OXFORD, England-After nearly twenty years, we look back to a time when a young British university college student volunteered to be fitted with technology enabling his nervous system to be fully linked to that of a computer.

The ground breaking surgery performed on Christopher Oshman effectively made him the world's first cyborg-part human, part machine. Although at the time it was a long way from what we see walking our crowded city streets every day, it was an accomplishment that marked a cornerstone in the development of the Man-Machine Interface.

Similar experiments had previously been carried out on cats and monkeys in the United States, but Oshman was the first human to receive such a procedure. Surgeons implanted a silicon square about 3 mm wide into an incision in Oshman's left temple and attached its electrodes, over 100 in number, each as thin as a hair, into his optic nerve. The wires were linked to a transmitter/receiver device to relay nerve messages to a computer by radio signal and used a heads-up-display format to acquire targets Oshman blinked at. While this simple process would look to you and me as archaic as any cave man drawing, at the time it cost over half a million dollars.

Recently, we contacted Oshman, who is currently a spokesman for CyberFree, a relief agency dedicated to aiding those who have lost family and loved ones to conflicts involving cybernetic criminals. He had this to say: "When we did it, it was always about seriously helping people with disabilities. I never dreamed things would get like this, to this level of saturation. It never occurred to us that people would ever want this type of device so badly they'd self-mutilate. Don't get me wrong; I don't regret what we've done. We've saved lives and helped improve the quality of life for so many people. I love watching someone walk who twenty years ago would be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But to be honest, CyberFree is about me wrestling with my own demons. It's not as altruistic as you might think, and I'm no hero. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, you just have to keep striving to make it a better world."

Cybernetics and You

One has to wonder if the people who lived during the time that the word "cybernetics" was coined and made popular, by Wiener's 1948 book, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, had any inkling that the world we live in today would ever come about. Cybernetics is typically defined as the science or study of control or regulation mechanisms in human and machine systems. In recent years, however, the word has become a slang term to mean man-machine interface, or cyberware.

Let's start off with a lesson in cyberware.

For starters, let's examine the heart (so to speak) of the system. Every item of cybernetics that uses power, and that the user has any control at all over, first requires a central processor unit. This mass of semi-AI plastic does the massive, brute force math required to translate between "body language" and "machine language." It takes the "lift the left arm and scratch the nose" electrical nerve impulses from the brain and translates them into machine code that the cybernetic arm, or "cyberarm", can interpret. In the other direction, it takes the "scratching the nose" sensory data from the arm and translates it back to nerve signals so that the brain can go "bonk, bonk, I CAN feel my nose...." This is extremely important due to the fact that if the body could not "feel" the sensory information, the amount of constant attention and training that standard use of a cyberlimb would require would make them impractical, or at least definitely less fashionable. Cybernetic enhancements these days, on some levels, are as common as tattoos were in the late twentieth century and mean just as much. Slowly but surely, the clientele has migrated from war-torn vets and the handicapped to the Hollywood elite and Wall Street power-hitters at a clearly visible and exponential pace. It started slowly with the odd person here or there with a skinwatch or a chipped radio in his head so he could hear how much the latest Dow figures fell. Like a cancer, it's grown to the point where you almost can't turn a street corner without seeing someone with some kind of glistening metal on him. It could still be as small as a skinwatch, but believe me, it's there.

Of course, being in a cybernetic age has its own hazards. For example, if you're stopping by Trinity Medical any time soon, you may want to see Elliot Branch in the Intensive Enhancement Ward before you saw off your arm to get the latest StreetSleeker from Barelli. On March 3rd, Elliot took a .22 slug to his head and his headware was damaged. On top of all his other wounds, imagine a radio in your head blaring Tejano music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The doctors had no clue, because his jaw had been destroyed in the combat. It took them ten days to discover it. He turned violent in six. At least they managed to stop him before he was able to hurt anyone else. The doctors finally shut it off. They think he should be ready for therapy by the end of the month. Now if they could only get him to stop humming those ancient Ricky Martin tunes....

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Cyberware Examples

Claws

Price: $800 bone, $1,200 chitin, $2,000 plastic, $3,500 steel/ceramic

An ideal addition to your full-body fur or scale enhancement. These nonretractable claws can be implanted into your fingertips, toetips, or forearms. The claws can be made of any material that you desire-anything from genetically harvested bone or chitin to plastic or steel. Metallic and ceramic models are not available through our cosmetics branches. The claws are chemically fused into your distal phalanx or radius, depending on the type that you purchase. Distal phalanx extensions are limited to a maximum length of 2 inches, and radius extensions are limited to a length of 8 inches. Claw design shapes include conical, bladed, and the sexy, natural look.

Prerequisites: None
Benefit: Your unarmed attack deals 1d6 damage. When attacking unarmed with claws, a 19-20 on the attack roll threatens with a x2 critical hit.
Penalty: You suffer a -1 penalty to Dexterity when attempting to manipulate items when your claws can get in the way.
Special: Long, forearm mounted claws do 1d8 damage but cause a -1 to Charisma in addition to the situational Dexterity penalty. Bone receives a hardness of 8 with 5 hit points due to the layered nature of the blades, chitin has a hardness of 10 with 5 hit points, plastic has a hardness of 10 and 10 hit points, and steel has a hardness of 15 and 10 hit points. Broken claws cost one third of the original price to repair.

Muscle Implant

Price: $2,800

Bundled biopolymer fibers are woven through striated skeletal muscle and tendons to reinforce the tissue and provide an enhanced stabilization and strengthening of the contractions of your muscles. The implants contract and relax similarly to natural muscle through standard electrochemical impulses from the brain amplified to activate the fibers. The contraction of the fibers also releases minute amounts of biochemicals such as triglycerides and glycogen into your natural muscle to aid in its activity. This helps keep your natural muscle from being damaged due to heightened activity. For Type I, "slow twitch" muscles, your brain's signals are amplified by repeaters inserted just under the skin throughout the body at various skeletal joints for greater lifting capacity. For Type II A and Type II B "fast twitch" muscles, the electrochemical signals are boosted with capacitors to increase the velocity of contractions for greater power. The fiber bundles provided are significantly massed such that areas with muscle enhancements will be up to twice as large as the original mass. Military-grade enhancements include more areas of muscle enhancement and a greater signal boost from the repeaters and capacitors. The chemical reservoirs need to be filled once a month by a licensed technician. Repeaters and capacitors should be serviced at least twice a year. While some reinforcements are made to your bone and joints, we highly recommend getting a full skeletal and joint enhancement to go with your muscle enhancement.

Prerequisites: None
Benefit: You gain +2 Strength.
Penalty: You suffer a -2 to Charisma.
Special: Military-grade muscle implants grant +3 Strength but incur an additional -1 to Wisdom.

Climbing Hand Module

Price: $650

The climbing module cybernetic enhancement requires the replacement of both hands and arms. The standard model arms can support and lift up to 300 lbs. At will, diamond-tipped steel teeth can extend from the fingers to provide superior grip on rough surfaces, and then be retracted again. The palms are recessed and air can be evacuated out of the cavity at will to provide powerful suction to help cling to smoother surfaces, and can be released just as easily with a mere thought. The joints can be locked in such a way that the user can hang from even the most precarious ledge indefinitely. A mechanical rope pulley wheel installed into the forearm just above the wrist can clamp onto a rope as thick as two inches across, for assisted rope climbing and rappelling maneuvers. The military model uses hydraulically assisted actuators for improved performance when attempting to climb and can support up to 600 lbs. We do not recommend attempting to lift anything of that weight with your climbing arms unless your legs and body are also capable of supporting such a load. When the climbing module is not in use, the arm and hand can function at approximately 70% of capacity of their natural counterparts. The climbing modules should be serviced at least once a year, or after every ten uses.

Prerequisites: Man/machine interface, replacement arm (both)
Benefit: You gain a +6 to Climb skill checks. With this enhancement, climbing speed is 10, 25 if used in conjunction with climbing leg module. Walls should be treated as normal floors for the purposes of measuring your movement. Going from horizontal to vertical is equivalent to 5 feet of movement along a normal floor. Going over windows and other open areas requires a Jump check of DC 15 or higher and is equivalent to 10 feet of movement if using only the hands (5 if used with the leg module). Opponents on the floor still have attacks of opportunity as you move within areas they threaten.