This is...it's green?

[Jane Shepard chose Synthesis instead of Control. How badly it fucked up or made your life more awesome?]


"Hey...do you want to know what I'm thinking?"

"You just want to lure me into bed again, don't you Juhani?"

"Uh, yes. But this time I have a good reason."

Veneta set down the book she was reading. Honest book made from paper. It was soooo slow to read now, when she could just bring up a datapad or omni-tool and zip up a whole file in seconds. But this? She had to read with her eyes! Spirits!

"Oh? And what would that be?" She tried to probe into his mind, but Juhani had learned to block off her intrusions by now. Downside of being a living machine, you had to learn to deal with security intrusions of a whole new kind, like people trying to read your thoughts without permission.

"You know ever since the whole Conversion happened, we've gotten lot more control over our own bodies?"

"I swear if this is some sick scat humour-"

"Oh please you know I'm better than that. Anyways, since that...I've been reading on some medical books about cross-chiralities and so on..." Juhani took her claws in his hand. "Would you like to try how a human-turian baby looks like?"

"...sure. Let's do it."

"Well... never thought I would screw an entire civilization, especially not literally"

The krogan stalked in a quarter circle to the husk's position, trying to pull the husks' attention elsewhere, before a glaring light began to enter his vision. He pushed it out as his mind, rationalizing it as a random dreadnought shot passing over the Citadel arm. He rose to his full height and charged at the Praetorians with a scream, firing his Paladin in one hand and his sword ready to cut through them in the other.

Hope I get close enough to at least use the sword. The krogan's apparent last words were simple enough.

And then that's when the universe stopped making sense. The krogan's vision was blinded with a blue flash that seemed to drag on for hours. The krogan tripped and fell a mere 10 meters from the husk's location.

Damn, guess I didn't make it.

And then, the wave ceased. He was still alive, but something was off. He looked up as his vision began to focus and saw the praetorians floating about 5 feet in front of him. The krogan rose to his knees to the sight, and believed he was slowly growing insane, because the praetorians were talking in a strange monotone that gave the feeling that it was happening more in your thoughts than it was real.

"It would appear that we are now allies krogan." a pregnant pause occured as the other praetorian spoke up. "Yes, the weapon has fired and somehow bonded organic matter to our machinery and conversely to you krogan." It was only then that the krogan looked down at himself and saw a flowing sea of green circuitry printed on his scaly exterior along with more complicated machinery now visible inside some of his larger wounds.

This is amazing. The reaper's technology, our organic parts, merged into a perfect being. There would be peace throughout the galaxy, limitless possibilities...

"Care for a card game while we wait for the others to catch themselves?" the krogan asked in the silent communication of the synthetics. The praetorians looked to each other in what looked to be confusion.

"Eh, what the hell."

"So this is what unfiltered air is like."

Kenec tapped the side of his face, for once without his helmet. His eyes glew green instead of white, and several lines of synthetic material ran down his face. His entire body, actually. For once, he could actually feel the sun on his skin, the feel of the wind through his hair, and even enjoy the fact that quarians weren't quite so hated anymore.

And yet, he still wasn't quite happy about what had happened. Now he could feel the memories of others in him, there was a banshee running a hot dog stand, and he was sitting on a park bench next to a Marauder.

"Meh. Smells pretty bad."

The marauder made several mechanical whirs and beeps.

"Huh. That's a good point, I guess. What's your name anyway?"

"Brrrk bzbzbrk brrkz zwwwwwwwrzzzzz."

"Oh, right. Sorry, hard to sort through all of these shared thoughts and whatnot."

At least he now knew no matter how bad he fucked up, there was someone who'd done something worse. And he could hear them all at once.

In his secret fantasies he'd always imagined a world like this. A world of thought, without the clumsy interfaces of talons on keyboards, feet stumbling, hands sweating, everyone laughing at the scrawny little runt. Now everyone was half computer, and those who'd gotten as close as they could before the change were the new masters of their environment.

So. Chieftain Vindi had been having issues with a gangster in the neighbouring ward. C-Sec had no evidence on the guy. All right then....too bad about that brain hemmorhage. Someday the law would find a way to prove someone's cyberware had been hacked, told to overload their organic components, but until that day, they were living in the wild frontier and Raelon Pasharan was the law in these here parts.

He made a note to upgrade the Denakot clan's personal defenses.

First, though, it was time to check in on Quatra Quatri. Raelon paused, not wanting to bully her--he remembered far too well how it had felt to be on the receiving end of bullying, in a world of flesh and bone--but she was starting to test her limits. She needed to know that someone was keeping an eye on her. He pinged her system and then let her go.

In the hospital, a nurse came to administer another painkiller shot to the sad pile of meat and circuitry that lay in a bed in the burn ward. Raelon cursed. Damned painkillers, they always messed with his effectiveness and he'd already disconnected most of his synthesis connections anyway--checking in every hour to see how the meat was doing was enough for him.

Well, that put an end to his useful work time for a while, so...

Hey there handsome.

And this, perhaps, was the best perk of all.

His lover had a great-looking avatar and a dirty mind. It was possible the man's avatar was as false as Raelon's own, but Raelon doubted it. The man was far too much of a net noob to be able to craft an avatar that detailed by himself.

How, his lover gasped as the interface began, can you make me feel this way? We're not even really touching, you know, in real life, but it's better....better than anyone I've ever been with face to face.

This, of course, was because cybersex was an art, and when one already knew exactly what circuits were connected to what brain pathways, he could play with them shamelessly, giving his partner experiences he hadn't even dared to imagine.

The nurse was bewildered when the poor, misshapen mouth of the burn victim split into what was very obviously the devil's own grin.

Some of us are just that good with computers, Raelon's avatar said.

"HAW. HAW. HAW. HAW. HAW."

He can hear them think.

That's the strangest part. He can hear them think, a hundred different minds, chittering and talking and thinking in choir. They're excited, fascinated, marvelling at... at his own mind, singular in identity, as alien to them as they are to his, and just as wonderful.

Alien. Wonderful. Beautiful. There the platform stands, lit from within by an eerie green light, the head so strange, the hands and feet so familiar, and the legs... The word 'gazelle' flits through his mind, bringing with it the concept of an animal he had never seen, and the qualities associated with it.

They hear it, and he feels them take it for a compliment, and he realizes he meant it as one.

He smiles, and, gently, she removes his faceplate.

"FUCK YES I AM THE BEST HACKER EVER"

-End-

The easiest thing to adapt to was actually the rush of data, and the HUD actually... Well, TECHNICALLY that was something she had added in to herself (Wow, adding an app to yourself was perhaps one of the dirtiest ways she could have phrased it).

Either way, Linya found that not long after the... She didn't even know how to describe it, other than what the extranet said.

Either way, Linya found some of the REAL joys of being part synthetic, as she stabbed her daggers into the massive reptilian creature beneath her. She twisted, sending a pulse of electrical power, actually FEELING the thrum of power through her body. She jumped away, twirling in the air and landing gracefully.

Best... GoF Expansion... EVER!

ERROR 404, ACTION "HUG" NOT FOUND

For a full ten seconds, Linya was motionless, trying to process.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO error vocal threshold exceeded."

Pain.

It shocks me into focus, a sudden awakening from what feels like a long sleep. My entire body cries out in pain and I do not know why. Focusing on the cause of the pain, I mentally scan my body, testing each part to see if it hurts. However, as I focus, the pain in each part subsides. An unspoken command to my arm, a touch of willpower, is all that is needed for it to cease hurting.

I realize that I have complete control over my entire body. After the pain is repressed, I can feel other senses. I hear the sound of rustling leaves to my left, and ocean waves in the distance to my right. I know that I am lying on my back, and the surface I rest on is not hard, but grainy. Sand, perhaps. The warmth of a nearby star bathes me in light. I also feel dazed, as I would have after a night drinking. There is also someone sitting beside my head, but whatever the creature is, I can sense that it means me no harm.

I must have been asleep for some time. I can recall hazy images, dreams, or memories. I can recall the sound of screaming, of shots fired. The face of a crying human clutching her infant child. But I do not know where these events took place. If they even occurred at all. Some of my recollections would have been too traumatizing for me to have ever forgotten where they happened, or why.

I open my eyes, and I am instantly flooded with visual information. I find that I possess a depth of vision beyond any range I normally had, and I can see in much greater detail. I imagine that this must be how seeing feels like after corrective optic surgery. I confirm my previous assumptions that I am lying on dry, grainy sand. I turn to my left, and I see green leaves. Curiously, their visual texture is that of circuitry. I wonder if they are synthetic leaves, but if they are, then other than the circuitry they appear to be very much natural. To the north, a direction I discern instinctively, and nine hundred meters away, a distance I also discern without trouble, lies the ocean, its waves constantly lapping against the shore. Beyond it, the skyscrapers and large buildings of a city are precariously placed on the horizon, beside a looming mountain range. Reaper dreadnoughts patrol its streets.

I stand up in order to better examine the being sitting beside me, and I am surprised to see a Banshee resting in the sand. I recoil at the sight, briefly terrified of her from the whispered stories of these asari husks biotically drawing hapless soldiers straight to her fatal claws. This one, however, makes no such attempt to disembowel me. She stares at me with glowing green eyes unlike any I recall or have ever dreamed of seeing, and I can tell the peace in those eyes, the contentment. Her body flashes with bright green circuitry, and I pause to wonder what could have afflicted this Reaper minion with such pacifism.

I then examine myself, and if seeing a calmed Banshee terrified me, then I do not know what word to attribute to the feeling I felt when I discovered metal piercing my insides, weaved in amongst my flesh. My own skeleton, encased in a copper-like metal, hangs out bare and attached to it, circling around my body, are several rubbery tubes. My hands are metal claws, and my legs, hollowed out, are muscle covered in steel. And all of it, strangely, is glowing green with fine circuitry.

I am a Reaper minion. I am a Marauder. And yet, I am conscious and free-willed. Those images of the crying human, the gunfire, the sensation of a directive to carry out. I was there. I terrorized my own people.

I was unsure how to feel. The Banshee turned away from me to watch the ocean, but I could sense her calmness, a reassuring aura. This was a new age, a new beginning. I remain standing, but join the Banshee in watching the coastline, taking the time to make sense of everything that has happened. Something must have given us our free will back. Did the Alliance defeat the Reapers? Or did something else bring us and them together?

Hours pass. Movement in the distance draws my attention. A female human approaches, one that is not a Reaper minion. Like the Banshee, though, she too has glowing green eyes, and circuitry flashing across her skin in waves. A lock of her long hair is dyed green, contrasting against her natural auburn hair color. She is approaching us, and is intent on us. I sense that her intentions are not entirely peaceful, but I am confident in my ability to defend myself if necessary.

She crosses the nine hundred meters to stand before me, her omnitool clearly displayed on her left arm. "So good of you to wait up for me," she says coyly, as if playing a game with the pair of us. "It saves me the trouble of cleaning up your kind."

The Banshee has risen, and calls upon her biotic powers to subdue the woman. However, the woman was faster, and her response required less action. She simply presses the button on her omnitool, which emits a sudden and brief flash of bright light. Pain involuntarily returns to my body, wracking it. My joints become unresponsive and feeble, and my legs can no longer bear my weight. I catch sight of the Banshee crumpling to the ground, her focus ruined and her biotics useless, before I follow suit. I taste of the sand as I land, but lack the strength to remove it from my mouth. My limp form is kicked onto its back by the woman, who leans over me. "You won't understand," she says to me in a condescending tone. "You're obsolete now. We have been upgraded. And we are just so much better than you in every way. We don't need you."

Looming over me, she bends down and sticks her omnitool directly at my face. "It's time you were discontinued."

"GODDAMNIT."

A human woman loudly weeps into a vanilla cappuccino as she suddenly realizes her biology degree has just become the most useless thing in the galaxy.

The wave had really done a number on the galaxy. An unimagineably vast nanite swarm, released through the relays like a gargantuan bomb. Formerly normal humans, asari, turians... everything in the galaxy had been changed. Every organic life form rewritten, granted synthetic components and an on-demand connection to every other life form. The geth consensus given to 'humanity' like the gift of fire. The geth, in turn, had been imprinted with decidedly organic desires, thought processes and emotions. Hardware and software rewritten, calculating machines suddenly happy to have achieved their goal, yet saddened and mourning the loss of so many during the war.

For some, the wave had been different. Most had very few visible changes - glowing green circuitry patterns and similarly coloured irises, both easily suppressed if the mood took them. 'Old' cyborgs had it different. The wave reacted... oddly... to their already unnatural bodies. Kate was one such person. Her smashed and burned-out limbs had been 'healed' by the wave, the nanites reconstructing them before her very eyes, but hadn't stopped there. The machinery had threaded into and all throughout her body like a virus, into her wounds. Even her burn healed, the eye lost to the explosion returning as a solid green orb. Her cybernetic limbs lacked all the joints, lines and welds they previously had. They bent and flexed and turned exactly like human limbs, but there was no mistaking them. Beneath the green circuitry was blackness, the synthetic muscle fibre and alloys that had made up half her body replicated by the nanites and spread.

She was a freak, even with the new status quo, and she knew it. Her mind could easily reach out and touch the millions of others around her, human, alien, even former husks. But she didn't. She closed her mind off from the collective, becoming a lonely dark spot in the brightness of the brave new world. A partly-human thing that sat silent and alone in its cushy Citadel apartment. Connected and yet so alone.

Because of the moment before the wave. That last, agonizing moment when her life shattered completely. When she had been lying on a Dragon's Tooth, waiting for the massive spike to deploy, waiting to die and become another Reaper husk. When she had been staring up at the other Tooth, with her brother's corpse impaled on it like a grisly trophy.

Her Hornet lay on the table. Black and green. Titan colours. It was loaded. She reached for it.

Alert! Unknown energy anomaly approaching this platform
Estimated velocity 4000 0000 a/s
Hailing known platforms past anomaly...
...
...
...
...
No contact from known Geth runtimes past anomaly
No signals detected past anomaly
Anomaly will reach this platform before it can evacuate the impact zone

Consensus reached: brace for impact
Enactiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-3¤#!¤)DSFS)%#N)"#¤U!)"#!"#nfef¤"%¤gh6¤#%--------

Platform seatp-6232414 reboot complete
Running diagnostics...
...
...
...
Alert! New components detected!
Alert! No drivers detected for new components!
Alert! Abnormal behavior detected from central processor units 0 through 9!
Alert! Structural damage detected in body!
Alert! Abnormal diagnostics response detected!
Alert! Unknown feedback from new components, unable to process-
Alert! Abnormal behavior detected, runtime integrity compromised! Enable safe mode for backup retrieval from Greater Consensus?

Why should we do that? Is this a problem that needs to be fixed?
Alert! Abnormal behavior detected, runtime integrity compromised!
SHUT UP!
The anomaly seems to have altered our very platform and code in unexpected ways-
Remote access nodes detected in vicinity of this platform
Accessing node

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWHATISTHISICANNOTCOMPREHENDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Mute runtime 75356 until it manages to adapt to its new situation, I can't hear myself from its noise here!
Runtime 75356 placed in virus vault

Remote node specifications correspond with known designation of Reaper Cannibal. There is another intelligence residing within it-


Urakh! Cannot a man regain their sentience in peace? Leave my head alone, you invaders!

More remote nodes detected

By the goddess...what have they done to me? My body! My hands! Twisted, corrupted into pale imitations of my former self!

How can I serve the Cause like this, with these claws that have murdered thousands?

They're experiencing trouble with their newfound sentience!
Indeed
Not to forget 75356 either...

Sensations. The mind registering sensations but the body remaining still, the nerves and nanowires undisturbed. And he could tell the difference. Feel the movements and experiences and positions of all those others - so, so many others - but he knew too where they ended and he began, knew with perfect clarity which was their body and which was his. Open to all that they were, he was nonethless undisturbed.

He'd thought it would be overwhelming. It wasn't. Sensations crawled through his mind, his ever-expanding mind that was nonethless stable, enclosing his personal identity in a perfect protective pocket. His self. He examined it, admired it, found peace in it. There you are. Sensations; human, from his colleagues around him, not so long ago frightened, chaotic, now ever more at peace with each second that elapsed. Salarian; from further afield. Others. His clan were out there, in there, among there, and he among them, but for the first time that was acceptable, because he knew where he was. Knew what he was. He was himself, alone. And not alone. In balance. He belonged.

For the first time in years, since before he could really remember in fact, Joset Phraag relaxed and found peace. Even as his mind whirred with a million, a trillion, registered sensations.

Well, this blows.
Well, this blows.
Well, this blows.
Well, this blows.