A thick white smoke poured from the metal, filling the cutting shed faster than the air-transfer pumps could manage. The nitrogen mix was holding steady in the workshop and I had ample time left in my tanks.“Careful there, sonny boy,” Gramps said over my comm-link. “Don’t let any of those shavings clip your air hose.”“I’ve done this before,” I growled into the helmet. “I had to recycle Mom, if you recall.”“How can I forget,” Gramps said. “She reminds me every day.”He’d pout now. Blamed my mother for stealing his precious son from him. “Dad volunteered for the cyborg-thing before he met Mom, you know that.”“She’s a witch, I tell you. A siren, that’s what she is.”“Shut it, old man.” The dulcet tones of my sainted mother echoed through the line. The woman had been a wicked geneticist, but a controlling shrew nonetheless.Now he’d gone and waked her. “Go back to sleep, Mom.” I said. “Please?”“Don’t you start with me, young man. If you knew the lengths I went to extend your life.
