Author’s Note:  This flash fiction story was written based on a prompt provided by a_d3ad_rat during a livestream.  I hereby transfer all story rights to them, with the caveat that it remain posted on this blog.  If you would like your own story, stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade during one of my streams and I’ll write it for you live!

Prompt: In a world where you can be anything, be a cyborg.

What a waste, thought every single child in the world once they learned what all the words meant, usually around eleven years old. ‘You can be anything’ all the books, posters, instructors, parents, and facilitators said. Eleven is when you figured out there was a second silent sentence after the first. ‘You can be anything; as long as it’s from the approved list.’

Wilt, now six years past this revelation, entered the job fair complex alongside his nervous mother. Domed white ceilings crisscrossing with beams draped a hundred banners, each playing a highlight reel of a different profession. The knowledge and experience of all these smiling professionals had come from the same exact place: the gates that Wilt and the other recently-adult prospects would stroll through in the next few hours.

His mother was a short nervous woman, making it all too easy to see over her on tiptoe, spy any faces he knew from school. Some of his graduating class should’ve been there, held back from the job fair just like him for ‘irresponsible tendencies’. The second silent phrase trailing that went something like: ‘head in the thunderclouds’.

Hey, there was Kelly. And Amir. And Francine too! If anyone got held back longer than Wilt, it would have been her, but it looked like her contractor father, standing there with I-beam arms crossed, was thoroughly tired of having her around the house. When the first recruiters had shown up, back in third grade, and asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up, Francine had upended all the future doctors, lawyers, coast guardians, and master chefs by saying ‘mutant monstrosity terrorizing the city’.

Only Wilt had laughed. Adults ignored that kind of thing the first time they heard it, shouted it down the second, and started making permanent marks in their files by the third. You didn’t make jokes about the job fair. If you did the rest of your life could have become the joke, and you wouldn’t be laughing for long.

His mother pulled him forward. The line was moving swiftly. It usually did, the process was so quick and painless. Effects usually took several minutes to manifest after passing through the gate. Nothing ever went wrong on the technical end, as the nanorecruiters were nowhere near as flawed as the human ones. They were their own software therapists and wound-mechanics.

Too small to see, it was only the people full of them, showing off everything they were headed for between the lines, that could make clear the results of the job fair program. Acrobats with chrome ligaments swung and flipped from beams overhead. Even if their internal gyros failed, a fall would cause little harm thanks to the springs spiraling up their legs.

People with much more mundane positions still showed superhuman skills and tools, words that had become interchangeable. Guys from loading docks carried out stone cubes nearly twice their own size. A human traffic light displayed mesmerizing patterns down her chest with just green, yellow, and red.

Warehouse technician. Traffic controller. Even acrobat… these were all official approved positions. Not what Wilt always said, that got him held back from the fair until he said something else. Cyborg. It was a silly suggestion, as technically they were all cyborgs. The nanorecruiters flooded your pores and orifices as you passed through the gate, they read the strongest silent suggestion of your brain’s electrical activity, and then they went to work, installing all the knowledge you would need for that profession and an individualized set of tools to help you along the way.

No more training draining a company’s profits. No more faking your qualifications. A perfect worker could be made to order; the only problem was the worker issued the order. Thanks to several laws of robotics, some of them written by the nanonrecruiters themselves, no such change could be made against anyone’s will. They had to want it, and they had to want something specific enough for the little machines to assemble inside them.

They were close enough to see the gates now. Wilt looked over at Francine; she did the same. Neither smiled. Years of every authority figure telling them they better not pick wrong. You could. The recruiters would make you whatever mess you wanted to be, but the rest of society was not obligated to include you. Without an attached salary you did not qualify for most housing, most device licenses, or for government office. The only thing you really became was a pariah or an asylum patient.

Not me though, Wilt assured himself. If he just thought ‘cyborg’ as hard as he could, and not ‘astronaut miner’ as he’d informed his mother and all his tutors, then they would give him tools for every task. It kept his potential open, could even include roles like ‘superhero’ and ‘babe magnet’. The little guys would get it.

It came to his turn, and Francine’s. Each looked at their parent. Wilt’s poor mother was just human, no additions or upgrades, as the process required a certain neurological plasticity present only in youth. She wanted so much for him, and he didn’t want to disappoint, but he remembered that he wanted so much more than she did.

“Please step through,” a man with goggles for eyes and safety lights for hands told him. Did that guy even work when the Job Fair wasn’t going on? Not the time to think that. Time to think ‘cyborg’. Passing through felt like nothing but being near a lightning strike. Without the startle of its crashing sound he could focus on the way the energies pooled in his joints, in the basin of his brain stem.

His mother skirted the gate, joined him on the other side, and then they went to sit on the comfort benches, with all those complimentary pillows and their tissue cases, to await the change. They didn’t say anything. The truth would be on his skin in minutes, and not in the form of an unfolding pickax or retractable space helmet.

Instead he got titanium skin, and green laser eyes, and panels all over, from which he could extend all manner of simple and complex devices. The thrill of not being pinned down, of the pin bouncing of with a metallic tink, filled him with a rush that was entirely human.

“What have you done?” his mother groaned once she realized, but her own disappointment was nothing compared to the anger of Francine’s father. He was screaming his head off, so everyone sat up from their terribly flimsy pillows and stared. Francine had lost her head too, the old replaced with new. Metal seams marked where her limbs extended, split into many more, like mantis claws.

Jointed tentacles emerged from her mouth and her throat’s new bay door, each tipped with a blinding light. Yep, Wilt thought, there’s a mutant monstrosity alright. She’d gone through with it too. Finally, now that she was taller than her father, she could act on her rage. Somewhere behind those squirming tendrils there was still a voice box, which emitted a terrible alien roar as she pounced on the man, slashed at him with claws that did little damage thanks to his construction modifications.

She didn’t stay long, as she wanted everyone at the Job Fair to know exactly what she thought of the whole program and what it tried to do to her. One recruiter went down, two, three; Francine plucked an acrobat out of the air and tossed her incidentally into a pile of shrink-wrapped pillows.

Now it was Wilt’s turn to spring into action. Utilizing the general enhancements encompassed in the word ‘cyborg’, he leapt a great distance onto her back, wrapped his legs around her. She bucked in response, tumbled, thrashed. In turn he extended a singing vibrating blade that was strong enough to split her extra appendages.

They grew back quickly; it wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about what she might need as a mutant monstrosity. Still, she needed raw materials to be like the hydra of old, and now it looked like she couldn’t get too many there, thanks to the heroics of this surprise cyborg. His former friend roared again, just as a final insult, and then fled with incredible speed.

Cheers erupted, all for Wilt. A crowd stopped him from helping his third recruiter to their feet. He knew his mother was off on the sidelines somewhere, too fragile to wade into a crowd of rambunctious recruited without taking serious injury. It worked. He didn’t need an official approved position. They just had to think he was brave.

Eventually he would be. For now, that practice with Francine was good enough. She held up her end of the bargain admirably. They could meet up later and relive it all they wanted. When they’d agreed to the fight, to be triggered by their new bodies, she’d said something about going to live in the nearest national park. That sounded better than a real job too.

THE END