As mentioned in the press release (below), Task Force 1 has a soldier who was “transplanted into a prototype android body made of an indestructible alloy. It makes him stronger and possibly immortal, but it also makes him a living action figure who craves the sensual world but can no longer experience it.”

For the hardcore science fiction readers out there, you could actually think of the character as less of an android and more of a “full body cybernetic conversion” (often referred to as a “full-conversion ‘borg”). Or the term I was always fond of back in my RPGing days, “Spam-in-a-Can”. For those not as familiar with the term, think of a simple cyborg (a “cybernetic organism” or a being composed of organic and machine parts) except that the only organic part left is the brain (and possibly the spine as well).

In essence, we have a bionic man like good ol’ Col. Steve Austin (from the Six Million Dollar Man), but they had to replace all of his body parts except the brain. Without all those original body parts taking care of various voluntary and involuntary actions within the body, the mechanical/artificial body needs to be able to handle that as well. Heck, there are a lot of things we’ll need to be able to do with an artificial body, so when I started doing my research, I tried to look at current research/discoveries and see what kind of cyborg body could be developed a generation or two in the future.

I first developed a list of the what I thought were the more critical components for getting our artificial body up-and-running…

• Skeletal and joint structure.
• Musculature and movement.
• Brain-body interface.
• Power supply.
• Life support systems for organic components.
• Receiving sensory input.

Then we had some additional elements added in for our artificial body based on Jim’s original character concept…

• Made of plastic.
• Doesn’t need to eat or breathe.
• Longevity.
• Some other factors that are [classified] because they will probably be used as part of a future storyline.

With my list of targets in hand, I then let loose the dogs of research… which we’ll start on tomorow.

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