More Cybernetics

On ultra-high tech worlds the general public are hardwired with internal gadgetry and high-tech enhancements that give them a much higher quality of life. However, in interstellar space, the odds are that cosmic rays, x-ray emissions, meson sources, and even random high level EMPs from stars could cause my augs to go offline or damage them, including my personal Aide. Thus, I dont enjoy space travel. Added at birth, these technological gadgets chelate into our brains and constructs nanocircuitry throughout our neural pathways as we grow. Losing this would be devastating for any high tech citizen:

No EM telepathy, so no way to talk to those around you unless you were actually in their presence or you happened to have a portable comm unit with you. No translator software; if your friend didn't happen to speak your language, you were out of luck. No e-conferencing in noumenal or virtual space. No datasphere linking you with every other person and every electronic service across the local networks. No way to access news, or weather—assuming you were on a planet which actually had weather—or med access, or e-pedia information feeds, or travel directions, or life journals, or any of the hundreds of other data downloads necessary in today's fast-paced life. No Sims. No download entertainment. No way to interact with either the stored or broadcast simvids that let you take the role of hero or villain or both. No way to buy the most basic necessities. Or to find them, since most shops now were on-line. No driving ground cars, piloting mag skimmers, or accessing public transit. No books, unless you could find the old-fashioned printed variety and that was assuming you could read them. No more educational feeds and no access to personal e-memory.

And then there was Aide. For someone like myself, it would feel like losing access to the AI mentor, secretary, and personal electronic assistant I'd had since I was a kid. Without this online cyberware, the world would suddenly be a much smaller, much more difficult, much narrower place. My hope is that this journey will be mostly uneventful.