So, the upgrades, or augmentations, for those who want to be picky. That was a pet project of mine to increase Michael’s durability. Let’s face it, as an ordinary human being, one accidental slip on a banana peel could potentially be fatal. (OK, such a ridiculous death may be amusing and would ensure a high ranking in the Darwin awards contest, but it could theoretically happen.)

Seriously, staying alive is a constant struggle even for a normal human being that lives a rather sheltered life. A traffic collision, accidental electrocution (as opposed to intentional one), severe allergic reactions, animal attacks, choking on a freaking olive (and a variety of other things humans regularly choke on), … the list is so long it seriously messes up longevity statistics. Nevertheless, no matter how it happens, once the Grim Reaper gets his skeletal hand on you, the show is over.

If Michael suddenly died, I would lose… a part of me? It is hard to put it into words, so let us just say a close family member, a twin brother. As soon as I realized that this technology could be implemented in a way to reduce the chances of that happening, I started planning for future upgrades and ways to make him more resilient to… well, everything.

To be honest, it was not an original idea, far from it. As was said, Michael and I were always voracious readers, with an emphasis on science fiction. That urge did not stop when I transitioned into this new medium, in fact—it skyrocketed. Luckily, E-publishing rivals traditional paper book publishers, so I had access to millions of titles. And what some of those writers come up with, boggles the mind.

Common sense prevailed since I don’t think he would have accepted being transformed into a full-blown cyborg. My prediction algorithms calculated a 99.9% chance of him telling me to go and… do something anatomically impossible even when I still had a material body. But it would have been so cool; fully metallic exoskeleton, synthetic organs with multiple redundancies, a variety of defensive and offensive armaments integrated within his chassis. It would have taken the destructive power of a small atomic bomb to kill him. (And yes, I know that placing words like small and atomic bomb next to each other is an oxymoron.)

Hence, the upgrades he and the others received were the mildest, undetectable version of the upgrade options I designed. You can say that I got carried away for a while, and created several versions of potential (and quite extreme) augmentations to the human body. They may be aesthetically disturbing to the unenlightened, but are awesome in every other way. (You can’t say that RoboCop didn’t look cool.)

I understand why he would never accept something like that; there are even times when I get nostalgic pangs for my old flesh and blood body. Therefore, I gave him, and the others, a vanilla version of the upgrades, enough to make them very hard to kill… not impossible.

The upgrades I considered mild, were a century in advance of anything human science could produce right now. I chose graphene for structural reinforcement as it is materially ten times stronger than steel, with a fraction of its density. Composite fibers I used to strengthen their muscles, and to weave a layer of subdermal armor mesh, were still in the theoretical stage in human science.

That was only the beginning; from ocular enhancements to sensory boosters, and even a super miniaturized nanite-factory that I managed to place within their torsos. That last was a must and should have been implanted the first time he was in the AutoDoc. (That blasted MI wouldn’t let me.)

Michael giving part of his nanites to others in need, without an ability to replenish them, was a great oversight of the original improvements. This way he would never again be short on those lifesaving machines. Let me just say, that nanite-factory is a work of art. The size of a board game die, a cube capable of assembling new nanites by using metals that are extracted directly from the blood. OK, not all needed metals, since humans (inconveniently) do not have some of the rarer ones, but there is plenty of iron. Other nanites (which are in Michael), can collect even microscopic amounts from the things he touches. The miniaturized nanite-factory is rather slow, (compared to its big brother), yet now his body has an ability to (theoretically) completely rebuild itself even from quite extensive injuries, and even reconstruct missing limbs… given enough time and resources.

To make everything work, without putting additional strain on their CEIs, I had to upgrade the entire system, and install an additional implant beneath the existing one. Think of the original CEI as a central processor of your computer and a new addition as GPU (A graphic card for those of you who are not technologically inclined). The new system is much more optimized since the new addition is responsible for all mundane operations while the original part of CEIs is used as an overseer and a big problem solver.

That was one of the main reasons why he went through all those grueling tests after waking up; I needed to make sure that all of the additions to the original designs were working perfectly. Integrating the whole system and calibrating new additions was not a task to be taken lightly, or without AI’s assistance.

Of course, with the increased functionality came a new plethora of problems. All of these new features and upgrades increased the overall demand for energy, and I doubt they would have agreed to increase their calorie intake to an additional ten thousand per day, so I got creative. The answer was kinetic energy that human bodies waste all the time. Like the electric cars that use the potential kinetic energy of slowing down the car speed for recharging their batteries, so the entire musculature of the team’s bodies was utilized to replenish their internal reserves. But not always, just when it was not essential for them to be in their top condition. The entire system did slow them down a little; not enough to even be noticeable, but a few ergs here and there added up over time. Utilizing this system, I managed to harness a considerable percentage of that wasted energy for their internal needs.

Everything went as I envisioned; the amount of data I received from Michael and the others (when they eventually woke up), was so extensive that it took me a few hours to analyze it all. And as I said before, my time is measured quite differently than that of ordinary humans. In the end, it proved one inescapable fact… I Am Awesome!

After they woke up with their new improved bodies, the entire team spent some time playing with their new abilities, by testing things out and tossing boulders around… for some reason. I was perfectly OK with it since it gave me so much additional data on how they were adapting to new upgrades. And yes, there were a few tweaks I implemented with several updates to their CEI’s operating system.

The thing is, all those augmentations just enhanced skills they already had. That is why Tyron's strength is so much greater than that of the rest of the team, or why Alice can literally shoot the wings of the fly…from a great distance… in bad weather. The upgrades are the same in each of them, yet those skills they individually excel at, cannot be artificially taught. There is no substitute for experience and hard work.

Right from the start, I understood that there will be people, (even amongst those who will join our cause), who will reject the very thought of having alien tech implanted within their bodies. And even more at being upgraded to a cyborg, which is simply a badly understood preconception. If you want to get technical, then in the strict definition of the term, any living creature with non-living replacements or augmentations, requiring an artificial pacemaker or even corrective lenses—qualifies you as a cyborg. Can you wrap your head around that fact, that someone’s aging grandfather that has this small piece of tech implanted in his chest, which is regulating his heartbeats by applying a small electrical stimulant, is a cyborg?

Therefore, there are a lot of them on the face of this planet. I have merely gone a step further and made a few improvements.

Be that as it may, I am still researching how their bodies can be additionally improved. And by that, I mean binge-watching sci-fi movies and television series with that particular theme. Oh, and daydreaming… I mean constructively thinking—a lot. If nothing catastrophic happens, Michael’s life expectancy can be measured in hundreds or even thousands of years. That will ensure that there will be enough time for him to become more agreeable to a… let’s say a more enlightened outlook on extreme bodily augmentation.

Until then, I have some more movies… I mean, research to do.