Cyberon (drug)

Cyberon was a "praxis-range nootropic" of liquid nanites that had a mind of its own. Although generally referred to as an "it", a patient injected with Cyberon, Denise, communicated with the substance's mind, which she believed to be female, referring to her fondly as "Cy"; Denise interpreted the presence as an angel.

Cyberon had many psychoactive properties and constituted a hive mind controlling all organic beings into whose veins it came to flow in large quantities. As such, it could be considered "the species' true form", with the humanoid cyborgs merely puppets or drones. In small doses, however, the Cyberon drug could have beneficial health effects on humans as well as inducing a desirable "high", without inducing full conversion. A single dose was enough to take full mental control of a Gendar, however.

Nature
The drug was silver (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons, Cyberon, The Last Dose) or blue in colour. (HOMEVID: The Only Cure)

For the Cyberon drug to take hold, the Cyberon matrix had to connect to a host's nervous system; (PROSE: A Worthy Successor) gold could interfere with this connection, giving the host freedom from the Cyberon's control. (PROSE: The Last Dose)

History
A "liquid solution of nanites" that was "the lifeblood" of the Cyberon species, (HOMEVID: The Only Cure) Cyberon in its purest form was generated by a nootropic volcano on the Cyberon home planet Aurichall, in the Amazolian system. The substance was produced by "the tectonic grinding of rival noospheres". (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death)

Tom Mordley attempted to introduce the Cyberon substance as a medical drug through PKD in the 20th century, (PROSE: Cyberon) having acquired it from a Cyberon who had crashed down on Earth and been found by the researcher Albert Foster (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons, The Last Dose) after being thrown back to the 21st century from the far future, near the end of the Cyberon War, by the Merrapine Scar. (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons) When asked by Lauren Anderson if Cyberon was an acetylcholine booster or a cholinesterase inhibitor, Tom instead claimed that it was a silicon-based protein.

He discovered that, when injected in humans, Cyberon enhanced their strength, even allowing Denise to walk again after becoming paralysed in an injury. According to Tom, it created artificial cells to replace lost ones. If used in Alzheimer's patients, Tom thought it could "weed out the plaques and tangles" formed by the disease and, in CJD patients, it would "restructure the spongiform areas". He also became addicted to the substance himself, craving the better cognition, improved memory and superhuman senses that it granted him.

After realising that Cyberon had a mind of its own and was slowly turning patients, and Tom himself, into Cyberon humanoids with no free will, Lauren cleared out all the Cyberon doses she could find in St John's Hospital. Tom, under the Cyberon's control, knocked her out and took her back to his home, hoping to fully transform her into a Cyberon creature, but she managed to stab him, seemingly breaking the bond between him and the drug and causing the Cyberon creatures who had begun to materialise in his vicinity to dissolve. (PROSE: Cyberon)

In 2008, P.R.O.B.E. detected an activation of Cyberon in Philadelphia and Patricia Haggard hopped on a plane to stop others from reaching it first. She traced the Cyberon to Brittany Mordley, Tom's niece. Patsy managed to talk Brittany out of suicide so she could get a hold over the Cyberon in her system. (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars)

On 4 April 2021, when Maxie Masters fell victim to a visibly life-threatening illness which no one in Giles's circle knew how to treat, given that she was not human, he took the drastic step of requisitioning a single syringe of Cyberon from "the storage site". He hoped to give her a dose that would be big enough to heal her, but not enough to convert her, much as the early PKD test patients had initially reported great health benefits before the more sinister effects of the injections started to be noticeable.

Although the injection did put to right what was wrong with Maxie — which later turned out to be an allergic reaction to alien pollen from the Ogden Farm — the Cyberon liquid immediately took over her body, apparently reacting very strongly to her Gendar biology. Making her eyes glow blue and granting her fantastical strength, it overpowered the other P.R.O.B.E. members and made its escape from P.R.O.B.E. HQ. It made its way to a cavernous area connected to London's sewers where, at some point, a Cyberon pod had crashed. It then made Maxie work on repairing the pod, before draining out of her body so that it could reunite with the pilot of the pod, a Cyberon shell with no Cyberon fluid left. However, Maxie and the other P.R.O.B.E. members who had followed her there were able to trigger the Cyberon pod's self-destruct before the newly resurrected Cyberon managed to get it working again, destroying the Cyberon with it. (HOMEVID: The Only Cure)

In the far future, after the near-extinction of the Cyberons, the substance became highly sought-after. One wealthy C.E.O. obtained a deactivated Cyberon at great cost and drained it alive of Cyberon fluid as part of a private "Creature Feature" party, so that he and his guests could micro-dose on the substance. Unexpectedly, this resulted in the Cyberon itself regaining emotions and individuality and no longer being constrained by the Cyberons' weakness to gold, allowing it to free itself and destroy its captors. (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death)