– 1 —
Wahl crinkled. His right foot was encapsulated in a glass cube and was a sorry sight. The swollen bluish-black flesh was oozing drops of some nebulous liquid. Although the cube kept the smell inside, Wahl felt like he could smell it internally. The smell was a kind of saturating his entire body and oozing treacherously from every pore. The worst thing was that the leg itched terribly.
Doctor Tim, a merry fat little man, as ill luck would have it, commenced his round with Wahl’s chamber mate. One minute, two… Wahl could not bear his boisterous cackling any more. Finally, the doctor turned to him and took an indulgent look at the guy’s dying limb.
“Won-der-ful!” he clicked his tongue with enjoyment and shook what was left of his red locks. The thin hair was drawn back in a puny neither-here-nor-there bobtail. Indeed, the doctor’s appearance was that of an aging punk-rock fan rather than of a world-class head of science. Wahl hated him.
While the “Wonderful!” followed by either one or two exclamation marks, had lasted for a month, what was left of his patience could last him for but a few moments. And, right away, the doctor said what the whole thing was all about.
“Ti-da-da, ti-da-doo, surgery tomorrow…", he chanted in the manner of his favorite song by the Clash, and Wahl all but joined him, although under any other circumstances the Clash’s “Should I stay…?” would have made him want to curse and swear.
He did not say a word to the doctor about the alarming itching, since now his biggest dream was to lapse into sleep and wake up five minutes before the surgery. Yet, he was in for a rather complex preoperative assessment. Everything had been discussed beforehand, and Wahl was aware that there would be no food and, most important, no pain-killers, during the following twenty four hours, plus he would have to go through a whole batch of unpleasant procedures.
But still that was going to be just one day! And he was nearly “off his rocker”, already cherishing a to-hell-with-that-leg-an-artificial-one-will-be-ok thought. All the more so, today’s prosthetics had grown dexterous enough to craft a limb barely distinguishable from the real one, so to speak. If it were not for surfing…
That was how the whole thing began. Surely, the higher the waves, the bigger the sharks. However, in 99,9999% of cases a shark will not attack you unless you are bleeding. What is left is a one-in-a-million chance of an unprovoked attack. Wahl remembered himself being carried away from the beach, not able to even look at his shredded led, and a rescue man saying to him: “You’re one in a million boy, Wahl!” He did have to say something anyway.
If it were not for the surfing, he would hardly have thought about the new method doctors had come up with – protomass limb regeneration. But for the government’s financial help (Wahl was an investigator at a local police department), nothing would have come of it either. The cost was far beyond an ordinary citizen’s capacity.
Now the government did help him, and at first Wahl was very happy considering himself a lucky boy. Later, he repeatedly tongue-lashed himself, since he knew that he would have rejected it, had he been aware how it would have ended.
The creepiest thing was that it was his leg rotting in the cube that actually generated the protomass. The beasts dressed in lab coats had set up a blockade to let Wahl’s leg rot completely. Frankly, the shark did a great job, and, it might have been a hundred years since it had brushed its teeth last time… It took only a month and a half. Only a month and a half! Wahl was a crazy surfer…
Alright, tomorrow he’d receive his batch of injections, the “protomass” would be loaded with nano-particles featuring DNA elements, and here we are! Wahl’s right leg’s second birthday – Happy Birthday, maam!
– 2 —
Everything swam before Wahl’s eyes. He felt a scalding pain in the leg. “Can you hear me? Good boy!” Tim the Merry Greek spoke in an unusually serious tone. But he beamed right away, not being able to hold it: “Everything was won-der-ful!”
