If you open a beer next to me, I can levitate your bottle cap with the tip of my finger. I can’t carry hotel keycards in my right pocket, because I occasionally demagnetize them. You can find my website by rubbing your phone on the back of my hand. Depending on how you look at it, I have either some amazing party tricks or the most pointless psychic abilities of all time.


Push hard on my skin, and you’ll find that the source is two lumps of glass, metal, and plastic embedded in my right hand: a years-old magnet in the ring finger and a newer NFC chip in my thumb webbing. Before getting the magnet, I read paeans to the coming cyborg revolution. After putting it in, I had people tell me my hand would fall off. Since getting the NFC chip in June, I’ve read that I’m carrying the Mark of the Beast and found instructions for how to disable it with a taser. Well, I come from the future, and I’m here to tell you: transcending the limits of the flesh can be downright dull.