Adams lifted his arm up over his head, turning his hand around slowly so that Muller could see the perfect angle where the light caught the fine honeycomb of haptic wiring sewn through the skin of Adams’ prosthetic, anchored by a glistening bar that traced the path where his ulnar nerve used to be. Adams was only alive because of the steady march of progress.
“They’ve made the first fully synthetic man, now. You seen him? The only thing left is a cluster of nerve cells. The only original thing, I mean. Doesn’t need to eat. His body runs on algal growth. His blood can hold oxygen for five times longer than normal. Disease resistant. Mental processing off the charts. That’s the future, right? To me, that’s what survival looks like.”
In my short story “The Mandatory Upgrade”, dark academia collides with a cyberpunk future. Two boarding school students break the rules to chase the best future they can imagine.
“The Mandatory Upgrade” is part of the Summer 2026 Issue of The Colored Lens
