Nate's Fated Mate(65)

Kyra had refused to be part of the work, but as a senior scientist at Norton she had been unable to avoid seeing the outcome. Children with controllers drew their personalities inside themselves the way abuse victims did. The wiring of children was more than tragic. It was despicable... and truly evil. It was on par to the evil she had committed by not challenging Jackson's ethics when she should have.

Everything bad had started with the soldiers who had volunteered to become cyborgs to better serve their country. Sure there was general peace across the entire world because of them, but the lack of open conflict had come at a cost no one had anticipated. Now every crime, every legal transgression, was potentially punishable by the installation of some form of cybernetic implant used to control the individual.

Kyra hung her head as she did every time she thought about her part in making such human enslavement a reality. Visionary scientists like her had cured cancer and finally relieved the world from its dependence on nearly non-existent fossil fuels. But sadly, her generation's vast intelligence was what had also given birth to advanced cybernetics.

In the beginning, cybernetic replacements were just intelligent prosthetics. Studies in how similar the brain was to a computer had led to experiments that resulted in reprogramming sociopathic criminals who had been declared socially unsalvageable. That had been the focus of her graduate work. No one had minded when former rapists, murderers, and child molesters had been turned into productive civil servants. Her self-righteous about the ethics of those criminal conversions had died a hard death right after she'd come to terms with what she'd helped do to the Cyber Soldiers.

Her success in controlling criminal minds had led Jackson to his solution of how to keep cybernetic soldiers from acting out their potential post-traumatic stress issues. In the span of six months, the line between right and wrong had been erased by the money pouring in from the first soldiers put into the Cyber Husband program.

If she had only rebelled then instead of helping make sure it worked, men like Peyton might have freed themselves a hell of a lot sooner.

"Resume recording. Before I install the new processor, my first task is to remove the controller wires. Without the aid of a body scanner, this will be a long process. Keep recording the visual even if I cease talking."

Kyra frowned at her brain's habit of endlessly rehashing the past. A person could intellectualize the ethical debate all they wanted. It didn't change the one truth she had painfully learned in her last twenty years as a cyber scientist. Good. Bad. Or somewhere in between. The degree of trying control didn't matter. Humans with free will were not meant to live as robotic machines. And they certainly were not meant to be forced by programming to obey the every voice command of another human being.



       
         
       
        

Cyber slavery was technically against the law, but the law only governed what was done with creations containing one hundred percent artificial intelligence. As strange as it was, the rights of completely mechanized robots were protected better than those of cyborgs. No one enforcing cyber law seemed to care that cyborgs were still human despite their processors and prosthetics.

Lost in her thoughts, Kyra walked slowly to her workbench and started gathering up her tools. Everything in her said mankind was doomed if programmed enslavement of all cybernetically enhanced people was allowed to continue and flourish.

She couldn't let that happen when she could potentially stop it.

Determined to change what she could before it was too late to try, Kyra carried her operating tools back to the chair. Rolling Captain Elliot's head to the side, she felt for his cybernetics access panel. When the small square opened, she stared into the metal compartment now mostly filled with soot coated electronics.

Ignoring the smell of burnt circuitry, Kyra removed the controller screw and set it aside. Then she began the task of pulling out twenty feet of conducting wire that carried the controller's current throughout his torso. The removal process took over two hours, during which she was mostly silent. It had to be done a few inches at a time to keep from tearing adhered tissue any more than could be prevented. Finally, the end cleared the tiny insertion hole and she let out a relieved breath.

"Suspend recording for ten minutes. Resume automatically after that time."

With the worst part of the restoration over, Kyra allowed herself to sob for real in relief. When that short bout of self-pity was done, she wiped her eyes on the cloth sleeve of her doctor's coat and swore at her dead ex-husband again. Regret over her marriage rivaled the shame she felt about her life's work.