"If you didn't like the manicure, you could have just said so." Agate says as she cuts the meat on my plate.
"Yes, because I chopped off my own arm to spite you."
"It's only a joke, darling. Say ah."
"I can feed myself just fine."
I took the fork from Agate and did just that. Being ambidextrous has its perks. Reasembled beef is almost the same as regular beef, but there's a weird after taste. Like when you're you're in a tire store and you can taste them, that's the taste. Luckily vegetables don't have that problem. The rubber taste actually causes some people to go vegetarian.
"Have they gotten started on a replacement yet?" I ask as I eat.
"They've made the diagram. I told them if they hurry I'll provide them with a little more funding under the table."
"I don't need you to bribe people for me."
"I'm a very powerful woman, I can be a little corrupt for your sake."
I didn't have the energy to deal with her nonsense. I kept eating in silence. If I didn't finish the plate Agate would get on my case.
"Joey told mother and daddy about what happened." Of course he did.
"You're 30, stop calling him daddy."
I looked out the window, trying to show as little interest as possible so she stops talking. It was 6:45 pm. Printing skin isn't that hard, an entire, functional arm is another. If they rushed it, it would probably be six days and five hours at the earliest.
When I was delivered to the emergency ward they stopped the bleeding, glued some skin over it (with artificial veins so the blood doesn't pool,) and sent me on my way with morphine pills. Just in time for supper the next day.
Agate's office always made me uneasy. Probably due to the fact we are hundreds of miles into the matle, yet the windows show a lush forest. It's no illusion, screen saver, or painting. What you see is the Agartha Zone.
Glowing crystals dot the ceiling, creating substituted suns. In 1984 the facility tried to collect some samples, but as I said, they substitute the sun. Meaning they generate heat. The misson was called off a few miles from the ceiling.
Waterfalls flow off and crawl up the gaint rock pillars that kiss the roof, coming and going through huge cracks at their tops. The researchers that came before us hypothesized that they were conected to the ocean. At leasts, that was the best they could figure out. They threw a bunch of rubber ducks into the water at one point in 1963 and had a few boats where they would have floated up in the Amundsen Sea, but they didn't find them.
Rivers ran between the pillars. We are not sure how, but the water comes out as fresh water and leaves as salt. Thick, ancient trees with light cyan leaves as big as your torso. Ripe, round fruit dangles from vines that changes color and taste depending on time of day and phase of the moon.
This is where the zoologist, botanists, geologists, really, anyone with an interest in the natural world, beg to go.
Expeditions only happened on rare occasions, ever since that day in 1987. Several teams were doing research down there when out of nowhere a ringing sound was hear. That was when madness struck them.
Level headed men of science attacked each other like starving wolves. Ties that bind didn't matter anymore. Men that had broken bread together, men that had shared dreams, men that had sweated together. All joining together in the blasphemous orgy of nashing teeth and spraying blood.
They had heard the ringing, but did not fall into a bloodlust like the rest had.
Joey was 18 at the time. He was on a team studying the forest penguins as a medic. He was the only one on the team to not loose it. As his position was to save lives, he did what he could. Out of six members of the team only two survived. Joey, and a young man named Siarhei Mikalaevich Kavalchuk, who Joey had managed to subdue.
There had been six teams in the Agartha Zone at the time of the incident, resulting in seven survivors and fifty four casualties. From then on only one or two teams were given special permission to investigate once every month.
It's funny how life works. If Siarhei had been standing further away from Joey, or if they had brought a medic who wasn't a clone, he would have mauled and been mauled. Then he would have never met Lilian Gallagher, then Agate and I would have never been born.
"I knew you would find something interesting." Agate said.
"Which part? The pilot or the ring?" I asked.
Agate grabbed her laptop and clicked on something. She moved my empty plate and layed the computer in front of me. It's a video of what was formerly my right forearm.
"Isn't that fascinating? They patched up the wound, now the pilot can truly control it." She said as my severed limb stood up on the fingers like a top heavy Thing from the Addams family. It's a special kind of weird when you get to watch what was once a part of your body move autonomously.
"Look, you can already see the blood pooling in the finger tips. We've never had a specimen like this before!" Agate said, despite know how much I enjoy having my things, including limbs, not stolen. "And here you can see the pilot adjusting to its new space." Agate said as she slowed the video to half speed.
My skin slowly moved as if worms were tunneling around in my hypodermis. I'll admit, it was intresting in a certain way. If it had been anyone else's body part I would have wanted to keep watching.
I might not resist when my body is touched or moved, but that's because I learned to be quite about it. Making a scene is not good for anyone. Now as I watch my own arm being puppeted by some mysterious goo that took it over like a hermit crab takes a shell, I can't help but feel queasy.
"What about the ring?" I asked, hoping to change topics.
"That is classified information, only to be remembered when someone of my clearance or higher asks." She said, continuing to observe the video.
I feel like I already knew what she would say.
After all, an identical silver ring was on her finger.
