[X] Eat. That's what augments need, right? Lots of calories? Might help the ache.
You haul yourself over to the kitchen, almost literally. Even with the stabilizers in your limbs and in your brain, even with the synthetic bio-feedback, even with the materials as lightweight as they can go while still giving Sarif a military-grade technocratic erection, sometimes walking feels like you're trying to do ballet with tractors for legs. You're lugging around so much metal it'd qualify as a workout, if there was anything left to work out. At this point it's the metal lugging you around, really, a glorified wheelchair for the ultimate invalid. You've got the sports car of iron lungs. You're just a half-chewed strip of jerky, with cocktail sticks for limbs and a shiny foil wrapper.
The weird metaphor wakes you up. Fuck, maybe you really are hungry. Maudlin distraction briefly subdued with embarrassment, you find yourself staring at the reflective chrome finish of a cupboard.
This is the New You™, after all. The augmentations are part of you, they keep saying. They're not something plugged into your body, they are your body. You need to make them part of your self-image, or you'll never feel comfortable in your own skin. Cue deadpan joke about not having much skin left, polite chuckle from doctor, no but really we have trained professionals who'll offer only the best of etc etc. One nurse keeps giving you pamphlets. You keep meaning to throw them away, but there are about half a dozen forming a nest in your jacket pocket right now.
Diet was another thing they were big on at the clinic. The augmentations burn through fuel, that's how they explained it. Artificial and natural. You needed to eat often, eat regularly, and eat healthily.
You gingerly swing the cupboard door open, and survey your varied and nutritious stock of groceries.
[-] Sun Bran? Your gums ache at the thought of bran right now.
[-] Magic Gnome? You're pretty sure gnomes are an actual ethnic group in Turkey, or somewhere ending in -stan. You push them to one side.
[-] Crunchy Pirate? Maybe. Oh, these ones are technicolour instead of the usual starch-yellow. You check the back. Apparently they're meant to be gems. Pass.
[-] Augmentchoos? You stare at the grinning kid on the front, telescoping arm looping around the box to dip his spoon into his bowl. Now With MORE Iron!
In the end you decide to just finish off whatever's the least full, and dig your way through several more boxes and satchets aimed at a range of age groups before you find an almost-empty box of Crunch Flakes hiding in the back. You pile one bowl far too high with the world's most enduringly generic cereal, shaking out the powdery dregs like it's some kind of garnish, and use up your last bag of milk before settling in to work your way through the dry, unsoaked outer layers. By the time you strike milk the flakes have lost all crunch, and are more like a glucose-flavoured bowl of soggy newspaper. This is just how you like your cereal. You have stubbornly insisted on the truth of this fact every day of your life, and you don't plan to stop now.
