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CHAPTER 2:
Broken Doll

Waldo J. @MagickInk
Who *wouldn’t* want to live in space and not have to worry about gravity or body weight?

ChirpChat, June 2039



Time passed, and the dreams—or at least the accompanying lucid periods—seemed more frequent. There were more doctors and nurses. The outline under the sheet took shape, and Glenn could see through the covering to metal frames, wires, gears, and fibers in the shape of human limbs. At one point, the images gained more color, more shape, and for a brief time he seemed to have regained his vision, hearing, and . . . sense of smell. The latter was unfortunate, because now he smelled all of the odors of a hospital—antiseptic, blood, burnt skin and hot electronics.

Glenn woke up.

He tried to move and found that he couldn’t.


“So how am I supposed to learn to use these things if I can barely lift them?” Glenn was sitting up in bed—if one could actually call it a bed. They had transferred him overnight into a device that was more of a supporting framework than mattress. It was not quite as wide as the hospital bed and had hinges and articulations at all of the same points as his new—and old—limbs. He wasn’t exactly strapped into the frame, but he could see that there were fittings for straps and clamps.

Doctor Martin Spruce smiled. He was a relatively short, brown-haired man in his late fifties. Every time Glenn saw him, he seemed to be holding a mug of coffee. He seemed to prefer a strong, bitter brew, but diluted it with heavy cream—the evidence for the latter being the hint of cream on Marty’s graying mustache. One would think that the high caffeine intake and the fact that Marty never seemed to stop moving would mean that he was thin and wiry, but the surgeon was comfortably thick around the middle, more like a wrestler than a runner.

Marty led the team supervising the “extensive rebuild” as Glenn called it. “Well, we don’t expect you to be able to use them right away. Your brain needs to learn what signals to use, and the processing chips in your arm and legs need to learn what signals to read.” He gestured to the framework. “This frame will support your weight as you re-learn how to walk. It’s also your new bed until you develop the strength and coordination to move yourself around even lying flat. We didn’t spend all of this time and money putting you back together just to give you bedsores, Shep.”

Glenn understood that last point perfectly well—especially the point about bedsores. Before the prosthetics were fitted, he’d been like a worm on a sidewalk, capable of rolling and squirming, but not much else. Even that small amount of movement had been sufficient to prevent the kinds of skin ulcers and pressure injuries suffered by patients confined to bed for too long without moving. Now that he had the additional weight of the prosthetics, though, his ability to move his body around was greatly diminished, and he risked developing lesions where the constant pressure compressed the skin and muscle, causing permanent bruises and eventual bleeding and open sores.

“I’m a little curious why you haven’t sent me back to Moonbase or one of the stations. Now that wound drainage is not an issue, I would think that lower gravity would be an advantage.”

“Not a chance, Shep,” Marty answered. “You need to learn to work against full gravity. If I let you get by with just a fraction, you won’t relearn normal reflexes. Besides, we learned a few lessons about orbital rehab with Asimov Station.”

Glenn’s expression darkened. The privately-owned station had been popular with celebrities and the extremely wealthy—many of whom thought rules were for others. Advertising emphasized health benefits, and a clinic had been set-up for those rich patients who could afford the multi-million-dollar price tag to escape Earth’s gravity. Patients and celebrities alike had proved unable to care for themselves in an emergency and lives were lost, including a doctor who’d been helping a rich, elderly patient get to an escape pod after the station suffered emergency decompression.

He’d been Glenn’s best friend from medical school.

“Yeah. Got it.” Glenn said, gruffly.

He tried to lift first his legs, then his left arm. He could move the leg stumps, but the prosthetics were just so much dead weight. “Huh. Speaking of reflexes, you said that the arm is completely controlled, and the legs partially controlled by electrodes on the motor cortex of my brain. I know that those regions of the brain send the actual movement commands to my muscles . . . but there has to be more to it than that. What about reflexes? Balance? Precise position adjustments?”

“Hah! I knew you’d pick up on that.” Marty nodded. “You’re right, if we were able to completely control the prosthetics by reading the remaining leg and arm nerve impulses, you’d have the benefit of spinal reflexes and your cerebellum smoothing out all of your movements. With only motor cortex control, you’d have a tendency to lurch and jerk at the start and stop of each movement. Unfortunately, we only have partial nerve interface for the legs, and none for the arm.”

“So how did you fix that? You can’t fool me; I see that grin on your face. You came up with something clever.”

“Uh huh, you’re too smart for your own good. Well, we gave you a computerized implant hooked up to all of the synthetic muscles and touch sensors. It contains a machine-learning algorithm which will learn how to smooth out the motion of the prosthetics just like your natural limbs. Combined with neuroplasticity—the ability of your own brain to learn how to operate it—it should give you the ability to move your new legs and arm just the same as your original equipment.”

“Wait, a learning machine . . . you put an Artificial Intelligence inside me to operate my limbs? I mean, I can see using an AI for robots, but these are my legs and arms. What’s to keep the AI from deciding to rebel and do things on its own? Besides, how big is this computer you stuck inside me?”

“Actually, it’s about half the size of your phone.”

Glenn looked at the one-inch square plaque on a strap around his right wrist and raised his eyebrows at Marty, who laughed at the expression.

“It’s a quantum computer, just like the sensors in your brain aren’t really electrodes, but squids—Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices. They work off of the electromagnetic signals your neurons give off. Much longer lasting and greater sensitivity than wire electrodes detecting voltage changes.”

“So, not just room temperature, but body-temperature superconductors, advanced computers, AI . . . what am I? A meat shell for a walking computer?”

“I hate to break it to you, Shep, but that ship has already sailed,” Marty intoned in a solemn voice.

“Always with the Navy metaphors, Marty. How about a Space Force saying for once? Maybe like ‘that rocket has already launched.’” He paused for a moment; his face screwed up in concentration. “Wait . . . you put SQUIDS inside me? Dang, you really are trying to corrupt me, putting SQUIDS in a Space Force officer!”

“Well, they were developed with a Navy grant,” Marty retorted.

“Typical,” said Glenn, as he laid back on the frame and thought about the implications of being equipped with devices that operated on light, magnetics and quantum tunneling. “They’re never going to let me into a secured facility again, are they?”


The framework had the advantage of closing around his body so that he could be rotated securely without having to move himself. Glenn knew that he should be in terrible pain from all of the muscle and connective tissue that had to be moved around to replace his shattered femurs with titanium bone all the way up to the hip socket, not to mention attaching a complete arm to the shoulder socket. Somehow, the doctors managed to block the nerve impulses, reducing pain to manageable levels while still allowing him to be conscious. That method, however, left him barely able to move on his own, hence the need for the rotating frame to allow him to alter sleeping position.

Marty had shown him how to give voice commands to the bed control so that he wasn’t at the mercy of calling for doctors and nurses when he wanted to turn over. Unfortunately, the more time he spent in the bed, the more impatient he became to start working with his prosthetics. This led to a bit of—experimentation on his part.

“Bed. Sit up.” Glenn was staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows formed as the sun rose outside his hospital room.

“Please specify angle.” The synthetic voice was pleasant—he’d tried several variations, settling on a female voice with a vaguely Australian accent. The voice reminded him of a charge nurse he’d worked with named Matilda.

“Bed, please respond to keyword ‘Matilda’ for all commands.”

“Acknowledged. This unit will listen for the voice tag ‘Matilda’ to activate voice control functions.”

Good, that was easy, he thought, just as the computerized voice repeated the previous request.

“Awaiting input for the command ‘sit up.’ Please specify bed angle.”

“Seventy degrees, Matilda.” He was tired of the perpetual reclining position of hospital beds. It was time to Sit. Up.

“Warning, postural adjustment in excess of fifty degrees is not advised.”

“Shut up, Matilda, just adjust the bed.” It was unfair. After all, he’d volunteered for this. He was just getting so impatient.

“Acknowledged. Adjusting posture.” The head of the frame began to move upward. As it did, he felt increasing pressure on his midsection.

“Stop,” he gasped.

“Acknowledged. Head elevation fifty-two degrees.”

“Okay, Matilda. I won’t doubt you again.” He stopped and caught his breath; it felt as if his diaphragm was all crunched up.

Ah. Of course, it is. My hips are at totally the wrong angle. Sitting in a chair is not the same as lying in a bed.

“Matilda, can my feet be lowered?”

“Affirmative. Please specify leg angle and pelvic tilt.”

“Um, okay, how about legs twenty-five degrees down and tilt my hips up by fifteen degrees.”

“Acknowledged.” The bed moved again as his feet were lowered and his hips raised just enough to be comfortable.

Okay, I can work with this. Glenn looked around the room. There was a vid screen on the wall, and a keyboard on a small desk in the corner of the room. He hadn’t watched vidcasts in several months, but then again, he’d been in a medically-induced coma off-and-on during that time. Later he might ask the nurse to place the keyboard closer, but not now. He might need a voice transcription module, though, since he was going to be typing one-handed, and it was certain he wouldn’t be using gesture-based controls for a while.

There was a mirror off to one side. It was fairly close to the door, but he might be able to catch a glimpse of himself if the angle was right. Marty had showed him the X-rays of his bones and the new prosthetics, but he had yet to see what they actually looked like.

“Matilda, can the bed be moved?”

“Affirmative, I am allowed to adjust position if converted to exo mode.”

“Wait, exo mode? As in exoskeleton? Marty didn’t say anything about that. Matilda, what is exo mode?”

“Anytime the legs exceed negative forty-five degrees, this frame converts to a full support exoskeleton. You will need to be passively restrained to the frame for exo mode.”

“Can I move around the room?”

“Affirmative.”

“Bonzer, mate, strap me in and let’s take this tinnie out for some tucker.”

“Query, command not parsed.”

“Matilda, activate the passive restraints and exo mode. Set leg angle to negative seventy-five degrees and head angle to positive eighty degrees.”

“Acknowledged. Pelvic tilt will be automatically adjusted to forty-five degrees to maintain comfort. Please remain still as passive restraints are placed.”

The bed frame began to move at the outside of his vision. First, eight bands curved up and over—four to each leg, two above and two below the knee. The supports clicked into place and tightened down to secure each leg. He couldn’t feel the restraints, but he could tell they were snug. Next, three wider curved bars arced over his hips, waist, and chest. The inner surface appeared to be some form of airbag, as they each inflated to secure him to the frame. The hip restraint was tight, but not uncomfortable. The waist and chest restraints were cushioning, but not tight. He could still move slightly from side to side. Surprisingly, restraints similar to the legs enveloped his left arm, but not his right.

Oh right, can’t move that one yet.

Once the restraints were in place, the frame adjusted again, bringing several hinged rods up from underneath the bed to fully enclose his torso from the armpits down. When he was completely surrounded, his legs tilted down and his head up. He felt something move under the fingers of his right hand—it turned out to be a small joystick. He tapped it briefly and felt the bed roll slightly across the floor.

Oh yeah, I think I’m going to like this.

He didn’t dare try any major movements with the joystick, so he just tapped it briefly until he was oriented in front of the mirror.

Oh. Oh my.

He appeared to be wearing a one-piece undergarment serving as both briefs and T-shirt. He could see tubes coming out of one leg hole. Probably his Foley. He couldn’t really feel anything down there because of the nerve block, so they would have had him catheterized. That led him to another thought . . .

Does everything still work down there?

His face was puffy and red. Two tubes led out of one side of his nose. His scalp had been completely shaved, and a bit of stubble was growing back in. He could see numerous small scars on the right side and a rectangular area near the top of his head was slightly raised with a puffy rim.

His left eye and ear were covered with bandages. From what Marty had told him, the retinal and cochlear implants were in place, but not yet ready for him to use. The plan was for the stem-cell-seeded ear and eyelid grafts to finish growing, first. Scientists had been growing skin in the lab, even 3-D printing it, for more than twenty-five years. He knew from the start that he could regain form. The challenge was regaining function.

That’s what the prosthetics were for.

His undergarment had a short sleeve on the right, but ended at the collarbone on the left. There was puffy, reddish-brown skin right up to where the arm should emerge from the shoulder, but instead of skin, there was a plastic shell, gleaming metal artificial bone and many fine fibers and tubes forming his new arm. The upper arm mechanism was bare for now, allowing him to see the mechanism, but from the elbow to fingers was covered with a material that certainly looked like flesh from his angle.

Not . . . bad.

He tried to flex his fingers but nothing happened. He couldn’t feel any sensation from the arm, but his body was telling him it was there. The shoulder felt like it had the appropriate weight hanging from it, it just felt . . . numb, as if it was wrapped in cotton.

Unlike his arm, which eventually had to be amputated all the way up to the shoulder, the docs had been able to save his legs about halfway down to the knees. The flesh of his upper thighs was also reddish-brown, except for many fine, longitudinal scars, which were a pale red. Clearly, they’d had plenty of time to heal from the bone replacement and skin closure. Like his shoulder, there was a clear plastic shell over the junction of natural and artificial limbs, so he could see a metal rod, thicker than the one in his upper arm, sticking out of each stump. He knew that each artificial femur extended all the way to the hip joint, as it was easier to simply replace shattered bones with the same material used in his artificial limbs, than to attempt to bind fragments back together into something that could support the prosthetics. The artificial bones ended in sockets, and attached below those were prosthetic legs. As with his arm, the upper sections were exposed, and from the knee down was covered in synthetic skin. There were even dark curly hairs on the shins.

The docs were a long way from being finished with him, and he still had to learn how to use it all, but Jack Steele and Martin Caidin would be proud.

He’d become a cyborg . . . a bionic man; the first human to be reconstructed so thoroughly with the intent of getting back to work and fulfilling his life’s goals.


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