Welcome to Gaia! ::

Shadows. They played upon the wall from the sunlight streaming in' an indirect sunshine that seemed to be made up of the dust motes the glinted it the faded yellowish stream of shining light. Devlon lifted his hand up into the light, letting the shadow of it fall across his facial panels, letting his visual sensors adjust there shutters to the changing light as the shadow of that hand, that metal, cold, lifeless hand flitted across the lenses. Lifeless. Machines were always described as lifeless. It was all that metal, the mechanics of it...the sheer essence of unfeeling....
Was that him now? Was he now a machine...
was he lifeless.
So many questions that were raised from being brought back from the dead. A technological Lazarus. The doubts that plauged his mind, for they could not have come from his heart...that was decomposing somewhere with the rest of him. Was he even a man anymore? He couldn't really be called that now could he...not without the working bits that go along with the title.
Was he just an it now? Maybe he had come back from the dead, but no matter how he looked at it, he couldnt help feeling that he had still lost his life....

"I suspect someone in my office of being politically opposed to the Wave. If you can investigate my coworkers and provide reports of any suspicious activity correlated with anti-Wave sentiments..."

Shenti crossed her arms as she stood in the office. "If you can do that, then we will talk about cost. I can give you a list of names to start with, but how long it is will depend on the cost." She didn't sit down, being too nervous and excited.

She wanted to get back to Devlon and start preparations for their misadventure. If the aggregate could give them any leads on who to trust when they needed help, great.

Shenti bit her lip. At first it seemed like a hard decision, because what she really wanted was someone opposed to the Wave who worked with her, so that they might help her directly. But if none such a person existed?

Then she thought of her bank account.

"Search for any one, then." She was anxious to get the price haggled out. She should probably get back to her friend, or back to work. She didn't want to be seen leaving this place, either.

"N-no, thank you," she stammered out. Embarrassed, Shenti turned and started to walk out. She couldn't think of any thing else to do here, and she felt like a fool for even coming.

Shenti hurried home to check on Devlon before going to work. She let herself into the house, knocking lightly on the door as she closed it. "Hello?" she asked. Since Devlon often had the lights out, she always half-expected him to have lost his mind and left the apartment.

Devlon sat with the data pad in hand almost as if he hadn't moved. The lights were off, but it was day, so there was light. At her entrance, Devlon looked up.
"Hello Shenti. Did you enjoy your meeting with your friend? I thought you would be gone longer." Devlon said. He would have smiled in greeting, but it seems inefficient to waste energy on such a trivial illusion of expression. He had never really been one for over politeness, but now, certain typical manners just seemed so unimportant.

"Perhaps and maybe sooner than you think." Devlon replied. He was still unmoving, knowing that his own comment woudl spike enough interest in his companion to at least force her to make an inquery as to the meaning of his words. Although he had done that often during his life, he now say it much more devious when contemplated in the mechanical manner his mind had adopted since his revival.

"Part of the main push in biological science is the ability to control the way and rate of how things grow. By doing so we can essentially create biological forms suited for a veriaty of previously hostile environments. The idea is sound except for two monumental obstacles that remain unsolved up to this point. The human brain, as an organism, is too complex to actually reproduce. While humanity has found a way to transfer it into a database, there is as of yet no way to spontanuously generate an individual sentient brain. But we are not trying to create a new one. We already have one we want to use." Devlon was indicating himself, of course.
"Which leaves us with problem number two. There is no way to control how much nutrients the cells of the biological form needs in order to properly sustain itself. A created body eventually burns itself out far too quickly to be a permanent solution. Sure we can create clones and alter an existing genetic structure, but any new biological tissue, spontaneously created without the aid of human zygotes would simply starve the as it consumes all the required material nutrients uninhibited. That problem I have not solved, but I have found a way to slow the rate of decay. That along with a biological energy source, such as photosynsthisis, or a large enough inital energy reserve, something equivalent to a full stomache, could produce a body which is suitable for temporary use. By simply adding cybornetic impants, my cybornetic brain could be attached to the body and I could pass as relatively human. Alternatively I could create a biological skin to cover my existing cybornetic form, but that would render me easily detectable by everything save the human eye."
Devlon slide the pad he had been working on across the table to Shenti. The second problem would also have been easy to solve, use cloned DNA and alter that genetic sequence. However, Devlon had always been sketchy on the ethical implications of cloning. He didnt want to play with anything that had the actual potential for individual sentient life. Instead, he would create his own, inert biological matter and avoid any ethical implications. It was the hard way...but he was taking it.