#134: Disability

Is your fictomere disabled? If so, what is that experience like in their society?

During the five-year gap separating the second and fourth instalment of Metal Gear Solid, I was interned into a top-secret facility and experimented on as part of a project seeking to create a cybernetic super-soldier. Associates of mine infiltrated and freed me from this compound before the research reached a true conclusion but, as a result, I would be left dependent on an artificial body from the jaw down. It rendered me unable to live out a typical human life again.

It seemed, for a while, as if I was the only living cyborg out there in the world. This came with its own issues, especially regarding maintenance. Neither roboticists nor physicians really knew what exactly to do with a human man who was ninety-percent machine. Treat me as a malfunctioning machine, and chances are that the biological remnants of me will bite back; treat me as a standard human patient, and you risk the machinery choking up in response. It took a very particular range of understanding and a healthy dose of luck to figure these things out. I was fortunate to be introduced to a number of experts who took on the workload of repairing me and developing technology compatible with my needs, as a personal project of sorts.

One unique trait of my frame was what was called "white blood", or "milk blood": the synthetic, perfluorocarbon-based blood substitute of choice for use in mechanised human bodies. This name came about from how the artificial haemoglobin was pale in colour. It had an interesting effect on the appearance of blushing, for example, as the skin would take on a pallid rather than ruddy tone. One major drawback of the use of white blood was that it was found to put significant strain on the kidneys, meaning regular access to a specialised form of haemodialysis was necessary, especially in cases where the individual's renal function was already impaired. As a result of these findings, the substance had already begun its decline into obsolescence as soon as a year or two after my initial mechanisation, making it more difficult to source.

Following my introductory fight in Metal Gear Solid 4, the haemorrhaging from my injuries, combined with the long delay since my last dialysis session, caused me to slip into autotoxaemia. My condition deteriorated very quickly. It was Naomi who caught onto the implications of my synthetic blood and her intervention ultimately saved my life. She was very kind to me, which I'd later piece together was because I reminded her of her brother. He, a little over a decade earlier, had been experimented on and outfitted with a mechanical exoskeleton not too dissimilar to mine. She pitied me, and I suppose felt an urge to protect me, for that reason. We proceeded to Prague, Czechia to consult with a cybernetics expert and seek out a medical device capable of infusing and filtering white blood. I knew Dr. Madnar to already be familiar with the configuration of my robotic body, as he'd fixed me up and filtered my blood once before: not long after I initially escaped the facility. He allowed Naomi and Sunny to take the equipment off his hands free of charge, and the pair of them began to nurse me back to health. I spend the remainder of the game incapacitated in some form. I can be spotted in the background of many cutscenes taking place onboard the Nomad, silent and unconscious.

Despite this, my cyborg nature wasn't intended to be something that makes me a delicate character. Quite the opposite: this design change was there to represent me as far more capable and "cool" than my poorly-received debut. This worked, too. I was just clearly nowhere near invincible for it. The newfound frailty of my existence, as well as my total reliance on the care of others to survive, is apparent throughout the events of the game, and in the face of it… I'd keep putting myself in precarious, self-destructive positions that nobody asked me to be in. On one occasion, I hold back a massive battleship that was rushing ahead to collide with the port, and my body is almost pulverised by its force; I offer to enter the hazardous microwave-ridden corridor in Solid Snake's stead and stick around to defend its entrance, despite the fact that both of my arms had been previously amputated. More than anything, I wanted to use my machine body rather as some dispensable, inanimate tool to protect those around me. I didn’t care about the likelihood of how, once I’d achieved the goal, the damage I sustain could be beyond repair; ultimately fatal. There's something here about the guilt disabled people often face about the transactional side to their relationship with others.

During the epilogue of Metal Gear Solid 4, I can be seen fitted with a "civilian" body that looks far more human-like in appearance compared to the previous, battlefield-ready model. Artificial skin covers the underlying machinery, and it looks… okay. From a distance. The complexion and elasticity of it; the way it stretched over the bulk of mechanical internals brought with it an uncanny quality that psychologically impacted how I interacted with others. Even though I preferred my civilian body, I often felt too blocky or wide when the bare machinery wasn't visually breaking up my appearance. I was especially conscious of how much the shape of my lower face had changed. It felt uncomfortable to stretch, twist too quickly, and I would become overheated faster when forced to work against the constraints of restricted airflow and a rudimentary implementation of the sweating process. When I wasn't covered with a shirt, the seams where my limbs and torso attached together created noticeable scarring, and the groove between my organic face and the rest of me was obvious from at least a conversational distance.

A few years after my alterations, the technology made its way out of covert tests and into wider knowledge: perhaps the project I was part of concluded with a new subject, it was leaked, or a separate research team developed a procedure on their own. I couldn't say. Private military companies began to invest heavily in augmenting their recruits even further beyond the haematological nanomachines already in use. Once the public found out, there was immediate outrage in opposition to the practice, and, in turn, the stigma surrounding modern cyborgs was born. Given that the technology was first handed out through defence contracts rather than committed to more beneficial civilian use cases, like healthcare, there was an overarching sense of vulnerability and resentment. Cyborgs were viewed as intimidating, brute-like mercenaries, unsuited for public life–which, to be fair, they often were. Since it was costly and difficult to conceal extensive body modification, many would struggle to truly jump ship from "green-collar" work and lend their skills elsewhere. This was something that would eventually come to affect me, when I struck out on a futile attempt to build an ordinary life, prior to the events of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The situation around cyborgs in public life was changing rapidly around the same time as this game, in both positive and negative ways, but I haven’t fully grasped my own noemata surrounding this period. I'll leave it here for now.