Tool use on the level of biology; civilization internalized, inscribed within the body. The cyborg is the understanding of limits and the judicious, persistent transcendence of those limits. She cannot exist without society around and within it—in this sense, the cyborg may be understood as the evolution or counter to the Rider, for where the Rider exists to reflect the judgmental otherness of the wilderness that frames society, the Cyborg mirrors the way civilization defines and erases its constituents. Cyborg bodies are always plastic, always changing, always discarded, amended, rewritten: an ever-changing and bewildering array of adaptors, ports, connections and grips.

The Rider spirals outward, away from society; the Cyborg inward. The Cyborg is always becoming accepted, always approaching respectability. Always being purchased, coopted, gentrified, adjusted—tools change what is thinkable, and in doing so become invisible, unnoticed, standard. In this disappearing act, the Cyborg goes underground, returns to her chthonic slumber, and loses something of her genius. No matter: there is always another standing in the wings, waiting for her entrance.