Conversion Surgery

The surgeon is sprawled out on her living room couch when you arrive, flipping through screen after screen of beautiful people on her ancient phone. One of her housemates answered the door and let you inside, their too-perfect smile drying into a polished mask as they realized why you were there. The last words they said to you before they fled were a quiet “good luck.”

She’s really not much to look at. Chubby and long-limbed, with oily shoulder-length hair. You can see her split ends from the doorway; it’s obvious that she’s never bothered to put proper care into them. Her clothes show a similar lack of effort, just loose grey sweatpants and a tank-top that barely contains her breasts.

The only part of her that’s really noticeable—the part that catches your eyes and makes you hesitate at the enormity of what’s about to happen—is the smooth plastic casings covering the ends of segment of her limbs, and the strangely spiky balls connecting them. The hum as she stretches, the faint whir as her fingers swipe left on another profile, a faint frown dancing across her lips—it’s almost too much. The house is so quiet.

She yawns and shifts, glances up; sees you watching her.

“Yeah? Who’re you?”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I’m, uh, Alex? We talked online?”

“Oh yeah. Was wondering when you’d get here,” she shifts from lounging to standing in a way that would dislocate half your limbs if you tried to mimic her, “if you’d wuss out.”

“… does that happen a lot?”

“Eighty-twenty. Lots of people online talk big but can’t back it up, y’know? Hah,” there’s something sharp and brittle in her laugh, “sometimes people try to back out when I’ve already got them on the table. Can’t deal with the reality of it. Weak.”

“I … I see.”

“So. You ready, Alex,” she scowls, “or are you just here to gawk at the freak?”

She punctuates the question by rotating one of her hands around, wrist grinding as it completes the full 360-degrees. You’re staring, gawking, but you can’t help it; it’s not like your sleepy little town has many—any?—other augs. They cluster in the cities, in the old world’s radioactive junkyards, in the places where baseline biology isn’t enough. It was astonishing to find one so near, much less a trained surgeon—her lips are tilting into a frown. She must think you’re just a fetishist, a chaser, unworthy—

“No!” you practically shout, “I mean, uh. I’m ready! I’m ready.”

“Yeah? Fine. Keep up.”

The house looked normal from the outside, just another of the mass-produced mid-western two-story single-family trash-piles with attached two-car garage and optional backyard deck that the Kessler Belt’s half-mad corporate agents carpet-bombs across the plains at irregular intervals. A GMO-turf lawn midway through being colonized by herbicide-resistant native plants, sprinkled with the telltale signs of the southwestern swarm’s outriders; gnawed leaves, bright-carapaced aphids, and piles of plump rock plants marking the exact point beyond which baseline humans could expect fucking around to lead to finding out.

In short: it was a house like any other.

The illusion fails as you follow the surgeon deeper into her home, beyond the living room’s pastel-patterned walls and focus-tested furniture. The interior layout had already struck you as a bit odd—the walls weren’t in quite the right places, there shouldn’t have been a step three feet inside the front door—but perhaps that could be explained away. Minor variations are normal.

The thick bulkheads and stained metal walls are not minor variations. Nor is the cavernous staircase plunging down where the ground floor restroom should be. A grinding scream echoes up as she leads you past it into what could almost masquerade as a normal garage, if not for the thick plastic sheets draped along its shelves and shrouding its ceiling or the polished metal table standing proudly beneath the garage’s single light.

You can’t tell what color the stains on the concrete floor are. Could be dark oil, could be dried blood. It’s hard to ignore them.

“Here we are. Up on the table, Alex.”

“Uh. Aren’t there restraints, or, uh. Something? This is a bit …”

“Nah. First thing I’m gonna do is stick an AP filter in your neck.” She grabs your neck, twists it; you gasp. “C5-C6 gap, probably, doesn’t look like you’ve got anything weird going on. You don’t, do you?” A pointed question. You can’t shift your head, can’t look her in the eye.

“N-no! My parents wouldn’t,” she releases you, waits while you rub your neck, “they’re hardcore naturalists. Like, most people are, here? But they’re …”

“That so? And here you are,” she says, a hint of hunger tinting her words, “asking me to ruin daddy’s perfect little all-natural—”

“Y-yeah.”

“And then, what, you’re going to run away?”

“Yeah. I have bus tickets,” you pat your pocket, checking that they’re still there, safe in your wallet, “for tomorrow. I just. Don’t want to arrive with nothing, you know?”

She laughs, abruptly, startling even herself. “Oh, they’re just going to eat you up, you know that, Alex?”

“W-what do you—”

“Don’t worry about it. Just get on the fucking table already. Oh yeah,” she grins, “you should strip first. Don’t feel like cutting the clothes off you.”

She doesn’t seem particularly interested in watching you strip, at least, just leans against the wall and flips through her phone. Doesn’t look away, doesn’t stare at you, just lets you get on with it. She’s being professional, you suppose, and even if she’s not kind it’s still better than high school locker-rooms. Anything would be better than that.

You still blush.

You’re not sure where to put your hands, when you’re done. Part of you wants to try to cover yourself up, to hide yourself, to hunch down and keep her from seeing, but … well, she’ll see soon enough.

The table is unpleasantly cold under your ass, and you let out an involuntary squeak at the sensation. No doctors-office padding here, no disposable paper covers, just hard, cold, metal. She glances up at the noise, finally taking an interest again.

“Ah? Oh, right …” Her eyes sweep over your body, and you ball your hands in your lap, trying to keep her from seeing. “Well. I’ve worked with worse.”

“I-I’m sorry, I, uh …”

“Don’t worry about it, yeah? S’just raw material, who gives a fuck. Anyway,” her joints grind as she starts to move, making her steps unpleasantly jerky, “let’s get started. Give me a second …”

You flinch away as she pulls your arms away from your crotch, not understanding, but she’s strong enough that your resistance hardly matters. Your arms positioned, she wraps her own arms around you. It’s a strangely tender motion, but perhaps that’s just because it’s been so long since someone last touched you; certainly there is nothing except impersonal focus on her face.

“There will be a slight pinch,” she says, and then, with a noise like shears closing on meat and bone, a noise that is exactly what it sounds like, there is pain.

You can’t feel your body.

You’re lying on your back on what must be the same table you were on a moment ago, before you passed out, and you can’t feel your body.

The light above is shining directly in your eyes, and your entire head is tingling, and there’s still a horrible pain in the middle of your neck, and you can’t feel anything below it. There’s a sharp smell in the air, and the sound of dripping, and—that’s piss. You pissed yourself. Good thing you’re naked, huh?

Thinking about that doesn’t help with the pain.

Somewhere in the room, outside the narrow scope of your vision, you hear the surgeon tapping on her phone. Dialing a number. Waiting while it rings …

“Hey, hoss. Yeah, just started. Wanted to check the order priorities before I—yeah, I’ll send you a picture.” The click of a camera’s shutter, exactly the same as your own phone made, back when you still dared to use it. “Mhmm, yeah. They breed them strong out here. … yeah. Yeah. I’ll see—”, a burst of static as the call ends, “—well fuck me for wanting to say goodbye.”

The surgeon’s feet click against the ground. She leans into your vision, eyes bright and eager, head limned against the light. “Guess what, Alex? You’re going to be an assault drone.”