Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
“Oh, my god!” I sit up and grasp for him. “Thank god that was all a dream.”
Arkon wraps me in all four arms with the most tender and sweet of embraces, kissing the top of my head, which does make it ache suspiciously. The pain is not too bad, but there’s not usually any pain at all, so I wonder…
“It was not all a dream,” he says gently. “We had to capture you, destroy the machine, and retrieve your brain to return it to your body.”
“There’s some light scarring, but that should go away in the not too distant future,” the doctor says.
“I was actually in the machine? He actually took my brain out?”
“He did, but it wasn’t your fault. He had engineered the interface to lower your perceptiveness and thinking. He thought that if he gave you a technical lobotomy, you wouldn’t have free will.”
“And that didn’t work out,” I say, my eyes filling with tears.
“It, uh, well. Things happen. It’s not your fault,” Arkon says.
“It is my fault! I drank the drink that made me agree to have my head chopped open.”
“Sweetness, he was going to chop your head open one way or another,” Arkon says. “That’s what men like him do. They manipulate.”
“I could have been more careful.”
“You didn’t do any damage,” Arkon reassures me. “It was a mess, but humanity is always in a mess one way or another. Some of the tech was sheared from the robot in their explosions though.”
My eyes widen.
I did it.
I did what I said I’d do.
“So there’s illicit alien tech on Earth now?”
“Yes,” Arkon sighs. “There is. Humanity has access to potentially build very high thermal panels, if they can reverse engineer what they have.”
“Oh, I bet they can,” I grin, clapping my hands together.
“I bet they can too,” he says. “But there’s one other thing you need to know. It’s important. And you need to stay calm when you hear it.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re pregnant.”
I stare at him blankly.
“You’re going to have a baby,” he says. “My baby. Our baby.”
“Was I pregnant before I got put in the robot, or…”
“Yes,” he says. “You’re very early on, but you are pregnant.”
There is one thing to do with this news: pass out about it.
* * *
When I wake up again, I am lying down on the bed, there is a cold cloth on my head, and my feet are elevated.
“She just fainted,” the doctor is saying. “It’s understandable, given all she has gone through. Give her a moment and some air. You’re going to have to get used to handling a tender woman now. There will be many more months of this, and she will only become more vulnerable.”
“I’m awake,” I say. “You can stop talking about me as if I am an endangered penguin now. Besides, I’ve not been here that long. I can only be a few weeks pregnant max. That’s barely anything.”
“It’s enough to have hormonal swings,” the doctor says. “And having been through two major surgeries, not to mention having experienced the universe through the body of a mechanical being is enough that I’m going to say you have to rest.”
* * *
Arkon
The relief I feel at seeing her sitting up, talking, experiencing reality in her own body, cannot be understated. It can’t be stated at all. I was so afraid Drak would not be good to his word, and instead do something to harm her.
But he kept his end of the bargain, and so, in the end, did I.
“You are going to rest,” I tell her. “You are going to let yourself heal. You are going to…”
She’s smirking at me.
The surgery must have been good.
“How is she like this so soon after…”
“We have technology that allows us to repair human flesh as if it had never been sundered in the first place,” the doctor explains. “She probably does feel quite well in herself. Not a reason not to rest, though. There will probably be effects we can’t quite predict.”
* * *
Evie
I feel amazing. I don’t feel sick at all. I don’t think the human body is really made to deal with the brain being taken out and put back in, so it is actually pretty chill about it. Also, medical science here is clearly so far in advance of Earth that there’s no way to even compare the two things.
But that doesn’t mean they’re not the same about medical advice. I have been in bed for three days with my brain perfectly attached to my body and I keep getting treated like I have some kind of horrible condition.
They’re making me stay in the med bay in case anything happens, when it’s pretty obvious to me that absolutely nothing is going to happen. I am fine. I’ve literally never felt better.
I decide to get out of bed while Arkon is out being busy. There’s a lot of work to be done on the goddess, the Fematrix, my second body, whatever you want to call her. I feel a pang when I think about how it was to inhabit those metal bones and feel the universe shrink around me. I was so big then.