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Genre: Science Fiction
About SFWriter13Location: Silicon Valley, CA Home Region: Website: http://sfwriter13.blogspot.com/ Favorite writers: Frank Herbert, Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Tom Robbins, Octavia E. Butler, Harlan Ellison, Stephen R. Donaldson, Orson Scott Card Favorite music: None. Music and my muse don't mix. It messes with the voices in my head. :-) Non-noveling interests: Reading, City of Heroes, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Alien Nation, Firefly |
Joined: October 5, 2006 This Year: Official Participant NaNoWriMo History: NaNoWriMo posts: 8 NaNoWriMo buddies: 8
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Synopsis: Soul of the Machine
Soul of the Machine could be considered mainstream science fiction, perhaps even in the classic sense. Books with similar themes include Man Plus by Frederick Pohl, Cyborg by Martin Caidin, and also my own short story, "Building Baby Brother". Just as Man Plus explored Roger Torraway's transition to becoming a reconstructed human capable of surviving on Mars, Soul of the Machine follows Nicholas Jorgensen's personal journey in learning to do more than just survive, but to live as something no longer human, even as his spirit remains so.
Excerpt: Soul of the Machine
Nicholas Jorgensen awoke to darkness. He then realized that it was more than darkness. Not only could he see nothing, but he can hear nothing. None of the usual ambient sounds seemed to penetrate wherever he was. He tried to move, but found that he could not move his limbs. He felt no pressure from restraints, but neither did he feel any of the telltale signs of motion, not even the faint, barely perceptible brush of air across the fine hairs on his arms.
He paused, wondering if perhaps it was simply a dream. He had been in dark, quiet places before. Eventually, he knew, his senses would adapt and he would be able to discern faint sources of illumination or the muffled echo of distant sounds. And so he waited, although not with any particular patience, for his eyes to reveal sources of light and his ears to register whatever sounds they could.
After a period of time he could not measure, although he was certain that it was not as long as it seemed, nothing had changed. The darkness around him remained as pervasive as it had when he had first awakened—and just as silent. He had been in similar situations before—hiding in dark closets, that kind of thing—but even in those instances, in the absence of other sights and sounds, he remembered hearing the sounds of his body. Absent here was the rhythmic throb of his pulse in his ears and the sounds of his breathing.
He took a quick, experimental breath. It seemed to work, as he did not feel his body kick into spasms of hyperventilation that would have followed otherwise. Yet, there was no sensation of his lungs filling with air and then deflating as they expelled his breath. He tried again, with the same result.
Nicholas began to doubt that this was all a dream, although he had no other explanation for it. While he had heard of sensory deprivation chambers, he had never experienced one. He certainly did not remember making arrangements with any of the campus psychology labs to participate in any of their experiments involving one. But if it was a dream instead, he also had no memory of falling asleep. Before he had awakened here—wherever here was—he had been . . . he had been . . . where?
