“Are you awake?” I hear a female voice. “It is alright; I am here for you. My friends call me Luna, okay?” Her voice is soothing, like she has an idea of what she is doing. “There was an accident. I am a repair technician, you will be alright.” I cannot speak; I cannot see. My optics are not on. What happened? I have only vague memories that honestly feel like the remnants of old dreams.
“Okay, just relax. I am going to start a diagnostic and see if I can find out what is wrong. Wait one moment.” Not like I have a choice I suppose. I feel the vaguest of sensations around parts of my body. Are both my legs missing… and my right arm? I want to be upset but I, I can’t. Why? “Okay, so I think I can get your optics, mics, yea those should be easy. Hopefully your auditors are okay but we will get to those.”
I feel a vibrating along my face and my visions flares up oddly showing a strange spectrum and the RGB is distorted and my HUD is gone; I can her face though. Her skin does not show the empty paleness of a life lived on a ship so likely a colonial somewhere. The soft roundness and the almond eyes shows she still has some true Earth heritage in her. I can see her putting a tool to the edge of my head and move it very slightly. Suddenly I can hear a soft tinking and a gentle buzzing off and on as she works.
“There, that should just about do it.” I can hear a soft accent now; she most have direct Earth heritage. “Can you nod at all, let me know how you’re feeling?” I try to comply, but my body feels so stiff, the parts I can actually feel that is. “Don’t try too hard, okay? Just relax.” I can hear how softly she is speaking and I try to take her words to heart: relax. “Just try to remember breathing. Slow and steady, okay?” I try to focus on the rhythm, in and out, in and out.
“Okay, so I need to restore your voice next so we can communicate. Just sit tight, okay? Remember your breathing.” In and out I keep thinking. It seems so odd that an action no longer undergone is still so deeply embedded in me. Perhaps this is the meaning on instinct. I feel her vaguely, bumping around somewhere in my neck. “It seems so odd that so much is where it would be in a human. I mean I know it is a space and familiarity thing, but it seems so odd that everything but the heart is where it would be in a regular old meat guy.” Truth be told I don’t know much about my own body as I am not a mechanic nor do I know much about the human as I am not a medic so I do suppose I have no choice but to trust her judgment on that.
“I can tell you from all the people I’ve seen here that things are definitely getting more dangerous out there, new frontiers and unrest in the Triangulum do not a good combination make. Don’t worry though, here at Serenitatis you are safe and cared for and to prove it… fixed.” She smiles a peaceful smile as she gently boops my face with her tool. “Now say ‘hello’ for me please.”
“Hello.” My voice is so scratchy and digitized it does not begin to sound like my own. “Thanks – fixing -.” It seems that I cannot keep my voice working consistently.
“Hrm,” she sighs. “That is unfortunate. For the moment try to use just a few words and speak slowly. I will likely need to get a new part for you. What is your body type? I don’t quite recognize it and it is not coming up on the diagnostic search.”
“FT-X795.” I need to make sure I enunciate each syllable slowly so nothing is lost. It honestly feels strange to talk about it.
“FT? Isn’t that the government test program, like military grade stuff and that? So you are an experimental model?”
“Yes,” I answer scratchily. Ergh…
“Okay, so that is gonna be some forms to fill out. Thing is, being the best mechanic means that I’m not the one doing it,” she says with a wink. “It also means that I will have trouble getting parts in for a while. You’ll have to sit tight, but we take care of you in the meanwhile.” I just try to relax. “Do you remember the accident?”
“No,” I croak. “I was on the dock and then everything seems fuzzy like a barely remembered dream.” I remember falling and talking and screaming and terrible fire, but something seems off. “Sorry, it is just hard.”
“Don’t worry, relax, okay? If you don’t remember that is fine too. It is important that we get you back to good order. Since I have gotten the ability to interact with you back why don’t I do something nice for you? Let me clean you off a bit.” She stands up and walks out of my vision. I can hear the sound of objects being moved and running water. It does not take her long to come back with liquid sloshing in the bucket. “Here you go, nice and warm. It’s just water; we will save the strong stuff for when you are in better shape. My diagnostics show your thermal sensors are still the most active so this should be nice.”
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“Thank you.” I honestly am starting to feel the strain. I just want to fall again…
“Hush,” her voice is close to a whisper. “We are here to help.” She keeps whispering soft words of gentleness as I feel warm move over my body and even linger a bit. The warm is peace and thinking is so hard, rest is soft, soft, quiet.
Fire and cold. Shifting. Not alone in the silence. The power, pain, darkness. Darkness is people and it talks. “Dogma cannot shut an open door son of Man, marked now with water. Will you climb the nine mounts, my Youth, and bear the oils of the Grigori?” Another, arms and wings and light. “I grant to you the Purple, Youth. See the world uncursed by Dogma.”
“Ah, you are awake.” I can see her more clearly now: saffron skin, almond eyes, and sweet night cascading gently onto her shoulders… Wait, what? “I can see you are awake silly. I managed to get your eyes a bit more fiddled with as well as your mics. Voice is straight up in need of a new part, though.” She nods sagely. “Most of the work here will need to be supportive until the major parts come in. Was the sleep good at least?”
“Dreamt… think…” Words are no easier. “How… long…?”
“Dreamt, really? That is odd actually. I should look at your heart.” Her face is laden with concern.
“Why… bad…?” I have never heard of such a thing.
“Cyborgs above a certain level aren’t supposed to dream. Has something to do with the inability to differentiate between dream and reality, sleepwalking, and something of that sort. I admit I was not too cognizant during that part of school. I had my eye on other things.” She drops a wink here. “But I never majored in robot psychology so I cannot give you a good answer.” She walks off my vision and comes back shortly. “Tell me, in any body have you had anyone work on your heart?”
“No… Generally…” I am suddenly starting to feel nervous. My heart is who I am and it was only ever exposed twice, once when I was fully converted and once when I was put in this body and I was certainly not awake for those.
“Unfortunately I dare not risk putting you out for this; just stay calm okay? We should avoid too much stress until this is done. I need to crack open your chest and give a peek inside, connect my diagnostic equipment and see what is going on.” I just hold still and bear it as she pulls open my chest and mucks around in there.
I can only vaguely feel what she is doing thankfully, but it is so odd to have someone’s hands deep in your body however much you can feel it. The thing is, when she touches my heart is when I really know: a small alarm dings in my head warning me that I am in danger. I must have reacted somehow because he starts speaking, “It’s okay; it’s only me. I just need to connect some things here,” I hear a clicking sound, “and now we are ready to start the diagnostic.” Clickty-clack-clickty-clack goes the keyboard as a feel the smallest jolt of energy through my heart.
The moments drag on as she stares at the screen, stretching the seconds to centuries. The ability to truly feel your heart is a terrible one, honestly. I know now every fiber and filament on my center and I would be tense if I could but I just lie here futilely. I hear her breathing, achingly slowly as I strain not to cry out in horror. She must perceive that something is wrong with me though, because I can feel her hand in mind, gently squeezing. “I cannot imagine your fear right now,” her voices touches me in my terror, a murmuring brook of soothing water. “I am here and I am going to help,” she speaks quietly in that charming accent of hers. I calm slightly, feeling like there is some greater thing I am missing.
“And we are done.” Her voices perks again as she lets go of my hand. The warning is still going but I can no longer feel that sense of impending doom coursing through. “Let me examine the results before I completely close you up.” She hems and haws at something, maybe it’s being uploaded to a cyber-eye? It takes a few minutes before she turns to me again. “So bad news, other bad news time: first bad news is that there is no reason you should be dreaming so I cannot say what is going on there; second bad news is that there are minor issues with your heart that need to be corrected immediately and I am not qualified to do it. We do have cyber-surgeons on staff though so I will get that all arranged for you. For now I am going to close you up and we can transfer you to a room as we wait for those repairs and your replacement parts to come in.”
“Thanks… Luna… Am… Kel…” I am just tired from all this ordeal but feel it would be wrong to not give my name ultimately.
She looks at me with a look I cannot describe. “Thank you Kel. Remember, if you are ever in trouble I am the best mechanic in the universe, so just look for me, okay?”
The next while seems to slip by in contrast with the pained moments before. She works, talks, contacts, and cavorts while I wait. In due time though I am loaded onto a stretcher by some pretty heavily modded orderlies and stretchered away to a cold clinical room lit only by a soft white light.