Addressing: Everyone
The
Santa De Angelo cruised through the gateway in Matuvista and burst through, into the Sol System. Piloting itself into orbit above Venus, it stabilised itself out, and then began broadcasting a messsage towards the meeting place.
"Representatives of the galactic community, we invite you all to a grand occasion aboard our luxury spaceliner
The Santa De Angelo. Food and drink complimentary! Come, enjoy the wonderous experiences of Matuvistan high culture! Music! Paintings! Poetry readings! A peformance of
Shakespear's The Tempest! A wonderous occasion not to be missed! Passage and security will be provided to the
Santa De Angelo courtesy of the Matuvistan Navy!"
Repeat.
The Zetans arrived quickly and with a startling level of professionalism to them. White coats, surgical masks, a stretcher wheeled between them. Three cyborgs and one warform had arrived to where Tanaka currently lay, and one let out a bitter laugh upon seeing him. “That’s all you could do?” The doctor commented. “Fake soldiers. Fake politics. Fake medicine.” The disdain leaked from the woman like, well, blood did from Tanaka’s heart.
“Brief us on the current situation please.”
Abadi answered from Tanaka’s bedside, “Our scanners detect two bullets in the heart, one in the lungs. Every heartbeat reopens the wound, so he can’t heal. There’s-” she paused to remember the term- “severe internal bleeding.”
She looked over to Tanaka, who seemed surprisingly unphased by all of this, and instead was answering the Zetan woman, "Doctor, this station was not intended as a medical facility. To tell the truth, I believe that the fact I’m still alive at all is testament to the fast-action and innovation of the ECU-"
"Everyone,” Abadi interrupted, “I really don't think now is the time for this.” She glanced between him and the Zetans.
“The fact you’re alive at all is because you’re a healthy human who got remarkably lucky. Any sterile location could have kept you alive. Multiple GSWs lodged in vital organs…” She paused for a while, thinking. “Prep for bionic implants. Heart. Lungs. Might as well do both lungs whilst we’re cutting the chest open. Nanite surge to prevent rejection.” At the mention of bionics, Tanaka’s eyes seemed to double in size. Another long pause.
“Fairly typical operation then.” The doctor’s assistants- the two other cyborgs, assisted Tanaka over and onto the stretcher, where one of their arms would break apart to reveal a suite of complicated looking medical technology.
“Will you be joining us?” The doctor turned to look at Abadi, who nodded definitely.
Tanaka inhaled sharply- which was a mistake, as it brought on another agonizing coughing fit, and that brought fresh red blood onto the stretcher. But when it was over, he still managed to ask: "Doctor, are bionics fully... necessary?"
The group began making their way back through the corridors of the Hollywoodite part of the station, the doctor talking as she walked. “You knew what you were going to get when you accepted our offer of assistance. You have one and a half vital organs currently tearing themselves apart against the metal that is lodged inside you. We
could try extracting it and using multiple nanite surges to heal the damage, but they’re not designed for that kind of precise, delicate reconstructive work. We could try to suture them together, but this is your heart we’re talking about- one mistake and your blood pressure will bottom and you’ll enter cardiac arrest. Augmentations are the safest and most convenient method to maximise survival chances.”
Tanaka closed his eyes, tried and failed to breathe deeply, and answered simply: “Alright. You can do it.” He never imagined himself as saying yes to bionics, in his daydreams or in the nightmares he’d had of this event, but the sight of the blood and the doctors was making all of it much more real to him. He didn’t want to die.
As he was wheeled through the hallways, one of the assistants reached down to wipe the blood from around his mouth. Abadi tried to reach for the cloth, saying “I’ll do it,” but Tanaka stopped her.
“Excellent. Incidentally, my name is Doctor Epsilon-Sina.” She introduced herself curtly, the small group leaving the Hollywoodite area of the Meeting Place and entering the Zetan section. It was hard to miss the glares that Abadi and Tanaka received from the cyborgs and warforms surrounding them, including at least one warform whose shotgun was pointed directly at Abadi’s chest (although their finger was thankfully off the trigger), the daggers only subsiding when they entered the Zetan medical wing.
As empty as it was, they didn’t stop right away. Instead, Tanaka was taken into an operating theatre- as the group passed through a doorway, a haze of cloudy, chemical-smelling mist was blasted across them, bringing with it a sense of cleanliness.
“We’re going to scrub in now, Tanaka. Doctor Omega-Salk here will monitor your readings until we return. Abadi, come with us- you’ll also need to scrub in for the operation.”
Abadi followed them into the other room, her friend looking like an abandoned child in the intensely foreign atmosphere of the Zetan segment. She never liked him much before, but it’s still hard to watch someone she knows go through all this. Will he still be the same after the implants? They say bad things about them on New Hollywood, but that’s probably just propaganda. She was more worried about his career…
“So, uh, your name,” Abadi chimed in to Doctor Epsilon-Sina, “is it Old Arabic? Mine is as well.” Sudden as the question may have sounded, this was the typical kind of conversation an Oligarch would make to try easing tension. (She did herself the favor of ignoring the ‘Epsilon’ part.)
“It is, yes. You may have realised that many of our names, if not all of them, are drawn from old Earth.” The doctor scrubbed their hands and forearms thoroughly, then took an offered surgical scrub and mask. Their shaved head meant there wasn’t a need for a hair net on top of the rest of the getup, and once she had scrubbed down as well, the same articles would be offered to Abadi.
“I did wonder why you seemed so upset with us when we first made contact. We thought you could help us terraform our planet, you know.” The doctor gave themselves a quick visual check, confirming with the third, as of yet unnamed doctor. “Then you… Well.” Her words were acid and bitter. “You know what you did.”
Underneath the mask she was now wearing, Abadi’s jaw worked in silence for a while before she could tame her feelings and muster a response. Her worst fear about this evening was coming true. "It wasn't..." she made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. "Of course I know. And we would have helped you, but-" she is suddenly certain that Tanaka, hidden behind the walls now, would have known exactly what to say. She's always been the one burdened with a tongue that only knows how to start arguments.
"Look," she blurts, "it wasn't about you, okay? I know that's hard to believe, I know, but it wasn't. It wasn't about us, even." She looks down at the floor, not wanting to meet their eyes. "We care about humanity. We care about what people
are. It matters more than anything to us. And we, we just don't want to see humanity turn into something else. Can't you understand that?"
“It wasn’t about me? No, you’re right. You have nothing against
me, Epsilon-Sina. You have everything against the metal that makes me,
me.” She was now outright glaring at Abadi. “Human history is the story of adaptation and change. You cannot desperately fight progress, and then claim that you are the more human for denying something so fundamental to our species. But. Regardless. We have a colleague of yours to save.”
The group returned to the operating room, with Omega-Salk taking the opportunity to scrub up himself. Tanaka was moved from the stretcher to a proper operating theater, and Epsilon-Sina offered him a choice. “We can either put you under, or we can use localised anesthetics to minimise the pain you feel whilst still remaining awake. Note, minimise. We will still be opening your ribcage out, which will inevitably feel rather uncomfortable.”
Tania grimaced, but somewhere along the way it turned into a shy grin, "Well, I'm along for the adventure now, aren't I? Keep me awake, please." He looked between the Zetans and Abadi, oblivious to the argument that was just happening.
“Affirmative. Let’s get your chest numb.” Epsilon-Sina was presented with a series of large needles, the first of which was pressed just above Tanaka’s collar, the second to the left side of his sternum, and the third underneath his sternum. After they had deposited their numbing agents, the Hollywoodite was hooked up to a machine that would keep his body oxygenated with his normal organs removed.
“Firstly,” the doctor explained. “We want to make sure there will be
no graft failures. That means that you need a dosage of uplink nanomachines. For a Zetan, this would be simple, and we would merely work off of their preexisting neural implants. Theoretically, we could install those same implants in you, except considering your dislike for even life-saving augmentations, I doubt you’ll find the full Zetan works particularly appealing." (At this, Tanaka managed a laugh. It was only
mostly forced.) "That means we need to set up a biomechanical network in your spinal cord.” She looked down at him seriously.
“This will hurt.” That was the only warning Tanaka got. “You know though,” the doctor continued, in an attempt to distract him. “You’re quite lucky. The past little while has given us Zetan doctors quite intimate experience with how to handle gunshot casualties. Comes with the territory, I suppose.” At this, Tanaka did not manage a laugh. As she spoke, the very large nanomachine-releasing needle was produced, and painstakingly eased into Tanaka’s back.
Much like Alpha-Bodi had felt, there was a soft click and a spike of pain as the tiny robots were deployed. “Nanite spike deployed. Activation signal in three… Two… One…” There was a nod from Salk. “Nanites safely deployed. Neural network established. We could have given you dumb implants, but it’s not the twenty-second century anymore, we can do better than that.” She stood up and handed the needle off.
“How are you feeling? We’re about to open up your chest now, so I’d recommend saying any last words you might have just in case something goes catastrophically wrong with the organ changeover.”
Tanaka seemed to think very, very deeply about this. At last, diplomatic posturing now fully set aside, he settled on his favorite term in any Old Earth language:
"Yee-haw."
Saik and Sina shared a look that could best be summed up as ‘what in the goddamn?’ Then, with a shake of her head, Sina stepped back and Saik’s multi-medical-tool arm split open once again, producing a rather grim looking surgical saw. “Three hundred years of medical evolution, and we’ve yet to get a better way of replacing organs than ripping half the chest apart.”
Then, there was a lot of blood.
When it was over, Tanaka looked down at his freshly closed chest. The Zetan doctors had done a good job- he could hardly tell he had ever been cut open. Not from the outward look of it, or from the inward sensations; whatever the cyborgs had put in there, it felt identical to his old heart, his old lungs. His breathing was a little clearer, he noticed, and nothing else.
But he was different.
Abadi approached the bedside, trying to rest a reassuring hand on his arm, and he had to fight the urge to pull away. He took the chance to survive, but now that it was done, his mind was already filled with thoughts of what would follow. The ECU would push him aside, a stranger in his own country...
While he struggled in his mind, Abadi tried to thank the Zetans curtly and officially for their assistance.
All three of the doctors looked notably more haggard than they had when they started. Sina waved a hand dismissively at Abadi’s thanks, only turning towards Tanaka. “We’re going to keep you in for another two days to make sure nothing goes immediately wrong. Thankfully for you, the wards here are very empty, so you should have some privacy and your colleagues will be more than welcome to visit. For now though,
rest. We’re good doctors, but we’re not miracle workers: the human body does not like going through major surgery.” At this, Tanaka smiled weakly.
The Collective was... Horrified? It was difficult to express the reaction they had upon finding a series of identical clones shot from the ship down towards the surface of the planet with a request to pick up the craft in orbit. It was baffling on multiple levels, but, they would give these newcomers a chance still. A reply was beamed, informing The One that they would have to wait in orbit for a short period of time prior to their craft rendezvousing.
Aboard the craft sent to assist were placed veterans of the ground war. It was too strange a moment to not ensure the safety of the crew.
Tortoise
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Lucid Dreaming
