Amputee

Last night’s dreams were very realistic. I was in some sort of training camp in a post apocalyptic era. The world had begun to rebuild and new governments were forming. The training camp I was in was for a military compound where I was a “drill sergeant”, if you will.

It was a stormy night, with lightning striking the ground every two to three seconds, and I was standing on a terrace overlooking a valley, watching the storm.

But besides the thunder, there were other loud noises. The sounds of missiles whistling across the sky and striking the ground, almost drowned out by the lightning. A man standing next to me saw the explosions, and asked me what they were. I calmly explained to him that these were part of a training exercise and there was nothing to be concerned about. A new missile prototype. 

shift

I was now standing in an armory, where all of the compounds’ weapons were stored. Rifles, Machine guns, mortars and rockets. They ranged from all sizes and weight, but were all designed for one thing. To destroy.

Suddenly there was a loud crashing sound and I ran towards the source. In one of the bays, a young recruit had dropped a missile from the forklift and another was pinned beneath it. The thing weighed almost a ton, and I could clearly his legs had been crushed beneath it. The cries that ensued from the man made the hair on the back of my neck stand. He almost sounded like… a pig squealing. 

I radioed for the medic squad to come down here immediately. Within three seconds the doors opened and two helpers arrived, running in to the aide of the pinned man. These two weren’t ordinary individuals. They were cyborgs, mostly machine and somewhat human. With ease, the two picked up the missile and placed it back on the forklift, and turned to the leg crushed man. I should say boy, he wasn’t much older than 18. His legs were ruined, and would need to be amputated and would most likely be fitted with machined legs. That’s what happened in this day and age; if you lost something, it was replaced. That’s what happened to the cyborgs. They were severely maimed and had lost all of their limbs and some of their torsos during battle. But now with their mechanical medical miracles, they were good as new. Better than new actually, since these parts were of the highest grade and would outlast their own lives. If they were to die, the parts would be recycled to the next person that needed them. For some reason this made me think of playing with Lego’s when I was a child.

I followed the helpers to medical and began to watch the entire process of the leg replacement. With as much blood as the recruit had lost and the pain he was in, I was surprised he was still awake. This one would be a great soldier.

What remained of his legs were completely numbed so he would not feel the process. Within three more seconds the crushed and maimed parts of his legs were severed from his body, and the arteries and vessels were temporarily sealed and rerouted. The machine legs would not require blood, only his nerve fibers. Watching this process was like watching one of those robot arms build a car, from long ago. The machines fixing him were exact, precise, with no room for error and thus never made one. Next the ultra light-weight replacement legs came in and they were positioned in front of his. The recruit, no longer in pain, watched with amusement. 

A machine re-opened the sutures on his stumped legs and exposed the bone. Next, bringing the new leg towards the bone it began to apply a sort of liquid metal, almost like mercury. But once it came in contact with the bone and the metal femur it began to harden. First it soaked partly into the bone and then it solidified, doing the same with the bio-metal leg. Then the machine opened his damaged thigh the rest of the way and began to wrap the remaining skin around the new leg, and followed this by injecting another liquid around the seams. This is where the magic really happened. This liquid had thousands of nanites, each programmed to read the signals travelling through the nerve endings, and then place those nerves appropiately where they needed to be on the bio-metal leg. During this process the recruit had to flex different parts of his lower legs (even though it’s not there, you still remember how) and the nanites did their thing. One leg done, in 10 minutes. The recruit sat in amazement as he watched his new toes flexing while the machines did the same to his other leg. When he could put clothes on again, no one would be able to tell. And the metal used in these limb replacements were undetectable, so he wouldn’t set off alarms everywhere he went. 

I heard something metal clink and I looked down. My right hand had bumped into a steam pipe, resulting in the metallic noise. My hand was replaced too. It moved and responded just like a real hand, but I couldn’t feel anything with it. That process hadn’t been entirely perfected yet. That had it’s good points too. If the recruit were to be shot in the legs, he would never feel it. He would keep going, being able to complete his mission and be repaired later if need be.

The young man on the operating table turned his head towards me, behind the glass, and smiled. I smiled at the corner of my mouth and saluted him, with my machined hand.

shift

My hand was bleeding profusely. Wait, didn’t I have a mech-hand? No, this was a different setting. There was no borg-esque technology here. I looked at my hand again and saw that my the tip of ring finger had been almost completely crushed. Great! I thought. Now what? But I found I was already sitting in some doctors office with my hand in front of me on a table, ready to be operated on. What a drag. What would my girlfriend think? Wait, what girlfriend? I have one? I shook my head. I watched as the doctor began to remove the maimed parts of the finger and I began to hear a beeping. Deep in my subconcious I knew what this meant. But I didn’t want to leave. And my brain really didn’t give two shits about it either. I began to wake up to my phone beeping and vibrating. 

Sigh.