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Urle was only vaguely aware of anything.  As augmented as he was, even the most powerful sedatives that shut down the living body had no effect on his hardware.

These moments were rare, and in a way he found them wonderful.

The outside world and his concerns were beyond him until a certain time.  He could simply be, by himself.

It spoke volumes about how much he had been augmented that there was enough mental power to be aware while he was technically not awake.  His flesh-and-blood brain was almost fully unconscious, and he became a being of pure algorithm and code, aware, even feeling, yet no longer biological.  It was not fully human, not even fully him, but he often wondered if this was better.

Sometimes he longed to break that last tether, to cut away the last of his flesh and become purely electronic; more than nature could ever devise, with none of the weaknesses of the biological.  Alive for as long as there was a server somewhere that retained a copy of his consciousness.

Immortal and that much closer to being his greatest self.

The technology still was not quite there, the wetware that composed the human mind was just not built to be digitized, and the server power and storage needed to truly replicate him was more than any one person could reasonably allocate.

But even if that was no longer an issue, there was something else that would have stopped him; his daughters.

Not that they actually had asked him not to – they didn’t even know about his wish.

But if he did end his mortal life, he knew that they would not share in it.  He would not even have a real body, only a shell like Dr. Y.  While that might function just as well, and he knew he’d be able to experience their hugs and warmth and love-

What if they felt he was gone?  What if the code that would be his person was not enough for them?

Or, what if, even though the odds were small, that the brain scan failed or messed up and he became faulty code, unable to be himself or even self-aware?  It was a one-way trip, the best method being a full scan that required slicing the physical brain into thin segments to get every detail.  An external scan was safer, but it was much more likely to make mistakes and result in a broken consciousness, which would then be his burden to bear.

Even if Verena was still here with them he could not knowingly take himself away from his children.

They were too young to safely begin getting their own augments, and he did not feel that children could truly understand and consent to such body modifications – let alone to being fully uploaded as they were, never to mature and grow.  As much as he might wish to keep his children small forever, it was a selfish thought.

No, not until their minds had fully formed.  No matter how intelligent, how learned, how advanced their children became, they were still that – children.

But one day they would be grown.  And if they decided they wanted to follow his path, as he hoped, then they might all become more.

So for now, he would just enjoy these rare moments and how they renewed him.

It was trance-like, and he knew that when he awoke, and the cuts had been fully sealed with protein glue and his organic brain resumed consciousness, he’d feel whole – restored.

He felt something connect to his internal system, felt the extension of his capabilities.  The new port had been installed by Madspark – or more properly, by his surgical machine.  Who wanted a person’s hand inside their body?  That was barbaric, a machine should always be the one doing the actual surgical work.

That meant his skull was opened, but that hardly worried him.  In a few minutes it would be closed again, as if it had never been opened.

It was just odd to realize.

His system automatically began to scan the new port, checking it.

Something was off.  He lacked the computational power to really think through it at the moment – all he could really do was consider past memories and decisions dispassionately, not deductively reason.

His system noted several errors, alarms began to go off.  This part was not right, it-

The port’s memory storage contained data – a program that had just executed.

His system was trying to quarantine it, but it was nothing like any virus it had ever seen.  It had been hidden, deeply, as if deleted and only scraps of it remained, but the sense memories were strong, and as it had been for a visual port he was getting images-

The insensate darkness was split as suddenly he found himself in a room.

Red was over his vision, and he knew it was not the effect of rage upon the living but splattered blood.  A scan told him that it was not his blood, but he knew somehow that it was.

He raised his hand to look at it, but it was gone.

Missing, from the wrist on, and he saw blood splatter out of it, pushed out by the pressure of his pounding heart.

The rate of which was through the roof, and a thousand alarms of injury and malfunction were going off for parts he didn’t even think he had.

The room around him was cold, his infrared sensors could detect it and his body reacted, feeling the hard cold floor against his back, under his kicking legs.  He was barefoot, and his bare soles were dirty and cut, trying to push him away from something.

He had no control over himself, and the audio cut in suddenly, and the vibrations he’d been dully sensing were the feeling of his own screams.

Someone loomed over him, their body hulking.  Despite the shadows, he could see the man perfectly.

It was Madspark, watching him coldly.

“—agreed to this,” he said, his strange voice lacking any humanity.

Urle only screamed again, and the large man stabbed downward with a stiletto-like knife that Urle realized was a shock spike; a device that would shut down augments with minimal damage.

He tried to wrestle with the man, but the spike lowered closer and closer to his eye.  It went in just next to it, and he felt the sharp pain as it pierced his skin, then began into his skull.

Alarms shrieked, all new alarms, ones he’d never even heard before, that he couldn’t understand in his panic.

“You should have stayed asleep,” the man said, and then the blade pierced his skull and sunk deep into his brain.

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