Sterile Infestation

Once again I laid down, staring at the lights within the operating room. Their unusual, eerie aspect reflected the circumstances that led me there in the first place. I wasn’t there as the billionaire chosen by the Sillicon Valley, God’s own intellectual paradise.
The doctors’ shadows made light and dark contrast starkly, and their attires were equally contrasting to the sterile environment. They spoke a language I couldn’t understand. Yet, they were the only ones to take my request at face value, and didn’t even so much as flinch toward my grotesque solicitation.

As per my own desire, I remained awake for the surgery. Hyperdense ostrich bones now made their way into my legs’ insides. It was only natural to get better limbs to go with the heart and the other improvements. My blood seemed even livelier than usual, and the skin of my legs stretched far to fit in the new improvements.

Once closed up, I rested peacefully at the foreign clinic’s recovery facilities.

“Boss?”, I heard him call for me. The cockroach, Arthur, more insect than man. Yet, his survivability in my company’s work environment had exceeded all of my initial expectations. Such was the way of the cockroach.

I refused to acknowledge him. Yet, he insisted.

“Boss, your wife wants to come visit. She says she’ll be here later today. You need help”, he argued.

He wasn’t in the position to argue.

“No! It’s far too early! I’m not ready yet!”, I yelled, yet he dared continue opposing me.

I can’t seem to remember what happened after my initial outburst of rage. I do, however, remember that the hospital required better hygiene. I’d practically trampled on a roach with my newly-attached legs in order to have it stop crawling around my bed.

Before Shelley could see me in this incomplete flesh prison, I fled on my own private jet that took me there in the first place.

Back at my own mansion, I locked myself in from the inside, and my body finally rested. My mind, however, saw far beyond the beige ceiling and well-adjusted natural light that invaded the room. It couldn’t rest until magnificence had been achieved.

I’d perfected transplantation technology. The immunosuppressants were a small price to pay. Not a single documented side effect.

Only one imperfection remained.

For the longest time, my heartbeat was only thanks to that beautifully-designed logo stamped on its pumps. Now, that dream was long gone.

I decided to walk outside for the first time in a while.

Many sights were directed at me. My superior hearing made it so I could notice even the slightest shifts in breathing.

“Monster.”

That’s right. I was breathtaking.

“Ew. What’s that?”

Gaze upon me. Upon my perfection.

“Mommy, help!”

Feast your imperfect eyes.

As if by muscle memory, I ended up at my own company building’s doorstep. The obelisk-like skyscraper stood alone like a mountain in the middle of the cityscape.

“Oh”, I whispered.

An infestation was in progress.

Rats, maggots, greedy flies rubbing their hands all over my offices and laboratories.

An extermination was long overdue.

Maybe it had always been like that. Maybe my former human eyes couldn’t see them right, especially all the way up from the top floor.

To insects and mice, a human is a monster. I was even more; a giant, maybe.

So, I took the matter into my own hands.

In the underground, where the power generators had once fueled my dreams, it was particularly easy to cut off the energy that fed outside communications and powered exits. It was my design, after all. Finally, I could walk up the stairs and deal with the problem.

The ground floor was infested by mice. Rats are known for invading the lower layers and scrambling for leftovers.

It was fascinating. How come the rat’s blood is red, just like my own? How come the rats look just like men on the inside?

Maybe that’s why we had always done so much testing on them.

The floors along the way were filled with all kinds of larvae. Those who fed on the bodies of fallen superiors, hoping to one day grow as big as those were.

Some even attempted feeding on me. They failed.

The contents in their stomachs were particularly gross. Digestion has been a thing ever since the days of single-celled organisms. No wonder it all looked so much like food.

Then, the last few top floors, where the mature flies grubbed over our dirty money all they wanted.

They were the easiest of them all to exterminate. The flies were fat, untrained, and could barely fly on their own. Their time as maggots had taken them there, and they didn’t have the will to leave since. The top floors were comfortable for them.

However, they still needed nourishment. This time, it seemed like they were feeding on a walrus. I wondered how exactly they’d caught him, but I was quite sure he wasn’t as innocent as his comments on that morning paper back then made him seem.

The hawk sight flooded my brain with the most detailed pictures of the surrounding environment, and certainly at a faster framerate than any other bio-tech could have engineered.

Not even the fastest of the fleeing flies could escape my augmented arms. The white lights soon reflected red.

The walrus was still warm. Breathing. Cornered.

“You’re insane! You're a monster!”, it yelled at me.

Surely it was time to take my immunosuppressants. The inflammation generated by my recent implants was probably the cause of such a strange auditory hallucination.

Still, I put the walrus out of its misery. What the greedy flies had done to him was more than enough suffering for that simple creature. I wasn’t aware we had moved the animal experimentation laboratories to this floor, but it was a welcome change for the time being.

I took my pills and my vision slowly came back to me.

It seems like they’d been redecorating since I last visited. The floor now had a wonderful bright-red carpet thinly spread over it.

Finally, I took the elevator to the topmost floor. A special key wielded by only me and my wife was the only object capable of opening its doors. No wonder I met her there.

She seemed peaceful, seated nicely at one of our work desks, looking at pictures from our past travels together.

“Oh. That one is Paris”, I whispered in her ear.

She screamed.

“Oh! My love! It’s you… Right?”

“Of course, dear! Is any other man this perfect?”

“No, no… Of course not… You’re… Perfect, my love”

“Sorry about the mess”, I told her, realizing she would probably notice I was still dirty from the pest control on the lower floors.

She smiled, with one hand slightly covering her mouth and nose.

“Be right back”, and she left for the bathroom.

I sat down where she had been, and scrolled through those same pictures on the monitor.

Gross. Imperfect. Flawed. That’s all I could see of myself.

I turned it off, and stared at my own reflection, faintly mirrored on the black screen. Now that’s what I’d call a man. The eyes of a hawk, the nose of a grizzly bear, simply superb.

Yet, I was still missing a piece of myself.

A heart.

I had always missed it, after all.

My studies and introspections, however, led me to the conclusion that the heart was a little different from other organs. Sure, it had to be capable of its basic physiological function… But there was something else.

Something many scientists argued was in the brain, but the truly brilliant minds of the poets had always known it was in the heart.

That something… That was something only Shelley had.

Her heart wasn’t simply perfect. It was tailored for me, and only for me.

I couldn’t wait.

I calmly walked to her. Locked doors were no obstacle to my powers.

“My love… What are those eyes of yours?”, she asked.

“They’re hawk eyes to see you better, my dear”, I replied.

“My love… What are those legs of yours?”.

“They’re made with hyperdense ostrich bones, my dear. To get to you faster, always”.

“My love… What are those arms of yours? And those teeth of yours? And…”.

“It’s all the parts you love so much, my dear. My parts”.

She was left speechless.

“Now, about that promise you made me the other day…”, I recalled.

“... Promise?”, she asked, as if she didn’t remember. Maybe her brain didn’t, but her heart did remember.
She shivered. So did I, in excitement.

“Your heart”, I said, simply.

“No!”, she screamed.

Just then, I couldn’t quite understand why a weasel had taken my wife’s heart and ran away. It wasn’t difficult to get her back, though. Not for me.

So, I took her to our OR.

Ever since the company’s medical records surfaced, I had to learn some operating techniques myself, as many of the doctors took deals to get away from legal troubles.

I don’t get it. I could have paid for them to be released. Yet, I was keen on studying it all, and doing it myself.

The sedation and opening procedures were particularly easy with modern instrumentation technique. Shelley had been unconscious from the beginning, after all.

She had promised me. No take-backsies, right?

The needles pierced her soft skin with ease. Not a single drop was wasted in the initial preparations.

The same goes for the electrocautery. Modern equipment was bliss.

However, the scent of burnt human meat bothered my extraordinary sense of smell. Some two-hundred times more than it would bother any other surgeon.

It bothered me so much I went for the conventional scalpel instead.

Maybe due to my bear’s nose perceiving the blood’s scent, I nearly developed an appetite for her.

Why was flesh so beautiful, yet so weak?

A newfound level of beauty; to be the operator, not the one operated on. Such a beautiful body could only be thanks to her perfect heart.

That’s right, that must be it.

I was born with an imperfect heart, and that’s why I had so many imperfections to fix in the first place.

I was jealous.

However, I would soon not be.

I cut through the skin. Liquid scarlet, warm, and highlighted by the ceiling’s cold LED.

I cut through the muscles. More red. Pink fibers. Resistant, yet frail when compared to the scalpel’s sharp cold steel. It was wrong, however, to assume steel bested flesh.

I cut through the sternum. The marvel of the spinning saw I used didn’t rest on its physical components. Nor did it on its materials. Rather, it rested solely on human ingenuity.

On experimentation.

On science.

Finally, I could see her heart.

It reminded me of my first one, the original.

Yet, this one was perfect, tailor-made for my use.

Gently promised by the loving wife that laid next to me. I laid down beside her, on a second operating table, and directed the scalpel to myself.

I cut through the skin.

I cut through the muscles.

I cut through the sternum.

Pain was the adversity to overcome.
Just enough to avoid neurogenic shock. I knew exactly how much that was.

Years of investment, all for this moment.

I stitched her heart into my own chest, all without turning off the machine that had kept me alive until then.

I felt free. Ecstatic.

Without a second thought, I ripped the artificial heart out of my thoracic cavity. The electrodes I’d connected to the new heart began acting up.

Finally, all that was left was to close the incision.

And I would be complete.

The doctor within me was quite satisfied with this work. He could rest peacefully now, and witness the birth of his creation. Himself, yet not. He would still be within me, within us all. The perfect species, born of surgery after surgery, blood, sweat and sacrifice.

Is this how God felt on the seventh day?