Chosen Assignments:
- https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/lets-see-some-id/
- https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/splash-the-color/
- https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/back-to-basics-2/
- https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/my-favorite-lyric/
- https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/merging-the-orginial-song-with-a-cover/
What do you get when you get a bisexual mess of a woman in the year 2197, cybernetic augments, and a recently discovered affinity for psychokinetic magic?
A fucking headache, that’s what.
The name’s Alana. I was born in the New Germany sector, and now live in what was once the Pacific Northwest of the now decrepit United States. Nowadays, independent countries like that are obsolete, instead replaced by a worldwide republic known as the Unified Nations of Gaia.
Not many of us humans still live here on Gaia (or Earth, as you 21st Century individuals called it), now that intergalactic travel is commonplace. I’m just one of the ones who couldn’t quite afford it. Instead, we’re kept under surveillance by the power-hungry bureaucrats and corporations that took power a couple decades ago. You’d think it’d become some dystopian nightmare written in old society texts, but it’s not actually that terrible.
Most are required by those above us to get cybernetic implants once we reach the age of 25, under the reasoning of it “extending our lifespans” and “improving us beyond our human limitations”. It’d be pretty swell if they told you about the whole “tracking your location and what you see and hear at all times of the day” thing, but for most, that’s not really much different from the external surveillance everywhere in the major districts. At the very least, they do allow us to customize what kinds of modifications we get, although most true “superhuman” upgrades cost far too much for anyone but the elite to access. I personally went with improved neural abilities and senses via a special headset.
As for my personal life, I currently own a little house near a lake far away from the hustle and bustle of any districts and spend most of my days crafting any kind of tech for any interested party. I’m not a big people person, so I don’t really question what they ask of me or what they’re using it for as long as they pay me and leave. I have admittedly been developing feelings for a certain someone, however; Merete, a beautiful lady with a biomechanical arm who frequents my shop for new tech and repairs. She exudes the energy of someone who knows that they’re gorgeous and powerful and owns it, and yet you can tell she has a soft side to her under her down-to-earth and rigid exterior. I just hope one day she can notice my feelings so me and her can connect as partners in something other than business.
It’s a simple life, but I enjoy it well enough. Well, at least, I DID enjoy it until all of it was thrown to hell a couple days back.
About a week after getting my enhancements, I was working on my bots as I tend to do when I heard a massive crash come from outside. When I went outside, I saw a greenish smoke coming from about a quarter mile away. My gut was telling me to stay far away from it and report it to the authorities, but something in me was refusing to let me, so against my better judgement, I went to investigate.
Upon arriving, I found a pretty sizable crater, astronomically larger than the singular green gemstone sitting squarely in the center of it. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I decided to take it. Perhaps it could be of use in one of my machines, and if not, I’m sure I could sell if for a fancy sum when I next take a visit to one of the market districts near me.
Upon grabbing it, however, it started glowing a magnificent green, and before I could drop it, it flew up to my head and embedded itself in the neural headpiece that I mentioned before. The pain was tremendous, and if not for said headpiece, I’m sure that I would not have lived the experience. When my head finally stopped hurting enough for me to think, I felt a weird kind of clarity in my mind, like I was thinking so much more than before and for myself alone.
I went home shortly after to try and sleep it off, but by the time I got back, there were a pair of officers sitting outside my home, one tall and lanky and the other short and with an impressive mustache. I asked them why they were here, but then something in my head told me to move immediately. Startled, I did so, and barely dodged an electroshot they fired from their pulse pistols. The short one tackled me to the ground, and as I attempted to wrestle out of their grasp, I felt some feeling of energy wash over me as they were blown backwards.
The tall one looked shocked at his much bulkier partner being launched, but before he could do anything about it, he suddenly fell over unconscious. Behind the two collapsed officers stood Merete, having just swung at the tall one and with a grim expression on her face. Without time for me to recuperate, she rushed me inside and explained what she knew of what was happening.
Apparently, the gemstone planted into my headpiece is the most recent of several stones which have fallen from the sky. Merete reveals that she has a similar stone to mine, only red instead of green and imprinted on the hand of her robotic arm, and states that they appear to disconnect the individual from the larger surveillance system as well as improving the functions of the tech it imprints on. For her, that means that her physical strength is massively enhanced, and as for me, it grants me the ability to mentally will things to move in the physical world. She says it’s a magic called psychokinesis, and that we could further develop our magic if we trained with it, and while normally I’m a firm believer against the existence of such nonscientific ideas, it’s hard to argue with what I’ve just experienced.
It’s been roughly a week since that incident, and things have only gotten more chaotic as things go. Me and Merete have been on the run from the law, as they’ve appeared to want to detain us for our unwilling powers. We’ve also picked up a man named Ike along our travels, who appears to have gained incredible speed through the blue gem imprinted on his mechanical legs. We’ve experimented with our powers a bit, and I’ve started being able to lift things from afar. Nothing super heavy or far, but it’s something.
Oftentimes, I look at what I’ve become and wonder if I’m even still the same woman I was only about a month ago. I’ve abandoned my home and work to go on the run, I have both cybernetic and mystical augments, and I don’t even know what our ultimate goal with all of this is. All I know is that nothing is the same, and that I can’t stop now that I’ve gone this far.
So yeah. That’s my story. Just a country bumpkin who’s found herself a fugitive, cyborg, psychic, and hopelessly in love. Certainly not what I expected for my birthday, but you know how life is, it never is quite what you predict. Tomorrow morning, we’re heading out to try and seek information on our predicament from the region’s central district. Wish us luck, and this has been Alana, signing off.
And that was my final story for this class, hope it wasn’t too shabby. I’ve learned a lot over the course of this class, and while it’s been a massive headache and I’m not sure I’ll end up using most of these techniques in my future career, I’m still glad I ended up taking this. I Definitely feel that audio was the biggest hurdle for me to understand initially, but once I got the hang of it, I actually found video to be the hardest and most time consuming.
I’ll be honest, I don’t think I could ever going into this field or teaching a class like this. There’s just so much to consider in terms of not only the story you’re telling, but how you’re going about it, and I just don’t think I’m equipped for all of that. If I did theoretically take over the class, however, I feel like I’d probably send out a lot more emails. Not that we weren’t supplied information and feedback, anything but that, but I know myself well enough to know that I’d end up worrying a ton about keeping track of my students and their progress.
As for my favorite project, definitely the Lyric Video I did last week. Not only is it something that I put a lot of time into, and thus feel proud of the product for, but I felt like I contributed to the internet as a whole since I couldn’t find anyone else who made the same video for that song.
I don’t really have much else to add, so I wish you a good summer and good luck with your future classes!