Hanashi-lily

Text 1. The Birth of Bionic Man

Astronaut Steve Austin is severely injured in an airplane crash. Scientists rebuild his body in an

operation that costs six million dollars. His right arm, both legs and the left eye are replaced with

'bionic' materials that enhance his strength, speed and vision far above normal human capabilities.

He can run at speeds of 100 km/h, and his eye has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities, while

his bionic limbs have the strength of a fork lift truck.

His heart valves were damaged? Replace them with the Hufnagel valve and supporting internal

apparatus. His skull was crushed? Replace the bone with cesium and with new alloys where

needed. Design a spongy center layer and another outer layer to protect the brain case inside. He

could then endure a direct blow ten times greater - without suffering injury- than the sledgehammer

thuds that cracked his skull in the first place.

Replace ribs. Install - and install was the proper word - added tendons, plastic valves, arteries and

veins where needed. Blinded in his left eye? Well, they weren't that good because the human eye

is a miracle of jelly and water and light-sensitive elements and rods and electrical impulses

trickling their way through bundles of nerves to a gray convoluted mass of three pounds encased

within the skull no, they couldn't 'yet restore vision when the optic nerve was mangled, and Austin's

optical nerve was so much biological garbage.

But they could make use of the area where there had been an eyeball to build a marvelously small

and efficient camera into where his living camera system had been. Steve Austin became a man

with one living eye and one extraordinary camera that recorded on tiny supersensitive film what

its human carrier saw with the living eye. None of these could compare with the miracle of the

recreated living limbs - the arm with its bionic bones, and the legs with their computer-directed

systems.

It was one thing to construct the limbs that were to receive the nerve impulses flowing to and from

the brain. It was another to mimic the nerve fibers and systems for transmitting the impulses from

the brain into the spinal cord and on down the message networks. To Steve Austin's arm stump

they double- engaged the bionics and the natural bone to exceed by far the original level of strength

and resistance.

If the bionics arm was not quite the same as the original arm, it was in many ways superior. Steve

Austin's arm was more than a human arm; it was also capable of performing as a battering ram, a

vise, a bludgeon - a tool and a weapon. His legs were also tremendous pistons. His heart and

circulatory systems served a body without the need of supporting two legs and an arm. The bionics

systems with their nuclear amplifiers attended to all energy needs, and so Austin's endurance

increased dramatically. He was dependent as ever on his heart and lungs and other systems. But he could run a day and a night because there was no energy drain from the legs hammering against the earth.