Salim entered the operating room with the stride of a flamboyant lawyer, ready to complete a day’s work no matter the difficulty. Dealing with the “sickness” of players and their bodies glitching out in the most literal sense was more than a challenge. He might not have had a degree in game design, but with the nurses wearing their sterile uniforms in a synchronized pattern, anything was possible, and he could feel it.
If he had more opinions about their predicament, he’d be the first to say that what struck Farkas and Paulie was far beyond his previous patients. Their legs contorted into a riving mass of sharp edges and skin so smooth and hairless that no one with a brain would consider it human. The frantic twitching of their bodies further cemented his other theses about player biology. In a way, this was their equivalent of a seizure, and the more he observed, the more the excitement in his soul rose.
Perhaps Salim could be amid another thesis after the operation because of Paulie, who began to speak in an unholy mess of non-vocabulary with his tongue sticking out like a fish on land. It was thrilling to find out if code error syndrome caused players to blurt out otherworldly languages instead of pure nonsense, as his superiors theorized. After all, anything was possible.
He tsk-tsked at his patients, shaking his head at the predicament that proved to be quite a handful. Even before he itched to use his new toys, which he swore again to the staff that they weren’t illegal, he stood in brief thought. “Well, well, well. What to do?” he said, tightening his face mask and gloves. “Sometimes, I wonder why His Majesty can’t fix these ‘people’ himself if he can snap any tea he wants.”
One of the many eyes within the Medical Looking Glass above his busy head gasped at such notions of casual indifference. “Mr. Hartman! You must know that running a country is far more at stake than the one job assigned to you. Our king isn’t an all-seeing deity of legend.”
Salim failed to keep the laughter from bursting through his obstructed smile, dumbfounded at how his colleagues managed to graduate from the same school that defined his obsessions. “Then, you don’t know the first thing about him. Hal and I go way back. Now, let’s begin.” He stretched out his hand for the nurses to hand him the first tool he acquired through his travels around Agrima.
To the naive and uninitiated, it was an inconspicuous white box carrying two glove-like devices that resembled average defibrillators. Salim refused to apply a tube of conductive gel required for such a procedure. He didn’t even rub them together before the life-saving shock, but it seemed that was never its true purpose despite common sense saying otherwise.
Upon placing them on what remained of Farkas’ gaping maw for a chest, a flashing wave of “pixie dust” swept over him, followed by a scream that would make a serial killer faint on the sidewalk. The horrors inflicted continued with every bit of agony and turmoil from his worn, scratching tone. His claws grew sharp within the leather straps but remained unsuccessful the third time he tried freeing himself from the operation, which had as much anesthetics as an interrogation method.
Forty-five seconds in, the procedure made Salim appear more like a monster than a man for a few seconds until the staff mustered up the courage to view the results. They were miraculous. Farkas regained one leg like an untied shoestring, as did the other, and the garish hole that exposed his false simulation of organs began to heal and close.
The recovery rate of flesh and bone was faster than any medical degree could explain, but Salim suggested not applying human logic for the time being. Players might pretend to need the same air flowing through their lungs, but bleeding their hearts over a group of living WMDs with unlimited stamina was what his mother would call a self-made deception. There was nothing to sympathize with, or at least according to his pragmatic conscience. They’d be fine by tomorrow, hopefully.
Salim lifted the gloves, smiling at the crucial data he collected from Farkas within three minutes. “Are you all right, son? Nothing aching from the belly?”
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Farkas breathed enough air to fill twelve balloons, eyes bulging like golf balls from his sockets. “What… What the hell was that?”
“Your salvation, of course, all thanks to these babies!” He presented the gloves near his face, branded as the Reaper Mittens on the tag. “Tacky name, but I can get used to it. As the kids say, your character model glitched out of control. Any more, and you could’ve turned into a heap of bad coding.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw it before but didn’t think it was ‘contagious’ or whatever you might call it. Where did you get such a thing anyway?”
“Ah-ah-ah. You didn’t say the magic word.”
“What?”
“I’m just kidding. The seller’s name was June Dough. It’s not very fresh or unique, honestly. So, before I give you a lollipop, I’ll have to do the same miracle with our beloved Paulie here. Who knows how many players will stand a chance against the horde without his guidance.”
“Be my guest,” Farkas reassured, getting up from bed. “You don’t mind me having a phone call, do you? I’ll be waiting outside either way if that’s fine for y—” Without warning, his breathing ceased again, and his hands shook until they became devoid of color and texture.
Salim cried out someone’s name for the first time in years, attempting to catch his patient’s fall as he went through another “seizure” that resulted in his head turning 720° in both directions. Eventually, the skin vanished and revealed his skull, constantly deforming like boiled tar, an intense mockery of basic anatomy at every angle. It was a frightening affair, indeed, with several nurses racing toward the exit to hurl their guts out elsewhere.
Sweet corn on a cob, this is worse than I thought. Salim carefully laid Farkas on his back, fearing that his convulsions now resembled the worst case of tetanus without being one.
A couple of nurses, still brave enough to remain on his command, began to increase the straps on both patients. Salim came in wanting a challenge for his unorthodox expertise, but now, it seemed the universe weighed on him as punishment for his petty indulgence. It didn’t matter that the average player could survive getting ground to a paste through a wood chipper. He messed up big time.
With a deep scowl forming in his eyes, any trace of worry faded to dust, replaced with a calming sense of determination that everything would be all right. “Fire up the Reprogrammer,” he said, turning to them with the same demeanor.
“But sir, it’ll take the whole day without rest, and it’s eating up all our bills,” one of the nurses replied.
“I don’t care! I’ll pay them out of my own pocket if I have to. The people need these two, and we need them.”
“…okay.”
Salim had hoped the day wouldn’t come for him to revisit an outdated yet reliable method of fixing code error syndrome. He could still remember the same mysterious entity online that gave him the bulky machinery free of charge. To say the Reprogrammer needed two hotel rooms worth of space would be the most generous understatement. The screen alone was the size of a tennis court, with keys at the bottom that needed twenty to thirty people working simultaneously without pause.
The Reprogrammer came with a sterile white chamber on the opposite side, enough to fit seven Paulies if need be. He wasn’t sure if a man of his girth would take more days to recover than his friend, but like the confident little angel on his shoulder would say, anything was possible. Just you watch, Hal. They don’t call us doctors for nothing.
The new ”procedure” was much easier than it appeared through its bells and whistles. Each line of code was a player’s blood vessels, each paragraph their bones, and each of those with designated colors their organs. It wasn’t a matter of reverse engineering the art of surgery but reverse engineering every book they studied in med school. It was now as difficult as learning how to type, depending on the average Joe in the room.
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“And that’s how I survived a fate worse than death,” said Farkas, concluding his conversation with his new best friend in another world.
As always, Hajime cackled like the braying hyena he was. “Jesus H. Christ, that is an interesting story. You could say we rejected our humanity unwillingly.”
Farkas returned his laughter tenfold on the other line. “Awesome reference, dude. Sometimes, your people have great taste.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Wolfman. So, do you really think it was Paulie who saved your ass that day?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Farkas agreed. “Do you wanna know how he did it?”
“Lay it on me!” Hajime didn’t mind an explanation that would last an entire season if it made his story more interesting than before. Although Swordland had yet to grow on him, he wouldn’t want to miss out on the ongoing wonder and excitement awaiting his return.
However, before Farkas could utter a word, the Brazen Couple called out his name from upstairs. At long last, the mammoth feast was about to begin.
“Sorry, man. I’ll call you back. It’s for the sake of the mission if you know what I mean.”
“No problem. I understand.”