Defective

“Remember when we had to do that ourselves?”

“I was too young to remember it. How old were you?”

“Fifteen. I still can picture the day my parents bought me my own unit. But it seems….”

“Seems what? If you were around, you can bring up those memories right? Just like we do now with our processors.”

“No. It looks weak. Like if a screen is dying, or its low on power. This was before our computerized lives. This is an old memory. You don’t have many because you were augmented when you were three. Actual memories are different.”

“They sound pathetic. You can’t recall an event with precision? I have nearly every file of my life stored in my NS unit. With a push of a button I can draw out and watch any moment of my life. But watching our lives in the past is kinda lame, it’s just us when we had weaker units and less advanced upgrades. And you can’t even remember those lame times that well? That is really pathetic.”

“No.”

“No? No to what? Humans are inherently flawed and weak. When they gave us our units, we could climb in and become ten feet tall, as strong as an ogre, and the software improved our mental capacity three fold.”

“But it’s all fake. Yes, you can watch a particular moment in digital history in real time. You can carry boulders and smash through trees with our units. But there is something unique about the vulnerabilities of a human body. I may not be able to recall the color of the wall, or what was on the stovetop, but I remember coming down each Sunday morning and seeing my mother. She turned, with a large smile on her face, handing me homemade pancakes and bacon.
I... I  remember limping in with my brother during the dead of winter. We had spent the entire daylight hours on the hill in the backyard, sliding, sledding, slipping, rolling, fighting, falling. Tired from the day. Not low on electricity, but actually exhausted from the running and laughing. Cold seeping through us, giving us a runny nose the next day.
Christmas morning, I slid across the wood floor in my thick winter socks. Scrambling with my brother to see who got the biggest present under the tree.
I may not remember everything. B-B-But I… I remember the important things.”

“I just looked in the official database. I can’t find anything about you and a brother. You must not have had one. Again, your weak human memories.”

“I remember the last day I saw him... The day I got my unit. His nervous system didn’t accept the augmentation. He died that afternoon. I’m beginning to miss him.”

“But we are better now. We can think faster, move faster, we are stronger. We are better now.”

“Maybe not. In a way, I miss my old body. I’m sure if I just shut this suit down, I could remember my old life even better. I must find the power cord, or tell the processor to shut down. I can just push these switches….”

“There is no way to un-augment.“

“..........”

“I said there is no way to un-augment.”

Process Interrupted. Tampering Detected. Defective Augmentation.

“That’s what I thought would happen.”

Defective Augmentation. All Humans Must Successfully Augment And Both Physically And Mentally Accept Augmentation. Humans Will Evolve Or Humans Will Perish….

“Another failed process. The units with humans from before the upgrades always seem to fail.”