Body of Theseus
By Bjorn Jensen

Timun sat on the floor in the corner of the room, his legs crossed as he looked down at his hand.  It had been what was replaced today, the cold, mechanical appendage looking too smooth, too perfect, moving with a mechanical fluidity that his natural one didn’t have.  It made a similar feeling form in his chest as he’d had when he looked in the mirror following the replacement of his eyes.  Eyes that were unnaturally symmetrical and a vibrant, electric blue, and looked alien in his face. 

Eyes that now focused and zoomed in on the augmetic fingers, palm, wrist, and forearm, automatically adjusting to suit his needs now that he’d gotten used to them.  Even if they still felt wrong. 

Reaching out, he picked up a small piece of concrete from the floor and held it in front of him.

While he knew he wasn’t truly feeling it, the sensors in pads of mechanical fingers sending a signal up through circuits to organic nerves in his elbow, up his arm and into the spine to the brain, forming the sensation as though he could still feel.  A trick, techno-sorcery that he had no hope of understanding, despite that it was now a part of him.  No one bothered to explain any of it; he was just the subject. 

How many parts could they swap out before he ceased to be ‘Timun’ anymore?  How long before his thoughts, his personality, what had made him him was replaced?  Swapped for another that was more ‘efficient’, more ‘useful to the Will of the Divine’?  And if that happened, would any part of him remain, locked within this mechanical body that was once flesh and blood and bone? 

Surely, a question for the High Priests and philosophers, and not one as low-born as he.  After all, what could he know about these things, about the Divine’s Will, if he couldn’t even read the texts that spoke of them? 

Letting his hand fall back into his lap, he leaned his head back against the wall.  He’d just have to endure, hold onto whatever pieces of himself he could retain.  He would fight to hold on to his humanity until his last breath.  They’d have to pry that from his cold, dead soul.