Would anyone like to purchase early-access to “Prompts & Ponderings” for $10? It’s currently an on-going project, but you will receive an ebook of everything when the series is complete (I have Calibre, so I can make different formats, though I’m far from an expert with the program). If you have a preferred store that you buy from — Amazon, Smashwords, Lt3, All Romance Ebooks — you can wait until the Perfect Collection comes out, though I don’t have a date on when that will be.
Use this link — PayPal.Me/HarperKingsley/10 — to send me $10 via Paypal and I will email you a page link and a keypass. (Basically, I’m going to make a simple page with a catlist of all the published Prompt posts as links. Then there will be new stuff through that page and it’s children.) Once the series is complete, an ebook will be available for download.
There is a space on the Paypal order form for “Special instructions to seller”. Please make sure to let me know what you’re ordering. The nice thing about Paypal.me/HarperKingsley is that I can be sent money from anyone with a Paypal account and my name. But because of that freedom I don’t automatically know what someone’s purchasing. (You could just be buying me a cup of coffee on a cold day, or hanging out with some quilting materials. Sometimes you don’t tell me what the money’s for, all you say is “Here, take my money!” and that always makes me laugh. And then you get sizzling chicken videos
and no explanation.)
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PROMPT: “He hated being a cyborg. He missed his old life. His old self. The way things used to be.”
SCRIBBLE: His wife promised him that they would have forever. Even with what was done to him, she had promised to stay with him.
A: He loves her so much that he takes a step back.
A1: He is open-minded enough to accept being in a polyamorous relationship. He is open to the idea of sharing the love of his wife, as long as she still cares for him.
A2: He completely leaves her life, spending all his time locked up in his sleep station and living cell. He’s a monster; he doesn’t deserve anything but this.
It stings his heart when she remarries. He thought that he was dying for a moment and his brain spiked so much that his pharmacopa started pumping Calm through his veins. By the time he trekked home, he was floating on a cloud that turned all of his woes to vague dreams.
He sleepwalked through his free time, then blazed like lightning on the violence of the street. It was the best part of being a robocop. Being able to go out there and punish the people of the City, from the high and mighty bastions of society to the lowest dregs of Poverty Row. Anyone that hurt another person was his prey.
He felt like Batman.
B: She tries as long as she can, but it’s so hard. There are some days when she craves the *sense of touch*, the warmth of another human’s skin against her own.
B1: Crying on the inside, she breaks it off with him. He’s a giant jerk about it and takes his pain out on her. “How dare you betray me?!” with no thought to what she’s going through. To how much it hurts when he’s away and she’s curled up on the bed alone.
B2: Realizing the pain and loneliness she must be going through, he finds ways to simulate his touch against her skin. He only has one human hand, and the other is made to give pain, but he’s got a gyroscopic computer in his head churning out millions of permutations a second. He is able to control his every motion to the point that he can snatch a fly out of the air or he can use a Dremel tool to carve the shells of eggs.
He couldn’t give her the physical touch she deserved with his cyborg body, but there were numerous replacement aides out there. What else could he spend his wages on? He made good money, and the house was paid for. He didn’t think the wife would mind.
He loves her so much. There’s not a single thing he wouldn’t do for her.
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A. She promised to always love him.
A1: She stays with him.
A2: She leaves him.
B: they are cyborg police doing their jobs.
B1: Controlled by others.
B2: Normal soldiers.
C: She was terrified of flying.
C1: Became a cyborg after a terrible plane/helicopter crash.
C2: Being wrapped in metal, her biggest fear was ending up in the ocean. Or any amount of water that reached a point over her head.
D: He’d had to relearn how to write.
D1: His prosthesis was intended for various tasks, but handling a pen was not one of them. He’d had to practice writing his own name until it became familiar again.
D2: Sever brain damage was the diagnosis. The cortical plug let him learn things at a ridiculous rate–until it seemed as though nothing had been wrong–but he knew.
He’d forgotten his name and his life. He only had faint wisps of his memory from before.
E: It was hard being the only non-enhanced human in the area.
E1: The whole town had turned cyborg. It was scary being the last, unaugmented human, but there was no choice. Heaven did not open to obscene simulations of life.
E2: She wanted desperately to be augmented, but it couldn’t happen. She was a noncompatible. Her body would resist any enhancement and she would die.
She was trapped in the cage of normal humanity.
F: The public fears the cyborg police.
F1: They are brought around to acceptance.
F2: They panic and attack.
G: She is a cyborg bodyguard for hire.
G1: She’s been hired as corporate security. It’s a good paying gig with a different level of danger.
G2: She’s hired as the nanny for a businessman’s heir. (It’s all good until the kid gets kidnapped.
H: A cyborged soldier comes home.
H1: Having to adapt back to civilian life after spending time in a war zone.
H2: He’s on furlough. He’s only going to be around his family for a short time.
I: Maimed in childhood, he has grown up with his loss.
I1: He is made into a cyborg after years of being paralyzed. It’s a revelation, a whole new world opening in front of him.
I2: He’s grown up in a cyborg body. It’s all that he has ever known.
J: They’d had to put his brain back together, making up the missing sections with synthetic parts.
J1: He wondered if he was human anymore. How much of his personality was him and how much was programming? (The thought bothered him though there was very little he could do about it. If he let himself dwell too much, he would end up going mad.)
J2: People beginning to question how much of a person need to remain to keep calling a cyborn human. At what point does a cyborg cease being a human with cybernetic components and become an AI with human parts?
K: A solider is saved after a terrible accident and is told she has to serve a shadowy agency.
K1: She resented what they’d done to her. But if she tried to run, the localized explosives implanted in her brain would explode. Her body would become the wetware for another more amenable operative.
K2: She hated living in the barracks with the other operatives. (There was never any privacy and she hated seeing how the others looked. Because even with her avoidance of mirrors, watching them made her wonder what she looked like.
For the first time in a long time she felt a bit self-conscious.