Hrrm...I REALLY wish I had a clearer notion on the whole 'altered body' thing...But lesse-
You can ask questions and I'll answer them out here, and in-character in the next segment to maintain narrative consistency if they're things Amy
would ask.
I think you mean sapient here. Sentient refers to having senses, not consciousness. It's a fairly common mistake.
No, I used sentience for the ability to have perceptions and be able to categorize and create concepts. The use and manipulation of senses [of the user] is standard for all innertech: see Amy's pop-up notification in the first chapter. Generalized perception is where low-level innertech fails, and where higher-level can succeed (to varying degrees).
Sapience is quite literally (by translation, even) having wisdom, which is a whole bunch of other things, including self-knowledge (knowing your own motivations/self, which is waaaay beyond self-awareness) and being able to act with insight (contextual comprehension of cause and effect) and understanding (handling some thing/situation using abstractions or generalizations created through experiences).
What portion of people take the innertech upgrade? How many of them report satisfaction with it?
"About sixty percent of an incoming class goes for it immediately. There's a number of reasons, such as not having innertech already and wanting it, having a system that may interfere with their talent, or just wanting to get the best they can.
"We ask again after a semester, and there's usually a good fifteen to thirty percent that accepts then after easing their worries and for the potential help with a problematic Talent.
"I've only Known of a handful of people ever wanting to either remove it or downgrade after getting it in the twelve years I've been working here, though I don't remember the specific reasons."
Does the innertech upgrade feel... invasive, you guess is the word? Are there any explicit or common complaints about it?
"It's... unnerving at first. Disquieting. Things don't work the same as they used to, and they aren't meshed perfectly well with your neurology yet. It takes anywhere from nine to twelve months for complete integration, which is at least ten times longer than any other innertech I've studied, but it's because of how the system studies and continually refines itself until it can't any more. It's usable without feeling unnatural within two weeks, at the longest, and things just become smoother and easier beyond that.
"The biggest complaint..." she laughed. "The biggest complaint was when the first version was introduced twenty-five years ago, the year before I came here, which was that it made things 'too easy'. People felt it was an unfair advantage between those who had it and those who didn't, especially in classes that had a practical component as part of the grade.
"Common complaints? Probably the adjustment period. People who are used to having their innertech work perfectly can get pretty frustrated when things don't work the way they should at first."
Would the augment package present any difficulties with getting other augmentations or upgrades? Does it cause problems with surgeries or other medical treatments? Are there any hints of a Version Two being in the works that you should wait two years for?
"Surgeries and any alterations to your body from a macro scale would be more difficult, if just because you'd be harder to get in to. Anything that works on a micro- or nano- scale and functions on already-present tissues should work fine if adjusted properly to compensate beforehand. Any that work while you're still developing, like this, would only be as effective as long as you were developing.
"There's been talk of a second, much-improved version for years. It's supposedly been going through clinical trials for the past two, but I haven't heard anything beyond that. Part of the reason for it was to be able to make the same changes to fully developed adults, instead of just late-teens who were exiting high school and wanted to get in on exploration. If it passed clinical trials, it could take anywhere between two and five years for it to become available. Since it would work on both developing and already-fully-developed tissues equally, you'd be able to move from one to the other without any problems, no matter how long you decided to wait to do so."
