Year 2034: Fion

Part 1: A Helpless or Hopeful World

When the people condemn me to hell, I want them to know and understand that in the beginning, I could have been so much worse. They are going to see my morals and learn how right I am. I can visualize them hesitating for the solitary minute before they yank the pin. The final result of my science.

“Who am I kidding? I’m out of touch.” I said while staring at the ceiling and letting my barred in laugh dance around my crumbling apartment. Dreaming about a far contrived situation while I still had yet to change the habit of letting time go to waste entombed in this permanent oblivion. Maybe the reason I’m engulfed by my mind is because of my own doing and is perfectly fitting. I wish it were different, but I just can’t escape living every day drained by personal failure. For I shouldn’t be here in this world I can’t accept.

“Why do people swear by the careless lie that their lives are their own to live? Do they not see the true nature of the world? We as humans subconsciously and consciously change ourselves in a vain reaction to those around us. As long as these multitudes of humans exist we will always have inner and outer conflict, so that our true freedom will not be obtained. We can try running from ourselves or others but it won’t change our reality or fate; I’ve desperately tried until I was left more exhausted and lost than I started. We are all born without control over our present, past, or future. The world of freedom we were owed is taken and held continuously out of reach. A world of boundlessness, sound, and color is a falsehood because of every unaware, ugly, and misguided failure of a human.”

“It's obvious to me now that the only way to change my life is to face the world and all it is head on while looking in its eyes to eat it alive. I’ll desperately struggle and exist to prove myself and the wrongful world false. If I truly never had any free will then my dream will go forever unrealized. Otherwise, I’ll have come far, and I’ll have the most beautiful dream that I am sure the whole world would like to experience. I swear it on my life that as long as warm blood flows through me I will not fail myself until I reach the freedom and ending that I’ve never felt even once before!”

I felt a sudden, resonant movement of my chair, and I opened my eyes and turned back quickly to see a hand on my office chair. Right then, a grumpy and unpleasant voice pulled itself into my ears and forefront.

“Hey Fion, I’ve come to make a progress report on your project since midnight today is the definite deadline. Have you discovered anything remotely helpful to aid our company with yet or is it just going to be like the last few times?”

It happened again. I went back to that old apartment. Lost in my consciousness gravitating toward the same feelings and mindspace of that day. I hastily pull and put together all my senses back into the right places, so that I can put together words again.

“Unfortunately, I have come up with minimal progress on how to make the synthetic virus I proposed, though you would know that if you read the email with the report that I sent to everyone. Between these required emails and meetings, we are bleeding lots of time. Can we change this in the future?”

“I can’t do anything myself, I already told you, you should just talk to someone one higher up yourself,” he said condescendingly. “Also, I am tired of your tone and general attitude lately. Mind your position in the company. Just because your independent research got accepted doesn’t mean you are in the clear. You are under grounds for reconsideration because you haven’t come up with anything to help the company lately. Your research could end in the coming weeks.”

“I understand. Do you need anything else?”

“No, I’ll end it here for the day.”

I watch as the faculty advisor who annoys me to no end waddles out the room. Which is fortunate for me and him because any longer and I would have spared little thought to what he would say. He’s presumptuous because he knows he is right. My research project is going to end soon. Not that it matters to me, I learned so much about synthetic viruses in my two years working at this company although they will never know the start of it. Mainly, without the proper equipment to edit and insert DNA sequences even with all the science and insights I could use in the world, I will never be able to create a perfect virus.

Still, fire me. This is all within the bounds of my plan. I don’t need this research job anymore because I am going to build my own lab with everything I need near immediately. A lab without the useless bodies, worthless procedures, barring ethics, and many eyes at my current job. What I am going to do could never be done in a public lab or company like this because once the world finds out, in this game I play, I will have lost.

After leaving work, I arrive at my newest apartment, where I get started preparing my current makeshift lab station, unimpaired by the time spent at my job. My lab is only filled with the necessities for creation and testing that I’ve kept meticulously sterilized and organized. I’ve reached the stage of my plan where the only path forward is the addition or insertion of a total of three artificial organs into my body. Two are placed in my right chest going down diagonal from my shoulder and the last is in my right arm. I’ve chosen these positions on my body because it's as effective as anywhere else and I can still hide it from others in public with layers of clothing, so I can avoid the inevitable prodding. I struggled over the moonlight to self-engineer these organs taking public designs and making numerous improvements over the course of six months. They are made out of stainless steel, chemically and resistance proofed glass, synthetic polymers, living cells, and are additionally lined with an endothelial coating to prevent my blood from clotting. This coating also has the secondary benefit of helping to maintain my natural blood flow and expedite the recovery after my surgery.

Why do I need new organs? Am I sick with some incurable affliction? Well dear brain, although this world makes me sick, these three artificial organs are going to work around the clock to filter and remove the viruses faster than they can replicate and take over my whole bloodstream. I need to formulate and test synthetic viruses on the fine specimen of myself because testing viruses on animals, cells, or using a computation is worthless to me and it will never be anywhere near fast enough and in the end I only care about how viruses affect real humans. I need meaningful data if just from me to understand the mechanism of action and every complex detail of the virus before I can release it and refine it on the whole world in a controlled manner. That’s needed because killing every human is the one thing I won’t have myself do.

Each organ component I’ve made has a distinct purpose to functionally create a modified implementation of the procedure, plasmapheresis. The process will work like this: first, a plasma separator distinguishes the blood and departs the plasma as it flows through some select veins in my body. Second, a centrifuge takes out the plasma, leaving the viral particles through rotational movement as the contents continue through. The viral particles that need to leave the body can be taken out by the final extraction portion, the third organ, placed the lowest out of the three in my arm. The viral particles can be interacted with from the outside where I can remove and replace it as a container. This organ can also double as an intake method for viruses and medicines into the body by using it as a direct track into the blood.

I lay down on a reclined solitary chair. My hands quiver, and my mind is forcibly trying to escape me; I’m scared of what’s to come, but I am even more terrified of the great effort it takes to reassure myself. I’m faltering and why do I feel it entirely? In this game only first place takes the spoils. In my lost position the only thing I can ever choose to do is raise the stakes, backing out is not going to get me the future I want. The self surgery I am going to perform on myself is a highly ill advised act with the worst case being my eventual death due to a failed surgery, mechanical failure of the organs, or my body rejecting the man-made organs. Still I am going to perform the procedure without anesthesia or pain killers. Why? Why dear brain? You know and you can feel it. As of late, I’ve realized that I have to reaffirm my struggling resolve and rid myself of my growing weakness. I should not struggle with any lack of faith in myself in the slightest. It should be nothing on the path that I must take to my total victory. It should be nothing like this at all, but it seems that my heart and mind have built up a resistance to my beginning promise, like how a body builds up antibodies after contact with a virus for so long. I can’t let myself become void and I won’t. If I can’t survive this pain then how do I deserve to create my dream virus? The only way to reignite the blood oath I made that day to myself is of course my unfiltered hot blood.

Raaghh! An instinctual yell that should have been projected out of my throat if not for stuffing my mouth with a gag. My legs and waist writhe in their holds and my arms feel painfully dull with my continued scalpel movements. I am extensively reminded that I could pass out from any manner of issues and if that happens I am going to die here in this cold place far from my dream. So far I have performed some lacerations and removed some body tissue to delicately connect the first organ in my chest to my bloodstream. Then I started to stitch myself back up after testing and checking the installation to work perfectly. I should really have used morphine or a local anesthetic. It's supremely obvious and its laughing at me. An idea runs up to me as soon as I can breathe. Should I wait a couple days and rest before starting with the others? Obviously not, I have adrenaline and I am still lacking freedom. I will perform all of the surgeries today.

The redness from my chest soaked through my prepared cloth and spread all over the surgical tray at an alarming rate. I cleaned my utensils in a station and changed my gloves in preparation for the next round. Performing an operation on myself was just like my hours of soon to be life or death practice except the recoiling pain I am in now. With focus my mind paid no attention however and stayed fully steady as I performed the second round of surgery which placed the organ into my upper right chest.

With each stroke and movement of my scalpel and scissors, I was thankful for my perfect knowledge of human anatomy and my own anatomy. I dare to say that my actions were much more concise than the first organ, since I finished hesitating. Still, I was becoming uncomfortable in my seating as I sealed the cut. My mind was beginning to feel weary. If I had to guess I’ve only lost 25% of my total blood so far, I’m approaching life threatening levels, but I’m not there yet. I press forward and begin the most difficult process, the installation on my right arm. At this point, it is fully a one-handed operation with the right arm having no part in the process. I feel the ominous flow of time and sweat all around my body. Finally closing the entry point, I confirm that I’m “done”. I was in the balance for more than two hours, still I wasn’t free to rest yet. I knew that resting now was risky and unwarranted. I still had to run tests on my body to make sure the organs and my body could maintain homeostasis. I had to check for continued bleeding externally and other complications. Lastly, I had to clean up the newly dyed red leather of my chair and floors of my apartment before that had become their own problem. In the end, it was over now, I could hardly contain the feeling of silent relief that set over me. I was right, I am still burning to see my total victory. I wasn’t void yet.