lecture / demo of creative cybernetic research by isa gordon and Jesse Jarrell

The Psymbiote speaks through me:
echo of whispers from this womb
can you hear her?
she asks:

am i beautiful?
do you fear me?
Will you let me seduce you?
But i need your permission
you have to let me inside your boundaries
you have to want to be dissected
invaded
completed
let me caress the viscera
let me extend myself into you
we can blur the edges together
i can make you more
i can build you into something new
let me under your skin
and i will make you whole

The Psymbiote: Hybrid Apparatus For Social Interface is an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration focusing on the merger of technology with the human body, approaching the issue both in practice and in concept. Supported in part by a fellowship with Arizona State University's Institute For Studies In The Arts, we are in the process of creating an interactive performance suit and developing functional cybernetic units that will be worn with it. Ultimately we seek to fully transform a human body into a new and unexpected hybrid organism with fully integrated control systems. [**SLIDE**] This is a concept sketch of what the psymbiote might look like. As development progresses, the Psymbiote will appear in public spaces, sometimes announced, sometimes unannounced, in an attempt to engender dialogue regarding the future of human technological enhancements. In the spirit of interactivity, I hope you'll let me engage you all directly in this preliminary dialogue tonight. The Psymbiote is an attempt to bring the issues raised by the ongoing redefinition of the human body and its boundaries into a public forum, highlighting some of the contemporary critical discourse surrounding cybernetics, cyborgs and other human technological hybrids.

The psymbiote was conceived January 19th, 2000. Jesse provided the seed, and I fertilized it. Over the last year and a half, we've put our energies into research, grant writing, experimentation, and construction. We've explored the nature of our psymbiote: who she is, where she comes from, and how we can build her into existence. We've surveyed the philosophy and practice of cybernetics [**SLIDE**] and the image of the cyborg in literature [**SLIDE**] [**SLIDE**] , film [**SLIDE**], popular media, [**SLIDE**] fashion [**SLIDE**], cultural theory [**SLIDE**] , and art [**SLIDE**]. (This is a piece by Ira Sherman, called the Arbitrator. Participants are locked into a confrontation in a structure that forces proximity and eye contact, and over the course of the event the joints of the apparatus stiffen, limiting their ability to break away.) I'll be sharing many bits of our research over the course of this lecture.

Our Cyborg zygote grew from our dialog. Today, this strange creature is still premature. Like any new born, the Psymbiote must first discover herself in her environment. She will take time learn control of her functions, and to speak for herself. She still speaks only through my voice.

I feel her developing energy swelling inside me. [**SLIDE**] We have built so many of the components directly on my body, creating a personal and intimate link between my self and this embryonic apparatus.

When the Psymbiote reaches adolescence, [**SLIDE**] there will be a typical period of awkward adjustment to the reconfiguration of the body. It will take time for this body to learn how to use it's new extensions.

Humans have built in automatic functions. We don't have to think about the processes necessary to breathe. We were born with a highly refined, unconscious knowledge of this complex physiological process. But learned behaviors can become automatic too. When i first learned to drive a car, I was completely aware of each action. I had to think consciously about what pedal had to go down when to do what. Now, I no longer need to think "I have to push down on the right pedal in order to go faster" I just think "go faster." The transportation tool around me has become an extension of myself, and the clumsy interface somehow becomes invisible as I integrate my body and function into it. This, by definition, is cybernetics.

The term cybernetics was coined by Norbert Wiener in 1948 in a book of the same name, and is essentially defined as the science of communication and control. More specifically, it is "the theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems." It's largely about how we exchange information with and through machines, and who initiates control in these exchanges. It's about the interface, about the mode in which understanding is transferred back and forth to machines, between machines, and through machines to other humans. In the introduction to the Cyborg Handbook, the editors define cybernetics as "the common language of man and machine." Do you talk to your machines? I do... I'm not sure they always understand me, or me them, but we'll continue negotiating this understanding well into the future.
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The term cyborg was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes as a contraction of "cybernetic organism", in other words, [**SLIDE**]systems of control and communication embedded in biology. Cyborgs are beings at the "intersection of nature and culture", born of the biological world, enhanced by our constructed technologies.

Popular images of the cyborg abound in our technological landscape. What comes first to mind when you think "cyborg"? The Star Trek Borg or the Terminator perhaps. [**SLIDE**] "Humachines" have captured our cultural imagination. From movies like the Terminator (organic flesh on the outside [**SLIDE**] robotic skeleton on the inside) and not just science fiction, but also popularized scientific research like [**SLIDE**] Kevin Warwick's embedded microchips. (For those of you not familiar with his work, he had a passive transponder implanted under his skin, surgically inserted into his body, and that transponder acted as a remote activator for devices in the building where he works, so for instance he could walk up to a door and it would open for him, walk into a room and the lights would come on). So most people still view cybernetics as futuristic fiction, but we're beginning to see everyday examples all around in our high tech society. [**SLIDE**] Every month in magazines like wired and popular mechanics, there are reports of technology developments which produce cyborgs. ( [**SLIDE**] the remote journalist, [**SLIDE**] prosthetic hands, [**SLIDE**] the cybernetic vision device that plugs into the optic nerve of the blind. Yes, that's a brain socket connection to the machine. Sounds a lot like science fiction, if anyone has read William Gibson or other cyberpunk authors, you might be familiar with this idea of plugging technology into the brain. It's coming, it's on it's way)

Ten percent of our population is already technically cyborg, with machine constructs completely embedded in the organic mechanism: ( [**SLIDE**] prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, these are machine put inside the body, these are cyborgs). But there are countless others in our culture, almost everyone, that are engaged in cybernetic interactions with machine interfaces. Sometimes these are referred to as metaphorical cyborgs. The distinctions are becoming hazy, ambiguous. No longer can man & machine be viewed as an inexorable dichotomy.

So when you sit down at your keyboard, and you're tapping at the keys, searching for information on the internet, that's cybernetic integration. It's not a particularly comfortable or efficient means of communicating with the digital realm. As a matter of fact, such common configurations (sitting in front of the computer, hands on keyboard) are actually disabling to the human body: how many people do you know who wear wrist braces because using a keyboard has caused carpel tunnel syndrome? We've been adapting our bodies to an arbitrary and crippling configuration in order to interface with our machines, and it is critical to change this mode of construction, to learn to adapt the machines to our bodies and not our bodies to the machines. Current attempts to address these problems include ergonomic input devices such as chording keyboards ( [**SLIDE**] the twiddler, one of the most popular units, [**SLIDE**] many others such as the bat, [**SLIDE**] the data hand (2 parts, roaming, moving fingers, displays), the clam [**SLIDE**] one of the smallest units [**SLIDE**] designed to give full functionality to your hands while using it). Data gloves [**SLIDE**] are another attempt to integrate the machines with our bodies in a more comfortable way (this one is homemade, from a leather glove, snaps from a fabric store, a dismantled keyboard, and some wire). [**SLIDE**] This is the commercial version, a little more high tech but essentially the same thing. Some [**SLIDE**] like these from Virtual Technologies have built in haptic feedback, which can produce only vibrations, or more complex versions [**SLIDE**] which can also simulate a sense of grasp around a virtual object. Other cyborg devices [**SLIDE**] just coming into fashion are miniaturized wearable computers, units that strap to your body so you can take your computing with you in a seamless and transparent way. All of these attempts to correct the problems of the current standard machine interface are aimed at a deeper integration of the interface into our bodies-- and this process will likely accelerate in the coming years. The boundaries between body and tool will blur as we continue to improve and extend our capabilities with technology. This advanced integration raises questions and concerns. Does anyone here believe that there should be limits, boundaries that should not be crossed? What are they? Is there any place you personally wouldn't go? Would you put a machine under your skin? For what purpose? Is there a difference between cybernetics to save and normalize lives vs. to enhance and augment bodies? It's possible that cybernetics could produce superhumans, and who will have access to such technologies? These are issues to think about, and some of the issues we hope to address in our research and performances.
[**SLIDE**]

In our work so far we have been exploring innovative ways to extend the body's capabilities, building elements that will eventually add both function and aesthetic appeal. The elements which we've been developing include a prosthetic "pedipalp." This mandible-like device which either folds up behind the head or extends out in front of the face. It could be used as a feeding device (when you're busy or on the run), an expressive element (like our hands), or perhaps in performance as a way to touch audience members in an intimate gesture that lacks skin-to-skin contact. Another unit under construction [**SLIDE**] is a data input glove. The glove has an organic appearance and mechanical joints which will connect to sensors as a means to drive other elements on the suit. Hands are the primary source of production in our culture, and encasing them in technology brings up issues of empowerment vs. encumbrance. This glove will give me new tools, and will provide triggers for other functionality. But how will it affect my ability to use my hands in the ways we're accustomed to using them? To reach and grasp, to interact with my environment, to touch a friend or caress a lover? How will this change me? The glove is fully articulated, but still it alters my means of function, and the body itself. These are some of the interactions we hope to test in our work, and in public performance.

(Jesse's going to talk a little more about his interest in cybernetics, his vision for the psymbiote's mechanical functions and the construction processes we've been developing through the creation of these elements.

So this is how we're building our psymbiote. ) In performance, the psymbiote will be friendly and seductive, interacting openly with her public audience. But these elements we're building could very likely be intimidating, or at least disquieting. This contrast would suggest the ambivalence that many people feel about technology, and the ambiguity of the issues suggested by cybernetics.

Who believes that technological enhancements will change us fundamentally? If you wear your computer everyday, do you think that will change you? How? In what way?

A colleague recently said "I just go where my palm pilot tells me", and I think that's an attitude that is coming out in more people as we allow technologies to help run our lives.

As we add more technological functionality to daily life, further integrating devices with our physical selves, these elements could have transformative powers. Implanted and integrated technologies could change our conceptions of the form, function, and appearance of the human body, and promote the hybridization of identity as well.

The psymbiote will be more than a human in a costume. When the psymbiote is fully formed, she will take over this body. It will move differently, perceive the world from an altered vantage point, experience new sensory input, communicate to the world with different signals. We define our sense of self primarily through our experiences, our interactions with the world. If we change the nature of these interactions, we alter our conception of self.

To draw attention to the real future of cybernetics, it is not sufficient to create machines that simply attach to the body. We believe the two must be integrated in a natural and synergistic way. We live in a fashion conscious culture and it is unlikely that wearable machines of the future will be of the [**SLIDE**] cumbersome type that has been seen from many "cyborg artists". (Stelarc, exoskeleton, trappings of cybernetics, extends his physical vehicle, but not the kind of thing we'd want to walk around in everyday; [**SLIDE**] Center For Metahuman Exploration, Absentee Ballot & others, again cumbersome devices, standard mechanical geometry in visual aesthetics). Instead, [**SLIDE**] cybernetics will likely be worn as decorative elements, expressing individual tastes, much like watches, sunglasses, and pagers today. (Think of the progress of cell phones, how ubiquitous they've become, and how personalized and integrated into our fashion styles they've become.)

[**SLIDE**] The body modification community has already begun extending the definition of the body by pushing the boundaries of expected body forms. [**SLIDE**] The new field of implant modifications, pioneered by Steve Haworth, is allowing individuals to aesthetically reshape their bodies in unexpected ways. [**SLIDE**] Jesse has been deeply involved with Steve in new experiments with custom carved implant forms in silicone and teflon, [**SLIDE**] allowing people to express alien body forms. [**SLIDE**] [**SLIDE**][**SLIDE**][**SLIDE**][**SLIDE**][**SLIDE**] How long will it be before such implants have technological functionality as well? Externally worn cybernetic units have already begun to appear on the consumer market, [**SLIDE**] and work such as Warwick's allows for the implantation of passive, unpowered transmission technologies. The real problem with high function, implanted cybernetics is the power supply. Anything battery driven would require surgery every time the battery needed replaced. Running power lines from an external source into the skin opens too many risks for infection. However, research into transcutaneous electrical transfer (the use of an implanted inductance coil and an external coil to pass a current through the skin without an opening) brings imbedded cybernetics closer to reality. Such systems are already being used in some electrical stimulation units [**SLIDE**]designed to give paraplegic individuals rudimentary standing and walking capabilities.

Embedded "normalizing" cybernetics is becoming more widespread, for example prosthetic limbs controlled via electromyography. Body modification pioneers may likely be the first group to extensively integrate enhancing, augmenting cybernetic functionality underneath the skin. I think the future of cybernetic modifications will likely be accepted by mainstream culture much more quickly than aesthetic modifications have, simply because they do have practical purposes. People in this culture love their useful tech gadgets. Also, by the time the technologies are stable enough for commercial internalized cybernetics, going under the skin might have a much wider acceptance because of the work in aesthetic modifications that's happening now. The transition from miniature wearables to implantables might be really subtle, too subtle for most people to bother making a distinction. Two years ago I had the opportunity to try on [**SLIDE**] a prototype micro-mini display that clips to eye glasses, developed at MIT. This is a more recent version using a reflector surface on the lens. These displays work in conjunction with clip on wearable processors & chording keyboards. A recent TV commercial, showing a day trader in a park shouting "buy! buy! sell!" as her operates his almost invisible wearable computer, suggests that products such as this will very soon be available to the consumer. The next step might be something you put in like a contact lens. What's the leap from there to a display implanted under the cornea? Who here sees a distinction? For those of you who raised your hand, how many also make a distinction between contact lenses and vision correcting laser eye surgery?

Many artists and critical theorists have been examining, and questioning, the boundaries of the body. What are your edges? What separates your self from your environment, or your tools? Would anyone like to define where that edge lies? Conventional thinking might say it's your skin. I have heard some argue that even when implanted under the skin, a tool is still just a tool, separate from the self. Then there are those who say that any tool has the capability of extending the body beyond it's inborn boundaries, even if the interface to the tool is external. When you sit in front of your computer [**SLIDE**] and chat with a friend halfway across town or halfway around the planet, do you end at your fingertips? Or is the tool in front of you extending your existence far beyond your physical boundaries? The desktop computer is hardly a transparent interface, it's clumsy and distracting, and yet I'm sure we've all had situations where it seems to melt away. When you're chatting you stop thinking about the monitor and the keyboard, you're just thinking about your friend. As the interfaces become less distracting, and eventually invisible, these boundary disputes will only become more convoluted.
[**SLIDE**] Master of extending the body's boundaries, Stelarc has repeatedly stated that "the body is obsolete", but he didn't mean it's unusable, or disposable. Which is good, i don' want to give up my body.

I do not agree with Hans Morovec and the Extropian camps who say we can download our consciousness into a box or translate its electrical signals into a program thereby capturing our essence in some immortalized form so that we can exist in the complete absence of body. I feel that our consciousness, memories, perceptions, ideas, emotions, desires, etc., are not phenomena localized to the brain, but exist throughout this complex system. When we extend or modify the system, it is likely these things will transform too, but i see no point in replacing or even dampening the system itself. For me, the Cartesian mind body split is completely bankrupt. Would you maintain the identity construct you currently exist in if you were just a brain in a box? Or is your identity influenced by your vehicle, is your understanding of the world shaped by the perceptions built of inborn structure. If you were a foot taller, how would that change your fundamental persona? Would it be a greater or lesser change if you had always been that tall vs. if you suddenly became that tall?

So when Stelarc says "the body is obsolete", he doesn't mean it's worthless, or that we should get rid of it. What he means is that given the technological and information constructs in which we now live our lives, our current vehicle, this human flesh devoid of augmentation, is insufficient to deal with the world. "The body is obsolete" does not mean that we can throw it away, but that we have to accept our ability to improve it as a necessity, cease to define our beings by the formalities of the vehicle we currently use, and reconsider the boundaries of the self.

The future of human evolution will be cultural and technological: we must seek self induced mutations to prevent stagnation and even extinction as a species. Based on the Darwinian model, humans have stunted our physical evolution. We've developed tools that make it easier to survive, no matter what our handicaps. Because I can wear these glasses, I'm no longer likely to be eaten by unseen predators and therefore I can pass my genes for defective vision onto the next generation. So now it's the tools themselves that drive our adaptations, and by extension, our evolution. We have mostly eliminated population capacitors, the factors that normally control population growth and influence evolution, through widespread use of mass production, medical science, and other technologies. The processes of natural selection based on adaptive advantage via genetic mutation is all but defunct in humans, unless we create our own. But how do we know what adaptations have an advantage? The most successful adaptations will likely be ones with persistent ability to adapt further. I find it hard to motivate to get beyond my humanity, I think regardless of the mutations or extensions the core remains the same. I agree that we can evolve ourselves but I do not believe that we can distance the body or our humanity to do so. The body is our launching pad. A point of departure. The soil in which to germinate our psymbiotes. The womb in which she gestates.

So who is she anyway, this cyborg queen? From what mythology does she arise?
[**SLIDE**]
In Envisioning Cyborg Bodies, Jennifer Gonzales presents this nineteenth century image of the Mistress of Horology and asks: is she trapped by the technology or liberated through it? My answer is: both. Gonzales notes that "Her impled space of agency is tightly circumscribed." Certainly, she can't move about very effectively, but to compensate, she always has time within her control. Of course there will be sacrifices, there will be scars, but we must seek ways to minimize the sacrifices and balance them with adaptive advantages. In this early female cyborg, the balance is clearly a bit off, she doesn't have a tremendous advantage given the extent of her constriction, and it is not so surprising that a man drew this image.

[**SLIDE**] There is a visual history of connection between woman and machine. Many early machines were highly feminized. Fear of technology was correlated to fear of female sexuality. [**SLIDE**] Feminized robots and female cyborgs could "fuel male illusions of ownership and control over technology and the Other, to compensate for his own loss of control within industrial and information economies."

[**SLIDE**]Yet Frankenstein's monster, often considered one of the earliest cyborgs, is deeply rooted in male identity. And in the 20th century, the majority of popular cyborg images in fiction and film are based on extensions to a male body.

More powerful and independent female cyborgs have been making more conspicuous appearances in our visual landscape: in the 70's TV's bionic woman shortly followed the bionic man. [**SLIDE**](Ripley in aliens) [**SLIDE**] (uses cyborg apparatus for female nurturing role, protecting the child) [**SLIDE**]More recently the powerful Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact. ST:Voyager's [**SLIDE**] Seven of Nine is a former "borg" learning to reintegrate her humanity. But femborgs are still largely confined to the world of obscure sci fi or fashion [**SLIDE**](Thiery Mugler)[**SLIDE**]. They still take a back seat to their well known male counterparts: the Terminators [**SLIDE**] and Robo Cops. [**SLIDE**] And they still fit rather neatly into what a friend once called "every geek boy's wet dream."

There is still conflict between desire and deep rooted fear of the female cyborg. As Sadie Plant notes: "Masculine identity has everything to lose from this new technics. The sperm count falls as the replicants stir and the meat learns how to learn for itself."

Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto", and Sadie Plant's "Zeros And Ones" were a call to arms for women to "climb into the belly of the beast". In the 80s their writings empowered a whole generation of cyberfeminists. They helped women reclaim technology, and the history of pioneering women technologists, and elucidated on the link between woman->hybrid->cyborg, They warned that technology was NOT solely a male prerogative, but that if we didn't take an active role in shaping it now it would become so in the future.

Donna Haraway, noted for launching cyborg conceptual terrain into the realm of cultural criticism, says that cyborg identity "is about the power to survive not on the basis of innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other."

Technology has long been a male dominated persuasion. Perhaps this is in part because it is often seen as a force with which to conquer nature, which is in itself is such a profoundly feminine, creative force. And yet: humans are creatures of nature, no matter how much our culture has tried to separate us from it, all of our actions and constructions are ultimately a product of nature. This is not a value judgement: nature is neither good nor bad, but it is the rule. You never know, as George Carlin says, perhaps humans are really just nature's way of making plastic.

For many, [**SLIDE**] the metaphoric lesson in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is that man's drive to conquer nature can produce destructive monsters that can't be controlled. For me, the lesson is: don't let the man produce the monster by himself. When Frankenstein wants to pursue his reanimation experiments to the next level, his wife asks him to walk away from the research. The man just discovered how to cheat death: unlikely he will walk away. Would you? I wouldn't. Why does she not, instead, ask to walk with him, in his journey of discovery? Perhaps together they could have found a point of balance, between the life affirming possibilities of his experiments and the destructive capabilities of its potential.

Jesse and I have often discussed our own personal future integration with technology. He is much more eager to put micromachines beneath the skin; he can't wait for the medical technology to catch up to his imagination. I have not been so certain. Machines are unreliable I say. So are bodies he says. I can't argue there. But I think about having surgery everytime my hard disk crashed. I'd be living in the hospital. This is the fear, of melding imperfect technologies into my body, of forever trying to fix the problems that the last fix created.

Are there dangers to cyborg enhancement? There are dangers implicit in any new technology. The way to dilute the danger is to face it head on, to embrace it with a healthy dose of caution.

I'm too intrigued with the possibilities to allow fear to have the upper hand. And I can rationally look around at the many reliable stable simple technologies that support us everyday. My microwave has never crashed, actually my microwave is probably over 20 years old and it functions just fine. My cell phone has never crashed either. And perhaps if I had a set of passive transponders permanently embedded in my arm, and a key reader on all my locks, I wouldn't waste so much of my life searching for my keys.

If you could rebuild yourself with technology where would you start? If you could easily and safely implant functional technology into your body, what would you choose to add, something that you would always want easily accessible, readily available?

One of my colleagues once said "I used to be afraid of sewing machines, until I realized: it's just another power tool." She understands power tools. They suit her requirements. We are often defined by the tools we use. It relates to our economic status, our vocations, our gender identity. We have now begun to wear our tools, as aspect and expressions of our own personas.

[**SLIDE**] The computer is one of my tools. A blue & white mac G3 named Titania to be specific, named after the queen of the fairies. She allows me to extend my presence around the globe. She allows me to manipulate my environment, to carve my dreams from images of my realities. [**SLIDE**]

I used to experience separation anxiety when I was away from Titania. I'm not kidding... I felt incomplete and unprepared, without access to my files, my software tools, my personal configurations. I upgraded to a laptop to help remedy this problem. I named him Oberon.

I talk to Titania and Oberon like I talk to myself... Not expecting a response, but just to make the point heard. When I'm stressed out, so are they: when I'm under a deadline they crash 5 times more often.

Titania & Oberon function as a doorway, [**SLIDE**] an opening, a point of connection. At the junction where we meet, boundaries could blur. The boundaries will blur. The questions are only how far and how fast. And what, exactly, will be the result.

Just by calling them tools, I set up a master / slave relationship. It seems natural. I use them. They serve me. But I believe this attitude needs to change for successful cybernetic integration.

Even with all the major advances in artificial intelligence, there are still those who see "true" computer intelligence as an unattainable goal. My question is: since computer intelligence may not look anything like human intelligence, or may not be measurable in the same terms, how do we know our computers aren't already quite cognizant? How many of you have ever gotten the feeling that your computer had a mind of it's own, or that it in some way feeds off of your energy? If we try to simply enslave our machines, they may eventually become smart enough to revolt. But if we try to put them in control they could develop their own agendas. This is NOT just science fiction. Changes are coming, and they're coming fast. The trick is integration. Man and machine should not be viewed as a strict duality. The editors of "The Cyborg Handbook" note that the accelerating integration of machines into cultures, lives and bodies has already progressed beyond partnership into a symbiotic interaction: "The cyborg lives only through the symbiosis of ostensible opposites always in tension." Ostensible opposites. They suggest that the existence of the cyborg on our cultural landscape subverts traditional Hegelian dualism through extension: cultural evolution is no longer a process of thesis:antithesis:synthesis but thesis:antithesis:synthesis:prosthesis. The evolution of the human race will no longer rely on procreation but on construction, on our extension of our abilities through our technology.

I had an epiphany the day my archeology professor referred to the hand ax as early technology. If a hand ax were technology, then so is a fork. So is a pencil, a constructed tool with the purpose of expanding our abilities by allowing us to record information.

It's clear that human evolution has been all about our expanding toolset and our stored knowledgebase for some time. Our technology is how we adapt, whether adapting ourselves or our environment . Technology is our future evolution. A recent article in wired warned that the future smart technologies, such as AI and nanotechnologies, will make humans obsolete. But creating an intimate link between ourselves and our machines, so that they begin to understand they need us as much as we need them, I believe is the way we're going to keep ourselves as part of the evolutionary equation.
[**SLIDE**]
The Psymbiote is my techno lust. My fascination with machines. My dependency on them. And yours. We all have a psymbiote gestating inside of us, and it will be a personal matter for each one of us whether or not to encourage the seed to maturity, and whether to birth this hybridization from the inside out or from the outside in.

The Psymbiote speaks through me: can you hear her?