Introduction

Being enhanced was nothing new. Depending on how you looked at it, humans have been enhancing themselves and their environment the moment they used a tool. While enhancements to the human body was nothing new, there were still people who won’t accept this as the norm.

The people who happily embraced the augmentation of the human body, were called Extenders. They saw it as just the next natural thing. Keeping in the line of corrections and fixing of the human when or where nature had failed. Just as glasses are used to asses the far or near sighted, so too were eye implants or stem cell sight correction used to give sight to the blind.

Extender argue, that people have been using shoes for centuries to protect their feet. Humans weren’t born with shoe on, so why stop there. What was wrong with having an artificial heart that lasted longer, beat stronger, never caused its owner an heart attack, they asked?

While all of this is happen and everyone saw the changes coming. Some people are just resistant to the idea of humans being fixed or augmented. Even for people who were in an accident or who were born physically handicap or with medical issues that could be corrected with augmentation. These people call themselves Puritans.

Puritans had not religious affiliation. They just felt very strongly that medicine was fine to help make humans healthier or to heal them. But there shouldn’t be any augmentation inside of or on the body. So no artificial lung if you had a bad lung, or need one after a crash. No prosthesis if you lost an arm or was born with a deformed leg. Corrective lens were ok, but don’t get an artificial eye that could see in the dark or infrared.

Over time, a rift developed, between Puritans and Extenders. The rift started long before each side would ascribe labels to themselves or each other. Long before the name calling and hate crimes. Long before laws had to be made to protect the rights of one side from the other. As more people extended, the more extreme the Puritans became.

Puritans saw Externders as nothing more than cyborgs. Cyborgs just happened to have a few human part, it didn’t matter it which was more. Whether there was more human than machine in a body. The same any form of internal or external extension as cyborgist.

Extenders too, had a name for Puritans. Extenders saw Puritans as Simpletons, uninformed and unevolved. Extenders argue that it was the goal of humans to be the best there is, and using technology to aid us in lifting a rock to crushing nuts. Was all the same thing, and today we take humans to the next level by bring the technology closer to the human, by adding to the human.

Mark was a typical Puritan. He was the shinning example of a Puritans. He hated everything about the idea that one would even want something the was artificial as part of them. Something you couldn’t part with, you couldn’t take off as easily as you shed your cloths, shoes, or glasses. Because, having extension and augmentations like prosthesis was more. They need permanent anchors on your body, protrusions to a fix to. It was simply not the same. Even hearing aids of the 21st century, didn’t need anything that you weren’t already born with. Same with glasses, you just put them on your nose, not drill a hook into the sides of your head.

Of course there is going to be hell to pay when Mark woke up and found that he had been fixed to save it life. He had an awful accident, an accident he doesn’t remember. He had always thought that if it came to saving his life thought augmentation, he would rather die a human than live as a twisted version of what nature intended.