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- Herausgeber: Timberdoodle Press
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Sun Li’s dream of becoming a marine biologist falls by the wayside when she has to give it up to care for her sister and ailing mother. When their needs grow beyond what she can provide, Sun Li agrees to transfer her intelligence into a cyborg body in return for their lifetime care.
Now she works in one of the west coast’s best known aquariums caring for the bad-tempered giant Pacific octopus named Rod.
What happens when a powerful earthquake strikes the aquarium and Rod’s life is threatened?
A short science fiction story with an unexpected twist, Cyborg Mermaid’s Song is available in digital format only.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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CYBORG MERMAID’S SONG
Charley Marsh
Cyborg Mermaid’s Song
Copyright © 2019 by Charley Marsh
All rights reserved.
Published 2019 by Timberdoodle Press.
Cyborg Mermaid’s Song is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For more information contact the publisher: https://www.timberdoodlepress.com/
All rights reserved
Cover Art: https://depositphotos.com/
Contents
Cyborg Mermaid’s Song
Also by Charley Marsh
About the Author
Cyborg Mermaid’s Song
Sun Li waited impatiently for Handler John to remove her from her padded carrier. This was one of the things she hated most about her new job—the cyborg shell her employer had contracted to place her consciousness in was too small and too oddly-shaped to function in the normal world, forcing her to rely on Handlers to move her around.
“Here we are, Sun Li.” Handler John’s voice boomed over Sun Li’s head.
She heard the steel carrier bottom scrape on the metal catwalk that surrounded the top of the huge saltwater tank, and smelled the musty funk that any aquarium, no matter how often it is cleaned, gives off.
“Another glorious day in the pool, eh?” Handler John plucked Sun Li from her custom gel bed and carefully set her on the catwalk.
He didn’t wait for an answer—Sun Li’s class of cyborgs were not equipped with voice boxes. They were given sight, smell, hearing, and touch, but taste and speaking were deemed unnecessary. The company didn’t waste money on unnecessary.
Sun Li stretched her arms and looked at her body with the usual mild disgust. Some designer had had himself a little fun—half human female, half fish, she looked like a miniature mythical mermaid.
She rolled to the edge of the catwalk and slipped into the water, enjoying a few moments of freedom while the Handler readied her submarine.
Floating on her back, Sun Li enjoyed the mixed sensation of cool water and the sun’s warm rays on her body. In the days before she’d given it all up, Sun Li had loved the beach. Loved the sun, the sand, the briny smell—and most of all, she loved the creatures who made the ocean their home.
She had wanted to be a marine biologist for as far back as she could remember. And despited the hardship of going to school while caring for an ailing mother and a sister who’s mind would never grow beyond that of a four year old, she had achieved her dream. Just not quite in the way she had imagined.
“Okay Sun Li, I’m ready for you.”
Sun Li kicked her tail and floated back to the catwalk where Handler John waited with a miniaturized submarine, one she herself had designed when she’d still been wholly human.
John scooped Sun Li from the tank and placed her inside the sub. Designed to blend in with the creatures and plants that inhabited the Angstone Aquarium’s largest tank, the sub looked like the tank’s second-most popular resident—the jellyfish.
Molded from a translucent gel, the hollow jellyfish-sub was large enough to hold Sun Li’s eight inch body and a nuclear power pack. Miniature tools floated on the ends of the fake jellyfish tentacles—scrubbers, pincers, cutters—all too small for the aquarium visitors to notice.
Sun Li sank one hand into the sub’s gel control panel and raised the other, her signal to let the Handler know she was ready. John sealed the sub body and slipped it into the water, carefully feeding the long tentacles onto the water’s surface.
Sun Li bobbed on the tank’s surface while she waited for the tentacles to descend below the sub. She watched the sunlight fracture into thousands of prisms on the small wavelets and checked the water inlet pipe that gave the tank a constant change of seawater. All looked as it should.
Handler John picked up her carrier and left. He wouldn’t return for several days.
That was fine with Sun Li. She’d much rather be working than be locked in her carrier waiting for her shift. Despited the fish tail, she knew she had a better deal than the more common temp cyborgs who were moved from robotic to robotic as needed.
She had steady work. The temps had to wait, sometimes for months, for a new assignment, locked away in an artificial body that was no longer needed.
