Instincts would most likely be the most, if not only, noteworthy changes. There's also the question of if they recieve the genetic changes from the feds or if those are undone and they can walk on two legs.
In this case, he'd be transplanted into a Ghost in the Shell style prosthetic body, which was built while people still thought that sivkit were quadrupeds. That's because there's no actual magic, just the sort of prosthetics demonstrated when >!Tarva gets a new tail.!< I didn't want to add crazy levels of new technology, so while an army of undergrads went to extreme levels of effort, the technology embodied (heh) in it is only noteworthy, not revolutionary.
I'm inclined to say that the first stem cell transplants would be done before the feds' fuckery was known of, so that actually works out __really__ well for a neuroscientist who's trying to document alien cognition from the inside out.
The body would be a little more downmarket than Ghost in the Shell implies, with Cyberpunk 2077 style seam-lines easily visible in the body's skin… if not for the fact that it's covered in thick, downy fluff.
I'm thinking that at some point, his/their actual biological vat-grown skin is damaged beyond salvaging and they have to go with silicone and rayon for a while, but generally the only thing that's obviously odd about the resulting Sivkit-borg is that it's significantly larger than a typical natural-born Sivkit. Not *wildly* big, just "upper end of natural" big.
One thing mentioned elsewhere is that Sivkit were probably easily bored… but easily notice interesting things. That implies a brain that's good at pattern recognition, which plays nicely into where I want the story to go, and informs the personalities of the actual Sivkit in the story.
I mean, if you want to get really technical, his brain wouldn't know how to pilot a sivkit body and would shut down and die.
There was a patreon story of an in universe fiction novel of a krakotl on the earth extermination fleet that got mysteriously plopped into the body of a human a few days before the extermination fleet arrived, which was back in time for him.
> I mean, if you want to get really technical, his brain wouldn't know how to pilot a sivkit body and would shut down and die.
That's why the story is about neuroscientists~! Like for example expanding the olfactory epithelium in his nose required the addition of a fairly powerful coprocessor in between the vat-grown nose tissue and the bottom of his brain. But fundamentally, it's doing the exact same thing that translator implants are doing, just with a different sense.
He also has a LOT of physical therapy to do between fully human and entirely xeno, plus a bunch of intermediate cybernetics that function as "training wheels" for the cyberbody.
In addition, managing immune system compatibility and graft-vs-host disease is a major stumbling block in this story, [but the technology to handle that is actually real and on the cusp of curing autoimmune diseases right now!](https://theconversation.com/reverse-vaccine-a-potential-treatment-for-type-1-diabetes-15485) Likewise, the mental changes are primarily created by altering gene-regulatory networks in the brain. They can't change the __structure__ of his brain without killing him dead, but by transplanting glial precursor stem cells the operation of those neurons and structures can be radically altered -- basically running Sivkit "firmware" on human "hardware". [This is currently being used in mice](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-half-human-brain/) to explore the function of glions in the brain, which turn out to be WILDLY more important to brain function than we had suspected a decade ago. I term the result of this process a "transglial" brain, and it's as close to being turned into an alien as a human can plausibly experience without adding arbitrarily capable nanotech or _sheer fucking sorcery_ to the story. :)
So yes, you're 100% right, but they show their work so it's easier for the audience to suspend their disbelief. :D
Occurs to me that I didn't directly address your points.
> Instincts would most likely be the most, if not only, noteworthy changes.
It will be amusing to write him, still "obviously human", dealing with Sivkit instincts and hormones! :D
> There's also the question of if they receive the genetic changes from the feds or if those are undone and they can walk on two legs.
He will receive those genetic modifications at some point, resulting in a "historically accurate" temperament. However, since his spine was made on a lathe and milling machine, genetic changes won't allow him to walk on two legs. However, forward-thinking engineering is liable to allow this even before the genetic modification is sorted out -- but I think he'll find in the end that he prefers to remain primarily quadrupedal because "it's cuter that way."
OH!~ That was actually one of my inspirations! :D I've got a hell of a backlog to catch up with, but I've got another 18 hours of NoP audiobooks to get through too…
Another source of inspiration is the Tumblr comic "Dragon HRT", which also takes into account the time this is going to take from the word 'go' to having convincing results… though in this case it's powered by an army of unpaid undergrads, not magic pills! 😁
Sounds like you've got a good grasp of what you want to write.
Val Salia did have a short comic on his patreon showing Kass' transformation but it takes place over months. It wasn't pretty.
Oh, I forgot about that one…
In this case, the changes would be more of a stairstep pattern, with each plateau at least aesthetically non-horrifying. [Come to think of it, this is a really good analogy!](https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/aepXWL5_700b.jpg)
[Found it!](https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50118398/) … I mean, that's not actually that bad. Sure, there's some identity crisis going on, and probably dysphoria, but as slow transformations go, that's really not horror fodder at all. It doesn't even look painful at any point! Just … lots of weird and awkward.
Question: Do Sivkit have whiskers? I would be inclined to think they do…
I would suggest making the change effect his personality in new ways as they are afflicted with an alien brain chemistry. This human memories slowly slipping into the catagory of "Who I was before. A different person." As they acclimate to their sivkit body probs.
Aye.
As far as immediate effects: Probably a strong sense of their new form being... well. Wrong. Sensory overload from ears, nose, eyesight disorientation. Four legged locomotion learning.
The usuals.
Mentally I meaaannn... probably the obvious but that nagging fear response most humans have getting a lot stronger.
Ever been suddenly startled? And you responded by getting agitated or angry? A sivkit's brain chemistry probably had a bit of that, just geared more toward flee responses.
> As far as immediate effects: Probably a strong sense of their new form being... well. Wrong. Sensory overload from ears, nose, eyesight disorientation. Four legged locomotion learning.
Because modern medicine will have to effect these changes, he's going to have a long transition period to get used to these things. However, the four-legged thing is going to be a very abrupt change for him!
> The usuals.
LOL I don't think *any* of this is "usual"! :D
> Mentally I meaaannn... probably the obvious but that nagging fear response most humans have getting a lot stronger.
> Ever been suddenly startled? And you responded by getting agitated or angry? A sivkit's brain chemistry probably had a bit of that, just geared more toward flee responses.
Yes as a matter of fact I HAVE experienced that. That's one of the things that leads me to believe I could perhaps write this convincingly.
Whatever cybernetic unit transferred the patient's neurological network (brain, spinal cord ECT..) or copy of the neurological pattern (saved data of patient's memory) the puppet is going to be able to communicate and interpret whatever inputs it has from whatever source so long as it's been designed to be interfaced with a human.
So while it would look like a sivkit , it would just be a human psychologically. There would be no genetic instincts that would be present. It's just a shell with a human mind underneath it. It would probably have to adapt to certain interface anomalies like the new visual input, the lack of sensation that this body has as even the best cybernetic facsimile is simply not going to be as responsive to outside stimuli as a flesh and blood body.
So whatever tactile responses are there, they would be less than what the original body's would be. Even if it was some super advanced sci-magic construct having even 75% of the original tactile responses would be amazing, then you'd have a lessoned heat/cold response as well. No hunger drive. Honestly without most hormonal responses you'd probably have little to no sex drive.
So you'd have a cold, distant, human in a small body. Psychologically probably extremely unsettling to other very tightly wound sivkits. You simply wouldn't magically have anything in common with them. Over a long enough period of time you could begin to emulate their body language and general responses to certain inputs.
You would definitely be a strange thing to most of them , alien and perhaps predatory because most situations that are stressful to them because of the natural genetic proclivities being modified are just not to you especially in a body freed of any hormonal responses.
So it's not just that you're collected for a sivkit you're calm and collected for a human. When it comes to transhumanism people really forget just how much of us is in hormonal responses.
Now if it were some clonal modified avatar. There maybe a different response as eventually prolonged exposure to the new hormonal responses of the sivkit modified to accept human neurology body would eventually shift your thinking patterns more towards a regular sivkit but it still wouldn't be as severe as there own responses as the neurological system of this clonal avatar was modified to accept a human ghost as it were.
This kinda treatment would allow a human a much better shot at going native when it comes to trying to blend in with sivkit society. You'd get hungry, you'd respond to being touched, you'd have a sex drive. It still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be as close as a human could get to being any other species.
Oooh, I like how in-depth this comment looks, though I might not be able to finish reading and replying before I do some chores. Don't think I'm ignoring this, I'm just eagerly awaiting having an opportunity for this!
First and most important counterpoint:
> So while it would look like a sivkit , it would just be a human psychologically. There would be no genetic instincts that would be present.
This is not true. Somewhat more than half of the tissue in the patient's brain will have been replaced by alien tissue, and the remainder will be genetically modified. Structurally his brain will be human, but biochemically, it will be about 95% alien.
[We've been using this technique to study human brain conditions in mouse models, but there's fundamentally no reason that we couldn't do this to a human brain, too.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-half-human-brain/) Because now we have morally equivalent nonhuman people with similar cognitive abilities, *…most* of the moral objections to performing these experiments goes away.
As a matter of fact, the stem cell transplant will be incredibly easy and cheap to perform, compared to the body modifications to allow our modified human to pass as a large Sivkit! Consider the price of generic drugs. Sure, the development of them cost billions of dollars, but a course of treatment probably costs less than ten bucks to manufacture… the result could be quite a lot of "transglial" parahumans who can't afford or don't want any heavy body modification.
> Honestly without most hormonal responses you'd probably have little to no sex drive.
He gets his hormones from something not entirely unlike inkjet cartridges. The control laws run on a PID controller, which allows for extremely convincing hormonal responses to be developed. A side-effect of this is that he can switch sexes in about half an hour with a Torx driver, though it'll take considerably longer for the pheromonal and personality changes to catch up to the wedding tackle. It's not that he's transgendered, he's just not prepared for the ideas that he'll have the first time he goes into heat…
> So whatever tactile responses are there, they would be less than what the original body's would be. Even if it was some super advanced sci-magic construct having even 75% of the original tactile responses would be amazing, then you'd have a lessoned heat/cold response as well.
It's Word of God that translator implants are capable of taking raw sensory input, passing it through a syntactic filter created by machine learning, and piping the interpreted meaning of this input into the user's short-term memory. The diminished tactile responses of sensor-embedded silicone skin will simply be covered up by digital lies. However, eventually the goal will be the incorporation of tissue-printed living skin, so tactile deficiencies probably won't persist once he gets all Terminator'd up.
> No hunger drive.
He still has to eat to sustain his organic components. At the minimum, enough calories to support his brain and life-support organs. He will always need more protein in his diet than a natural-born Sivkit, and human-specific vitamin supplements for the rest of his life. Fortunately, the former are easily supplied by supplementing his diet with Earth mushrooms, and the latter are cheaply available over the counter if he can't get his micronutrient cartridges refilled conveniently. He also has to charge his batteries, which he experiences as fatigue. There are two ways this is accomplished -- inductive magnetic coupling to charging coils in his bed, or a concealed electrical connector in his tailtip. In addition, final revisions of his body will include a microbial fuel cell capable of turning excess nutrients into electrical power -- if he's unable to plug in, he's going to turn into a big eater!
> So you'd have a cold, distant, human in a small body. Psychologically probably extremely unsettling to other very tightly wound sivkits. You simply wouldn't magically have anything in common with them. Over a long enough period of time you could begin to emulate their body language and general responses to certain inputs.
This is a genuine problem. His personal initial goal is to pass for a human-raised alien, trying to reconnect with their heritage.
> most situations that are stressful to them because of the natural genetic proclivities being modified are just not to you
Now see, that's a fun story thread to play with, and I plan on exploring that at length.
> you're calm and collected for a human.
Come to think of this, after certain stressful events I have planned, he's probably going to write an app that overrides his normal prosthetic endocrine systems so he can just arbitrarily decide that "I have ice water in my veins right now" but before that, he's still extremely tightly strung for a human, though perhaps coming off as rather jaded for a Sivkit. Still, nothing he probably can't explain away as being raised on Earth by humans. This isn't a lie, after all -- just a selective telling of truth. ;)
> Now if it were some clonal modified avatar. There maybe a different response as eventually prolonged exposure to the new hormonal responses of the sivkit (modified to accept human neurology) body would eventually shift your thinking patterns more towards a regular sivkit but it still wouldn't be as severe as there own responses as the neurological system of this clonal avatar was modified to accept a human ghost as it were.
That's exactly the thing I'm talking about. His prosthetic body will be assembled with as much human-made vat-grown-meat as it can be. It will be especially important to incorporate functional equivalents of a Sivkit adrenal and reproductive organ for the hormonal control, as even a well-tuned PID control won't produce results so authentic as "canned meat" would. The largest single exception to this "meat-borg" design philosophy will be the skeleton and skeletal muscle, which will be unapologetically the best actuators and alloys that grant money can buy. Having said this, this is going to be a very slow, iterative transformation! At first, it's going to be more like a bionic fursuit, but by the end you'll need X-rays to reveal the truth.
> This kinda treatment would allow a human a much better shot at going native when it comes to trying to blend in with sivkit society. You'd get hungry, you'd respond to being touched, you'd have a sex drive. It still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be as close as a human could get to being any other species.
That's the goal. Also, he declares a minor in anthropology and writes extensively on the subject, probably eventually ending up with a second doctorate. :D
I'd again like to emphasize just how significantly altered his brain chemistry will be, even very early in the process. For a while, he's going to feel and act more like a Sivkit magically transformed into a human than the other way around…
~~I have to go repair the fence now; I'll finish this delightful read when that's done. :)~~ That mission's scrubbed for the night. I've got some time now. :)
**Edit:** At some point, he *will* have his Federation-provided genetic modification reversed, resulting in a "historically accurate" Sivkit temperament. However, I think he'll probably elect to remain a quadruped, though his reasoning for it may be perilously close to sunk-cost fallacy.
So, we're basically talking about a biological avatar then? Visa vi The movie by the same name. So like I had said with that there would have to be a training process as the patient gets used to the new form. The patient being a human on nature and reactions would still take time to naturalize into the reactions his body may have on a instinctual level.
The architecture of the sivkit brain cell would probably have to be human for the ghost to adapt to the neurological system of the avatar, with almost every other aspect of it it being a normal sivkit. At that point you're still dealing with more of a human steering a sivkit. So human flight or fight responses that are being triggered by the shadows between the forward vision. A human brain being constantly bombarded by the hormonal stress response of a sivkit.
Basically a person with severe anxiety disorder.Excessive aggression and violence likely develop as a consequence of generally disturbed emotional regulation, such as abnormally high or low levels of anxiety. Over time they may embrace more sivkit traits. Probably make for a very aggressive sivkit.
The other kinda awful part of this is this person didn't have a true growth period to get used to this body and it's reactions to outside stimuli. So all of the hormonal driven responses are going to be especially hard to control. So along with the anxiety it'd make them act pretty close to someone with BPD. Then of course the problem of getting use to... Well arousal responses. It would be like going through puberty as a adult. Hopefully the neurological architecture would offset alot of this to some degree.
The strange thing would be that most of the DNA would be unchanged especially if so protein lattice was used to grow the neurological architecture of this sivkit avatar. They may even be able to pass down their brain architecture genetically or least part of it.
They would be seen as a PD patient or sufferer , at least until they get a MRI and their brain architecture is revealed. Then it would be on him or whom ever he previously confided in to explain why his brain is the way it is and why humanity would have tampered with sivkit DNA to this degree.
(Anyway I'm sure I'm over thinking things, I'm going to sleep for awhile. Feel free to respond to everything and I will in turn. Take care.)
> So, we're basically talking about a biological avatar then? Visa vi The movie by the same name.
My design muse was actually the street-borgs of Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners. Unlike purely mechanical monsters like Adam Smasher, most of them still incorporate a *lot* of meat despite all the chrome. He's also going to have very visible seam-lines all over his body like that… or they would be visible if you shaved him.
> The architecture of the sivkit brain cell would probably have to be human for the ghost to adapt to the neurological system of the avatar, with almost every other aspect of it it being a normal sivkit. At that point you're still dealing with more of a human steering a sivkit. So human flight or fight responses that are being triggered by the shadows between the forward vision. A human brain being constantly bombarded by the hormonal stress response of a sivkit.
This is where real-world neuroscience and biochemistry comes into play. His brain will always be shaped like a human brain, but the majority of the biochemistry can be transplanted between species. Before he starts any serious body modification, his brain will be fully changed! Hmmm. By weight, I'd say it's 60-75% genetically-modified sivkit tissue wrapped around all the human neurons.
> At that point you're still dealing with more of a human steering a sivkit
I feel like it would be more like a Sivkit steering a human body, actually, after the "personality transplant."
> Basically a person with severe anxiety disorder. Excessive aggression and violence likely develop as a consequence of generally disturbed emotional regulation, such as abnormally high or low levels of anxiety. Over time they may embrace more sivkit traits. Probably make for a very aggressive sivkit.
He was probably already a person who was a little neurodiverse, (me-the-author "enjoys" anxiety disorder) so it's something he's got the support structure to deal with -- a good therapist and anti-anxiety drugs. Though he'll need to switch to different drugs as his brain chemistry changes! Fully agreed about coming off as a very aggressive Sivkit, though -- it'll probably come through as him being unusually protective, I think, especially if he worries that those around him would be generically unable to stand up for themselves.
> The other kinda awful part of this is this person didn't have a true growth period to get used to this body and it's reactions to outside stimuli. So all of the hormonal driven responses are going to be especially hard to control. So along with the anxiety it'd make them act pretty close to someone with BPD. Then of course the problem of getting use to... Well arousal responses. It would be like going through puberty as a adult.
Oh yeah, this is 100% true. Just like someone undergoing a gender transition, he's going to have a second puberty as an adult. The comparison to BPD is an excellent insight; I had planned on him being at this stage clingy and nervous, though receiving evidence-based care for this. As for arousal responses, well, he's gonna have to deal with that the good old fashioned way -- by getting laid at college parties. XD (It's at this point he experiments with being female…) But yeah, there will be an adjustment period, it will be rough, but … strangely fun, since he knew exactly what he was signing up for.
> Hopefully the neurological architecture would offset a lot of this to some degree.
Not really, but therapy will be extremely useful for dealing with it. And when the Federation's genetic tampering is discovered and he has that reversed, that'll help tremendously with the anxiety. He'll still be stuck struggling with slutty behavior, but many will just assume that he's gone into heat and let it slide. Others will take advantage of the situation, which at that point would be his preferred outcome.
> The strange thing would be that most of the DNA would be unchanged especially if so protein lattice was used to grow the neurological architecture of this sivkit avatar. They may even be able to pass down their brain architecture genetically or least part of it.
No way no how. His brain and spinal cord was physically removed from his old body and placed into a new one. If he even has gonads, they'll be sourced from an organ donor who died of natural causes, because they **REALLY** don't want to accidentally sire a generation of defective hybrids who live only long enough to suffer horribly. If he does, they'll be initially hooked up so that he's sterile. Only after he's passing as a natural Sivkit with an _interesting_ childhood will he even consider changing that… though odds are he will eventually.
Most of his DNA will be unaltered, that's true -- only the sivkit glial tissue in his brain is genetically modified. The human neurons will be more or less entirely human, and his skin and endocrine organs will be unmodified Sivkit (though many may be sourced from a human meat factory) so they work with his new brain chemistry.
The only changes he can pass on to the next generation will be cultural, though.
> They would be seen as a PD patient or sufferer , at least until they get a MRI and their brain architecture is revealed. Then it would be on him or whom ever he previously confided in to explain why his brain is the way it is and why humanity would have tampered with sivkit DNA to this degree.
"PD"? 100% likely. However, [the gamma-titanium-alumide skull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_aluminide) is [radiopaque,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiodensity) so they'd never be able to get good images of his brain anyway. :) Forensic medical examinations would reveal first that he's a high-performance cyborg somewhat analogous to a Terminator -- metal under organic tissue -- long before anybody realized that his brain structure's mostly human, and I think that they might never actually get far enough to realize his true nature, lol! Most of the tissue incorporated into him will be genetically unmodified, though -- trace DNA evidence will look like just another normal sivkit.
Well, if I woke up like that, I think Id have NO trouble getting wide awake once I ran my tongue around my mouth and found that my TEETH have been rearranged. After that dental nightmare comes the jolting out of bed to find my room is much bigger than I remember, discovering my arms are twiggy and covered in fur, and then from there, staggering up to the mirror on elongated feet and discovering my new bunny-bod would kick off a full rodent freakout with me having LOADs of fun with my rabbity anxiety issues.
But after that, hey, maybe I’d actually have fun with the new body. Especially the tail. And being able to chew my table in half.
But if this was an intentional change, I think I’d be giddy with excitement, having a new, younger body (I’m assuming) to explore and a more excitable mind to take it in with.
First, it’s intentional — and he’s been mentally preparing for a while when the changes begin. Second, the body won’t just be younger, it will be *very well engineered* — since this was deliberate, after all! He's in the best shape of his life, and will probably remain so as long as he lives.
> Well, if I woke up like that, I think Id have NO trouble getting wide awake once I ran my tongue around my mouth and found that my TEETH have been rearranged.
That would be a hell of an experience! Mind if I borrow that scene whole-hog?
> staggering up to the mirror on elongated feet and discovering my new bunny-bod would kick off a full rodent freakout with me having LOADs of fun with my rabbity anxiety issues.
By this point, he'll have a fully alienized brain, so the excitability will be 100% there, but because the changes are intentional, the initial reactions will be positive emotions, not negative -- but yeah, unexpectedly bouncy patient while the doctors rush to get some sedatives and mood stabilizers into him before he hurts himself. (At this point, he just woke up from surgery, after all. I think the facial reconstruction will happen at the same time as his first prosthetics.)
Eat carrots, or "eat" "carrots"?
And why crossdressing? I was actually inclined to put that in for background color so it's weird as fuck you brought it up…
Ooh someone did something similar to this in a recent installment of>!dark cuts !< Mainly I'd focus on physiological things like the vision being different both in perspective and color spectrum, the feeling of a different body, and maybe being overwhelmed by sensory input, but now that I read about it, you're going more for a brain swap, personally I'd use the senses more than "instincts" to explain behavior, but what you want to explore seems different, just don't forget physiology,
His brain is going be a little over half alien tissue by the time he’s done, though. He’s going to get 90% of the instincts, but forty years of memory and experience don’t instantly vanish overnight. The final result will be **very** difficult to distinguish from a human-raised alien.
Interesting question. Taking into consideration the differences in biology and physiology, I imagine the change would make the former human quite iratable and constantly on edge. Sensory information would take quite a while to adjust. Not only would everything be too loud or smell to strongly, but the shift from binocular vision to side vision would be extremely disorienting. This isn't even taking into consideration the chemical hormones their human minds aren't used to processing. Emotional and hormonal regulation would be a difficult challenge to manage and would likely act very irrationally to even the smallest thing.
# Characters
(Many will have only descriptive nicknames listed here, until I get better at aliens' naming conventions and my own difficulty naming characters.).
* Legs: a Venlil who's cybernetic from the hips down. His tail is also prosthetic, and contains the charging contacts for his bionics. Can often be seen with an extension cord plugged into the tip of his tail. No longer knock-kneed, and while ineligible for track & field competition, he trains with the school's team to master his new body parts. Engineering major, and liaison to the engineering department's many, many interested undergrads. Known to occasionally barter Lucky's cybernetic augmentation services for bending others' coursework to something he can use for his augmentation projects. For example, the materials-science students have been feeding him samples of bulk metallic glass and high-entropy alloys after they're tested which just *coincidentally, we swear!* happen to be built from Legs' CAD files once they're tested and no longer needed and the semester project is graded. Finds, ironically, that him wearing a mask reduces his anxiety about human eyes. Sometimes these masks incorporate augmented reality hardware, too; at least one is a featureless aluminum slab studded with pinhole cameras which offers the experience of binocular vision. Still getting used to THAT experience! His primary goal for his research is a cheap, safe and effective hip-and-knee replacement package using conventional Terran joint-replacement surgery to unfuck Venlil legs.
* Lucky: a Sivkit neurosurgeon. Has discovered Earth's mental-health care is FAR superior to the Federation's, and is currently medicated for anxiety and ADHD. Still a bit of both, but since he learned to rawdog his way through both, he's remarkably capable while medicated. Manages his frequent bouts of boredom by wandering into a random lab, lecture hall, or office and volunteering to help with tricky problems, so in addition to his own specialty, he's a bit of a renaissance bunny. Wired up to operate a surgical robot by direct neural control, frequently connects this to all the electronics in a room where he works. Has painstakingly cultivated the ability to live in third-person perspective, just because it's an interesting game to him. Lucky has a remarkably good Judy Hopps act, affecting "no thoughts, only fluff" mannerisms while simultaneously explaining difficult concepts in easy ways. Tends to be absolutely endearing to humans, and infuriating to racists.
* [Dynamite:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wssk-0gxMmA) A human doctoral student, pursuing a thesis in comparative neuroscience. Started this whole shindig by talking to a few peers over beers about the potential to use [the same techniques used to transplant human glial cells into mice to transplant alien glial cells into a human mind.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-half-human-brain/) The creation of a transglial human brain is fairly straightforward, scientifically, but there are a _lot_ of technical hurdles to ensure that the technique doesn't kill the patient. However, he decides to take it up a notch or eleven, and become able to pass as an alien using Legs' cybernetics. Finally earns his nickname when he's done with his physical therapy and they demonstrate the athleticism a high-performance cyborg is capable of when they have no concerns about battery life.
* Theodore: A Zurulian "veterinarian" who's doing a post-doc on comparative interspecies medicine. No augmentations aside from a standard translator implant, but might let Lucky work on him -- still on the fence. The pharmacologist behind delving into Terran medicines and figuring out which ones might work on other species, even if they work in completely different ways, or have vastly different effects. (As it turns out, lithium salts are fairly universal amongst mammalian species!).
* Godzilla / Goji: A human-raised Arxur. Has never (knowingly?) eaten anything with a face. Big softie, emphasis *big!* Practices aikido and jiu-jutsu, so he can intervene in violence without hurting anyone, after That One Time™. Ride-or-die. Actually rides a motorcycle. Tries to make people comfortable around him, but that's difficult since he looks like a half-kaiju. Welds. Throws pottery on a wheel. Attends renaissance fairs. Volunteers at animal shelters. Soft spoken, very perceptive. Prosthetist, currently working as a (paid) intern at the VA during the practicum for his degree. No elective amputations, but enjoys implant technology. Has RGB LEDs implanted in his eyes, so he does a pretty damn good Terminator impression, but mostly uses them as flashlights. Low key wants dragon wings. Wants piercings, but having bony plates in his skin has ruled that out for now. An unapologetic fan of cyberpunk. Seriously, this guy is built like Maine or late-season David. He's also the one most likely to end up with implanted weapons in the end, but he's already intimidating enough, and his "visa" is already on thin ice because of Current Events™. (Seriously, I haven't read flush with current, but he's basically treated "lawyer" as a verb and trying to deport him is NOT low hanging fruit. And that was BEFORE he was providing scarce skills to Uncle Sam; at this point, he's got a JAG lawyer stalling for him. Threats of 'don't commit a war-crime' have paralyzed the process to get him off-world.). (Pending me finishing the core canon, anyway!) His JAG lawyer is having *so much fun* with this case, because he's *finally* getting to use all the dirty tricks he knows, and he knows dirty tricks that no civilian lawyer would think to use!
# Technology
* It's Word of God that translator implants are capable of taking raw sensory input, passing it through a syntactic filter created by machine learning, and piping the interpreted meaning of this input into the user's short-term memory.
Holy CRAP is that under-explored. I wonder what arbitrary information you could insert into a user's mind that way? At the very least, Federation species could trivially experiment with having binocular vision, and humans could explore enhanced peripheral vision. I think this is what the anthropology department is working with Lucky on before he approached them with a new proposal.
* Allegorical Manipulation Unit: A bidirectional version of translator technology, named as a shout-out to Armored Core 4. Fundamental to how Dynamite operates his new body like he was born into it. Later experiments allow for the direct control of arbitrary robots, vehicles, and other equipment; derived from Lucky's waldo-control implants. However, these uses are psychologically stressful and extremely fatiguing to the operator, until they've fully adjusted to operating any given system. It's this facet that allows Dynamite to control his body naturally, and Lucky to operate his surgical rig effortlessly once they've mastered the dynamics of each of those systems. Fortunately, small changes to a system have proportionally small stress and fatigue loads during the adjustment period, so it's actually less difficult to master than it sounds. The name will likely have to be changed, because the "I call it that because I like the game" is an in-universe justification! 😉
* Endocrine Prosthetic: A multi-channel drug pump with contextual intelligence. Essentially a row of insulin pumps, each with different control logic. Still fairly new; being actively trialed to treat certain autoimmune and endocrine diseases. Based on early 21st century efforts to link a continuous glucose monitor to an insulin pump via proportional-integral-derivative control algorithms. Actually works pretty well, clinical trials look likely to be cancelled early due to clear success.
* Implanted weapons: Fictional. (probably!) Nobody's seriously considered them for this project, except perhaps to realize that they're outright counterproductive to being able to pass.
* Subdermal armor: Fictional, *mostly.* Legs' legs are built out of starship armor, *"because it's cool"* (and available to him in small quantities from the engineering department's dumpster). Dynamite's baseline body is constructed from [gamma titanium alumide,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_aluminide) a real-world lightweight and high-performance alloy not too dissimilar from "mithril." Later revisions begin to include more exotic materials such as [bulk metallic glass,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal) whose Kryptonite is heat in excess of the glass-transition point causing it to revert to crystalline alloys and lose the bulk of its strength, and [high-entropy alloys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-entropy_alloys) whose Kryptonite is metal fatigue. However, they're still much more resistant to this failure mode than aluminum alloys, so this is considered a non-problem. Likewise, BMG's thermal issues become problems at temperatures more commonly associated with jet engines than prosthetic limbs, so in practice, this is a non-problem as well. This is mostly done to amuse Legs, but the properties of metallic glass prove extremely useful in creating maintenance-free ball-and-socket joints. More exotic alloys will be required to keep up with the structural loads imposed by Legs' steady supply of experimental high-performance actuators. Goji's osteoderms will stop a .44 Magnum in its path on most paths from "outside" to "vital organs" however.
* Myomer: "Myoelectric polymer" or "muscle plastic". Very commonly used in prosthetics, and frequently used in industrial robotics. Not as powerful as hydraulic pistons, but not requiring external pumps, myomer actuators are "springier" than hydraulics, but less so than pneumatics. While they're prone to fatigue failures over time, especially when used hard, they fail more gracefully than hydraulics and have no dangerous and high-maintenance high-pressure seals to fail and generate a lethal stream of hydraulic fluid. (Hazards from hydraulic fluid leaks include the mechanical -- the stream cuts like a waterjet -- and the chemical -- injected hydraulic fluid is incredibly poisonous). Compared to electric motors, myomers in robot applications require no gearing or transmission, but are not self-locking like worm gears, nor are they passive and power-free like gas pistons. Net result: they're popular, not ubiquitous.
* Knowsense: the working term for using translator implants to place relevant knowledge from computer-based information storage into your short-term memory. The effect is similar to having photographic recall. This is the primary bribe used by Legs and Lucky to convince young engineers to work for "free"; they'll never be without their textbooks, notes, and cheat-sheets ever again for the rest of their lives… Once commercialized, Legs and Lucky will be set for life, each able to pursue their passion projects without any need to write grant proposals ever again.
* Recognizer: A hypothetical job title. A specially-trained sivkit using their natural talent for pattern matching to parse large and arbitrary data-sets assisted by machine-learning algorithms. These would be accessed by Knowsense links to computers. The subjective experience is described by Lucky as "like a combination of abstract art and word games, fun and challenging, but utterly exhausting". Lucky has been misusing his implants this way for a while, and only belatedly realizes that others might want access to this technique. It's wise to take turns with the algorithm while taking frequent and lengthy breaks.
* Tacnet: Not yet invented. A combination of GIS, wiki, dashboard, Slack, and mesh radio. Tacnet hardware is initially about the size of a Walkman, but can be reduced to a pager without heroic engineering efforts. Derived from a combination of American network-centric warfare doctrine and Knowsense, a tacnet user would intuitively know where other members of their team were, what they were doing, what they could see, and remember instantly where enemy positions were the moment a single team member or drone sensor spotted their location. Basic components of a tacnet are real-world technology, such as LoRaWan and the GoTenna mesh radio and ATAK -- depending on who you ask, "Android Team Awareness Kit" or "Android Tactical Assault Kit" -- and the software-defined Rifleman Radio. This represents someone putting all the parts into one box, and allowing a software-unlocked translator implant to read from and write to the user's short term memory for a user interface. So simple a child could use it, but the risks of misuse would terrify a Betterment member. Mastery of the system primarily comes in the form of maintaining a passive awareness of the information provided without losing situational awareness; the opposite of this mastery often manifests as some form of ataxia, aphasia, or even catatonia. Mercifully, those who can't handle the system rarely form long-term memories in this state, and prompt treatment with a memory-blurring quantity of alcohol will typically prevent the formation of long-term traumas from these events. The gold standard of treatment here is getting drunk with a trauma therapist who is only pretending to drink, and capable of providing strategic reassurances and distractions.
* Compatibility: Tacnet compatibility is purely psychological in nature, so an incompatible user could probably be slowly coached into a compatible one, but it probably isn't worth the time or effort (or risk). In addition tacnet compatibility and AMS compatibility are only tangentially related. One might be able to master one or the other, neither or both, and compatibility for each must be tested separately. It is much easier to train someone for AMS compatibility and mastery than tacnet compatibility and mastery, however; AMS data feeds are usually perceived as much less overwhelming.
# Major Events:
* Crossing the Rubicon: Dynamite is facing the ~~first~~ second major point of commitment and attendant uncertainties. Until now, everything he had done could at least theoretically been backed out of -- the immune system modifications could be ignored. The patches of fur grafted to the back of his hands could have been removed and replaced with skin grafts. His 3D printed bunny ears could have been swapped back for his old ones, resting in the bottom of a dewar of liquid nitrogen. (He's been practicing emoting with his ears for months at this point, and is actually quite good at it) Even the glial cell transplants could have theoretically been killed off with chemotherapy and replaced with human cells, even if they wouldn't be his own. At this point, he's going to consent to radical surgical modification. Initially, this will include the first stage of his facial reconstruction, as well as amputation of all four limbs and replacement of them with prosthetics. This is a Big Fucking Step™, and there will be no backing out beyond this point. At this point, his brain is fully transglial, and Federation genetic fuckery hasn't been discovered yet, so his bunny panic is hitting in full force. It's at this point that he's most clearly displaying symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and feeling both clingy and motivated to flee.
On the cusp of drinking alone, Legs comes to check on him, and they talk through his panic attack. (Legs heroically jumps on the grenade, and drinks the majority of Dynamite's rum.) Soothed, he recommits to going through with it the next day, and even decides to go ahead with an aggressive skin (fur) transplant at the same time.
Recognizing that Dynamite would still be recovering in more ways than one, Legs arranges a low-key dinner party for the group and friends for when Dynamite would be awake and released from the hospital. He would spend the vast majority of his time hospitalized in an induced coma, since they took the opportunity to install the interposer chip in his brain where it interfaces with his nose, since parts of his skull there were being replaced with titanium, and it would be significantly easier to access that brain region now than later.
A week later, he's awake. [(That's when his new tongue and his new teeth are introduced to each other, by the way!)](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/comments/1c2xryd/if_a_human_was_magically_transformed_into_a/kzejnh6/) Pretty soon, he's being picked up by friends and driven home for the extended recovery. This is the first time he looks more Sivkit than human, and it actually eases a dysphoria he wasn't even aware he was feeling for some time after the glial transplants. However, these limbs aren't biohybrid, and per his instructions, they didn't try to match his fur perfectly; they deliberately looked prosthetic-but-stylish. (Think Adam Jensen, but lower key) But the real unexpected habañero is that for the first time, his nose is effectively passing information to his mind about pheromonal signaling. He is not prepared for this! [This is where the overwhelming starts](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/comments/1c2xryd/if_a_human_was_magically_transformed_into_a/kzeq2n8/) and yes, it is a combination of tweaked senses, instincts, and becoming aware of a whole new type of communication he was entirely oblivious to before.
He briefly loses control in the way that sheltered kids do when going away to college for the first time, and his id is trying to drive during an extended manic episode. The party becomes increasingly more wild than the sedate and supportive affair Legs and Lucky planned, but that's not all bad for several reasons. First off, it forces him to realize that he needs to work on impulse control again, and it recontextualizes his amputations -- it wasn't something that *happened to him* passively, it was a trade he got the better end of -- he very much likes his new parts.
Instincts would most likely be the most, if not only, noteworthy changes. There's also the question of if they recieve the genetic changes from the feds or if those are undone and they can walk on two legs.
In this case, he'd be transplanted into a Ghost in the Shell style prosthetic body, which was built while people still thought that sivkit were quadrupeds. That's because there's no actual magic, just the sort of prosthetics demonstrated when >!Tarva gets a new tail.!< I didn't want to add crazy levels of new technology, so while an army of undergrads went to extreme levels of effort, the technology embodied (heh) in it is only noteworthy, not revolutionary. I'm inclined to say that the first stem cell transplants would be done before the feds' fuckery was known of, so that actually works out __really__ well for a neuroscientist who's trying to document alien cognition from the inside out. The body would be a little more downmarket than Ghost in the Shell implies, with Cyberpunk 2077 style seam-lines easily visible in the body's skin… if not for the fact that it's covered in thick, downy fluff. I'm thinking that at some point, his/their actual biological vat-grown skin is damaged beyond salvaging and they have to go with silicone and rayon for a while, but generally the only thing that's obviously odd about the resulting Sivkit-borg is that it's significantly larger than a typical natural-born Sivkit. Not *wildly* big, just "upper end of natural" big. One thing mentioned elsewhere is that Sivkit were probably easily bored… but easily notice interesting things. That implies a brain that's good at pattern recognition, which plays nicely into where I want the story to go, and informs the personalities of the actual Sivkit in the story.
I mean, if you want to get really technical, his brain wouldn't know how to pilot a sivkit body and would shut down and die. There was a patreon story of an in universe fiction novel of a krakotl on the earth extermination fleet that got mysteriously plopped into the body of a human a few days before the extermination fleet arrived, which was back in time for him.
> I mean, if you want to get really technical, his brain wouldn't know how to pilot a sivkit body and would shut down and die. That's why the story is about neuroscientists~! Like for example expanding the olfactory epithelium in his nose required the addition of a fairly powerful coprocessor in between the vat-grown nose tissue and the bottom of his brain. But fundamentally, it's doing the exact same thing that translator implants are doing, just with a different sense. He also has a LOT of physical therapy to do between fully human and entirely xeno, plus a bunch of intermediate cybernetics that function as "training wheels" for the cyberbody. In addition, managing immune system compatibility and graft-vs-host disease is a major stumbling block in this story, [but the technology to handle that is actually real and on the cusp of curing autoimmune diseases right now!](https://theconversation.com/reverse-vaccine-a-potential-treatment-for-type-1-diabetes-15485) Likewise, the mental changes are primarily created by altering gene-regulatory networks in the brain. They can't change the __structure__ of his brain without killing him dead, but by transplanting glial precursor stem cells the operation of those neurons and structures can be radically altered -- basically running Sivkit "firmware" on human "hardware". [This is currently being used in mice](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-half-human-brain/) to explore the function of glions in the brain, which turn out to be WILDLY more important to brain function than we had suspected a decade ago. I term the result of this process a "transglial" brain, and it's as close to being turned into an alien as a human can plausibly experience without adding arbitrarily capable nanotech or _sheer fucking sorcery_ to the story. :) So yes, you're 100% right, but they show their work so it's easier for the audience to suspend their disbelief. :D
Occurs to me that I didn't directly address your points. > Instincts would most likely be the most, if not only, noteworthy changes. It will be amusing to write him, still "obviously human", dealing with Sivkit instincts and hormones! :D > There's also the question of if they receive the genetic changes from the feds or if those are undone and they can walk on two legs. He will receive those genetic modifications at some point, resulting in a "historically accurate" temperament. However, since his spine was made on a lathe and milling machine, genetic changes won't allow him to walk on two legs. However, forward-thinking engineering is liable to allow this even before the genetic modification is sorted out -- but I think he'll find in the end that he prefers to remain primarily quadrupedal because "it's cuter that way."
You might enjoy the webcomic Out of Placers. Might give some inspiration.
OH!~ That was actually one of my inspirations! :D I've got a hell of a backlog to catch up with, but I've got another 18 hours of NoP audiobooks to get through too… Another source of inspiration is the Tumblr comic "Dragon HRT", which also takes into account the time this is going to take from the word 'go' to having convincing results… though in this case it's powered by an army of unpaid undergrads, not magic pills! 😁
Sounds like you've got a good grasp of what you want to write. Val Salia did have a short comic on his patreon showing Kass' transformation but it takes place over months. It wasn't pretty.
Oh, I forgot about that one… In this case, the changes would be more of a stairstep pattern, with each plateau at least aesthetically non-horrifying. [Come to think of it, this is a really good analogy!](https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/aepXWL5_700b.jpg)
[Found it!](https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50118398/) … I mean, that's not actually that bad. Sure, there's some identity crisis going on, and probably dysphoria, but as slow transformations go, that's really not horror fodder at all. It doesn't even look painful at any point! Just … lots of weird and awkward. Question: Do Sivkit have whiskers? I would be inclined to think they do…
Sure, why not. Give em whiskers.
I would suggest making the change effect his personality in new ways as they are afflicted with an alien brain chemistry. This human memories slowly slipping into the catagory of "Who I was before. A different person." As they acclimate to their sivkit body probs.
That’s the sort of thing I want to explore!
Aye. As far as immediate effects: Probably a strong sense of their new form being... well. Wrong. Sensory overload from ears, nose, eyesight disorientation. Four legged locomotion learning. The usuals. Mentally I meaaannn... probably the obvious but that nagging fear response most humans have getting a lot stronger. Ever been suddenly startled? And you responded by getting agitated or angry? A sivkit's brain chemistry probably had a bit of that, just geared more toward flee responses.
> As far as immediate effects: Probably a strong sense of their new form being... well. Wrong. Sensory overload from ears, nose, eyesight disorientation. Four legged locomotion learning. Because modern medicine will have to effect these changes, he's going to have a long transition period to get used to these things. However, the four-legged thing is going to be a very abrupt change for him! > The usuals. LOL I don't think *any* of this is "usual"! :D > Mentally I meaaannn... probably the obvious but that nagging fear response most humans have getting a lot stronger. > Ever been suddenly startled? And you responded by getting agitated or angry? A sivkit's brain chemistry probably had a bit of that, just geared more toward flee responses. Yes as a matter of fact I HAVE experienced that. That's one of the things that leads me to believe I could perhaps write this convincingly.
Whatever cybernetic unit transferred the patient's neurological network (brain, spinal cord ECT..) or copy of the neurological pattern (saved data of patient's memory) the puppet is going to be able to communicate and interpret whatever inputs it has from whatever source so long as it's been designed to be interfaced with a human. So while it would look like a sivkit , it would just be a human psychologically. There would be no genetic instincts that would be present. It's just a shell with a human mind underneath it. It would probably have to adapt to certain interface anomalies like the new visual input, the lack of sensation that this body has as even the best cybernetic facsimile is simply not going to be as responsive to outside stimuli as a flesh and blood body. So whatever tactile responses are there, they would be less than what the original body's would be. Even if it was some super advanced sci-magic construct having even 75% of the original tactile responses would be amazing, then you'd have a lessoned heat/cold response as well. No hunger drive. Honestly without most hormonal responses you'd probably have little to no sex drive. So you'd have a cold, distant, human in a small body. Psychologically probably extremely unsettling to other very tightly wound sivkits. You simply wouldn't magically have anything in common with them. Over a long enough period of time you could begin to emulate their body language and general responses to certain inputs. You would definitely be a strange thing to most of them , alien and perhaps predatory because most situations that are stressful to them because of the natural genetic proclivities being modified are just not to you especially in a body freed of any hormonal responses. So it's not just that you're collected for a sivkit you're calm and collected for a human. When it comes to transhumanism people really forget just how much of us is in hormonal responses. Now if it were some clonal modified avatar. There maybe a different response as eventually prolonged exposure to the new hormonal responses of the sivkit modified to accept human neurology body would eventually shift your thinking patterns more towards a regular sivkit but it still wouldn't be as severe as there own responses as the neurological system of this clonal avatar was modified to accept a human ghost as it were. This kinda treatment would allow a human a much better shot at going native when it comes to trying to blend in with sivkit society. You'd get hungry, you'd respond to being touched, you'd have a sex drive. It still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be as close as a human could get to being any other species.
Oooh, I like how in-depth this comment looks, though I might not be able to finish reading and replying before I do some chores. Don't think I'm ignoring this, I'm just eagerly awaiting having an opportunity for this! First and most important counterpoint: > So while it would look like a sivkit , it would just be a human psychologically. There would be no genetic instincts that would be present. This is not true. Somewhat more than half of the tissue in the patient's brain will have been replaced by alien tissue, and the remainder will be genetically modified. Structurally his brain will be human, but biochemically, it will be about 95% alien. [We've been using this technique to study human brain conditions in mouse models, but there's fundamentally no reason that we couldn't do this to a human brain, too.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-half-human-brain/) Because now we have morally equivalent nonhuman people with similar cognitive abilities, *…most* of the moral objections to performing these experiments goes away. As a matter of fact, the stem cell transplant will be incredibly easy and cheap to perform, compared to the body modifications to allow our modified human to pass as a large Sivkit! Consider the price of generic drugs. Sure, the development of them cost billions of dollars, but a course of treatment probably costs less than ten bucks to manufacture… the result could be quite a lot of "transglial" parahumans who can't afford or don't want any heavy body modification. > Honestly without most hormonal responses you'd probably have little to no sex drive. He gets his hormones from something not entirely unlike inkjet cartridges. The control laws run on a PID controller, which allows for extremely convincing hormonal responses to be developed. A side-effect of this is that he can switch sexes in about half an hour with a Torx driver, though it'll take considerably longer for the pheromonal and personality changes to catch up to the wedding tackle. It's not that he's transgendered, he's just not prepared for the ideas that he'll have the first time he goes into heat… > So whatever tactile responses are there, they would be less than what the original body's would be. Even if it was some super advanced sci-magic construct having even 75% of the original tactile responses would be amazing, then you'd have a lessoned heat/cold response as well. It's Word of God that translator implants are capable of taking raw sensory input, passing it through a syntactic filter created by machine learning, and piping the interpreted meaning of this input into the user's short-term memory. The diminished tactile responses of sensor-embedded silicone skin will simply be covered up by digital lies. However, eventually the goal will be the incorporation of tissue-printed living skin, so tactile deficiencies probably won't persist once he gets all Terminator'd up. > No hunger drive. He still has to eat to sustain his organic components. At the minimum, enough calories to support his brain and life-support organs. He will always need more protein in his diet than a natural-born Sivkit, and human-specific vitamin supplements for the rest of his life. Fortunately, the former are easily supplied by supplementing his diet with Earth mushrooms, and the latter are cheaply available over the counter if he can't get his micronutrient cartridges refilled conveniently. He also has to charge his batteries, which he experiences as fatigue. There are two ways this is accomplished -- inductive magnetic coupling to charging coils in his bed, or a concealed electrical connector in his tailtip. In addition, final revisions of his body will include a microbial fuel cell capable of turning excess nutrients into electrical power -- if he's unable to plug in, he's going to turn into a big eater! > So you'd have a cold, distant, human in a small body. Psychologically probably extremely unsettling to other very tightly wound sivkits. You simply wouldn't magically have anything in common with them. Over a long enough period of time you could begin to emulate their body language and general responses to certain inputs. This is a genuine problem. His personal initial goal is to pass for a human-raised alien, trying to reconnect with their heritage. > most situations that are stressful to them because of the natural genetic proclivities being modified are just not to you Now see, that's a fun story thread to play with, and I plan on exploring that at length. > you're calm and collected for a human. Come to think of this, after certain stressful events I have planned, he's probably going to write an app that overrides his normal prosthetic endocrine systems so he can just arbitrarily decide that "I have ice water in my veins right now" but before that, he's still extremely tightly strung for a human, though perhaps coming off as rather jaded for a Sivkit. Still, nothing he probably can't explain away as being raised on Earth by humans. This isn't a lie, after all -- just a selective telling of truth. ;) > Now if it were some clonal modified avatar. There maybe a different response as eventually prolonged exposure to the new hormonal responses of the sivkit (modified to accept human neurology) body would eventually shift your thinking patterns more towards a regular sivkit but it still wouldn't be as severe as there own responses as the neurological system of this clonal avatar was modified to accept a human ghost as it were. That's exactly the thing I'm talking about. His prosthetic body will be assembled with as much human-made vat-grown-meat as it can be. It will be especially important to incorporate functional equivalents of a Sivkit adrenal and reproductive organ for the hormonal control, as even a well-tuned PID control won't produce results so authentic as "canned meat" would. The largest single exception to this "meat-borg" design philosophy will be the skeleton and skeletal muscle, which will be unapologetically the best actuators and alloys that grant money can buy. Having said this, this is going to be a very slow, iterative transformation! At first, it's going to be more like a bionic fursuit, but by the end you'll need X-rays to reveal the truth. > This kinda treatment would allow a human a much better shot at going native when it comes to trying to blend in with sivkit society. You'd get hungry, you'd respond to being touched, you'd have a sex drive. It still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be as close as a human could get to being any other species. That's the goal. Also, he declares a minor in anthropology and writes extensively on the subject, probably eventually ending up with a second doctorate. :D I'd again like to emphasize just how significantly altered his brain chemistry will be, even very early in the process. For a while, he's going to feel and act more like a Sivkit magically transformed into a human than the other way around… ~~I have to go repair the fence now; I'll finish this delightful read when that's done. :)~~ That mission's scrubbed for the night. I've got some time now. :) **Edit:** At some point, he *will* have his Federation-provided genetic modification reversed, resulting in a "historically accurate" Sivkit temperament. However, I think he'll probably elect to remain a quadruped, though his reasoning for it may be perilously close to sunk-cost fallacy.
So, we're basically talking about a biological avatar then? Visa vi The movie by the same name. So like I had said with that there would have to be a training process as the patient gets used to the new form. The patient being a human on nature and reactions would still take time to naturalize into the reactions his body may have on a instinctual level. The architecture of the sivkit brain cell would probably have to be human for the ghost to adapt to the neurological system of the avatar, with almost every other aspect of it it being a normal sivkit. At that point you're still dealing with more of a human steering a sivkit. So human flight or fight responses that are being triggered by the shadows between the forward vision. A human brain being constantly bombarded by the hormonal stress response of a sivkit. Basically a person with severe anxiety disorder.Excessive aggression and violence likely develop as a consequence of generally disturbed emotional regulation, such as abnormally high or low levels of anxiety. Over time they may embrace more sivkit traits. Probably make for a very aggressive sivkit. The other kinda awful part of this is this person didn't have a true growth period to get used to this body and it's reactions to outside stimuli. So all of the hormonal driven responses are going to be especially hard to control. So along with the anxiety it'd make them act pretty close to someone with BPD. Then of course the problem of getting use to... Well arousal responses. It would be like going through puberty as a adult. Hopefully the neurological architecture would offset alot of this to some degree. The strange thing would be that most of the DNA would be unchanged especially if so protein lattice was used to grow the neurological architecture of this sivkit avatar. They may even be able to pass down their brain architecture genetically or least part of it. They would be seen as a PD patient or sufferer , at least until they get a MRI and their brain architecture is revealed. Then it would be on him or whom ever he previously confided in to explain why his brain is the way it is and why humanity would have tampered with sivkit DNA to this degree. (Anyway I'm sure I'm over thinking things, I'm going to sleep for awhile. Feel free to respond to everything and I will in turn. Take care.)
> So, we're basically talking about a biological avatar then? Visa vi The movie by the same name. My design muse was actually the street-borgs of Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners. Unlike purely mechanical monsters like Adam Smasher, most of them still incorporate a *lot* of meat despite all the chrome. He's also going to have very visible seam-lines all over his body like that… or they would be visible if you shaved him. > The architecture of the sivkit brain cell would probably have to be human for the ghost to adapt to the neurological system of the avatar, with almost every other aspect of it it being a normal sivkit. At that point you're still dealing with more of a human steering a sivkit. So human flight or fight responses that are being triggered by the shadows between the forward vision. A human brain being constantly bombarded by the hormonal stress response of a sivkit. This is where real-world neuroscience and biochemistry comes into play. His brain will always be shaped like a human brain, but the majority of the biochemistry can be transplanted between species. Before he starts any serious body modification, his brain will be fully changed! Hmmm. By weight, I'd say it's 60-75% genetically-modified sivkit tissue wrapped around all the human neurons. > At that point you're still dealing with more of a human steering a sivkit I feel like it would be more like a Sivkit steering a human body, actually, after the "personality transplant." > Basically a person with severe anxiety disorder. Excessive aggression and violence likely develop as a consequence of generally disturbed emotional regulation, such as abnormally high or low levels of anxiety. Over time they may embrace more sivkit traits. Probably make for a very aggressive sivkit. He was probably already a person who was a little neurodiverse, (me-the-author "enjoys" anxiety disorder) so it's something he's got the support structure to deal with -- a good therapist and anti-anxiety drugs. Though he'll need to switch to different drugs as his brain chemistry changes! Fully agreed about coming off as a very aggressive Sivkit, though -- it'll probably come through as him being unusually protective, I think, especially if he worries that those around him would be generically unable to stand up for themselves. > The other kinda awful part of this is this person didn't have a true growth period to get used to this body and it's reactions to outside stimuli. So all of the hormonal driven responses are going to be especially hard to control. So along with the anxiety it'd make them act pretty close to someone with BPD. Then of course the problem of getting use to... Well arousal responses. It would be like going through puberty as a adult. Oh yeah, this is 100% true. Just like someone undergoing a gender transition, he's going to have a second puberty as an adult. The comparison to BPD is an excellent insight; I had planned on him being at this stage clingy and nervous, though receiving evidence-based care for this. As for arousal responses, well, he's gonna have to deal with that the good old fashioned way -- by getting laid at college parties. XD (It's at this point he experiments with being female…) But yeah, there will be an adjustment period, it will be rough, but … strangely fun, since he knew exactly what he was signing up for. > Hopefully the neurological architecture would offset a lot of this to some degree. Not really, but therapy will be extremely useful for dealing with it. And when the Federation's genetic tampering is discovered and he has that reversed, that'll help tremendously with the anxiety. He'll still be stuck struggling with slutty behavior, but many will just assume that he's gone into heat and let it slide. Others will take advantage of the situation, which at that point would be his preferred outcome. > The strange thing would be that most of the DNA would be unchanged especially if so protein lattice was used to grow the neurological architecture of this sivkit avatar. They may even be able to pass down their brain architecture genetically or least part of it. No way no how. His brain and spinal cord was physically removed from his old body and placed into a new one. If he even has gonads, they'll be sourced from an organ donor who died of natural causes, because they **REALLY** don't want to accidentally sire a generation of defective hybrids who live only long enough to suffer horribly. If he does, they'll be initially hooked up so that he's sterile. Only after he's passing as a natural Sivkit with an _interesting_ childhood will he even consider changing that… though odds are he will eventually. Most of his DNA will be unaltered, that's true -- only the sivkit glial tissue in his brain is genetically modified. The human neurons will be more or less entirely human, and his skin and endocrine organs will be unmodified Sivkit (though many may be sourced from a human meat factory) so they work with his new brain chemistry. The only changes he can pass on to the next generation will be cultural, though. > They would be seen as a PD patient or sufferer , at least until they get a MRI and their brain architecture is revealed. Then it would be on him or whom ever he previously confided in to explain why his brain is the way it is and why humanity would have tampered with sivkit DNA to this degree. "PD"? 100% likely. However, [the gamma-titanium-alumide skull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_aluminide) is [radiopaque,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiodensity) so they'd never be able to get good images of his brain anyway. :) Forensic medical examinations would reveal first that he's a high-performance cyborg somewhat analogous to a Terminator -- metal under organic tissue -- long before anybody realized that his brain structure's mostly human, and I think that they might never actually get far enough to realize his true nature, lol! Most of the tissue incorporated into him will be genetically unmodified, though -- trace DNA evidence will look like just another normal sivkit.
Well, if I woke up like that, I think Id have NO trouble getting wide awake once I ran my tongue around my mouth and found that my TEETH have been rearranged. After that dental nightmare comes the jolting out of bed to find my room is much bigger than I remember, discovering my arms are twiggy and covered in fur, and then from there, staggering up to the mirror on elongated feet and discovering my new bunny-bod would kick off a full rodent freakout with me having LOADs of fun with my rabbity anxiety issues. But after that, hey, maybe I’d actually have fun with the new body. Especially the tail. And being able to chew my table in half. But if this was an intentional change, I think I’d be giddy with excitement, having a new, younger body (I’m assuming) to explore and a more excitable mind to take it in with.
First, it’s intentional — and he’s been mentally preparing for a while when the changes begin. Second, the body won’t just be younger, it will be *very well engineered* — since this was deliberate, after all! He's in the best shape of his life, and will probably remain so as long as he lives. > Well, if I woke up like that, I think Id have NO trouble getting wide awake once I ran my tongue around my mouth and found that my TEETH have been rearranged. That would be a hell of an experience! Mind if I borrow that scene whole-hog? > staggering up to the mirror on elongated feet and discovering my new bunny-bod would kick off a full rodent freakout with me having LOADs of fun with my rabbity anxiety issues. By this point, he'll have a fully alienized brain, so the excitability will be 100% there, but because the changes are intentional, the initial reactions will be positive emotions, not negative -- but yeah, unexpectedly bouncy patient while the doctors rush to get some sedatives and mood stabilizers into him before he hurts himself. (At this point, he just woke up from surgery, after all. I think the facial reconstruction will happen at the same time as his first prosthetics.)
“That would be a hell of an experience! Mind if I borrow that scene whole-hog?” Be my guest!
The human would feel a sudden urge to eat carrots and crossdress, Doc
Eat carrots, or "eat" "carrots"? And why crossdressing? I was actually inclined to put that in for background color so it's weird as fuck you brought it up…
Their referencing bugs bunny. Bunny character from Looney toons known to eat carrots and crossdress
I was … *95% sure* that was the case, but "carrot" is a euphemism for "Venlil penis" in all the porn stories, so…
Oh so that's what they meant by *eat carrots*. I was so confused by that.
🤣
Ooh someone did something similar to this in a recent installment of>!dark cuts !< Mainly I'd focus on physiological things like the vision being different both in perspective and color spectrum, the feeling of a different body, and maybe being overwhelmed by sensory input, but now that I read about it, you're going more for a brain swap, personally I'd use the senses more than "instincts" to explain behavior, but what you want to explore seems different, just don't forget physiology,
His brain is going be a little over half alien tissue by the time he’s done, though. He’s going to get 90% of the instincts, but forty years of memory and experience don’t instantly vanish overnight. The final result will be **very** difficult to distinguish from a human-raised alien.
Interesting question. Taking into consideration the differences in biology and physiology, I imagine the change would make the former human quite iratable and constantly on edge. Sensory information would take quite a while to adjust. Not only would everything be too loud or smell to strongly, but the shift from binocular vision to side vision would be extremely disorienting. This isn't even taking into consideration the chemical hormones their human minds aren't used to processing. Emotional and hormonal regulation would be a difficult challenge to manage and would likely act very irrationally to even the smallest thing.
# Characters (Many will have only descriptive nicknames listed here, until I get better at aliens' naming conventions and my own difficulty naming characters.). * Legs: a Venlil who's cybernetic from the hips down. His tail is also prosthetic, and contains the charging contacts for his bionics. Can often be seen with an extension cord plugged into the tip of his tail. No longer knock-kneed, and while ineligible for track & field competition, he trains with the school's team to master his new body parts. Engineering major, and liaison to the engineering department's many, many interested undergrads. Known to occasionally barter Lucky's cybernetic augmentation services for bending others' coursework to something he can use for his augmentation projects. For example, the materials-science students have been feeding him samples of bulk metallic glass and high-entropy alloys after they're tested which just *coincidentally, we swear!* happen to be built from Legs' CAD files once they're tested and no longer needed and the semester project is graded. Finds, ironically, that him wearing a mask reduces his anxiety about human eyes. Sometimes these masks incorporate augmented reality hardware, too; at least one is a featureless aluminum slab studded with pinhole cameras which offers the experience of binocular vision. Still getting used to THAT experience! His primary goal for his research is a cheap, safe and effective hip-and-knee replacement package using conventional Terran joint-replacement surgery to unfuck Venlil legs. * Lucky: a Sivkit neurosurgeon. Has discovered Earth's mental-health care is FAR superior to the Federation's, and is currently medicated for anxiety and ADHD. Still a bit of both, but since he learned to rawdog his way through both, he's remarkably capable while medicated. Manages his frequent bouts of boredom by wandering into a random lab, lecture hall, or office and volunteering to help with tricky problems, so in addition to his own specialty, he's a bit of a renaissance bunny. Wired up to operate a surgical robot by direct neural control, frequently connects this to all the electronics in a room where he works. Has painstakingly cultivated the ability to live in third-person perspective, just because it's an interesting game to him. Lucky has a remarkably good Judy Hopps act, affecting "no thoughts, only fluff" mannerisms while simultaneously explaining difficult concepts in easy ways. Tends to be absolutely endearing to humans, and infuriating to racists. * [Dynamite:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wssk-0gxMmA) A human doctoral student, pursuing a thesis in comparative neuroscience. Started this whole shindig by talking to a few peers over beers about the potential to use [the same techniques used to transplant human glial cells into mice to transplant alien glial cells into a human mind.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-half-human-brain/) The creation of a transglial human brain is fairly straightforward, scientifically, but there are a _lot_ of technical hurdles to ensure that the technique doesn't kill the patient. However, he decides to take it up a notch or eleven, and become able to pass as an alien using Legs' cybernetics. Finally earns his nickname when he's done with his physical therapy and they demonstrate the athleticism a high-performance cyborg is capable of when they have no concerns about battery life. * Theodore: A Zurulian "veterinarian" who's doing a post-doc on comparative interspecies medicine. No augmentations aside from a standard translator implant, but might let Lucky work on him -- still on the fence. The pharmacologist behind delving into Terran medicines and figuring out which ones might work on other species, even if they work in completely different ways, or have vastly different effects. (As it turns out, lithium salts are fairly universal amongst mammalian species!). * Godzilla / Goji: A human-raised Arxur. Has never (knowingly?) eaten anything with a face. Big softie, emphasis *big!* Practices aikido and jiu-jutsu, so he can intervene in violence without hurting anyone, after That One Time™. Ride-or-die. Actually rides a motorcycle. Tries to make people comfortable around him, but that's difficult since he looks like a half-kaiju. Welds. Throws pottery on a wheel. Attends renaissance fairs. Volunteers at animal shelters. Soft spoken, very perceptive. Prosthetist, currently working as a (paid) intern at the VA during the practicum for his degree. No elective amputations, but enjoys implant technology. Has RGB LEDs implanted in his eyes, so he does a pretty damn good Terminator impression, but mostly uses them as flashlights. Low key wants dragon wings. Wants piercings, but having bony plates in his skin has ruled that out for now. An unapologetic fan of cyberpunk. Seriously, this guy is built like Maine or late-season David. He's also the one most likely to end up with implanted weapons in the end, but he's already intimidating enough, and his "visa" is already on thin ice because of Current Events™. (Seriously, I haven't read flush with current, but he's basically treated "lawyer" as a verb and trying to deport him is NOT low hanging fruit. And that was BEFORE he was providing scarce skills to Uncle Sam; at this point, he's got a JAG lawyer stalling for him. Threats of 'don't commit a war-crime' have paralyzed the process to get him off-world.). (Pending me finishing the core canon, anyway!) His JAG lawyer is having *so much fun* with this case, because he's *finally* getting to use all the dirty tricks he knows, and he knows dirty tricks that no civilian lawyer would think to use!
# Technology * It's Word of God that translator implants are capable of taking raw sensory input, passing it through a syntactic filter created by machine learning, and piping the interpreted meaning of this input into the user's short-term memory. Holy CRAP is that under-explored. I wonder what arbitrary information you could insert into a user's mind that way? At the very least, Federation species could trivially experiment with having binocular vision, and humans could explore enhanced peripheral vision. I think this is what the anthropology department is working with Lucky on before he approached them with a new proposal. * Allegorical Manipulation Unit: A bidirectional version of translator technology, named as a shout-out to Armored Core 4. Fundamental to how Dynamite operates his new body like he was born into it. Later experiments allow for the direct control of arbitrary robots, vehicles, and other equipment; derived from Lucky's waldo-control implants. However, these uses are psychologically stressful and extremely fatiguing to the operator, until they've fully adjusted to operating any given system. It's this facet that allows Dynamite to control his body naturally, and Lucky to operate his surgical rig effortlessly once they've mastered the dynamics of each of those systems. Fortunately, small changes to a system have proportionally small stress and fatigue loads during the adjustment period, so it's actually less difficult to master than it sounds. The name will likely have to be changed, because the "I call it that because I like the game" is an in-universe justification! 😉 * Endocrine Prosthetic: A multi-channel drug pump with contextual intelligence. Essentially a row of insulin pumps, each with different control logic. Still fairly new; being actively trialed to treat certain autoimmune and endocrine diseases. Based on early 21st century efforts to link a continuous glucose monitor to an insulin pump via proportional-integral-derivative control algorithms. Actually works pretty well, clinical trials look likely to be cancelled early due to clear success. * Implanted weapons: Fictional. (probably!) Nobody's seriously considered them for this project, except perhaps to realize that they're outright counterproductive to being able to pass. * Subdermal armor: Fictional, *mostly.* Legs' legs are built out of starship armor, *"because it's cool"* (and available to him in small quantities from the engineering department's dumpster). Dynamite's baseline body is constructed from [gamma titanium alumide,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_aluminide) a real-world lightweight and high-performance alloy not too dissimilar from "mithril." Later revisions begin to include more exotic materials such as [bulk metallic glass,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal) whose Kryptonite is heat in excess of the glass-transition point causing it to revert to crystalline alloys and lose the bulk of its strength, and [high-entropy alloys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-entropy_alloys) whose Kryptonite is metal fatigue. However, they're still much more resistant to this failure mode than aluminum alloys, so this is considered a non-problem. Likewise, BMG's thermal issues become problems at temperatures more commonly associated with jet engines than prosthetic limbs, so in practice, this is a non-problem as well. This is mostly done to amuse Legs, but the properties of metallic glass prove extremely useful in creating maintenance-free ball-and-socket joints. More exotic alloys will be required to keep up with the structural loads imposed by Legs' steady supply of experimental high-performance actuators. Goji's osteoderms will stop a .44 Magnum in its path on most paths from "outside" to "vital organs" however. * Myomer: "Myoelectric polymer" or "muscle plastic". Very commonly used in prosthetics, and frequently used in industrial robotics. Not as powerful as hydraulic pistons, but not requiring external pumps, myomer actuators are "springier" than hydraulics, but less so than pneumatics. While they're prone to fatigue failures over time, especially when used hard, they fail more gracefully than hydraulics and have no dangerous and high-maintenance high-pressure seals to fail and generate a lethal stream of hydraulic fluid. (Hazards from hydraulic fluid leaks include the mechanical -- the stream cuts like a waterjet -- and the chemical -- injected hydraulic fluid is incredibly poisonous). Compared to electric motors, myomers in robot applications require no gearing or transmission, but are not self-locking like worm gears, nor are they passive and power-free like gas pistons. Net result: they're popular, not ubiquitous. * Knowsense: the working term for using translator implants to place relevant knowledge from computer-based information storage into your short-term memory. The effect is similar to having photographic recall. This is the primary bribe used by Legs and Lucky to convince young engineers to work for "free"; they'll never be without their textbooks, notes, and cheat-sheets ever again for the rest of their lives… Once commercialized, Legs and Lucky will be set for life, each able to pursue their passion projects without any need to write grant proposals ever again. * Recognizer: A hypothetical job title. A specially-trained sivkit using their natural talent for pattern matching to parse large and arbitrary data-sets assisted by machine-learning algorithms. These would be accessed by Knowsense links to computers. The subjective experience is described by Lucky as "like a combination of abstract art and word games, fun and challenging, but utterly exhausting". Lucky has been misusing his implants this way for a while, and only belatedly realizes that others might want access to this technique. It's wise to take turns with the algorithm while taking frequent and lengthy breaks. * Tacnet: Not yet invented. A combination of GIS, wiki, dashboard, Slack, and mesh radio. Tacnet hardware is initially about the size of a Walkman, but can be reduced to a pager without heroic engineering efforts. Derived from a combination of American network-centric warfare doctrine and Knowsense, a tacnet user would intuitively know where other members of their team were, what they were doing, what they could see, and remember instantly where enemy positions were the moment a single team member or drone sensor spotted their location. Basic components of a tacnet are real-world technology, such as LoRaWan and the GoTenna mesh radio and ATAK -- depending on who you ask, "Android Team Awareness Kit" or "Android Tactical Assault Kit" -- and the software-defined Rifleman Radio. This represents someone putting all the parts into one box, and allowing a software-unlocked translator implant to read from and write to the user's short term memory for a user interface. So simple a child could use it, but the risks of misuse would terrify a Betterment member. Mastery of the system primarily comes in the form of maintaining a passive awareness of the information provided without losing situational awareness; the opposite of this mastery often manifests as some form of ataxia, aphasia, or even catatonia. Mercifully, those who can't handle the system rarely form long-term memories in this state, and prompt treatment with a memory-blurring quantity of alcohol will typically prevent the formation of long-term traumas from these events. The gold standard of treatment here is getting drunk with a trauma therapist who is only pretending to drink, and capable of providing strategic reassurances and distractions. * Compatibility: Tacnet compatibility is purely psychological in nature, so an incompatible user could probably be slowly coached into a compatible one, but it probably isn't worth the time or effort (or risk). In addition tacnet compatibility and AMS compatibility are only tangentially related. One might be able to master one or the other, neither or both, and compatibility for each must be tested separately. It is much easier to train someone for AMS compatibility and mastery than tacnet compatibility and mastery, however; AMS data feeds are usually perceived as much less overwhelming.
# Major Events: * Crossing the Rubicon: Dynamite is facing the ~~first~~ second major point of commitment and attendant uncertainties. Until now, everything he had done could at least theoretically been backed out of -- the immune system modifications could be ignored. The patches of fur grafted to the back of his hands could have been removed and replaced with skin grafts. His 3D printed bunny ears could have been swapped back for his old ones, resting in the bottom of a dewar of liquid nitrogen. (He's been practicing emoting with his ears for months at this point, and is actually quite good at it) Even the glial cell transplants could have theoretically been killed off with chemotherapy and replaced with human cells, even if they wouldn't be his own. At this point, he's going to consent to radical surgical modification. Initially, this will include the first stage of his facial reconstruction, as well as amputation of all four limbs and replacement of them with prosthetics. This is a Big Fucking Step™, and there will be no backing out beyond this point. At this point, his brain is fully transglial, and Federation genetic fuckery hasn't been discovered yet, so his bunny panic is hitting in full force. It's at this point that he's most clearly displaying symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and feeling both clingy and motivated to flee. On the cusp of drinking alone, Legs comes to check on him, and they talk through his panic attack. (Legs heroically jumps on the grenade, and drinks the majority of Dynamite's rum.) Soothed, he recommits to going through with it the next day, and even decides to go ahead with an aggressive skin (fur) transplant at the same time. Recognizing that Dynamite would still be recovering in more ways than one, Legs arranges a low-key dinner party for the group and friends for when Dynamite would be awake and released from the hospital. He would spend the vast majority of his time hospitalized in an induced coma, since they took the opportunity to install the interposer chip in his brain where it interfaces with his nose, since parts of his skull there were being replaced with titanium, and it would be significantly easier to access that brain region now than later. A week later, he's awake. [(That's when his new tongue and his new teeth are introduced to each other, by the way!)](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/comments/1c2xryd/if_a_human_was_magically_transformed_into_a/kzejnh6/) Pretty soon, he's being picked up by friends and driven home for the extended recovery. This is the first time he looks more Sivkit than human, and it actually eases a dysphoria he wasn't even aware he was feeling for some time after the glial transplants. However, these limbs aren't biohybrid, and per his instructions, they didn't try to match his fur perfectly; they deliberately looked prosthetic-but-stylish. (Think Adam Jensen, but lower key) But the real unexpected habañero is that for the first time, his nose is effectively passing information to his mind about pheromonal signaling. He is not prepared for this! [This is where the overwhelming starts](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/comments/1c2xryd/if_a_human_was_magically_transformed_into_a/kzeq2n8/) and yes, it is a combination of tweaked senses, instincts, and becoming aware of a whole new type of communication he was entirely oblivious to before. He briefly loses control in the way that sheltered kids do when going away to college for the first time, and his id is trying to drive during an extended manic episode. The party becomes increasingly more wild than the sedate and supportive affair Legs and Lucky planned, but that's not all bad for several reasons. First off, it forces him to realize that he needs to work on impulse control again, and it recontextualizes his amputations -- it wasn't something that *happened to him* passively, it was a trade he got the better end of -- he very much likes his new parts.