Betty’s my cyber. I’m her bio. We’re a team. We retired after the war, and now we do this. A little trading, a little smuggling, a little hunting, a little running. A little studying. The universe was so simple then. They wanted us dead or slaves. We disagreed. Now we find a universe far more wonderful than we ever imagined. And far more terrifying to some if they knew. We like it.
The cybers won the war for us. Our partnerships, we have the reaction times of a cybernetic intelligence with the pure randomness of a biological intelligence. No computer can predict us, and no flesh can react to us. Combat is an eye-blink’s dance between a laser and a missile head with a partner who knows when to lead and when to follow. It’s a real rush.
The cybers choose us you know. After the screening, they examine us, decide if they want to be what we need. If they want to be that, they make the change. They become our one perfect partner, the brother or sister who will stand beside us in war and peace, who will fly the ships around us, who will never betray us. They complete us.
You know we go through a lot of testing before we get a cyber. Comprehensive personality screening they call it. They need to know what makes us tick. What we follow on instinct, our brightest aspirations, or darkest fantasies, what will keep us fighting when outnumbered twenty to one with no relief in sight. Only one in ten of us who get tested end up getting chosen by a cyber.
It comes to mind I been talking about me, myself, and I a whole lot. I suppose that’s what these journals are for, so our stories aren’t forgotten. The real ones. My story would have been over a long time ago if I hadn’t met my partner though. She’s a cyber. She’s the air I breathe, the bulkheads around me, the best partner and closest friend I’ve ever had. Just like they planned it.