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Save Point: Life Drawing

Age Of Azatlan

"I don't really need the paper of course," Cleo is saying as she sketches.

"What do you mean?"

"One of my upgrades is a handy military 'intelligence management' tool that doesn't just take a screenshot of what you're seeing, but corrects for angular distortion from multiple images. So I can just remember any document I've seen even once. Only catch is you have to activate it deliberately, but after you use it you can rotate, move or even draw on the memory. So I've memorized a bunch of the largest, finest paper samples I could get my hands on. Observe."

Cleo continues drawing, without her piece of paper, onto the empty air. Her actions are precise, and would probably, with the right overlays, be perceived as being trailed by a colorful blue glow by other users of the software.

"Now for the really interesting bit," she concludes after adding some significant feature. "It outputs the pictures too, by prompting the muscles of my fingers and hands to produce the correct lines."

She retrieves the paper and silver-point, adjusts them to better match their imaginary equivalent and then almost instantaneously reproduces what she just sketched into empty air, onto the page.

"I still have almost everything I ever drew. It's quite remarkable, after all this time."

"No wonder they thought you were gods," he observes morosely.

"Expectation management," confirms Cleo. "It was all part of the planning, giving us lots of small and meaningless additional features to confound the enemy. Ambidextrosity and the ability to dual-wield just about any weapon as standard. Adaptive visual augmentation of numerous sorts, so we could see in the dark. I was actually one of the least modified, because almost everything I needed I already had, but even then I've got a sort of platinum-molybdenum mesh built into and around my ribcage."

"So how do you still breathe and move so smoothly?"

"Features borrowed from a house cat. My ribs meet at the centre under impact and interlock but I don't actually have a sternum in the technical sense. Actually I only accepted the mesh because it gives me extra chest support and these," she cups her breasts affectionately, "need as much support as they can get if I'm going to go leaping about all over the place."

"I'd say it seems to be working."

"Thanks. There's actually a set of data ports built into the underside of the lowest point, which I could get into if I had no choice by cutting open the overlying skin. For medical purposes, you know, in case the bioelectrics failed and they couldn't connect wirelessly. The mesh can behave as an antenna unless it's hopelessly shattered, which means it comes in handy for listening in on communications."

"If you're the least modified, what did they do to the others?"

"One of my team-mates liked to be cutting edge. She'd had her entire skin replaced with a sort of synthetic mesh that bonded to her muscles and made her bulletproof. She had four two-inch data ports on her back and spine that could also be used as medical ports for plugging in multiple reflex boosters to keep her alive under fire. Mostly her bones weren't original and she'd infiltrated her muscles with a web of fine super-strong fibres to give herself greater leverage and traction. Her eyes were modular and she'd swap them out as needed. She carried a bunch of spares in a contact lens box."

"Well that's just kind of strange."

"Yeah. I think she actually liked getting shot - having rounds bounce off her made her feel alive. Some times she'd come back from a fight with so much surface damage they'd have to peel her skin off and replace it entirely. The good news was that they could print off new extremities for her using a rapid prototyping unit, so she didn't have to wait for small things to grow back completely from scratch."

"I'm starting to think that maybe you're having me on."

"No, I'm completely serious. You do not forget peeling your friends skin off starting at the spine and discovering that it is about half an inch thick and has gold circuitry printed finely across the inside. The last time I saw her, she had even bigger plans and was going to upgrade the skin with a complete active camouflage system to let her sneak up on things. Her exact comment was 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop having hair. It's just too highly visible,' to which I replied, 'Can I be the one who shaves your pussy?' We had a hell of a laugh about it over drinks."

"Shame that none of us ever got to meet her. What was the name of your unit?"

"Blade Dogs. They called us the Sword Bitches. With the utmost respect of course."

"I have my very own sword bitch."

"Stay still or I can't draw you properly."

~*~