to rest.”
“How long…when?” Wow, I’d been almost a regular chatterbox now.
Chris looked at me and got serious. “Four months; they brought you here in April. It’s now August. But please rest; we’ll catch you up later. I’ll leave you be for now, but don’t worry, I’ll be watching from the main desk. All the monitors are on.” He fiddled with his TV remote thing again. “There is a sedative in the IV. It will relax you. You should sleep.”
“Head’s better, thanks.” I smiled and then said, “Others, the others, did they rescue the others?”
He looked concerned. “No, just you. Sorry.” Then the sedative knocked me out, and I fell back to sleep.
*****
When I woke in the morning, Chris and a middle-aged woman were both in my room. They fiddled with the machines and tapped on the handheld remote. They passed the remote back and forth to each other. Neither spoke, but Chris looked nervous and edgy. The woman stepped to the side of the bed and asked with a kind expression, “Feel better this morning, honey?” I looked at her and smiled. She looked like she was about to say something else, but the door opened again.
A man and a woman came in. The man, dressed in casual clothes, went straight over to the computer bench. For some reason, computer techy geek types all seemed to look alike to me. The woman came up beside my bed, and the nurse stepped away. This new woman was quite a contrast from the computer tech. She was in a very expensive dark blue business suit with a red silk scarf. She carried herself with a lot of poise. She smiled and looked at me. “Hello, it’s good to see that you are awake. I’m Jane. Jane Dietrich.” She sat on the side of my bed and touched my hand but didn’t disturb the IV tubes. There was a connection between us, a warm connection that I didn’t understand. I looked down at her hand, and I thought I saw a glow, but there was nothing to see. I must have imagined it. She smiled. “I will help you get your life back together. To get you back out into the world.”
The computer guy was starting up his machines. Lights and beeps went off on his bench, and the two monitors beside me came to life. Then there was a soft tingling in my left arm, and I gasped and jerked my head toward him.
“I’m sorry, I should have said something. The boot up here can affect your sensory networks. I didn’t mean to startle you. Again, sorry!”
At the same time, the door flung open, and two men burst in. The first man was a tall, lanky, skinny-type old guy, and the other was a younger black guy. Both wore lab coats. Tall and skinny stepped up to the foot of my bed. He had a hook nose and stared down at me. He had long white hair pulled back into a ponytail. I thought to myself, I’m sorry, old guys with white hair should act their age. They don’t look cool with a ponytail. I suppose he had a motorcycle parked outside that he bought during his latest midlife crisis.
Ponytail guy spoke right up, “Well, we’re all here, good. Let us begin.” And looking straight at me, he asked, “And how are we this morning?”
I looked right back at him. “We? I have no idea how you feel, but I feel like shit!” Both Jane and the black guy lowered their heads and smiled.
“Yes, quite. I see.” Without missing a beat, ponytail guy continued, “Let me introduce myself and everyone else present. My name is Dr. Philippe, Marcel Philippe. I am chief of medicine and director of medical research here at White Willow Medical Center. I am your lead physician. Beside me here is Dr. Jeffrey Davis; he is head of med surge at this center, and he is your chief surgeon.” The black guy looked up and smiled. “Sitting beside you on the bed is Dr. Jane Dietrich, head of psychiatry.”
I thought to myself, Oh, great! She’s a fucking shrink.
“At the computer table is Mike Berry. He is our bio IT technician and is an expert in alternate technology linkages. You will get to understand what that means as we work more with you over the next little while.” I couldn’t believe how arrogant this character was. “I understand you have already met Chris and Zoe. They are both medical practitioners and will attend you as well. In short, we are your medical team.”
Besides having a ponytail, he had a large hook nose. “To begin, Chris told me you asked about the elapsed time of your treatment. The ship you were traveling on was attacked, and all hands were lost, but then a medical ship found you along with your damaged DNA sequencer. Unfortunately, they could not revive you. Your sequencer, or SCARAB, was damaged beyond field use, and you could not survive over three or four minutes at a time. As a result, reviving you was pointless. As a consequence, they pronounced you dead.
“As luck would have it though, the chief physician on that medical ship was relentless. He would not stop trying to save you, and what’s more, he knew of my work here and contacted me. I immediately saw a marvelous opportunity to add to our research and to test a process that could save your life. The fact that we’re all here now proves that we succeeded.” There it was! He didn’t care about me; he only cared about the applause he’d get later.
Then looking at the doctor beside him, ponytail guy started, “Let’s begin by explaining how we treated our patient. Dr. Davis, if you would be so kind?”
“Okay, miss…” Dr. Davis seemed shy when he spoke, “It was not possible to restore some organs, and that was the main reason that the previous resuscitation attempts failed. Revive terminals could not restore your heart, liver, or your pancreas. So we have provided you with replacement biotechnical organs. These are digitally engineered biomechanical nanobots programmed to perform like the organ they replace.”
He must have seen the look on my face. The one that said, “What the fuck did you just say?”
He spit out, “These artificial parts act like the real organs.”
What he said shocked me. “My heart! Wow! Will I be restricted? Will I have to be careful?”
Dr. Davis answered, “No, quite the opposite. You will soon be in better shape than I am, and believe me, I am perfectly fit. He finished with, “Mr. Berry can explain the patient’s prosthetics.”
“All right.” Mike began, “Your left arm and your left leg are bioengineered prostheses. They respond to your brain like your real arm and leg. The difference is that the artificial parts use a battery that is also located in your new leg. Now this battery is remarkable. It is subatomic driven, which is not dangerous and may not need a recharge for twenty years. Also, your arm and leg are computer driven, and you will have sensory response, touch, and feel, like your real hand. What’s more, you will be as gentle or as firm or strong as you may desire.”
Mike looked at Dr. Philippe who was pretending not to be paying attention by fiddling with a monitoring machine up behind me on the wall. Probably the one that would chime whenever I woke up. Dr. Philippe seemed like a phony. Mike asked, “Dr. Philippe, should I continue?”
“Yes, but let me inject a comment first.” Dr. Ponytail was standing over me, looking straight down at my head. Or was he trying to look down my shirt? Pervert. “Please understand, miss, you also had extensive head injuries. We had to rebuild the right side of your skull and forehead, and these included the nerve ganglia for your eye.”
Mike continued, “Well, yes, you have sensors to process visual and nonvisual information. This is not like anything science has done before. In effect, this improves your optics. You have sensors that will give you information about whether a person is beyond your vision and if they have weapons. It will even tell you if a hostile creature is behind you.
“A
