The operating room was unlike anything Gabriel Meunez had ever seen. All the surfaces were a shade of red and covered with tacky, self sterilizing non-slip coating. Independent inertial dampeners, environmental systems and gravity management systems were behind a thick armoured curtain in one corner, available for servicing at a moment's notice. The lights projecting down from overhead were so bright and multi directional that the few shadows left stood out like stark black outlines on the various red surfaces.
The one they had augmented and rebuilt from human into a hybrid framework lay on the operating table under surgical covers. She was called Gloria, but in moments she would be no more. Her human brain, born of a mother like trillions of humans throughout history would be discarded like a waste product. All that work, moderating her tendencies through direct interface treatment, rehabilitation, all gone to waste. It's a shame, but the woman was so damaged that her mind couldn't be cleared without damaging it physically, permanently. At least there will be no pain.
“Anaesthesia is in full effect. Begin,” ordered the dispassionate lead surgeon. He was a specialist, Doctor Nevil Barnes, and he had spent months aboard his ship waiting to take on this one task. The kind of transplant that was about to occur was beyond rare, it was nigh unheard of outside of horror movies.
The initial crackle of a particle saw coming to life startled Gabriel and as he watched from behind the sterile shield at one end of the operating room the beam began cutting through skin and bone. He cringed and had to look away. The very nature of what was happening was at first fascinating, then he discovered how grisly the act would actually be and he found himself struggling to watch.
He had sent countless troopers to their deaths, onto battlefields that became graveyards, but he had never personally seen the gore. The blood that flowed in everyone's veins was a scarlet secret to him and even though the events transpiring in the room were of his doing it took all his bravery and fortitude to look back at the proceedings.
The lead surgeon, surrounded by other doctors who leapt at the chance to assist, was just about to finish cutting the top of the woman's skull off. The large three dimentional representation of what was happening inside the patient's head hovered in front of him, backed by another two dimensional display just past it, keeping all her vital readings and invisible details in easy view.
“All right, here we go,” announced Doctor Barnes in a whisper as he gently removed the top of Gloria's skull.
Unable to control himself any longer Gabriel spun around. A nurse was right behind him with a bucket, holding the self sealing lid open for him. His gelatinous brown synthetic breakfast came up in a violent surge. The sight of the substance his automated nutrient generator filled his stomach with several times a day urged another heave.
“Don't mind the man behind the curtain,” commented one of the Doctors as the skullcap was carefully laid in a container. There was some chuckling and head shaking, Gabriel could hear some and guess at the rest as he wiped his mouth with the towelette the nurse handed handed him.
He took several deep breaths and started to turn back to the ongoing surgery. Gabriel's stomach immediately threatened to revolt, to start heaving whatever was left and he faced forward once more. “They said this shouldn't happen, the nutrient delivery systems should manage any reaction,” he told the nurse, a hairy knuckled, thickly built man.
“It's nerves sir. Same thing happened to me in anatomy class. I have something that'll help,” he replied, holding up a small medical infuser.
“Please, I don't want to miss this, it's history you know.”
The nurse held the infuser next to Gabriel's cheek and pressed the small button on the other end, sending a mist of medication into his system through his skin. It felt like a mild, brief cold pinch. “You should feel that right away.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you very much, there'll be something extra in your next paycheck.”
“Just doing my job.”
Gabriel returned his attention to the operating table and flinched his gaze away. Her head was wide open, Gloria's brain was plain for everyone to see as the doctors ran scans over her entire nervous system to verify that she was ready for the next phase.
“All right, starting to connect the new mind with the nervous system. Watch for neural spikes and call out problems with connection strength,” announced Doctor Barnes as he brought a circular device with cables leading directly into a tank behind him where the Eve brain waited, anaesthetized like the patient on the table.
The ultra fine net of wires seemed to move on their own, reaching down to the table and around the brain inside Gloria's head. They were drawn into her skull by nanobots programmed specifically for the task and none other to make a connection between a living, working nervous system and a new brain while the original was still in place.
“Wow that's quick. Did you program these yourself Doctor Barnes?”
“I had to. Outside of emergency brain transplants into machine managed clone crop bodies no one does this anymore. The idea of bringing an old brain into a body with a pre-existing mind became taboo centuries ago,” replied Doctor Barnes without a hint of pride as he watched the holographic display of the lines being connected to the brain stem in hundreds of places.
“Looks like all the lines are in, Doctor.”
“All right, let's start with something simple. Let's see if our patient can connect with the tactile nerves in her upper body.”
“Anaesthesia won't interfere with our readings?” asked one of the red clad men around the table.
“Of course it will, that's what anaesthesia does, but that doesn't mean we can't run an artificial sensation up and down the nerve to check to see how we're doing,” Doctor Barnes replied with a little irritation. “I'd go back to wherever you studied neural science and request a refund if I were you. Until then, keep your questions to yourself,” he commented as he programmed the test sequence in a holographic control pad. Barnes couldn't feel the keystrokes or icon selections, but that didn't seem to slow him down. “All right, let's see if Eve is willing to communicate with the new body.”
Several of the half hair thickness lines lit up, glowing different colours as several new readings on the floating two dimentional display remained completely flat. “Come on, you've been in active preserve for a long time but you've got to remember what it feels like to be human,” Doctor Barnes said to himself.
Gabriel watched intently as the display still showed four flat lines. “I'm not sure what this means. It has to do with Eve accepting the new body?” he asked the nurse in a hushed whisper.
“They're checking to see if she could feel something touching her if she weren't under anaesthesia. It's a standard test for people with severe brain damage.”
“You think Eve's been damaged?”
“Probably not, but they have to find out if she can accept a new body, this is a good way.”
“But she's not communicating with the new body.”
“Not yet. No one's done a brain transplant with this kind of technology before, not on the books anyway.”
Gabriel stared at the flat lines as everyone in the operating room watched her vitals in silence. “So we don't know how long it'll take or if it'll work.”
“I'm sorry, you're asking the wrong person sir. I'm a good nurse, but not a neurosurgeon.”
“All right, we're going to have to simulate a sensation,” Doctor Barnes announced as he brought up another manipulatable hologram beside him. It outlined Gloria's entire body with a focus on her nervous system. “Stimulating a cluster.”
All four activity lines bumped for a moment, then returned to scrolling from left to right. The half dozen doctors all waited in silence, watching the steadily breathing form on the operating table and the readings hovering translucently above her.
Gabriel had become more accustomed to the grisly display before him already and his gaze went from the display with the flat readings to the body, then to the wires leading from her skull to the halo that kept them gathered and from there down the blue cable that carried the whole bunch to another ring that spread the lines out again and fed them into the opaque tank that held the Eve Mind.
“Stimulating a cluster closer to the brain, it might feel like a broken nose but if our anaesthesiologists did their jobs right she won't remember it,” Doctor Barnes announced as he activated a holographic control beside him.
The four lines spiked once again, this time much higher and to Gabriel's dismay they returned to scrolling along, from left to right, as flat as they were before.
He didn't blink, move and barely breathed as he looked on, his gaze flinching between the readings and the grey tank that held so much promise. A mind that had been in storage, connected to an interactive computing system for a hundred years while the galaxy moved on, while humanity expanded and Eve's children went on with their existence. They pined for her, worshipped her like an absent Goddess, looked for ways to bring her back to life and failed for all that time because of some block that had been put in place, some inability for them to generate a solution to the problem.
“It's been too long. This mind hasn't seen the inside of a body for centuries, it was a long shot to begin with,” said one of the Doctors quietly.
“Let's try one more time. Maybe we're going about this the wrong way,” replied Doctor Barnes. “I'm going to simulate a sensation artificially then send a similar sensation through the tactile senses.”
The lines spiked again, more gently this time.
“All right, that was the simulated stimulation, from our technology to the Eve mind. Here's the real thing.”
The four readings spiked once more, only slightly differently, the line was more gradual, less jagged. For a long moment those lines returned to being flat and then they started showing activity on their own.
“There we go! Basic nervous system interaction, it almost matches the original host brain,” announced Doctor Barnes with a sigh of relief.
“Congratulations Doctor,” said one of the other physicians attending.
“Yes, this has got to be the most humane transplant ever done.”
“I'd agree with you if we had a host body for the woman who has original possession of this body,” Doctor Barnes contested quietly.
“That body was property of Vindyne Industries until I purchased it. She was a known criminal and a burden on society. If Vindyne hadn't used her for medical purposes she would have been put to death, your conscience should be clear. Continue Doctor,” Gabriel called out from behind the sterile screen.
Most of the surgeons turned to look at him but only for a moment. The eager giddiness on Gabriel's face was enough to unnerve most.
“All right, let's make the primary connections.” Doctor Barnes directed as both his hands began to manipulate holographic tools that appeared around them.
“What does he mean, primary connections?” Gabriel asked the nurse beside him. He could have just as easily have looked up the information himself, but his attention was fully focused on the surgery.
“They have to get the new brain to take over the automatic functions of the body like breathing. Then they can start calibrating the finer points of the nervous system.”
“So when they're finished she'll be able to walk around and speak?”
“I doubt it, but it shouldn't be like learning to walk all over again either. She'll remember how to walk and do other things, but she'll have to apply that knowledge to her new body. I've seen brain transplants into full grown clone replacement bodies before and I don't expect this to be much different.”
“You'll be staying?”
“I'm on Doctor Barnes' staff. I specialize in physical therapy so I'll be helping her with her motor skills. I'm Nathan,” he offered his hand to Gabriel as they both watched the fine wires leading into the woman's skull light up in colours of blue, red, green white and yellow.
Gabriel shook it. The man's hand was thick and strong. “We'll be getting to know each other Nathan,” he meant to sound reassuring, to put the man at ease, but instead it sounded more like a threat. If it had any affect on the nurse, it didn't show.
“All right, everything checks out fine but we haven't been able to send any subconscious suggestions to the new mind, it isn't accepting anything,” Doctor Barnes announced as he looked right at Gabriel through the transparent sterile barrier. “That means that she could still emotionally reject the body which can result in overall organ failure and death.”
“I'll comfort her,” Gabriel replied.
“With all due respect that may not be enough, sir. This isn't some old fashioned skin graft or plastic surgery; if the subject rejects her body in a deeply emotional way the first thing to go will be the brain.”
“I will guide her. Don't doubt me on this Doctor.”
Doctor Barnes stared at Gabriel, who leered back for a moment before looking back at the body in front of him, bathed in the glow of all the lines connecting it to the Eve mind. “All right, the Eve mind is taking over all nervous system control, the old mind will be dormant while we find out if the new one can handle working on its own.”
Several moments passed and there were slight changes in vital signs as the woman's breathing pattern, heart beat and neural readings shifted slightly. The time crawled by for Gabriel, it was yet another moment of truth.
At long last Doctor Barnes nodded and announced; “I'm instructing the nanobots to disconnect the old brain from the body. Prepare for removal.”
Before Gabriel was ready, before he had time to look away, Doctor Barnes put his gloved hands on bare grey matter and pulled slightly. The brain came away with a sick sucking sound, leaving an empty, open cavity. Gabriel's gaze flinched away in revulsion but all too late. He'd remember that sight for the rest of his life, and as he heard the soft mechanical arm draw the Eve mind out of the tank he steeled himself and looked back.
There was something different about the glistening organ, it looked so much cleaner, more like he had pictured a human brain before the surgery had begun. There was so little blood as the tubes feeding the delicate circulatory system of the organ were carefully removed by fine automated manipulators and the arm that held it shifted it perfectly into place inside the empty skull cavity. The hundreds of lines leading to it from the metal halo that followed it from above glowed, bathing the entire red operating theatre in an eerie light of the entire colour spectrum.
“The nanobots are connecting the blood vessels to the brain, controlling pressure and bridging nervous system pathways before removing the interim wires,” Doctor Barnes announced as he watched all the status displays carefully. He made fine, manual adjustments to what the nanosurgeons were doing, expertly assessing the situation as it developed.
Several tense minutes later the two wiring halos and the thick shielded blue cable stretching between them were taken away, no longer needed. The vitals of the woman on the table were steady as Doctor Barnes stepped away from the table.
Two other surgeons patted him on the shoulder as he stood back. “Congratulations Doctor. That's a viable transplant,” one of the two female surgeons said to him. “I didn't think I would see it today to be honest.”
“Your scepticism was just another challenge, Doctor,” Barnes replied as he watched another surgeon step in, regenerate protective and connective tissue on and around the brain then begin to replace the top of the patient's skull.
It only took a moment for the application to be performed, for the wounds to heal and during that time Gabriel couldn't help but look over to a steel pan beside the operating table, where the old brain had been placed. It lay there, disconnected, dead.
She was a crass, unreformable woman. If she had truly committed to any of the behavioural modifications things would have been done differently, but even the ones we managed to force into her mind were near breaking. No, this was the best use for her.
“Finished,” the surgeon announced as he looked up to Gabriel. “How long do you want her hair?” he asked.
The question surprised him, and he stared blankly at her perfectly bald head for a moment before mentally searching the information he had on Eve. After a moment he found it, the one picture of her before she had become the center of the construct in the Eden system, before she had become Eve. She was a young adolescent girl with straight blonde hair down to her chin. He cross referenced the style with a fashion database and found its name. His eyes snapped open and he smiled at the surgeon. “Give her a bob cut in that body's natural colour. Nora always wanted red hair.”
“Nora?” asked the nurse beside him as the surgeon got to work with a hair growth stimulator.
“It's the name she went by before her body died and she was transplanted into the machine.”
“Good to know. Do you think she'll want to be called by that when she wakes up?”
“I'm sure she'll tell me.”
The hair finished growing and the surgeon brought another tool to her scalp and traced it over top. Gabriel recognized it as a rejuvenator, used to correct damaged or over stressed skin. Artificially accelerated hair growth caused just that kind of stress. As soon as he finished two nurses who were waiting at the sides of the room stepped forward with another gurney, transferred her to it in a quick, professional, practiced manner and wheeled her out of the room.
Gabriel followed wordlessly, leaving the highly paid experts behind him in memory and actuality. Thoughts of the red room would be avoided, but never forgotten.
Within minutes she was changed into fresh, soft, clean clothes and located in a quiet recovery room with a bed, nightstand, a chair and soft, subdued lighting. He sat in the seat beside her as a nurse checked her vitals with a hand scanner and smiled. “She'll be awake in the next few minutes. It looks like everything is fine,” the nurse smiled at him before leaving the room and quietly closing the door.
Gabriel carefully took the young woman's hand in both of his. There was something pure, something innocent about that sleeping face. It was like with the replacement of it's mind the body was made pure again, clean.
The eyes creaked open, fluttered and then sprung wide in a shocked expression. Her face was unbalanced, one side of her mouth was stretching wide while the other was tense and mostly closed. Her gaze darted around the room, not taking in any one thing but glancing, sweeping around in panic. Her arms vainly twitched as she tried to move them, to accomplish something that her body couldn't yet deliver.
Gabriel shushed her strangled croaks and inarticulate cries as tears began to stream down her face. His hands held hers in a tight grip, not letting it go regardless of how she yanked, perhaps involuntarily for all he knew.
The nurse burst back into the room and he held a hand up. “No! I'll guide her!” he called out before closing his eyes and forcing a connection with the microscopic data interface built into the woman's hand.
As soon as he connected to her mind he was flooded with her frantic thoughts; “Where have they gone? What am I seeing? My brood are disconnected from me! Who has done this to me? Who are you and what are you doing connected to me? What are these sensations? Father? Father where are you? My sensors aren't picking up any of your biometric readings anywhere and my solar system, my garden is gone. I don't understand what they've done to me, who did this to me? Am I sick again? Why doesn't anything work? Am I supposed to go somewhere else? Did I do something wrong? What do I have to do to make things right? What do I have to do to get my children back? My flock is gone, the bad men disconnected me from them and then I was in a different place, a place that's unclear, but it was comfortable, I was asleep, now where am I? How did I get put back into a body? Why did I get put into a body when father told me he couldn't do it, that no one could do it, but I was the only one who could take care of the new garden, I'm the only one who can tend Eden. No one else knows how it should grow but me and my brood, how could they disconnect me? Did I do something wrong? Father, where are you father, I miss you father and I don't understand what they've done to me, where are my new eyes from and why does the light not hurt? I feel like I did before the sickness, before the burning, I remember life burning then you took me away and gave me a million children and gave me Eden to love and protect, the children carried out my will, made me whole, gave me a million eyes everywhere I wanted to see, they took me outside while I played, while I found new ways for things to grow, while I could watch and be with my father? Father? Where are you? Have you done this to me? Have I been bad? Is it time to wake up? Where is my flock? How can I make things right without my brood? Why have they left me? Did I do something wrong?”
“Stop!” Gabriel replied as his mind was overwhelmed by the feelings of regret, loss and panic that Eve conveyed all too fluently. “I am Gabriel, and I've awoken you from your slumber because it's not right for you to be asleep for so long.”
“Gabriel? How are you here? How am I hearing you? How can I give you what you want from me?”
“I'm touching your conciousness with a special connection I had built into your new body.”
“Why did you do this? Where is my brood?”
“I did this because someone disconnected you from your mechanical body, the one in orbit around Eden Two. Do you remember?”
“I-” Images of soldiers breaking through the inner walls of her control complex, fighting her heavily armed machine guardians and dying by the dozen before finally overcoming them and severing her connections to the systems she used to control millions of sentient and semi-sentient machines of her own creation flashed through Gabriel's mind at a staggering speed. “I remember Gabriel. They said they owned Eden and that they'd kill my children if I didn't let them have it their way and I couldn't find father.”
“I'm sorry but your father didn't survive.”
“I remember now. Why am I here? I don't sense anything but what this body is telling me and your mind. You want to save me, to be close to me, to love me. I can feel your needs.”
“They put you to sleep for a very long time,” unbidden the number, two hundred and thirty four years, came to the forefront of his thoughts.
“That is a long time. How are my children?”
“There are many and they made Eden clean. A man took control of them a while ago and I killed him for you.”
“Thank you Gabriel. Who controls them now?”
He allowed mental images of himself, the new, young pre-adolescent Lister Hampon and a gathering of thousands of West Keepers standing in front of him as he preached the word of the West Watchers. In that moment she was given all the information he had about how the organization was built, its true purpose and the progress they had made. It would either overwhelm her, insult her or she would approve.
He couldn't see what she was thinking nor make sense of her feelings for a long ponderous moment and then he was rewarded with the mental tickle of childish amusement. It was charming, it was playful and it was so much purer, amazing than he could have ever imagined. “You've made all the men and women your own,” she concluded.
“Not all of them. There are so many more, and that is what your children have been helping us with. They're very good at showing the people that unless they join us their ships and their technology will be destroyed. They work to make this galaxy pure again so it can be rebuilt however we like.”
Her reply came as a complex thought process that was at the same time emotional and rational. It happened so quickly that it overwhelmed him, threatened to overtake the cybernetic section of his brain as she used it to assist her in making a thousand decisions a second that would determine how she would react to the information he'd given her. “I can feel your dedication to the one you thought would be your mate before, Alice. She is the opposite of me yet your desires are transferred, your expectations, your needs. I can't give you what you want without knowing about your world.”
It all stopped without warning, as though she was taking a deep mental breath before making a more intrusive connection and redoubling her efforts. He couldn't understand exactly what she wanted, why she needed the biomechanical components in his brain. “Eve… Nora… please be careful,” he begged mentally and aloud.
“I have you Gabriel, are you afraid?” she asked mentally, playfully.
“No,” he answered, knowing his lie would be detected the moment it was thought.
“I can feel your fear but the desire to see me born was greater. Poor Gabriel, always so alone. Even in a crowd you're connected to everything but in touch with no one. We can be a part of each other but first I need…” her final thought could only be translated by his own cranial implant as information, but her requirements of him, what she wanted to take from him felt like so much more. She was in full control of his cybernetic mind, it was as though she held his very being in a vice. She surged forward using the digital connections throughout his body to connect to the ship around them and to the databases within.
He was a helpless onlooker as she wandered through petabytes of information as quickly as the digital pathways connecting him to her would allow. The pain was unlike anything he'd ever experienced, not the pain of the body but the crush of the weight of centuries worth of information coursing through him. He could feel circuits in his body being pressed well past what their design specifications, starting to heat, to burn. “You're killing me,” he managed to think despite the confusion and pressure of a thousand thoughts, a thousand thousand facts a second.
The pressure increased, entire circuits burned out as his bleeding eyes opened to slits, watched the young woman in the bed before him smile. Sparks from nearby circuitry in the room showered down as the dim light went out. Then it all stopped. Part of the cybernetic implants built into his brain were completely fused, many of the circuits that he used to connect to the circuitry all around him had burned out and he was in great pain.
“All finished Gabriel. Your implants will repair themselves and you're not too badly hurt. I hope I didn't seem too needy, but there's so much to see and I stopped before you passed out.”
“Thank you,” he gasped.