Challenge #01480-D019: Facing Doubt

"Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow." — Carrie Fisher on pursuing dreams despite mental illness -- RecklessPrudence

Rael woke from his haze. His body hurt. That meant that the surgery had gone ahead. In lieu of recovering in an Intensive Care Patient Drawer[1], he and his warming tank were in a dimly-lit shelf in Medik Central. A young nurse sat nearby, studying something so she could become a Doctor all the quicker[2].

He formed a rudimentary speaking apparatus. The bare minimum to make sounds. It took him three goes. They'd given him the strong stuff. Eventually, he was able to form, "Was... surgery... successful?"

The nurse, who had been dozing a little over her studies, snorted into awareness. "What? Oh. Yes. Your Medik team were able to remove the implant. You've only lost point zero, zero, zero two three percent of your total mass. Please remain idle until a qualified Medik can assess you."

The Medik had read the essential data, since they were in a hurry, and skipped over the Patient Comfort section. As evidenced by the fact that ze leaned over Rael's tank for a closer look at his liquid body. The view from Rael's perspective was... unflattering. Nobody ever is when the view encompases both nostrils and at least one ear hole.

"The patient file said not to do that," said the nurse. "You're leaving a bad impression."

"Oh. Sorry." The Medik leaned away. "There's no sutures... did we use a molecular bonder for the epidermal surface?"

That was what the SPOEns insisted on calling the 'royal we', and encompassed the entirety of Medik Central. This was not Rael's surgical team. The nurse checked her notes. "Uuuuhhh... yes. Proprietary equipment from Wave of the Future. They charged Ten Years' for the rental."

"For essential surgical equipment to remove their own torture device? Send that gem of to the Cogniscent Rights' Committee. This is a pro bono service. Nothing more."

Rael recovered as quickly as he was designed to. In that, his creators did not let him down in that aspect, at least. He had no troubles until the host of Mediks seeing to his recovery cleared him to resume normal daily life.

He never had one of those.

He had always had the chip inside him. Bonded to some essential organs he could not absorb, and programmed to hurt him excruciatingly if he tried it. Now... he was free of that control. And ironically petrified by the prospect. Would people know? Could they detect it? Would he loose life-giving work because citizens would fear him running amok?

Powers knew that his makers had enough footage of his angry, frightened, or frustrated fits to fill a library. From multiple angles. And the Powers That Be also knew that Wave of the Future was using as much of it as they could get away with to smear the rest of his species. All five hundred members of it.

So, whenever he viewed the latest news on his people's progress towards being freed of their maker-company, he was forced to sit through yet another view of yet another fit, and to feel like a traitor to his kind.

He dithered at the last doorway. Freshly-formed hand almost touching the control to open it. On the other side... reality. People going about their business. People who may have a good reason to hate and fear him. People who could demand he be locked up as a wild animal.

Which is where his classification was, at the moment. He was, now and until some legal hiccough said otherwise, a wild animal of gengineering origins. He much preferred ELF. Engineered Life Form. It encompassed all that he was without adding any weight to his description.

If he stayed... a Medik working in the psychotherapy field would help him touch that control. They would feed him and shelter him and bill him in full. And he knew he barely had the funds for his next meal. Assuming Nik would still talk to him, let alone give him the friend-of-the-family discount.

Well. He could either stay here being afraid or go and find out if there was anything to fear.

Vertigo. Now or never. Rael lunged at the button and felt a sympathetic twinge from inside, where the shock chip used to be. He would be feeling those phantom pains for a long time, yet. Every time he instinctively expected punishment for doing something wrong.

"Welcome my friend," boomed Nik. He was waiting with a rough quarter of his family. All of whom were carrying foodstuffs. Casseroles and platters and cakes.

"Oh my," Rael breathed.

Officer Marken was also there, and wrapped herself around him in a very off-duty hug. "Welcome back, Rael. Count yourself lucky that I didn't try to cook."

A joke from their very beginnings as something of a team. A joke which he dutifully laughed at. "Thank you," he said. And then he realised that it was not just Officer Marken and Nik's family. There were others. Regulars. People he chatted with on the Trams. People he met in the Veets[3]. His day-to-day life wasn't as empty as he believed.

And none of them feared him. The passers-by were only merely annoyed at the friend-cluster, and not hateful about his presence.

Wild animal was only a technicality. These were the people who knew the truth.

[1] Space is, ironically, a premium in space. Every open area must be cleaned, heated, and have an air circulation system. And since patients in Intensive Care are not expected to move about very much, their wards have been reduced to a bio-monitoring drawer just large enough to be a comfortable space.
[2] Becoming a medical doctor not only includes some years of intense study, but a minimum of five Galactic Standard Years' of working as a nurse and learning all the tricks that medical school still can't teach. This leads to a marked reduction in medical arrogance on the part of the doctors.
[3] Galactic language, though relatively plastic, has had trouble with literal-minded species before. Therefore, what humanity has termed 'elevators' or 'lifts' has become Vertical Transit. Veet for short.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / curaphotography]

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