1.

Political status: soft anarchy.
The WoB (War on Beauty) was the second great ideological war of the human race - or whatever came after it. Just like the first great ideological war of the human race, it didn't dare call itself by its own name: in fact, it was not over aestethical standards we were fighting about. It was about the prevailing of a technology over another. Would a being be better-looking whether he looked more like a human being (bipeds, five senses, fingers, conscience and such), or if he could better adapt into a specific environment (another word for work)? What was to be better anyway? (Just when you believed metaphysics were dead...)
A consensus was reached when everybody had gotten some tech into their bodies - even if it was mere better hearing. Some consciences, by their own will, would not feel the ("primary", they'd say) sex drive. Among those who did feel it, by their own will or by lack of divisa, it would be the human represented by its most failing aspect (cellulitis became a fetish and were reinduced into the genome) or antinomic machines.

a)

No, no, it is no legend. Not all of it. That the Japanese put a tiny nuclear reactor as her heart, that part is true. The name she received was Da-n-ge-ro-su Ha-a-to (ダンゲロス ハート) which I think it was their way to say Dangerous Heart. So Dani was but the first; then they made two and three, all Brazilian with big eyes and thick lips. Now, they said first Dani's reactor had a glitch. That if they made the girl come strongly enough, they would see a meltdown. Such a hit she was in the black market, huh? All clients would spend time and effort to make Dani come like crazy. Like if they weren't the ones paying for her services. Stupid, 'cause if they made it happen, they were going to be dead, but that was precisely the thrill, I guess. Well, anyway that was a myth. My theory is, her owners threw in this hoax to pump up their merchandise.
Anyway, someday Dani heard about it. First she got very upset. She thought she was most wanted between the three girls for her prettiness, attractiveness or bedskillness. Then she got scared it could be true. Finally, she volunteered herself to another experiment they had been wanting to try – she would come out of it with an animal tissue heart. She had been a guinea pig before, it worked out alright, no prob doing it again, right? Wrong. She died.