| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
Renata lies back on the exam table, fully undressed. She’s never done this
before. Even in her implanted memories, she never had to have a full
physical examination like this. She has always just walked into the doctor’s
office, and talked until they cleared her. She’s not uncomfortable, though.
It’s unclear if the woman here is a doctor or a mechanic, though, which is
just a little unsettling. Again, why is she internalizing it? She should
just ask. “Are you a doctor, or a mechanic?”
“Both!” Evica replies confidently. She’s wearing what basically looks like a
hazmat suit, but it’s fairly thin, and her face is exposed. She’s wearing a
respirator mask and protective glasses, but Renata still feels safe here.
“As a biocyberneticist, I specialize in cyborg healthcare. Now that I’ve
performed the visual exam, we’re going to have to move on to the tactile
portion. Is it okay if I touch you?”
“Go ahead, I’m not shy,” Renata replies sincerely.
Evica lays her hands on Renata’s body. She pats and rubs all over, quite
systematically and carefully. She sometimes tilts her head away, not in
shame, but to let her fingers do the understanding, and not cloud her
interpretations with sight. “Standard humanoid shaping. No protrusions,
tears, or injuries.” She taps on the side of her glasses twice, implying
that they’re showing her an augmented reality. “Preliminary scans indicate a
carbon-fiber endoskeleton and polymer muscles. The skin is wholly
artificial, but still organic. I’ll need a deeper scan to see your
brain—wait.” She reaches for her glasses again, with her thumb and index
finger. She slowly rubs them together. Maybe she’s zooming in? Evica reaches
over with her other hand, and starts tapping on the medical pod screen.
“What? What is it? Is something wrong?”
Evica makes another tap. Red scanning lights appear from the foot of the
pod, and sweep across Renata’s body back and forth a couple of times. “Can
you turn off your sensitivity to cold?”
“What? Why would I need to be able to do that?”
“To save my life,” Evica explains cryptically. “Can you turn it off?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never tried before.”
“Try it now,” Evica urges. “Don’t just lower the sensitivity. Turn it all
the way off.”
“Tell me what’s going on.” Renata demands as she’s trying to comply, using
her intuition alone, and maybe the clear sense of urgency as motivation.
“I’m gonna take it out, but I can’t do that unless I cool you down to
extreme temperatures first.”
“Okay, I think I can’t feel cold anymore, but even if I can, just do it. I
don’t care.”
Evica hits the button. Nozzles lining the inside walls open and begin to
flood the pod with some kind of fluid. She can’t feel the cold. It just
feels wet. She breathes a sigh of relief, but she’s still anxious. “Have you
ever heard of an ATP bomb?”
“No, but it sounds real bad.”
“It’s not bad for you. You don’t have any mitochondria, but I do. If
that thing goes off, and I’m still in here, the agent will get into my
system, and basically disconnect my mitochondria from their partner cells.
It doesn’t stop the mitochondria from producing power, it just prevents them
from channeling it into energy. All of it becomes waste heat. So not only
will I not be able to move, breathe, or do anything anymore, but I’ll burn
up with a fever that kills me within minutes.” She watches the screen for a
moment. “Okay. We’re safe, for now. And I don’t need to call in any help, so
we’re going into lockdown.” She moves over and lifts the lid from a button
on the wall. She then pulls it. Metal shutters slide down in front of the
windows, locking them in.
“If that’s good enough,” Renata says, “then just leave and leave me in here.
That’s what bomb experts sometimes do. They activate it from a safe
distance, so the energy is wasted.”
“Sounds good in theory,” Evica agrees, “but we’re talking about a biological
weapon. We inspect it first. She takes a breath. “I’m going to cut you open,
okay?”
“I can’t feel pain anymore either. Do what you gotta do.”
Evica sterilizes her instruments, and herself, then begins the procedure.
She cuts into Renata’s abdomen very slowly and carefully. “It’s located
where your gall bladder would be if you needed one. Your artificial liver is
a little bit smaller to make room for the device too.” She pulls the skin
apart, creating a giant gaping cavity.
“Why do I need a liver at all?”
“Your liver processes all liquids, so they can be purged safely.
Except for water, you don’t need to consume anything, but you think you do,
so you do. And that has to be filtered out.” Evica takes some kind of wand
and slips it into the cavity. She suddenly steps back in fear, dropping the
wand on the floor. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“Worse than something called a freaking ATP bomb! What could be worse!”
Renata questions.
“I thought it would be an aerosol. Everyone in the vicinity would absorb it
into their pores, and they would die from it, and I wish that were
the case. You just close the door, and it’s fine. But this...this has a
gamma pulse delivery system. Much more sophisticated, and orders of
magnitude more dangerous. I couldn’t detect the intensity, but it would pass
through the walls, and surely everyone in this building would die. Probably
the dome too. Maybe not further than that since the dome walls are hardened
against radiation, but they’re designed that way to protect us from space. I
don’t know if they work in the reverse. That’s not my department.”
“What can you do? Throw me into a volcano?” Renata suggests.
“That would be unethical, and unwise. I don’t think the bomb is designed to
trigger via heat, but enough heat would likely break the seal
anyway.”
“Then jettison me into space.”
“Same deal,” Evica reasons. “Gamma ray bursts happen all the time in space.
They can’t be stopped.”
“Not by the domes?”
“Actually, you’re right. This bomb is powerful, but it’s not a quasar.
Still, we’re not entertaining this. I don’t have to send you into space. I
just need to extract this thing from you.”
“That won’t work. My mother did this to me, and she is no fool. Her
contingencies have contingencies. I’m gonna have to talk to her about it.
Only she knows how to fix this, and she’ll only tell me. I know her well
enough to know that too.”
“That’s not my department either.”
“Then get Hrockas Steward on the phone.”
