Replacement Parts

The light crackled on, stirring Chloe from her fitful sleep and sending her into a suffocating coughing fit. Gasping for breath, she opened her eyes to the steel walls of her chamber, blinking until everything stopped spinning. She tried to take in a deep breath of the stale air, groaning in frustration. She looked down contemptuously at the white sheets now spattered with bright red splotches.

As she stood up, she took another blinking moment to let the room stop spinning, and set to removing the blood-splattered sheets. She shoved the less-than-soft ball into a canvas sack. When she got to the door, she chewed on her lip for a second as she servailed the room in search of her shoes. Conceding to go barefoot, she pushed her shoulder into the cold metal of the door and muscled it open.

A right and two lefts had her standing before another steel door that led to the Infirmary that serviced this sector of the commune. As she was reaching for the admittance bell, the door decompressed and slid smoothly into the wall to the side. A tall thin woman stared down her nose at Chloe, a scowl etched across her brow. “Chloe, I swear by the Gods! I haven’t seen you in 2 weeks. Where the fuck have you been?”

Her mother’s low growl cut through her brazen confidence. Chloe kept her chin pressed to her chest and skirted past the woman, and into the sterile room beyond, unceremoniously dumping the bag of sheets on the floor. She knew better than to try to answer her mother’s question. She didn’t actually want to know. “Well?” Her mother’s accusatory words pushed at her back, “Do you have anything to say for yourself, or are you just going to stand there like a Wedge?”

Chloe flinched at the insult, eyes flickering with grave memory behind her eyelids. When Chloe was five, she was left alone in her room to nap while her mother went back to work in the Infirmary. Not able to sleep, she fought her way out the door and went to find her Mother. Before she knew where she went wrong, Chloe was lost deep in Central Sector. Panicked, she muscled her way through another heavy door. She was met by bright lights and a wave of nauseating heat, the pressure of which snapped the door shut behind her.

She pulled hard, but her little arms weren’t strong enough to pry the door open again. As she turned around to assess the environment she had trapped herself in, she saw four huge male figures. They walked in a methodical rhythm between a burning forge and a host of work tables lined end-to-end near the wall. Behind each table stood another large man, hammering at hot metal in a chorus of clanking.

Terrified, Chloe ran up to the closest of the men and grabbed his large hand. All four men stopped and looked at her. She tilted her head back to meet his eyes and screamed. The man’s pupils were murky red, like old blood. None of the men showed any signs of understanding the needs of the girl and just blankly stared through her. The man’s hand squeezed painfully tight around Chloe’s fingers and lifted her small form off the ground. She swung her head wildly to see where she was being taken, only to realize that the man meant to place her in the fire, just like the metal that rested in his hand before her. This time, Chloe’s screams were a wild and desperate plea for help. Just before he lobbed her into the forge, the man abruptly stopped. His grip suddenly loosened on the girl’s hand and the tower of a man crumpled onto the floor.

“Chloe, you stupid girl! How did you get down here? You’re not allowed in here without your mother! Do you understand?” Tears were freely streaking Chloe’s cheeks as she allowed herself to be pulled away from the forge. She nodded intently so the man knew she understood.

Chloe looked over her shoulder at the once-human pile that still rested in the middle of the floor. The other 3 men had already continued their rotations and adjusted their path around the mass. The men at the tables never faltered in their rhythm. When her rescuer returned her to her chamber, she promised not to leave again until her mother came to retrieve her. As the door sucked closed, Chloe crawled under her bed and into the corner as far back as she could push herself. She pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed.

Her mother took no care to soften the details of the men who almost ended her existence. “They are tools,” she explained coldly. “Most of them were criminals or degenerates, but some of them were simply deemed mentally unfit to remain at the commune in their natural state. And, as we waste nothing, we replaced their cranial mass for a manufactured article that was more programmable.” The calmness in which her mother gave this explanation to the young girl resolved her tears and, at least for the time being, put her mind at ease about the soulless monster that had almost killed her.

For most of her life after that day, Chloe dreamt of the Wedge’s eyes. She could never shake the thought that it was a cruel practice to use humans as tools, even if they were defective or criminals. She was careful to keep those thoughts to herself, often smoking them away with the other trainees in her class.

“Chloe, are you even hearing me?” The sharpness in her mother’s tone snapped her back to the present.

“Sorry Dr. Massario, I was lost in thought.” Her mother scoffed at the prospect.

“Just put the gown on and get on the table,” she snapped, “and where the hell are your shoes? I swear, one of these days…” Her voice trailed off as she walked out of the room, mumbling to herself about her daughter’s shortcomings. Chloe collected the threadbare hospital gown and went to remove her clothes before the agitated woman returned.

A few minutes later, Chloe was sitting on the edge of the table, the metal surface finally warming under her skin. Her mother walked back into the room, trailed by a short, dark skinned nurse. Chloe tensed a little as their eyes locked. Her gaze was full of frustration and rage. The woman’s lips were pushed together hard, what Chloe knew was her only method of keeping her comments to herself, and she narrowed her eyes in a way that clearly stated that they would be having a discussion as soon as they were alone. Chloe swallowed and broke her gaze, regret settling into the pit of her stomach. Two weeks hadn’t seemed that long to go on a hiatus, but without the rejection drugs that the doctor refused to allow her to administer on her own, she supposed it was much too long.

The nurse was gentle when untying the straps on the back of Chloe’s gown, and moved quickly to prep her for the procedure. When her mother left the room to scrub up, the nurse hissed in Chloe’s ear, “Are you trying to die, child? Where the hell have you been?” She didn’t give the girl time to respond before continuing, “Do you know what could have happened? You could have died in your sleep, or thrown a clot, or gotten an irreversible infection, and then what? All of our work would be discredited because you had to throw a damn temper tantrum!” The woman spread a cold liquid up and down Chloe’s back to disinfect the area and set a heated blanket over her legs to assure she didn’t get too cold in the chilled room.

“I didn’t ask to be her science experiment,” Chloe barked back in a careful whisper. She knew better than to allow the Doctor to hear her complaints, especially pre-procedure. “And anyhow, it wouldn’t be a problem if she would just give me my own damn dosing like she does for everyone else.”

The nurse poked her in the ribs with her thumb, making her jump. “Listen child, you would be dead by now if it wasn’t for your mother, and for all of her shortcomings, she does love you. Why else would she put up with your stupidity all the time? Now, shut up and swallow this.” She placed a small white pill on the table next to Chloe’s face along with a glass of water. Chloe sighed in relief as she inhaled the medicine that would dull the pain of the procedure. No doubt, Dr. Massario had instructed the nurse to wait to give it to her until the last minute; Let her sweat and think she was going to have to endure the pain unaided, again.

Chloe had not been the first person to undergo Lung Reconditioning at the commune, but she had been the youngest, and the first to survive for any length of time. At 14 years old, her friends introduced her to Lenzo, a red substance that tasted like heaven when you smoked it and made you feel invincible and awake in a very inhuman way. After that, she didn’t sleep for 15 straight days while she rode the euphoric wave. She breezed through her usually challenging drills, read more books than she had in the year prior, and ran rampant throughout the compound with her crew of friends. On the 16th day she collapsed on an exercise block at the southern end of the commune. By the time the medics got her back to her sector, there was little that could be done to save her collapsed lungs and failing organs. Little, but not nothing.

When she woke 3 weeks later, the Reconditioning had already been completed. “The process is fairly simple,” her mother explained. “We peeled out the inside layers of your lungs and replaced them with a synthetic mechanism that mimics the original tissue while also replacing the filtration characteristics of your liver and kidneys.” It was, in fact, not simple at all, and had failed almost 100% of the time up until Chloe’s operation. But in her poor condition, Chloe stripped her mother of any ethical dilemma she might have had about using her daughter as a test subject.

After that, Chloe was her mother’s showcase and a well known case study for visitors she didn’t know. Within a year, it was deemed a viable treatment measure for others with similar organ failure. It was during a lecture at a neighboring commune that Chloe was introduced to alcohol. They preferred it over Lenzo because of the reduced risk of death. Chloe quickly discovered that it was even more enjoyable if you mixed the two, and now that she could replace her body parts at will, all thoughts of self preservation went out the window.

There was a wet squelch as her mother split open the semi-permanent incision down her spine, and Chloe could feel pressure being applied to the back of her ribcage. At this point, the doctor had stopped explaining any of her actions. In the 5 years since her collapse, Chloe had smoked through 12 sets of implements, her current set only making it 2 months. She knew each step intimately.

She felt the nurse’s hands rest heavily on her shoulders, and then she was suffocating. Her body involuntarily bucked at the sudden lack of air. Her mother moved slowly but deliberately as she laid the freshly plucked used mechanism in a metal bowl. The pounding of Chloe’s heart beat loud in her ears as it struggled to compensate for the missing organs and pain bloomed across her forehead. Her body jerked again in a desperate attempt to find air.

Chloe heard the crack of the cooler opening as the doctor removed the replacement mechanism from its cold safe haven. Just as she started to black out, she felt the freezing cold hardware settle into her chest cavity. There was the distinct sound of suction, a loud snap, and suddenly Chloe was able to pull air into her body again. She knew to carefully take shallow breaths while her mother finished seating the mechanisms and closing the surgical site.

As soon as Chloe felt her mother’s hands move away from the incision, she took in a long, deep breath and held it for a moment. She released it through her teeth and revelled in the sound of the air pushing out. She shivered slightly as the nurse pulled the heated blanket up from her legs to cover her bare back.

“I have business in another sector, so Nurse Carting will let you know when you’re free to go back to your room.” With the snap of her gloves being removed, Dr. Massario prepared to leave. Briefly she hesitated in the doorway, “And Chloe, can you at least try not to ruin this pair so quickly? This is becoming expensive, and frankly, I have enough successful operations that I don’t need to justify your stupidity any longer.”

A chill ran through Chloe as she watched her mother leave. She couldn’t tell if it was her frozen lungs, or the coldness of the woman’s words. She slowly sat up and allowed herself to be helped to Recovery for a nap. As she walked arm-in-arm with Nurse Carting, the older woman mused maternally, “I took the liberty of sending your sheets down to the cleaning sector with some things from the Infirmary. You should have a fresh set outside your room when you get back.” As she tucked Chloe into the heated recovery bed, her face was a mixture of apologetic empathy and sadness. “You have to stop doing this girl. I don’t want to be here the day those things can’t be fixed anymore.”

It took about 2 hours for Chloe to return to warm up. As soon as she was given the approving nod, she pulled herself from the bed and made for the door. When she got back to her room she made it her first priority to put on the fresh sheets. Settling on top of her bed, she leaned heavily on the pillows and her headboard.

Once somewhat comfortable, Chloe reached over to her side table and removed a small clay tube and a lighter. She readjusted red dust that already filled the cavity at the tip of the tube and brought the pipe to her lips. With practiced hands, she lit the drug and pulled in a long, deep drawl. She held her breath, and then exhaled a plume of red-grey smoke around her face. Within a minute, she could feel the gentle tug of the Lenzo settling into her body. She didn’t know how many more times her mother would replace her broken parts, but she supposed she could probably afford to call her bluff at least once or twice more.