lost, or when the augment was put on an old stump instead of fresh.

With that said, Zina started getting to work on tearing out Morgana's old circuitry, tutting as she pulled out wires that went nowhere and trying to figure out how to streamline the process. Bolt by nut by screw Morgana's connection port fell to pieces, flesh exposed with each wrench or screwdriver Zina put to it. The whole construction was idiotic, metals with different expansion rates placed next to each other so when the temperature changed they would swell or shrink at different rates! It drove Zina crazy! She loved it! Morgana wasn't going to know what hit her.

"I love projects," Zina said sheepishly when Morgana pointed out her utter glee. "Especially ones I get to make my own. The pain is secondary." Zina nodded emphatically when Morgana asked for metal. "Faux skin is for squares. Why hide something that makes you unique?" If Zina had a limb torn off in some horrific, traumatic incident she reckoned she'd make her replacement the coolest limb ever. Then again, she was pretty lucky to not have lost a limb, and too paranoid about having to let someone else join her up to take the plunge and get one herself. "You send me more crazy fighters hyped up on credits wanting augments with no idea of the market value and I'll give you a discount."

Zina flipped up her eyepiece as Morgana let her into her little secret. "Zodiac!" Zina closed her eyes and flicked through to her trashy charts music playlist, let hits from Veles spill out from the speakers. "You're not going to make the fighter synths chew up his pretty face? Then again, I'd like to see how far I can hack into the Synthsphere coding..." Making a singer become a fighter would be some feat.

[doc--frank]

sxrapper‌:

He’d been out in the scrap yard all day, his mask slipping several times as the heat alone made him sweat, craving for a scrap of shade and a drink of water. He’d stacked his hover cart pull of useful items and he knew that the first stop before the shop home, was going to be the Doctor’s tinkering shed. Plucking off his mask only to wipe a mixture of dirt and oil across his forehead before wearing the mask again, he turned the corner and approached the door, the sounds from within enough to make anyone avoid this corner of the street, the metal on metal grinding, the banging and sparks, it was a miracle people hadn’t thrown her out for the noise alone.

Hearing her voice crackle over the intercom he stiffened as he fumbled for words, her abrasiveness sometimes caught him off-guard, throw him in a pit with someone twice his size, sure no worries. Put him in front of someone like Zina and he felt like a small child again, berated for making a mistake, but in awe with the work she did. “Me again. I’ve got some new things for you, big haul today.” He waited for what felt like 10 minutes, with nothing other than the electric, static hum of the intercom to keep him company. Shifting his weight from foot to foot as he felt awkward just standing there, the sun making it look like the contents of his cart were glowing.

“Want me to come back later?”

There was little things better in life than delivery services. It was how Zina got her food, door answered by a little fetching robot which dispensed a few extra credits for a tip and which would electrocute anyone who tried to pick it up. She wasn't used to her scrap being delivered to her, but knowing she wouldn't have to go outside where people were smelly and loud and bumped into her was already enough to have her grinning. So excited was she that she didn't bother to let Pip know that she was coming, weaving through scrap until she passed through the hologram that made any lucky intruders think they had stumbled upon an empty warehouse. At the door a security protocol reminded her to check her other cameras to make sure this wasn't a trap. Tutting Zina whizzed through them, the door unlocking with a click and a loud beep as Zina pulled it open.

"Nothing like fresh scrap to brighten the day!" Zina motioned for Pip to come in, making sure his hover cart had enough space to enter. "Though... I might have to do some trades..." But it was so hard to say no to new supplies! Zina walked steadily forward, past the hologram and into her own personal chaos. Scrap haphazardly organised into piles, a dump in itself to some people, but not Zina. "Anything you're interested in particular? I tend to get a lot of the synth-waste if you want anything like that."

[doc--frank]

zxnith-txch‌:

Her hand had been playing up of late, fingers twitching unexpectedly, shattering the glass in her hand on more than one occasion. Sparking and sending short spasms through her lower arm. She’d been putting it off for as long as she could, thinking that it was easy to hide, and not obvious, but when one of her subordinates had mentioned her hand shaking and whether it was good that participated in the last job, that had been the final thing to make her mind up. She would not be sidelined during her own job. She hated people knowing that she was weak or otherwise off her game so she had decided to venture down to see the good Doctor by herself, winding through the streets, hand in pocket, head down, not paying attention to anyone and not getting any attention.

Hearing the Doc’s unimpressed voice crackling through the speaker she smirked, “Charming as ever Doc.” Muttering to herself she didn’t say anything, simply held up her custom-designed hand to the camera, surely the Doc would recognize her own handy work. All those years ago when she had decided to replace her hand, her original plan was for a high-tech piece, something new and shiny. But it was an old friend that pointed her to Zina, a ripperdoc that experimented and tinkered building her own modified tech. This was exactly what she wanted, they’d sat down for hours designing and planning, the nitty-gritty parts not bothering Kyra one little bit, knowing that it would most likely hurt and there would be problems down the track … none of that mattered. She wanted this. Her hand was perfect for her, it left no fingerprints, no traces, more than perfect for her line of work, it had the ability to slash and easily kill, as well as a port to connect to other tech. 

Like a mechanical spider, a smile crawled across Zina's face as she saw Kyra at her door, holding up a nice piece of custom work that Zina was always happy to work on. "A tune up?" she asked over the speaker, taking the time to scroll through her security protocols. Nothing on infrared or the pressure plates. Zina unlocked the front door - it clicked with a loud beep - and hurried to write down her notes about the three arm design. Kyra would know well enough to walk through the holo of an empty warehouse to find Zina's sprawling laboratory-workshop, scrap littered in somewhat organised heaps, and to make her way to the more hospitable section of the warehouse. A doctor's bed surrounded by lights and trolleys of equipment. Quite terrifying to the untrained eye, and those that were trained knew better.

"What's it going to be this time?" Zina asked, chipper and happy as could be. Kyra was just as experimental as she, someone she could bounce ideas off of and make into reality sooner rather than later. Zina scooted over to the bed on her stool, humming happily to herself. "Any problems? Ideas for new tech? I've been working on my portfolio." When wasn't she?

[doctorsavin]

Kickstarter : Fane & Zina

[doc--frank]

doctorsavin‌:

Fane had been contracted into visiting one of the corporate hospitals on the upper levels, did he want to be here? Not particularly, most of these doctors were just waltzing around like the stuffed shirts they were. More interested in the paychecks that got written at the end of the month than the work they were contractually obliged to do. Granted, that wasn’t the case for all of them but Fane honestly found them too… conventional and linear thinking for him to truly be able to work side by side with them.

It was why he freelanced so much, needing to flex and challenge the capacity of his mind with cases that were beyond the norm. That were unique. He was here to meet with Doctor Trewa a specialist in the field of spinal bio-modifications. They hadn’t worked together before, but Fane was interested in speaking to her about her ideas considering his own work installing said modifications. To see if there was any way in order to streamline the work process to make it more effective when you got to the operating theatre.

Briefcase in hand, his black wingtipped footsteps echoed down the pristine white corridors that smelled distinctly like antiseptic. So sterile and clean in comparison to some of the clinics he’d seen in the lower city. Arriving at the room in question he noticed a woman in a white coat with her back to him looking busy, “Doctor Trewa I presume?”

@doc–frank​

Everything was going to plan, and Zina was terrified. It was nice when things went according to plan, but at the same time, it was the worst, because you never knew when it was going to fuck itself up. If things went wrong at the start it was easy to breathe a sigh of relief, because then the one part of the plan that was going to fuck itself up was over, but having forged an identity, gained access to the hospital, pretended to be a real doctor long enough to bluff past the nurses and orderlies and students and other doctors and gotten to the office she had seen would be free filled Zina with a sense of looming dread. There was an old myth about a king sitting under a throne with a sword hanging above his head. There was something to that.

There was no point in trying to sit still. Zina was full of nervous energy, humming off-key to herself as she pulled up the monitor and connected herself directly into it, seeing how good her forged credentials really were at gaining her access to the database, and then seeing how far her rusty hacking skills could get her past that. Somehow, hacking into a medical database was soothing, and Zina's humming settled down as she took screenshots of interesting designs she could see. Of course, the real prize was going to be locked on non-networked computers, and to get to those she had to 1) find the doctors with specs worth 'emancipating' and 2) get into their offices to access their accounts. Dr Savent seemed like a good target to test her master plan out on.

Deep into her hack, she almost forgot that she was supposed to be meeting Dr Savent today, jumping at his voice. She quickly disconnected from the computer, smoothed down her clinical coat (it was heresy to call it a lab coat), cleared her throat and turned to face him. He looked smart, a proper big chin, but that was who she was supposed to be as Dr Trewa too. Zina straightened her shoulders and jutted her chin out. She'd tweaked her old fashionware implants over the years; the face Dr Savent saw was not Zina's, nasal bridge, cheekbone height, fat distribution, eye shape all slightly changed so she became Dr Augusta Trewa. "And you must be Doctor Savent," she said with a brave smile, sticking out her hand for him to shake. "Sorry, you caught me knee-deep in emails. They all pile up so fast and then..." she trailed off and made an explosion-motion with her hands, laughing the way people were supposed to when they made small talk.

"Thank you for meeting with me, sit down, I can't wait to pick your brain!" Zina laughed in that small-talk way again, brain unhelpfully reminding her that everything had gone far too smoothly so far, and she was bound to fuck it up.

[doc--frank]

morgcna‌:

It was the usual. Zina looked as if she was knee-deep in a technical revolution and Morgana, well she didn’t understand any of it. She’d tried school and like most kids do down in the underbelly she dropped out. There wasn’t any point studying to become a garbage collector. “Three years.” But it wasn’t exactly new when she’d gotten it. For around four months after the accident all Morgana had was her stump and the vacant ports where an arm could slot in. The beauty of having all your money siphoned away, there was nothing left to sustain yourself. Even now the thought of paying for a new limb when this one, more or less, still functioned. Some people chose to have cyberlimbs but it was an unfortunate necessity for Morgana. She’d seen the damage done by augments, was watching it in real time with a certain few people.

The spasm of muscle twinges that rippled through her shoulder left Morgana grimacing but she didn’t complain, Zina was too hyper-focused to notice anyway. Then without warning the quack picked up her arm and dumped it in a bin with various scrap metal. For a second Morgana couldn’t process what had just happened. Zina knew right that the arm had cost her more than its weight in scrap? That she couldn’t afford to just toss it away and replace it. Fuck if she had that kind of credits she’d have gone for a high-grade replica of her arm. The kind that were indistinguishable from your original limbs. The kind that only people up above her could afford. “What the fuck Zina?”

She didn’t want to listen to whatever it was that Zina was spewing out but she spoke too fast for Morgana to get a word in edgewise. It was uncomfortable, sitting here as Zina poked into the socket as she watched from afar as her beloved arm blended into the scrap. “I lost all feeling years ago.” The doc that had sewn her up and done the original amputation had botched an already messy job. She could control the arm but didn’t have any of the touch sensitivity. It was like having a foreign object for a hand. Watching through a frosted divider as your fingers stretched and recoiled on demand, but that glass you were holding? Weightless. Neither cold nor hot. After a while Morgana had simply readjusted.

“Lucky for me I don’t have a hand, hmm.” She leant back and squeezed her eyes shut. This wasn’t happening. It definitely was. Really it ought to be a surprise that it had taken Zina this long to take the plunge. Every micro adjustment to her arm had always furrowed Zina’s brows deeper, as if she couldn’t quite understand why Morgana was clutching onto dead tech. If Morgana had hoped that this would all revert back to normal, that once she’d opened her eyes Zina would simply be fiddling with her arm and making the necessary adjustments to keep it from failure, she was wrong. Obviously. Zina was fiddling, but she had her prodder deep into Morgana’s socket tutting at the mess of wires.

“Alright, alright.” She batted Zina away for a moment so she could slide off the table. “You can do what you want but this.” Morgana picked up the arm Zina had trashed. “I keep this.” It wasn’t worth much. Even the scrap metal barely had a worth but there was a meagre little sentimental worth attached. Memories of an easier time when life was a simple chase of adrenaline. “Nothing too fancy, got appearances to keep up.” Her attempt at a joke flatlined but Morgana didn’t smooth over the awkward laugh, or her lopsided grin. She just hoisted herself back onto the table. “Keep thinking I should keep up with the kids these days…everyone’s got a weapon stashed somewhere.” Morgana was unfathomably old-fashioned. In an age when it was considered trendy to have scythes built into your forearms she still clung to a sword at her hip. “That’s not a suggestion Zina,” she said pointedly. “Just want one that works…”

Zina couldn't quite understand the grief and anger that flared across Morgana's face when she realised where Zina had placed her arm. It was worth little more than scrap, and would probably cost more in repairs in the next five years than it would cost for having a brand new arm made by a genius like Zina for the rest of her life. She set her jaw and continued examining Morgana's connection port, already categorising the repairs and readjustments she would have to do. "No feeling at all..." she muttered to herself, pulling out a screwdriver and taking off the protective panel, digging deeper into the mess of wires that lead to the connection point where flesh met  metal. Zina hummed in concern the deeper she prodded, tracing the path of each individual wire with some difficulty until she was stopped by Morgana's protests.

She waited like a kicked puppy, worried she had done something wrong, not said the right thing and Morgana was going to leave without even a tune up. She audibly sighed when Morgana told her her terms, if tilting her head in confusion. "I was going to take the scrap off the price," Zina said, knowing by the way Morgana held it that it had some sentimental value to her. Sentiment, something Zina had never really understood.

"Alright," she said as Morgana insisted on a standard arm. Perhaps a little bit entranced by the way Morgana smiled so easily... This was why she focused on the arm. "We're going to be working on this for a few weeks, if not a month, so there's plenty of time to change your mind," she grinned, letting Morgana settle back into the table before picking her tools up again and refocusing her eye onto the microscopic details of Morgana's connection point. She spent a good few minutes tracing the paths of individual wires, figuring out which wires did what, and making notes which she could view through a programme in her cybereye.

"So the good news is that you're in good hands now. The bad news, if you're inclined to think that way, is that it's a complete gut job." Zina leaned back and looked at Morgana. "You have a pain-modulator? Might be worth turning it on, otherwise I might have some pain blockers lying around. Today I can redo the wiring for movement, which seems to be what you're able to do now. Then in a few days I'll use some bioware to regrow your sensory neurons so we can hopefully get you some proprioception, temperature, pressure, texture, fine touch sensations back into your arm. I'll have to wire into the somatosensory system while the nerves are still raw, so you can work on reassociating the senses." Zina smiled, worried she might have sprung too much onto Morgana. "And then, after all that, we can fit you a new arm!"

[doc--frank]

On engineering days, Zina played rock. There was something therapeutic about electronic guitars shredding lines when you were welding, and the cacophonous nature of it helped to hide the otherwise unsettling sounds of drills and saws cutting through metal. Zina had her hair tied back into a high ponytail, hands greased from carefully feeling out any imperfections. She'd been hit with a muse to create some more cyberware parts, perhaps the muse was directly tied to her revenue. Not everyone wanted a custom built, one of a kind, experimental augmented arm that she would design with them (or at least, with them in the same room as her). So she'd better make some limbs to take along with her to the ripperdoc offices. Each one with something exciting to really sell it, and Zina was on a roll. Over the past week she had made three arms and two legs, now it was just time to make some additional hands and feet so she could swap them if needed. Maybe she should create a single arm with two hands, no, a single connection point with two arms.

Zina was a flurry of activity, spinning around on her chair to grab her notebook and drawing with her finger in the 3D projected screen some ideas about mockups, at least for a training arm that would help the neurons train for having an additional limb to control. Zina hummed loudly in excitement, only for half of her vision to be blocked by a security notification. Someone was at her door.

Without even bothering to look at the security camera feed, Zina groaned and switched to the buzzer by the door. "Interruptions! What is it with you people and interrupting me when I'm having a breakthrough?" Zina rubbed her face with her hands, smearing it with some more grease from earlier. Business was business, and a customer at her shop was less time spent milling at the ripperdoc offices. "... What is it?" she asked in a slightly more friendly tone, flicking to the security camera feed.

[connorspiracy]

To Be Frank || Jack & Zina

[doc--frank]

jacksummers‌:

‘Go see Doctor Frank’, someone had told him when he asked around. 'Best prices on the market’. And so, Jack had been trying to track her down. He didn’t know the name off the top of his head, but the more he’d looked into her, the more he felt he knew about her. His dad had done a few jobs for her in the past, mostly around biotech and scientific stuff that Jack had no real knowledge in. All the two of them had known was that something needed stealing, so they stole it.

Zina was careful, and a little unorthodox. He’d heard stories of the kind of mess people who’d tried to break into her warehouse had gotten into, and most of them had been swept up and dropped into the Bay in little pieces. You had to know the right people to track her down, which was why it was fortunate Jack had been running cons and making allies around this part of town long enough to get the right information. Even then, it had taken him a few days.

He couldn’t help but be a little nervous as he approached. There was an unusual smell of chemicals and burning in the air, not the clean, sterilised smell you’d expect from a ripperdoc’s office, but then not all ripperdocs were created equal. Jack sent a message to Del with his location, a photo, and a message that said 'just in case I end up in a body bag or something’. Poor Del would flip their lid at his glib expression, tongue half out, peace sign, wink. Still, at least someone would be able to come look for him if Zina turned out to be a total quack.

“Hello?” he called, knocking on the outer warehouse door and looking upright to see if he could catch a glimpse of a security camera and give it a wave. “Miss Z? Doctor? Anyone home?”

@doc–frank​

Today was a miserable day. The sort where Zina laid back in her bed, too demotivated to even turn on her holoscreen, watching her usual sitcom through the video feed in her cybernetic eye. Her cell line had died, again, last night, and this time for no real reason! Just some dumb apoptosis pathway that'd been activated. So stupid... She sighed and switched from the sitcom to a rerun of The Jay Chakrabarti Show, pulling up her list of 'tearjerking cliche's' that his interviewees always leaned on to show how hard they had it. Everyone in the Lower City had a sob story, it was amusing to see some wealthy heiress of the Upper City use the same lines.

DOOR ALERT. Zina rolled her eyes, switching the video stream off and flicking through her security profiles. A kid, of all types. Zina quickly panned through her other security measures, heat sensors, pressure sensors. The kid was no decoy. Zina sighed, turned on the buzzer to the kid's right and said, "What is it, kid? Science is broken today." Her voice echoed, tinny, through the speaker. "Trying to sell scrap or something?" Too baby faced and bushy tailed to be a gangster wanting augments. Didn't look half-wired by some drug or another either. He looked vaguely familiar, but in the sort of way that people in the street could look vaguely familiar after you passed them by.

[morgcna-blog1]

@doc–frank​

Usually, maintenance was quick fixes here and there. Morgana had scrounged a disc drive with information about how to keep the bolts in her elbow clean, or how to degrease the piston. Except all of that was useless when the actual limb in question was poorly constructed. Poorly fitted. Altogether useless and good for nothing but the scrapyard. She had a little spare cash nowadays, not enough for a new arm, but she could find something entry level. On the other hand, she could put the cash elsewhere and just keep taking trips across town for patch ups. Back when she was a kid she’d have spent hours down at the scrapyard only to pull out junk processors and build circuits out of the elite’s rubbish. Circuits that wouldn’t function. Not that she or the other kids minded it was a way of passing time. These days the scrapyard was just another part of history, somewhere she passed every time her thumb stopped working.

She loitered outside of the warehouse. Somehow she always ended up here, at Zina’s door. Not the sort of person you could just drop by and visit, as Morgana waited to be buzzed in. Patience had never been one of her virtues but it was mandatory with Zina. She slipped inside and shirked out of her jacket as she weaved through the lab. On her first visit the hologram had tripped her up. She’d stood in the doorway gawking like a fool wondering if she’d come to the wrong place but Zina had simply emerged, as if from nothing. Walked her into the unknown and it was as if they’d never really come back. Morgana threw herself down onto the table. Zina had her back to her working, furiously at that. “Dr. Frank…” She pressed down onto the release and with a shrill hiss her arm detached. “I don’t know what’s wrong with. It’s driving me nuts. I think a connection is wonky, or shit I don’t know.”

Technology. This wasn’t her area of expertise. She’d tried jacking in once but lasted all of three minutes before she pulled out the plug and retched onto her friend’s lap. Zina’s world was so far removed from hers. She rubbed her eyes with her remaining hand. Delphi had been lingering around the pit lately so maybe that was sign. It was finally time to upgrade. Only she didn’t know if she could trust them. “I think something came loose in here.” Morgana pointed towards her stump and the various loose wires that were a technicoloured mess. Probably something to do with throwing Carter in a training session after the brawler thought himself above Morgana’s advice. 

“It can wait…if you’re busy.”

[doc--frank]

In the darkness of the warehouse, sparks flew around Zina to cast her in a dramatic silhouette. Not that she cared. Having the lights on low helped her focus, and with her cyberoptic eye zoomed in on the microbot she was focused on and an electronically powered magnifying glass strapped to her acoustic eye, Zina needed all the focus she could get. She hummed softly to herself, foot tapping to some garbage synthpop tune that she'd heard in passing on one of her rare visits to town and couldn't get out of her head. Maybe it wasn't garbage, but actually good, like all of the scrap and parts that littered her warehouse floor. Just when she was about to solder on a small, arachnid leg, an alert popped up in her eye and she jumped, missing the microbot by a whole millimeter. "Piece of shit," she muttered to herself, looking up (heavens her back ached from being hunched over) and letting her security feed tap through. Zina saw the security cam by the front door, then saw information from the pressure sensors she had installed in the roof, walls and grounds a half kilometer out from her warehouse and determined that Morgana was alone, and safe. Sighing, blowing a fluff of hair out of her face, Zina dismissed the booby traps and let the security door swing open to let Morgana in.

It shouldn't be so hard to attach a leg to a microbot, really, but recently Zina had been obsessed with nanobot battles, and had sent in a Goliath microbot to try and take down a team of two nanobots, and the little bastards sure had torn the microbot to pieces. Its leg had been so badly disfigured she'd had to reconfigure a new one, and now this one did not want to join no matter what she did. Her senses were turned down as she focused the tiny tips of her soldering irons to the join of the leg, only vaguely aware of Morgana by a shift in the airflow around her. Zina hummed louder, sucking on her bottom lip as her iron neared closer... and closer... Just a few more seconds now...

"YES!" Zina jumped up with excitement, laughing with glee at having finally put the leg back onto the Goliath, cheeks flushed with pleasure. It was only then that she turned to see Morgana laying down in the chair, now jumping in fright.

"I... I let you in," she said, nodding to herself. She flipped up the magnifying glass from her face, blinking as Morgana came into focus. Her eyes darted to Morgana's arm. Well, some people would describe it as an arm. Some rip off of a Zercher model Cykleton 452. Zina had higher standards than that. Morgana had scrap metal attached to her in the shape of an arm.

Zina turned her auditory senses up a little to hear Morgana if she spoke. Had she been speaking? That'd be embarrassing if she'd ignored what she'd said. Zina hummed again, but the tune turned decidedly sour as she started poking around the connection point of Morgana's arm. "You've had this arm for... how long now? 72 years?" The connections looked that old, and they used the red wire for the proprioception inputs! proprioception was definitely blue! Zina hummed louder and poked the wires with the tip of a metal probe she pulled from her coveralls. Dark red canvas, so the stains weren't so visible. "Hmm... this is fixable." Zina nodded her head, going over the work she could do by the end of today to give Morgana a suitable arm. Without ceremony she picked up Morgana's arm, looked over it to catalogue the majority of the metal alloy, walked through her warehouse and unceremoniously dumped it into a pile of scrap. She walked back without the arm, pulling a wheeled stool up next to Morgana and began prodding at the junction between her shoulder and arm connection.

"This is fixable, but you might have to go to a temporary carbon arm until we fix all of this." Zina spoke fast, a little too fast for Morgana to interject, not that she should, because Zina was giving her the best possible option. "Have you lost any sense in your augmented arm? We might have to do some neural repair of your shoulder with some bioware bots I have floating about somewhere. It might make your hand feel like it's immersed in lava for about two to five days but it can really help improve your control of your cyberlimb."

[doc--frank]

CURRENT PROJECT: Eyes in the back of your head.

STATUS: Preliminary research & cell culture

AUGMENTATION TYPE: Bioware

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Creating light sensitive dots, similar to nudibranch eyes (a type of sea slug common in salt water before the acidification of the world's oceans caused most sealife to go extinct) that are hooked up to the human nervous system and strategically placed on the back of the neck to heighten awareness of non-visible surroundings.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Heighten abilities of third eyes (possibly with some cyberware after nervous system has adjusted to additional visual input) to see in colour/infrared/ultraviolet.

PAST UPDATES: Reprogramming of adult skin biopsy to iPS successful. Analogous human genes to nudibranch eye genes identified by BLAST search. Additional genes required for full differentiation successfully transformed into iPS cells. Cell line established, denotated Z-nudeye. Production of transgenic proteins tested in cell line by inducible promoters. Two nudibranch proteins failed to be properly produced. Additional chaperone proteins transformed into Z-nudeye2. Proteins still failing to be produced, determined to be due to post-translational modifications not produced by human cells. Cell lines Z-nudeye3 to Z-nudeye-19 produced to try and fix protein production problem. Cell line Z-nudeye-19 successfully produces nudibranch proteins. Cell line Z-nudeye-19 perishes due to virus. Cell line Z-nudeye-19a produced with resistance to virus. Cell line Z-nudeye-19a tested for differentiation pathways, with some modifications.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Differentiation condition #17 is being tested on Z-nudeye-19a-3 cells. Differentiated cells from differentiation condition #16 visually resemble nudibranch eyes, but RNAseq analysis showed a failure of cells to properly communicate with one another and a failure to produce all genes associated with a fully differentiated nudibranch eye. Conditions of cell culture to be looked into if differentiation condition #20 unsuccessful, co-incubation with neurons or ectoderm might be required for proper differentiation.

[nemurou]

Miyamura (Preview, Terms of Use, Code)

Please check the preview to see all of the theme’s features! 

This theme is named after Miyamura Izumi, one of the main protagonists in Horimiya. I binge-read up to the latest chapter in a day, haha. It’s a really cute shoujo manga!! 10/10 would recommend (ᅌᴗᅌ* )

Features:

16 color options

Custom post width from 350px to 540px 

Optional post borders

Timeline inspired sidebar(?): includes an about section with up to 5 rows of content; 2 optional sections for you to input extra information; home, ask, and archive links + up to 6 custom links; custom title; optional timeline sectors (the horizontal lines); custom timeline dividers/markers (dots by default) with adjustable sizing and positioning; and a circular/rounded/square 50px icon 

You can choose to have the timeline fixed but if you’re going to use all of the timeline boxes provided I would strongly recommend turning off this option in order for the theme to be compatible on all screen resolutions.

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A like or reblog would be appreciated if you are planning to use this theme! Please direct all your questions and feedback here.