In the present, alterations to your body are often a long, expensive, and painful process. In a future, that might not be the case.
In the present, alterations to your body are often a long, expensive, and painful process. In a future, that might not be the case.
I lay there- supine beneath the body-machine, consciously immobilized by paralytics. Satisfied
with my vital signs, the position of my body, and the conditions of the world surrounding us, a
glow appeared somewhere within its chrome-steel skeleton. The body-machine slid into life.
Position One
The machine brought the first of its hands to my chest: a blade borne on a cascade of limbs and
joints allowing it near-infinite freedom of position and rotation. The body-machine paused and
considered my form, or rather, its precise dimensions as determined by hundreds of cameras
embedded in the dome like black stars in a grey sky.
Rotation, position, incision, pause.
Translate.
Rotation, position, incision.
At the edge of my peripheral vision the first hand rose from its working position to rest above
me. A droplet of blood rolled off the treated blade as it rose back to its station, falling
where I could no longer see it. A click came from above the machine.
Position Two
The great carriage of the body-machine whirred quietly as it rotated. Its chosen arm, tipped in
a scissor-like hand, lowered to the incisions and slipped within my breast. Over the course of
several minutes the tool worked inside me, moving inward and outward; whirrs punctuated by short
whines and odd tearing noises as it separated fat and tissue from my inner lining and suctioned
it through an opaque plastic tube that rose to its interior. Before long this arm ran out of
flesh to remove and retreated from within me.
While I was changed, my thoughts tended to seek out changes from a greater past than mine, the
species-past. In that past, pain was common to most. It welled up amongst great swaths of
humankind, tearing at the edges of the social fabric. Jagged peaks of malignant hurt stretched
the weave and weft of a ten-thousand-year patchwork, daring it to rip, daring the exposure of
all the world’s ills, its bruises, its brutal exploitation of all things that lay before it.
Position Three
This last hand the body-machine brought to me was a cylindrical appliance tipped with a flat
crystal watch-glass. The tool whirred as its arm guided it in a gentle arc above me; segments
dancing as each traced a Fourier pattern in the air. This was the device that ended pain for all
time. The watch-glass glowed with a faint light from within the tool, cyan of a shade too subtle
to describe: this glow sucked all the world’s injury into it and brushed away like dust the
endless consequences of having your body broken and mended over and over by
an uncaring world. Even through the sedative and the immobilizing agent I felt the psychosomatic
tingling of mending flesh, the body’s confused response to external repair.
When the fabric ripped, our species nearly frayed into nonexistence. The tears were too great
and the jagged ridges of pain between us seemed impassable by the compassion that had previously
served to bond us and lift us away from dread and ignorance. Decades passed where Earth was home
to violence and hatred it had never known before while humans walked its surface, all the while
our bodies hurt and broke and those who dared rise above their confines were berated about what
it meant to be human, what it meant to be defined by your arrangement of limbs and your fragile
characteristics.
Aftermath
Things improved slowly. Those burdened by pain went to great lengths to look into each others’
eyes and recognize each other as beings rather than objects. This was the first step of many we
would take towards a better personhood. It is easy to not look back; to see the world and think
that now the fabric has been mended by our efforts. But those who look know the truth: the
fabric does not exist anymore. It was woven by humans, and to think beyond humanity we had to
unweave it and cast it away. We do not need it anymore.
I lifted myself from the table and glanced down. There were no scars on my chest. There was no
blood. There was no pain. The skin pricked and tingled still where the healing tool had passed
over it, a reminder of a change no more consequential than taking off my clothes at the end of a
day. After me, someone will undergo a similar change. Maybe they will think more of it.
Contributor bio:
Claire Shepherd, she/her