Transhumanism ain't just for the rich

I’m sort of inured to pain by this point. Anesthetic is illegal for people like me, so we learn to live without it; I’ve made scalpel incisions in my hands, pushed five-millimeter diameter needles through my skin, and once used a vegetable knife to carve a cavity into the tip of my index finger. I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot working in the name of progress: I’m Lepht Anonym, scrapheap transhumanist. I work with what I can get.

[...]

My first foray was into RFID (radio frequency identification) following Amal Graafstra. He’s famous for having his doctor implant him with a passive ID ampoule. After one visit to an outraged state GP here in Scotland (“I wouldn’t do it even if I could, and I have no idea why you want to do it!”), I was fairly certain I’d been born in the wrong country for that — here, doctors would be struck off the records for helping me. I was on my own.

Luckily, I’m far too stupid to be stopped by bureaucracy. I bought my first Swann-Morton scalpel online, scrubbed the cleanest bathroom we could get with household bleach, settled myself cross-legged over the bathtub with my spotter, and poised the blade over the Biro-ink line I’d drawn for guidance. For a few minutes, I doubted whether I’d even be able to do it — cutting yourself open is not something we’re adapted to be good at. Contemplating St. Gibson, I took the plunge.

[...]

RFID chips work on passive power. Readers take power from a USB to generate magnetic fields. The chips contain copper coils to convert the magnetic field back into an electric one that they can use as their power source. After the RFID op, I acquired another implant that works with EM fields, the neodymium-60 nodule pioneered by Steve Haworth.

The implants sit in various places under my skin: middle fingertips of my left hand, back of the right hand, right forearm — tiny magnets, five or six millimeters across, coated in gold and then in silicon to isolate the delicate metal from the destructive environment of your body. They’re something of an investment at about thirty euros apiece, and hard to get hold of, but worth pursuing. When implanted, they become technological sensory organs.

There’s an entire world of electromagnetic radiation out there, invisible to most. Our cities are saturated with it. A radio, for instance, gives off a field that’s bigger than the device itself. So do power supplies and wires in the walls. The implants pick up on the fields, and because they’re magnets, they fizz with gentle electricity, telling you this hard drive is currently active, that one is turned off, there’s the main line in the wall. Holding a mobile phone, you can feel the signals it sends and receives. You know it’s ringing before it starts to play any sounds, and when you answer it, you stick the touchscreen stylus to the back of your hand to hold it, then to your finger to type.

Scrapheap Transhumanism. I must say, those magnetic nodules sound like a lot of fun. Autosurgery without anesthetic, not so much; but I know enough medically trained personnel that it wouldn't be that big of a problem..... now, Xauri'EL, don't go and do something retarded.