On Wed, 10 Apr 1996, Ranma al'Thor <ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu> wrote:

 		Amy Grant's "I Will Remember You"
 		Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings"
 		Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch"
 		Patty Loveless' "How Can I Help You (To Say Goodbye)"

 	And I really don't have much more to say than that.

Good taste in music you have :)

	Well, those are all quiet, "my heart is slowly bleeding" tunes
that fit this one -- I could have added Queen's "Who Wants to Live
Forever", but it was just too obvious (and I'd already made enough
Highlander references in "Road")

 	She came to the palace less often after that.  I think we couldn't
hide our revulsion enough.  Amy had it the worst ... every few years,
Mina would contact her on some pretense, casually mention some new
modifications that had just come on the market, and say something about
not trusting any of the cyber-docs out there ... Eventually, Amy finally
came up with a self-repairing, self-upgrading set of bionics, installed
them in her -- getting rid of most of what was left of Mina's internal
organs, I gather -- and asked her never to darken her doorstep again.

I take it cyberware is frowned on?
Or are they just biased against it?

	It's kind of like excessive plastic surgery ... if it's done for
medical reasons, then it's okay ... but Mina was making "improvements" for
the sake of improvements at that point (replacing an eye that was in
perfectly good shape for one that had nightsight, etc.)
	And I'll freely admit that *I* have a strong aesthetic bias
against cybermodifications.  Human beings were meant to be biological,
not mechanical ...

 	"That's disgusting!" I shouted.  "How dare you talk about her like
that?  She gave up her life for us!"

Wait...so who narrarated the first part of the story?
I'm confused...

	It's Raye.  It's always Raye, through the whole bit.

That was a seriously powerful story, probably one of the best works of
fanfiction I've ever read.

Excellent job.

	<Bows> I learned from the best, sensei.

Chris Davies.