Near future wor*fare

When mum came back from the war her skin was on inside out and she was crapping through a hatch in her belly button. That was nothing. Last time she'd coughed her lungs up and if not for the nanopills we'd have needed to stuff them back in ourselves. Like we did with aunt Claire's. Hanging down her front like a forked bib they were. *Yeugh.*

We did laugh though.

But this time it was the baddies came off worse. She had a vid to play us and it was a case of your tote destruxor. She took out two bungalows and the playground beside the old folks home, and Mrs Moggins vaped the brick flats on Mill Street. They pulled everyone back when the 'topes came in.

'Topes? No snopes. We never opened the windows anyway these days, what with the smell from next door. All just piled up out there they were. Good neighbours. Plain bad luck...

Bzzz...

Money in old tropes - Cyborgs

Second in the series in which I give YOU a new take on an old trope and tell you to go earn big!

Last time was marines; this time it's cyborgs.

We know the concept very well. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism. But that's been done. To death. Check out just this list. We've had all of endoskeletons, exoskeletons and implants.

What's left? Well, our imaginations are the limit.

For example, you've probably heard of utility fog. It's been mentioned at the Expanse here re gaming and here re philosophy. The idea is that a huge number of tiny links in a 3D matrix regulate their relative positions to change shape, colour and property. The T1000 starts to look less fantastical. The real world starts to look less solid.

But how does this tie in with cyborgs? Surely utility fog is beyond biology? Not so fast. There might be plenty a nanocloud couldn't do, or do easily. Believable mimicking might be tricky, and replication of the large array of integrated systems in a complex organic lifeform - and that integration itself - might prove harder than creating the cloud.

There's more on that kind of thing up now at the superb Astrogator's Logs, here.

So how about a biological base on which nanotech has gone to work, producing a transbiological form of tougher, more flexible bone, more efficient muscle, improved nervous and circulatory systems, and through all this a utility cloud has been run?

Within the body the cloud could beat the heart faster, reinforce blood vessels, hold wounds closed while they are repaired. It could project out beyond the skin to provide an invisible cushion, reacting to incoming projectiles and maybe deflecting them with concentrated electromagnetic pulses. It could provide support for the limbs or additional limbs, and allow chameleonic changes in appearance as well as a limited shapeshifting.

Impressive. How you feel about it as a possible reality likely depends on how you feel about transhumanism in general. It's a big subject. Fiction can help us explore it, assuming it's not selling it to us, whether for enthusiasm, profit or something more sinister. And there is of course a danger that fiction can make development more likely.

Am I being irresponsible? Maybe. Ideas are very powerful things.

Let me trivialise it now then, by statting it up for gaming. I'm going to use the great free skirmish game FireZone by Gotthammer, which would work just as well for a more classical punk approach to cybernetics, something like Lantz's AdMech FanDex, also great and free. I put together a blunderbuss last week, but this time it's a protagonist.

Or rather two, one playing up the slow inexorable zombie tradition, one faster.

Nanorg (slow)

S  P  I  D  E  R

 3  4  3  6  8  3   Abilities: Dauntless, Shielded 4/1


Nanorg (fast)

S  P  I  D  E  R

 5  4  5  8  8  5   Abilities: Stealth, Free Running, Sure Footed, Dauntless, Shielded 4/1

No equipment here, but for weapons - if you need them - Gotthammer's flamethrower, thermal cutter and plasma welder would reflect the idea that lifeforms like this might get burdened with heavy, difficult work. He statted those for Studio McVey's Sedition Wars.

Read FireZone to see what the notation means; to whet the appetite, those shields recharge. Again, the rules pdf is free and could become that new wargaming system.

_