h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*The Northwest Tower's basement is set up like all of the tower basements in CLI: as a tribute to the early days of mad science. Jacob's Ladders cover the walls, outdated computers and generators the size of cars whir with some unknown purpose, and a classic medicine table, complete with straps and attachable skull cap adjuster, sits in the center of the room. Affy unlocks the doors from above, and wanders down the stairs whistling "Puttin' On The Ritz" to himself. He examines a particularly crumbly section of the stone wall, and heads over to one of the few relatively new pieces of equipment, from which he picks up a microphone*

Ampton! Ampton, schedule some maintenance and beautification droids to come to the northwest tower's Classic Lab basement and work on the south wall just at the foot of the staircase. The stone's so crumbly that I can see the reinforced titanium wall of the modern lab next door, the geothermal imaging lab. Oh, and send a message to Sol in the Atelier that I'm ready, let her know where the lab is.

*Affy turns off the microphone, walks over to a book shelf, and peruses the titles. After a few moments he tilts a book marked "Cybernetics," and steps back. Ten seconds later the book case slides to the side as what appears to be a walk-in closet lowers itself into position, with several racks of cybernetic gear folding out*

Man. That Wonka sure knows how to build his elevators....but I know how to make a Swiss Army Knife out of it. I need to get those alien candies to him, he installed this over a month ago....

[Lentilla walks into the room. She spies the glass elevator, and her first thought is to press her mouth against it, inflating her cheeks amusingly. This leaves a greasy faceprint on the glass, and she looks at it in disgust, wiping it away with the bottom of her shirt. She then leaves, muttering something about needing to wash her face.]

Glass? Hmm....I guess it has to be glass now. Stupid continuity.

Still, I need to teach the Atelier more about the neovernian art scheme that CLI tries to adhere to....that'd be fun.

*Sol enters, looking a bit... distracted and a bit... flustered with... hair sticking up at odd angles and a distinct showing of the odd white hair.*

Sorry, Affy, I got lost on my way here. Wow. You got some really... interesting nooks and cranny's around, haven't you... With some really... interesting occupants...

Why yes, yes we do. I'm thinking of making that part of the tour groups. What do you think?

Well, I think that it might be a good idea to get them to sign some kind of disclaimer first. Check that none of them have weak hearts, sort of thing, but otherwise, yeah. Should be a winner.

A gift shop could make a packet too. Tough I'm not sure how you could convince the manufacturers that what they would be shaping is feasible...

Hey Lentilla! What're you in for? Just like being at the hairdresser's, this.

Oh, she just dropped in to examine my elevator, based on designs originally dreamed up by Wonka, last of the classic mad scientists. I'll be making it so that it's not glass in the future, though.

Speaking of the elevator, though, what cybernetic upgrades could I interest you in today? Virtually any type of enhancement is available for any attribute. Strength, speed, coordination, stamina, sense boosting....we could even do weaponry, though that's considered strange in most circles.

*As he speaks he wanders into the closet picking up various different pieces of equipment. He picks up an arm, notes that it's labelled "Puzzle Box", and quickly puts it back down*

Better steer clear of Puzzle Box stuff....but anyway, what were you thinking of?

You'd have to do some talking to get Willie Wonka to design you anything besides a *glass* elevator. He's weird that way. The glass toilet wasn't one of his great successes, but people liked the glass houses. Although it made it hard to get stoned...

Me? I'd love it if I could get a Thinking Cap™ made for me. Some days I'm smarter than others, so I'd like a backup plan in case the neurons aren't firing as quickly as they should be. I'd like the Cap to look like a metal colander with a couple of television antennae poking out of it. You know, so it'll look authentic.

Ah, but Wonka won't be changing this elevator from a glass one into one more fitting for CLI. I can do it. If I can reverse engineer an alien UFO that lands on my property, then I can change a glass elevator.

Now, Lentilla, as for your thinking cap, that's not technically cybernetics. I can do it, but it's actually clothing gadgetry, much like eyeglasses that can see sound waves, or electric blankets. I can do it, but it'll take longer with what I have down here right now.

Now, while it breaks certain Galactic peace treaties for me to create a helmet that can actually increase intelligence, there's nothing wrong with a device that can help to "clear the head" and make sure that all neurons are firing as effectively as they possibly can.

*Pulls out a tape measure and quickly measures Lentilla's head*

Not too hard to make, but custom designing a skull cap can be tricky...

*Perches brightly on the edhe of something* What's wrong with glass?

Strength, speed, stamina, co-ordination. Yes please. Basically the sort of body which will withstand a direct strike from the illness and injury monsters.

*Frowns* But pretty, right? I don't want to look like a tank.

Sense enhancement. Hmm. Twenty-twenty eyesight would be good, but I think I'd rather keep my own nose and ears. I can already hear a whisper about going round the bike sheds for a smoke from twenty paces, so I think that's sufficient, and I don't think being able to fine tune precisely what pollution I'm sucking up would be much of a bonus.

Oh, I know. Could I have a sort of telescopic attachment fitted? A zoom lens style of thing?

*Considers the idea of weapons wistfully, but regretfully decides that having blades which slide out of your knuckles probably would be considered bad form.*

Direct strike to illness is easy. That's just a matter of flooding your body with nanites capable of acting like white blood cells. Won't be effective against unknown diseases, but common colds and fevers won't stand a chance for more than about twenty minutes, and even that would surprise me as normally the disease would be gone before symptoms could show up.

Injury is another matter. Short of transfering your brain into a robot body, I can't think of any way to get rid of injury completely. Now, I could replace many bones with a surprisingly lightweight and durable metal structure, and that could minimize injuries significantly. And the nanites could be programmed to help speed up the body's self-repair functions. All of that would probably permit you to survive getting hit by a car going forty miles an hour with little more than mild bruising and minor cuts which could heal themselves pretty efficiently. It'd hurt like crazy for a few minutes, but the car would be more damaged than you in the end.

As for pretty, no concerns there. Most of these changes can be done internally, and external changes can be custom fit to look however you'd like.

*Rummages through some boxes, and pulls out a box marked "telescopic eyes"*

And these I already have designed.

All that remains is the general request for strength, speed, stamina, and co-ordination. That's easily accomplished, I just need to know how much of those you'd like, and where you'd like it. I could do anything from a 100% muscle reformation, down to just a little more strength to help opening pickle jars. But the more you change, the harder it'll be to look natural. So if you don't mind an obviously metallic arm, then there's any number of things I could do.

Also, we could custom fit you to excell in any number of physical activities. Running, rock climbing, piano playing, anything at all. So, what and where should be the starting point?

Aha. Definitely the nanites. I've always wanted some. I shall call them the Swarm. The bones thing sounds like a good idea and I think I'll take your adive and stop at that and the nanites.

*Gazes in awa at the telescopic eyes* Nice hazel models, right? I couldn't go blue at my age.

Right. Rather not do the metal arm thing if at all possible. But I'm already pretty good at opening pickle jars - you bang them on the wall first. So I think we could be a little more ambitious there...

How to describe it? Can I pick a fly out of the air? I've always thought that would be a nifty party trick. And I'd love it if I could get from one end of the room to the other faster than the naked eye. This would definitely boost my ability to catch recalitrant teenagers in the act of putting chewing gum on my chair. Something like that. The ability to pick up a car and hurl it away would also come in handy in the city. I'm guessing that this would be the full muscle jacket here, but if it requires more than that, I'll settle for less.

Custom fitted for... hmmm... tricky... I'll have to think about that...

*Takes the eyes, opens a panel in the back of them, and flips some switches. As he closes the panels they fade to hazel. He also pulls out a bottle of Nanite Compound 7, and fills a syringe with the liquid*

Okay, they eyes and nanites will be easiest. The nanites are dissolved into this liquid, which goes directly into the blood stream. It'll take them a while before they completely move through your system, so try not to run headlong into a car for at least a couple of days (in fact, don't do that at all. Protection from brain injury is still hard to manage). If you can get on the table here, then we can do those while you think more about the other things.

As for everything else...snatching a fly out of the air is very simple. You're probably capable of doing it already, you're just not practiced. To fine-tune your arm for doing something like that, though, would require a little bit of hand-eye coordination improvement. The world might seem like it's going in slow-motion for a few hours after such an upgrade occurs, but it'd settle down to a reasonable intake level once your brain adjusts (not unlike how your brain receives optical input upside down, and flips it over for your benefit).

Getting across the room faster than the naked eye is trickier. I can do this myself without cybernetics, but that's because I rely on theatrics and only feel safe with a wall behind me. To literally move faster than the eye can see would require significant internal muscular alteration for nearly your entire body, not to mention further eye-coordination upgrades so that you can handle being able to move that fast. Fortunately you were already okay with the massive bone transplant, otherwise this wouldn't be possible.

And picking up a car and hurling it...depends on which cars, and how far you need to hurl it. Most people are actually capable of lifting up an end of a car and shifting where it points by a few feet, they just don't practice lifting enough to do it. But actually picking up an entire car over your head and tossing it to the other side of the street would take a good deal of work, more for being able to acheive the necessary balance than anything else.

At this stage, your body would be nearly 87% robotic if we count the nanites. I should probably warn you that while you can always upgrade cybernetics to be an improvement on what was there before, you can't exercise cybernetics on your own to make them naturally stronger. Oh, and you'll be subject to a form of weapon that you were previously able to live your life without worrying about, the Electro-Magnetic Pulse. An EMP goes off in your vacinity, you won't be able to move for at least half an hour, and the nanites might need replacing entirely.

So yeah....what you're suggesting is on the absolute limit of what I can do without using external cybernetics visible for anyone. You'd look incredibly muscular, as your muscles and bones would both need to increase in size, but there'd be nothing external.

*Hops up on table, closes eyes and thinks of England.*

*Pops open eyes again.*

Incredibly muscular, you say? Hmmm. Perhaps we could just limit it to the fly thing? Improved hand eye co-ordination? Not sure I really need to pick up cars and I could live without the speed thing.

Tap dancing. Could you program me for tap dancing? I've always thought tap dancing looked pretty cool, but I... well, lets face it, can't be bothered to learn from scratch. It's a mild yen rather than a get yourself down to evening classes now sort of idea. But while I'm here...

Tap dancing is another difficulty. That goes beyond hand-eye coordination, but it's the same type of concept.

I can give you the ability to tap-dance marvelously, but actually teaching how to tap dance isn't something I could do without a direct data port to your brain. Which is possible, but a different level of cybernetics that not everyone's comfortable with.

Ah. So better to choose something I can already do than to choose something I can't. Hmmm. Hmmm. Deary me. I'm not sure I have any skills.

Right, so we are up to the nanites and the eye and the bones and the hand eye thing. Being a bit conservative here, aren't I? I shall have to think.

*Lies back again and closes eyes again*

*Pops eyes open again and sits up. Again*

Hair. Can you give me hair that will change colour when I want it to and restyle itself? Not sure what the functional value of that would be, but it sounds cool. It could do with being a tad thicker too, if at all possible.

Um...cybernetic hair tends to feel itchy to the scalp, and wiry to the hand. It could do all that easily, but it might not always feel comfortable.

As for conservative, yes we are. Cybernetics are normally reserved for medical emergencies, cheating athletes, or time/space warlords who don't care about their humanity. To be totally honest, I've never done...um, "preemptive" cybernetics. Let's call it that for now.

Anyway, it's difficult to undo cybernetics sometimes. We can flash freeze any removed body parts indefinitely in case we need to go back, and if something happens to those we can clone them back from your remaining DNA. But it's always easier to add cybernetics than remove them.

For instance, it's easy to upgrade your "normal" eyes for robotic ones. But with time, your brain gets used to the ease of the robotic ones, and switching back actually takes a concentrated effort, and time.

Anyway, these changes shouldn't be too tough to undo if you ever want to undo them. It may come as a shock when doors are a little harder to open later on, but nothing that a day or so of practice couldn't handle.

Now, as for hair...I can do it, and I can try to experiment with it to make it act like that. I could also dabble with some genetics to make it more realistic feeling with the same effect, but I've gotten a few weird experiences when dealing with genetics and hair...remind me to tell you about "Tangela" some time.

D'you know, I'm actually quite relieved to hear that you aren't gagging to rebuild me. How odd. Obviously I'm not going to be a candidate for cosmetic surgery any time soon.

Tell you what. We'll just stick with what we've got planned, and you tell me about Tangela.

*Steps behind a convenient lead shielding just as an X-ray photograph is snapped, and sent to the computers to begin constructing the metallic bones*

Tangela was the result of an experimental shampoo. CLI doesn't do cosmetics normally, but we figured hey, shampoo can't hurt. Then we went crazy, as we are wont to do.

We decided to make the absolute *best*, and longest-lasting shampoo when it comes to combatting oily hair. Our first test subject, a girl named Angela, was a prime candidate as she had an unusual chemical-build up within her hair. Nothing shocking, but still vastly different from most. Who knows why. Despite her excessively oily hair, we were sure that our product would work for up to a period of a week with just one washing and rinsing.

Our experimental shampoo reacted so strangely that her hair came to life, managed to reach into the skull and tap into Angela's brain. Christening itself "Tangella," the hair went on a crazy conquest to figure out just what conditions caused its creation, and how to go about making others like it.

Fortunately, it took her about a week to figure out just what caused it, and even though we couldn't contain Tangella, time proved to be on our side. The shampoo's effectiveness wore off, and Angela went back to normal. And normal she remained, providing that she never again used that brand of shampoo.

Which is why CLI's only brand of shampoo is available through prescription only.

Well, now, my word... Perhaps I'd better not christen the nanites after all...