#cyborgification

Memory Chips (or just Chips) are similar to microSD cards, and are typically about the size of a stamp, and contain up to an exabyte of data. They are uniformly gray, with no ornamentation, and cannot be taken apart once put together. After being installed into a Unit, the Chip runs a one-time program that prevents the Unit from touching the area the Chip was installed into, to prevent data corruption. There are two things that make Chips unique compared to other data storage devices.

The first is that all data contained on a Chip is converted into one of several lossless, unique formats. For example, a Unit's memories of their "life" before being purchased are stored as .mmry_long, and may contain scent, touch, and location data, among other things. Other formats include mmry_real, for things the Unit has actually experienced, mmry_phys for "muscle memory", and .mmry_cmnd for active or past orders the Unit has received.

I’ll try!  For some reason best known to laziness and lack of observation, writers have been saying that cybernetics eats your soul.  Show a person with artificial parts in fiction, even a hand or an eye, and you can frame them as irredeemably evil without any effort. [1]  Reality is, we humans have been replacing bits of ourselves with non-vital parts for millennia and doing so systematically since WWII -- and in no case has it been found to compromise one’s humanity.  Not the million hip and knee implants done every year, not the artificial hearts, not even brain implants to control tremors or seizures.

We live in a world where bionic eyes are real and yet it’s also a world where for months I’m reading and watching reviewers comment that the character of Sekingar must must must be evil because he has an artificial eye.  Because in most stories, of course he would be. Damn.

OPM is a world where the state of art of prosthetics are good enough to not just be considered for pure medical need but also to enhance performance and its impact on people is spectacularly unspectacular.  It shouldn’t be radical that body modification doesn’t change people, but it is because sci-fi writers are so rarely good observers of humanity.  A world where people can choose transhumanity is neither a cyberpunk world nor a utopia.  Most people won’t and those who do have reasons that are personal and meaningful to them and have to trade off on what they want, what they can safely do and what they can afford to do.  Just like everything else.

Cyborgification though, is a bit different.  Strange but true, it’s also based in something that exists here and now -- there are research groups wiring up insects and forcing them to move hither and thither according to the researcher’s whims.

People aren’t beetles or cockroaches, but this outfit at the Neo Heroes has worked out how to just use people as living (more or less) platforms to make them do whatever they want them to.  They bill it as a life-saving technique, but at Metal Bat puts it, there’s no life left in the people who’ve had this done to.

I appreciate so much that ONE consistently treats taking agency away from people as wrong.  Whether that deprivation comes from trying to control what they do socially, via controlling their environment, via drugs, tools, whatever means, it’s all evil.

Oh I got that the Units were people. I was talking about the Factory itself

Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding, then!

The Factory itself isn't mindless, but its goals are motivations are esoteric and not really rooted in anything logical.

It's letting a sizable portion of its customer base get turned into cyborgs. Hell, it's the one doing the cyborging!

It doesn't care about money, and the cash that it does get from sales only goes to maintaining the machinery, and with the remaining money being literally thrown out or mailed back to the banks, it's entirely unknown where it gets the materials to make new Units.

In addition, there are literally no humans out and about inside The Factory, but even if there were, it's both set up in a way that people can't easily navigate, and it's much, much larger on the inside than on the outside, so even if there were other people there, it's practically impossible to find anyone before you're identified as a spare Unit and converted. This also make reconnaissance nearly impossible, as, again, humans who go inside The Factory tend not to come back out.

And all of this is on purpose on The Factory's part. Every aspect of what it is doing is purposefully planned. The only question is, what does it have planned? Is it a hostile takeover? Is it misguided benevolence?

Since both are in the story, there's nevertheless some important differences that have arisen.

Body Modification

Freely-chosen by those who can afford it and really want it

Done for a variety of reasons, not necessarily health-related -- many characters perfectly able-bodied and opt in for career, identity or lifestyle choice reasons.

Does not affect will-power, ambition, or personhood

Outside-in: most modifications focus on relatively mundane artifiial modifications such as joint replacement, improving vision, etc.

Approached like other forms of radical, life-altering surgery: thoughtfully.

Normally limited, with few people going over 30% modification

60% thought to be the survivable limit. People going further are either willing to live with a lot of sacrifice (Webigaza) or are doing something very strange and crazy.

Cyborgification

No one chooses this: imposed on individuals by others.

Destroys will, identity and purpose.

Intact bodies are prized -- a heart isn't necessary, but they really want limbs to be intact and the guys planning to convert Metal Bat waited two whole days for him to recover fully before attempting to cyborgify him.

Effectively inside out: keeps a human body and reduces it to a meat puppet.

With both in the story, it's a refutation of the idea that you can judge a person's humanity by their body composition. At its extremes, someone with extreme body modification may have replaced 95% of their body but be entirely a human, moral being capable of judgement, attachment, suffering, responsibility and all the things that come with being human, while someone who has been cyborgified can be 99% flesh-and-blood and yet have nothing human about them.

Twilight: Carapace decided to build it for me after reading your ask and... I have to say, it’s -gorgeous-. Apparently, I’m meant to go in that transparent bit in its chest.