3rd of March, 2192
Encrypted Message to Jax999: We need your help.
(10 minutes later)
Encrypted Message to QualityLife: What do you need?
Encrypted Message to Jax999: We need you to steal something. File attached.
Encrypted Message to QualityLife: Received.
4th of March, 2192
Rory woke up in a haze. It felt like hours had elapsed, but all she knew was that she was in a machine, and it wasn't one of the ones the doctor had listed previously. Rory tried to look around and found that she could move again, well, her upper body at least, but she couldn't feel her lower body.
Rory looked down with her eyes and tried to move her big toe on her left leg… and then her right leg… neither worked. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything below her waist. Then she started panicking;
She was too young for this; this wasn’t the progression of her disease. She was supposed to have limited mobility but otherwise be able to move. What the hell was this?
Rory frantically tried to shake her legs, and all she got was the doctor's voice saying,
"Oh, you're awake; that was fast. How do you feel? Like shit, I imagine. Those shots are excruciating, or so I've been told, and we don't even know if they do anything besides destroy bodily organs. All we know is that this treatment won't work without them. Side effects vary from innocuous, such as a nosebleed, to the other end of the spectrum. What's the worst thing you can think of? Think of worse, and that is what these shots can do to you. The worst we've seen is cardiac arrest after rapid tumor growth. I'm talking tumors growing in minutes that should take years and growing to the size of baseballs. I bet you are starting to freak out more right now, and I understand that. Let me say one thing before you respond, I do not care about you at all, and whatever happens, is your fault."
Rory started frantically panicking, and all she heard was the heart rate in her ears. After passing out, Rory finally felt something in her arm and realized she had been administered an IV.
She hadn't consented to this. She'd consented to 4 shots, which was a mistake, as she couldn't move her legs. The liquid going into her arm was red and had hints of purple in it, and it was thick. It felt like syrup was going through her veins, and as it coursed through her body, it was painful.
The pain in the arm that the IV was in was like no other pain she'd experienced. It was like her bones were being broken and mended over and over in the span of seconds, followed quickly by her other arm starting to feel like jelly. The pain had become Rory's life, and her mind didn't know how to stop it. Rory remembered drifting in and out of pain for what felt like hours on end.
When she thought it couldn't get any worse, the pain intensified. It felt like her skin was being flayed off while being burned alive. Barely able to think, her mind got out three words,
This wasn't right
before she passed out again.
Rory woke up some time later and realized that the pain wasn't unbearable anymore; she could tolerate it. Almost right after she thought that, though the pain intensified, and she heard a voice tell her,
"Sorry about earlier, these liquids are thicker than we would like, and the only way to get them through your system is to increase your heart rate and keep it elevated. However, that scare tactic can only work for so long, so we must use… other methods. So, from now on, we will keep you at the end of your tolerance to pain so that your heart rate stays elevated and you don't die from this liquid coursing through your veins. Just think about the possibility of getting better… Now, have fun! Oh, and we told your mom to return in a few days."
Then the pain became all she knew.
Time passed in a fog, and Rory just hung on and focused on when this seemingly everlasting pain would cease. Something interesting happened, though; Rory found that she could concentrate through the pain. Rory focused on this new sensation and decided to flex that "muscle" because she had nothing else she could do in the meantime.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
What felt like hours passed to Rory, and something even more unexpected happened; the pain just stopped. Rory looked around and tried to see if maybe the machine had powered down or broken or something, but figured out that her body had just stopped acknowledging the pain because when Rory tried focusing on it again, the pain came flooding back, not overwhelming, in nature, anymore, but still present.
In fact, Rory found, with the new focus that she "acquired," that she could modulate the amount of pain that she felt. She found a happy medium of moderate pain to look like she was still enduring the procedure to her doctor but not so much that it took away from this fantastic new mental muscle she had acquired.
Time passed swiftly after that, and Rory remembered that she had been trying to learn Japanese and could remember some of the lessons on Duolingo. Rory mentally started sounding out words and phrases; once she tired of that, she tried her hand at Kanji to see if she could remember the ones she'd been taught. She didn't do too well, but then a voice materialized, the doctor's, in fact,
"Rory, you are doing great, and we are done with this test; we will power down the machine and let you go home soon. All we have to do is give you some saline solution to flush the stuff in your body out so you'll be normal again, or dare I say better than normal."
The moment his voice stopped was the moment Rory heard a whoosh from the machine's top sliding open. The nurse greeted Rory with a smile, the same one that gave her the injections, and thanked her for going through all of the pain and suffering in the present to mend her body for the future. Rory was helped out of the machine, her legs still didn't work and helped into a bed, in which she promptly fell asleep.
Rory woke up later and found that she couldn't remember how she got to where she was, but that she was in a bed, in a hospital, with an IV, and the bag said saline solution. The procedure must have been a success. Rory couldn't remember anything that had happened; for some reason, it didn't bother her even though it should.
It seemed like the very moment Rory had awoken, the doctor had somehow known, and she heard the doctor's voice speaking,
"You did great, and the procedure went fantastic, almost flawless; you'll be going home in no time, probably in the next couple hours. There was a complication, though; when we were doing the procedure, we had to go through the area of the brain where lower body motor function is located. We have sham injured that portion of your brain, so you'll notice you cannot walk or move your lower body, but we have a little present we are sending home with you that should help get you back to full vitality. Enjoy… and thank you for entrusting The QOL Foundation with your health."
Rory looked up at the doctor, or toward where she thought the doctor would be, and only saw empty air. She wanted to ask what QOL stood for.
Right after that thought flowed through Rory’s mind, Rory’s mother rushed in and practically screamed,
"Oh my gosh, my baby… the doctor told me all about the procedure and the side effects. We'll get through this together. Now, I'll let you rest, and in a few hours, we can go home."
Rory looked at her mother and asked,
“What does QOL, in their name, stand for”?
Rory's mother said something inaudible, well inaudible, to her because she had already started to fall asleep.
Rory, lightly shaken awake a few hours later by her mother, was told,
“You’ve been cleared to go. Let me help you get to the car.”
Rory was then promptly wheeled out to the initial waiting area and beyond by her mother, where she saw the doctor patiently waiting. Rory silently hoped this was the final time she would see him. He finished with what sounded very rote to Rory by saying,
“Welcome to your new life…. And enjoy!”
When Rory and her mother arrived home later that day, a giant, small car-sized package was waiting for them on the driveway with an installer waiting beside it. Rory's mother drove her car up to the worker and asked,
“What is this? What are you doing here?”
The mover just responded with,
"The QOL Foundation sends their regards. Where do you want to set this up? It is for your daughter."
Rory's mother looked at me, and Rory replied,
“My room, please.”
The mover grunted and began relocating it to the indicated bedroom. Rory and her mother followed the employee inside, much to his chagrin.
Once it was moved in, Rory wheeled herself over to the end of it and thought it looked like one of those sensory deprivation pools… with thicker fluid. And attending it was a helmet and a note. All the message said was,
“Enjoy,
TQOLF”
Oh great… This doesn't seem suspicious at all. Oh well, let me go tell my mother, and then I'll just dive in, or well, be helped in.
Rory wheeled herself out to the living room, where her mother opened a letter from The QOL Foundation awarding their family ten thousand dollars for my mother's hardship while I was hospitalized.
Rory called her mother’s name,
“Mom, can you help me into this pod?”
Her mother, without complaint, came over to help Rory get in the pod. The liquid was cold to the touch, and Rory could honestly say she wasn't a fan, but this was supposed to help. Fully submerged up to her head, she donned the helmet and plugged in all the cords she could reach while her mother plugged in the remainder. Her mother, Helen, said something right as the helmet was affixed on Rory’s head,
“You should send the Quality of Life Foundation your thanks when you get done.”
Then the helmet turned on, a screen appeared, and everything else was forgotten.
PLEASE SUBMERGE YOURSELF COMPLETELY BEFORE PROCEEDING!!
Rory submerged herself, and the anticipated prompt appeared:
WELCOME TO MY ANCESTORS!