Scalpel

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Dr. Katherine Ann Scranton laid on the operating chair in front of her husband. He was no surgeon by any means, her personal assistant sure, but not a surgeon. Regardless, she was confident that this procedure would go well. They had practiced several times on both dummies and live patients, and she would still be awake to guide him should he need. Nonetheless, the procedure was necessary. She was getting older. Her eyesight was deteriorating and she refused to lower her standards of precision to accommodate it.

Her husband glanced at her while putting on his scrubs. As he prepared, she watched the way he checked and rechecked his tools. It was almost cute. She could see he had everything he needed but was nervous. That was fine. She just hoped his hands wouldn’t shake.

"Are you ready, doctor?" He flicked his eyes between her and his tools, attempting to ease the tension with a smile.

"Yes. For about thirty minutes now. Are //you// ready, Marcus?" She didn’t smile back, which wasn’t unusual for her.

"Yeah," he took a deep breath and shook himself out, "Yeah. I’m ready, Katherine."

She asked "What happened to ‘doctor’?" with a cocked head and one raised eyebrow.

"I’m ready, Doctor."

"I’m joking."

"Sorry."

She looked at the fluorescent lights overhead and the prosthetic eyes she’d made herself, tested plenty of times on other subjects. Soon her vision would be perfect, and she was excited.

—————————

Her name, what was her name.

They hadn’t told her.

She’d asked. They hadn’t told her.

Her whole head was filled with mud and nothing came easy.

They said…

She shut her eyes tight over the throbbing in her skull.

They said her skills would come back to her. That she would remember how to do what they asked of her.

But as she looked at her wrists and the tools that they gave her, she couldn’t comprehend how what they told her to do was even possible.

She tried once more to remember.

—————————

Hands were incredibly complex, sensitive machines. However, their biological nature made them prone to failure: twitching, tremors, incoordination. Even if those failures seemed small none of them were failures Dr. Scranton could tolerate. In order to correct them, she had adapted the schematics of the Cogworks Orthodoxy. They were schematics in standardization, a rigid dogmatic process where practitioners attempted to better fashion themselves into the image of their mechanical god. Dr. Scranton was no such practitioner.

She did not believe in god. At least, she did not believe that any of the ones the Foundation had documented were worth her devotion. However, she did believe in perfection, science, the elegance and fragility of the human body and its systems. She believed in improving on what you were given, making it perfect. Taking holy writ and making it her blueprints, it just happened to be a church’s documents that had given her the medium she needed.

Her designs were sleek, hidden, when the procedure was finished all that would be noticeable would be a quiet ticking noise underneath the skin. In the operating room she smelled the harsh scent of cleaner. Among the assistants, her husband smiled at her, white teeth and shy eyes. Though she herself was both gifted and careful, should something go wrong they could assist her. Scalpel in hand, she made the first incision to take perfection upon herself.

—————————

Her hands moved without her knowledge of what they were doing. They remembered this procedure, but all she got was the smell of blood and the sting before the blade had even pierced her skin. Her hands were steady and wielded the scalpel to reveal complicated clockwork in miniature just under the skin. She knew this. She knew this. She wondered if she listened closely if she could hear the whirr and click of gears. Cogworks. The word came to mind. It was related somehow, she knew this, she knew this. It felt so familiar but her brain click click clicked, neurons leading to other neurons, and came up blank.

Her hand stopped, skin of palm and wrist pulled back to reveal all that lay underneath. "Is it all in working order?" the guard watching her asked. It was a test not a question.

She clicked her hands closed and open, checking the function of her hand, a series of exercises, she closely observed the gears and cogs turn and push and pull. "Yes," her brain supplied without the reason for her answer. She shut her eyes and tried to find the answer before the guard grabbed her attention.

"Hey!"

"Yes?"

"You have further instructions."

She looked at the guard and waited for them.

"Break it."

"What?"

"Break the machinery in your hand."

She stared at them. She stared at the machinery in her hand. Her palm slammed down on the counter in front of her and scattered intricate machinery.

It hurt, her eyes teared up. "Don’t cry," The guard demanded and she did her best to quell the tears and soon they dried up.

"Now repair it," the guard demanded.

She looked at the guard, she looked at the scattered machinery, the surgeon's tools. This is… This is something she’d done before. Maybe. No. Not this. Something similar? As she looked at each piece the name of them came to mind but all she could remember was seeing them in front of her just now. She felt like she should know this. Click, click, click. Nothing. Why did this feel so familiar? There was no way she could possibly put this machinery back together on her own without instructions, it was too intricate and complex. She’d broken it without asking why and now she didn’t know what to do.

Her working hand sorted through the parts, making them into little stacks. Separating pieces, the first necessary step. She knew how to do it and she didn’t know why. Her brain scrambled for connections and came up with nothing. Her hand alone put things together, stuttering every so often she processed what it could be doing, concepts percolating through her consciousness, abstract and isolated. Piece by piece she put herself back together. The guard nodded as she sewed the last suture. "That’s all for now, follow me back to your room." She did so.

Her head pounded.

—————————

Dr. Scranton stood over an anesthetized D-Class. Research had determined the D-Class was no longer a viable human test subject and had handed him over to her for her amnesticization projects.

See if you can get rid of whatever’s making him mess up our results, they’d said. She’d gladly taken the opportunity.

Her husband had already shaved his head to prepare him for the procedure and she had already marked the lines on his head for the incisions. She grinned, "I feel good about this one, Marcus."

Her husband looked at her, "Yeah, we were close last time- you were close, I mean."

"Yes. And I know why it didn’t work I think. I wrote it in my report, but I think it’s above your clearance."

"Ah. Yes, of course." Her husband handed her a prepped scalpel so she could begin and she caught him glancing away when she met his eyes.

"Marcus, do you have something to say?"

"No. No," under the fluorescent lights she could see his face flush, "Well just, it’s, I know it’s not the right time but, well, I was just thinking of how pretty you look, even with all the scrubs, that’s all."

"Oh. Well, if that’s all-"

"Sorry."

"-I was going to say thank you."

"Oh," he looked up at the ceiling.

"I’m going to make the first incision now."

"Yes. Understood."

Carefully, she cut along the premarked line with her scalpel, peeling back the skin, then the muscle, exposing the skull underneath. Holes drilled, outline cut, skull plate and dura removed, brain exposed. She studied the inside of the brain, referencing the diagram she’d so carefully memorized. All it took was a few incisions, and a precise application of her own amnestics solution, and she had removed years of the man’s life.

After an extensive recovery period the procedure was deemed a success. With several more tests, Dr. Scranton was able to publish her procedure. She insisted it was named after herself and so the "Scranton Invasive Amnesticization Procedure" became apart of the standard arsenal for Foundation neurosurgeons and amnestics experts. Her and her husband celebrated with wine and caviar.

—————————

Morning. Made known to her only by the alarm her keepers had playing from a hidden speaker in her room. She had 30 minutes before a guard would get there and take her to today’s rehabilitation tasks, assessments, and conditioning. 10 minute shower, 2 minutes brushing teeth, 5 minutes getting dressed. She was efficient, although occasionally she paused, feeling some sort of gap in her routine. She looked into the mirror and met eyes with her reflection. Her hands slid over her shaved scalp. Her chest tightened in a way she couldn’t place, a hiccup escaped her throat, tears escaped her eyes. Stop crying, she told herself. She stopped, but her hands continued to trace the still healing incisions until the guards arrived to walk her through today’s schedule.

—————————

Dr. K.A.S. met eyes with her husband as she tied her hair into a tight bun in one fluid motion. "You’re looking at me like a lost puppy. Do you need something?" she asked.

"I wanted to, um…" his fists clenched and unclenched, he shook his hands out, "You’re always uh, too tired when you get home… to talk. So I thought maybe we could talk now about uh, well. I was wondering if uh, you’d wanna start a family?"

She swiveled around on her heels to face him. Her eyes avoided her gaze. "You want to have a child?" she asked.

"Yeah. I think, well, I always wanted to be a dad, and isn’t it about time? We’ve been married for what, 4 years now?"

"4 years on August 5th," she confirms, their anniversary just a few months away. "But what makes you think I have any desire to be a mother? Don’t you know what having a child could do to my body?"

"Of course, Katherine. I just thought, well, it’d be proper for us. And we have the world’s best doctors at our disposal, and well, think about it. Wouldn't it be nice to have some say on the people who will come after us?"

Katherine hummed in thought and tilted her head. "I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know though. If we do have a child, they’ll be a Scranton. I'm not going to carry a child just to have my name forgotten. Understood?"

"Of course, Katherine. I love you."

"Yes," her eyes met his, "as do I."

—————————

Factotum "Scalpel" stood over O5-1 "The Founder" laid bare for her on the operating table.

His body was failing.

It had been failing for the last several decades as he started to near two centuries in age. A diaphragm of mesh and tubing spasmed making him gasp unevenly, each hissing and wheezing like a rusted steam train. A complex box of electronics and clockworks cycled blood through the veins in his body, connecting disparate pieces together like wires. Sinew had been delicately stripped back from fragile bone so both could be replaced with machinery. Beneath his flesh they writhed, creating patterns of blue and green and purple on tissue paper skin.

None of it lasted long. With each attempt to extend his life, it seemed to claw more desperately to escape him. His body, more machine than man, still rejected each new organ, leaving them to rot and rust inside him.

She watched him sweat with fever and bloat from infection and estimated the necessary procedure would take at least 14 hours. If not more.

With reverence she takes her namesake in hand.

Afterall, it is only through taking him apart that she can fulfill her duty and piece him back together again.

And again.

She makes the first incision.

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Scalpel

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