All in the Pursuit of Human Science...

Dinner's sugar water for the fifth time this week. Not like you can afford anything better; every time open your wallet two or three flies fly out. The destitute job-hopping life is tough... Maybe not so tough for a hummingbird.

On your way walking to work, you decide to take your regular shortcut; a sudden turn into a dingy alley, up someone's fire escape/makeshift clothes rack, along a series of rooftops, and finally down another fire escape... Only this time, a tall man in a beige suit is sat atop an overflowing garbage can, a dying cigarette clinging to his bottom lip. He doesn't notice you. Doesn't seem to breathe. The way he's sitting lets his greased blonde hair obscure his eyes.

You take a set forward. The cigarette falls from his lips as he turns his head. A straight-toothed smirk pries apart his lips. The beige-suited man pushes himself from the garbage can, a hand coming up to pluck the cigarette from his lips. His hands are covered in thick leather gloves. His eyes are a strange mixture of green and blue.

"Good mornin', stranger!" He slowly struts up to you, keeping a respectable distance between him, and you. "Y'look like a nice, quality person. Not someone I'd presume 'be cuttin' through alleys at such early hours." He flashes another grimy smile. He smooths his hair out with a clawed hand.

"Not t'be rude, but judgin' by the local and the per capita living conditions of the average man AND/OR woman, you're broke." He glares at you like he's your doctor diagnosing you with a terminal sickness. "...An' I have the solution. Quick cash. Want in?" He extends a gloved hand, one of his thin eyebrows raising. His other hand slinks past his smoothed suit lapel. If anything, he's inviting you to a money laundering or pyramid scheme. Maybe something to do with drugs? But prison's free room and board, so you shrug and shake his hand.

A needle's jammed in your neck. Your eyelids feel heavy, and eventually seal your consciousness behind them.

Your brain feels like it's going to seep through the fissures of your skull as you slowly, slowly stir into consciousness. Your guts ache like they were in a boxing match, and your arms and legs are sore beyond belief. A hand- your hand, comes up to your forehead to console your pounding headache. Only... Metal fingertips grace your brow.

Where your original, flesh hand once was is now a robotic one- one with black steel for joints and white carbon-fiber for platemail skin. Your new fingers creak with each twitch. Both hands are steel. So are your arms. And your legs.

A large, hideous incision runs down from where your collarbones meet down to your belly button, clinically stitched up with cauterized scar tissue. Your insides pulse with coolant and oil instead of blood.

You lay on the same chilling operating table that this transmogrification took place on, tables of bloody tools and strange metal pieces littering the space around the table. The walls writhe with cords and cables and blinking LEDs, the only light fixture in the room being the hefty lighting arm hanging above your form. In the dark of the room, a lone door sits ajar. Hard footsteps sound off from the hallway behind it. A hand pushes open the door. A man stands there. A tall- very tall man, one with glasses and slicked back black hair, a lab coat which was smeared with blood, and a pair of nitrile gloves clutching a clip board. He doesn't say anything upon witnessing you staring back at him. He only readjusts his glasses, and steps into the room.

"Good evening. Please fill this out to the best of your abilities." He hands you the clip board and a pen from his breast pocket. Its a paper you'd get at the doctors office- one you'd fill in your information and insurance on. Name, date of birth, preferred address, phone number, etc...