Chapter Thirteen: The Grudge — Part 3

Elec and her staff set up an operating center in the kitchen, wrapping down the center cooking island with plastic, padding, and another layer of plastic before dropping a sheet over all of that. They then spent washed and sterilized themselves and the room around them with a proficiency gained from what would amount to thousands of years of experience. Yap would be in soon, prepped for surgery, and finally strapped to the cooking island in a circle of curtains and lights. In the moments following, the area inside the curtains, to include all of Yap, would be resanitized by androids carrying sleek machines that looked like miniature electric leaf blowers, each of which emitted a mix of ozone, antiseptic steam, and ultraviolet light. It took ten minutes to convert the kitchen to an operating station, five minutes to wash and prep Yap, stripping her of her clothes, strapping her to the island. Elec stared down at Yap’s bloating, putrescent body, her face locked into a constant expression of stern consideration.

“Oh Yap.” Elec whispered.

The team moved in, working like a trained production line, began hooking up Yap’s biological and android components to dozens of different monitors. Elec leaned into a plasma screen, her face lit brightly by the abnormal blue glow, reading data about each of Yap’s major systems. Her expression had been one of distinct calm, but that calm shattered as she studied the interactions of cells and microscopic robots, known as synth-antigens, in a tissue sample collected from Yap’s decaying hume flesh. She rapidly sliced open the android skin and removed a square of it from Yap’s belly, exposing the hume torso concealed within.

“Some detrimental condition must have triggered the decompositon process, which is at seventy nine point aught three percent completion. The necrosis is in its last stages twenty-four point aught ninety and seven percent of all tissues. I’ll try to coerce its reversal, though I am ninety nine point aught five percent certain it’s already too late.” Elec spoke primarily to keep her staff aware of her intentions, and to give the androids around her numbers to entertain themselves with.

Elec worked for over an hour, trying stop the chaotic process that would end in the destruction of Yap’s hume components, while her associates, both hume and android, did tests to determine if they could stabilize Yap’s android components. Elec felt helpless as the flesh first turned proud, then changed from blue to green, frustration building as the skin, muscle, and bone joined in the process of rapid deterioration. Elec and her android staff worked until all that remained was the bloodstained husk of an android frame. The tissues were disposed of via the kitchen drain, nearly liquefied by androids working with a meat grinder, the smell of it overwhelming to anybody with hume senses, except for Elec. The woman was utterly desensitized to it all, having worked hume remains into biodroids for so long that the smell of dead, ground and rotting flesh hardly bothered her. As they worked to restore to Yap her neurological processes, one of her android associates brought Elec a slide, and Elec looked at it under a powerful microscope, knowing immediately what had happened.

“Bone cancer.” Elec said, her voice level but concerned. “It is in the advanced stages. I am surprised her hume components survived long enough to have the child. I would be highly surprised if the child isn’t as sick as the mother.”

“The child is healing.” The android said, “It carries the synth-antigen needed to keep this form of cancer from attacking its system, and to keep the resulting necrosis in check.”

“And you know this because . . . ”

The android paused, a sure hint that it might be hiding something. “Orchid wanted us to know. She and her brother are watching the baby closely. Her technological prowess is close to yours.”

Elec would not concern herself with the android’s slight delay. “Yap must have been desperate to have this child . . . ”

The androids cleaned out Yap’s chest cavity with a speed that no hume could have matched, and fabricated replacement parts to fill in the area that had once previously housed the torso. They then integrated the new parts, some of which were extra memory spaces, some extra systems power cores, and some of which would allow Yap’s cybernetic interface to adapt with her now fully mechanized replacement parts. Yap’s unique cybernetic neural network, for instance, had been designed specifically to learn to, improve upon, and thoroughly enjoy both the physiological and emotion emotional experience of orgasm. She would continue to experience her existence much as she had before her hume components failed her, as without such sensory input, she would most probably suffer emotional and mental collapse.