Date point: 14y 8m 2w 2d AV
The Dog House, Folctha, Cimbrean
Late afternoon
Julian Etsicitty
Agony.
If Adam had a singular talent that stood out, it would have to be his supernatural ability to give his training victims some very dramatic results by inflicting insane amounts of pain. Julian both dreaded and eagerly anticipated his sessions with the big slab of a fella, because every time he thought he knew what he could do and where his limits were, Adam showed him how wrong he was.
And sometimes he did it by being a complete asshole, too. Like today, where the lifting was mostly giant sets in an order chosen specifically to make them as hard as possible and drain all his energy. Which was why at the very end of the day, after intervals, high-rep work, heavy work, combatives, wind sprints, more lifting…Julian found himself about to do heavy squats.
And that wasn’t even his finishing lift. That was going to be yet another giant set of high-rep burnout squats that would most likely have him feeling sick to his stomach and fighting back tears of pain in his eyes. As part of a circuit with heavy calf raises. And lunges. The sadistic motherfucker.
“You ready for that bar, bro?”
Julian looked at it, and silently gulped. The bar was bending a little under the weight even with the rack supporting it close to the plates, which were themselves stacked on all the way to the bar’s ends. But still. If there was one thing Julian had learned through everything, it was that Adam never challenged him with something he wasn’t able to do. If Adam had decided on that much weight at the end of a day filled with torment, then Adam knew what he was doing. And if that was what they were about to do…
Julian nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Getting settled under the bar was telling. It didn’t budge at all. Julian took a few deep, practiced breaths, shook his head out, growled, settled himself in and straightened his back—
Up. Pain. The bar was so fuckin’ heavy.
Down. Almost too fast but Adam was there and wouldn’t let him fail.
Up. Slooowwly. Legs kept bent at the top because at weights that high, an accident could tear his knees apart if they decided to bend the wrong way.
Down again. More controlled. Up. Much harder. He was panting now, almost out of breath and he was starting to get tunnel vision. One more…”
His prosthetic foot snapped with a ping and a crunch as the arch collapsed, just as he was almost at the top of the lift. He yelped involuntarily and felt himself falling backwards. His life flashed before his eyes as he realized suddenly that an overloaded bar was about to crush his chest flat, and—
Adam’s enormous hand darted out and snatched the bar out of the air, then stiff-arm lifted it back onto the rack with an insultingly quiet clank. His other caught Julian in the middle of his back before he’d hit the ground and gently lowered him down to the floor. It was a feat of strength so incredible that it went way past amazing and all the way back to unconcerning.
“That’s why we lift with a squat rack, bro. You okay?”
It took Julian a moment to recover his sense of…well, everything. He nodded and Adam seemed to understand, since he picked Julian up under his arms and sat him down on a nearby bench.
“Sit here for a bit bruh, I’mma get you something to drink.”
Julian recovered for a moment, then painfully hoisted his overpumped leg up onto his knee and inspected the damage to his foot, thinking—or hoping—that it was maybe salvageable. One look and he realized that no, the foot was more or less pulverized, with all the intricate little pieces crushed into each other. There was definitely no fixing it at this point, the whole thing would need replacing.
“Goddamnit,” Julian swore to himself, and shook his head clear in frustration. He didn’t have time for this!
And more importantly he needed to get up and move or his legs would cramp up solid and he wouldn’t be able to walk. He stood, tested things…well, he could probably still hobble along on it like a gimp. He was so goddamned fucked. He couldn’t lift, couldn’t drive a car, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything useful back on Akyawentuo or anywhere else. Fuck!
Julian hobbled over to the punching bag and slammed his fist into it so hard it made the metal girders overhead creak in protest. “Motherfucker!!”
Adam picked that exact moment to walk back in with a beaded jug of water. He stopped short and watched for a moment, then squeezed sideways through the doorway and thumped over.
“I knew you could do that lift, bro,” Adam said with a cheesy grin, and sat down heavily on the bench. He gestured for Julian to sit.
“Yeah, well,” Julian hobbled over and slammed himself down. “That lift didn’t turn out so good.”
“Nah, you did fine, bro! You didn’t fail, that did,” Adam pointed a meaty finger at the shattered prosthetic, then handed Julian the jug. “Here, it’s nice and cold.”
…Okay. So Julian managed to break his alien spacemagic foot with his caveman hobby. That did feel good for the ego, but at what cost? It was exactly the kind of stupid injury he was worried about from the beginning. Well, okay. It wasn’t technically an injury, but still.
“Where the fuck am I gonna get a new one?”
“Dude, the Ricky-tick guys have their Medtronics company here in Folctha. Or, there’s also that little genetics company too. I forget the name. They could grow you a new foot, man!”
Something about that squicked Julian hard. “No. I like my foot, I’ll just get another one.”
Adam started to shake his head. “Bro, at the weights you’re doing now, that’s…that’s dangerous. Look what just happened. That bar woulda killed you if we weren’t being smart.”
“I’ll get a better fake foot,” Julian said, irritably.
Adam sighed. “Bro. Hear me now and listen later. Remember that secret I was gonna tell you?”
“…Yeah?”
“See that little black book over there? Go look at the numbers in it.”
Julian threw an irritated look at Adam and hobbled over to where the book was lying. He picked it up and read. Then read it again. Then he looked back at the wreckage from Adam’s distilled insanity of a workout that was strewn about the gym. Julian looked at the numbers one last time, closed the book, and hobbled back over to the bench where Adam was sitting.
Julian didn’t say anything for a long moment. “…No fuckin’ way.” What else could he say?
“Yeah way,” Adam retorted with a grin. “You’re really good at not noticing these things so I thought I’d point it out for ‘ya. There ain’t a lot of anyone who could manage any of the shit you did today. In fact, you’re best buds with most of the dudes who can. So, knowing that,” he challenged, “You think a shitty little xeno prosthetic is gonna cut it?”
“…Okay,” Julian admitted, “I don’t have an answer to that.”
“Yeah you do, don’t be dumb. A real foot grows stronger with you and you’re a long ways from slowing down, I bet. So why don’t we just go visit Nofl and—”
“Stop right there.” Julian surged back to his feet and paced…well, no, he hobbled around angrily. “Doctor freakshow already tried to get his limp little hands on me. He can go fuck right off with his mad science bullshit.”
“…Dude? I mean, sure, he’s a little weird, but—”
“No.” Julian said firmly.
“C’mon, man!” The thick-skulled meathead didn’t get the hint. “This guy can grow new limbs. You aren’t even gettin’ a new foot, you’re gettin’ your old foot back.”
Julian ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Did you not hear me? No. I don’t know if it’s that alien mutant juice they have you on, or maybe it’s ‘cuz you weren’t ever one of their lab rats, but fuck no. Abso-fuckin’-lutely not.”
Adam recoiled a bit like an enormous puppy that had just been slapped. “…Dude, you didn’t need to go there. I just wanna make you the best you can be, man.”
…Well, shit. Whatever. Julian was too angry just then to make nice, so he hobbled back up and grabbed his towel irritably. “C’mon. Least you can do is give me a lift back to my place. I’ll figure out what the fuck to do about this later.”
“…Okay. I, uh, don’t have a truck so…I can carry you, or—”
“Adam. I’m not riding you through town like some fucking little kid!”
“—Or I can call a cab. Chill the fuck out ‘fore I get angry, dude.”
Julian grunted and flumped back on the bench. “Yes. Cab please.”
They didn’t talk much after that. Julian sat and marinated in his thoughts while he waited for the cab, and while he rode home. Adam didn’t ride along but when Julian arrived just a few minutes later he was already there, not even panting or anything, and looked like he was deep in a conversation with both Allison and Xiù.
Great. Just great. How the hell was Julian going to explain everything to them?
Date point: 14y 8m 2w 2d AV
Etsictty-Buehler-Chang Residence, Folctha, Cimbrean
Evening
Allison Buehler
“Look,” Julian hobbled about angrily, “I don’t fucking care how much of a no-brainer it is. I’m not letting doctor freakshow put his science bullshit in me!”
There were moments where Allison seriously could not wrap her head around Julian’s mindset. He was normally a pretty logical and collected guy, but he was also as stubborn as Allison could be and right now he was being a complete jackass. He’d come straight back from the gym and was still riding the aggressive high he always somehow had right after one of Adam’s legendary workouts. On any other day that might have resulted in him throwing her and Xiù on the bed and taking charge, showing them his real strength and then passing right the fuck out afterwards…
But right then all his fizzing aggression was making him stupid in a very unsexy sort of way. Hopefully Xiù would return soon with his favorite fried chicken, since a hungry post-Adam-workout Julian was also downright cranky. Adam had arrived before Julian’s cab got there and warned them about the incident. Xiù needed no hint, nodded, and left to go pick up dinner, even though it was technically Allison’s fault that they hadn’t had time to make anything.
She regretted nothing. Meanwhile, it fell to her to deal with Cranky Bro-Tarzan and the Incredible Bulk having some sort of emo boy-tantrum thing going between them, too. They’d not said a single word to each other since Julian got back, not even when Adam more or less threw Julian to the floor and bent him all sorts of painful-looking ways for their post-workout stretch. Normally that would had Julian moaning and laughing in pain and Adam would have been the most spectacularly gruff, friendly meat-bro there ever was. Now? They’d stretched and done the post-workout rubdown, parted ways and said nothing to each other. It was like watching a silent soap opera. Ugh.
“He won’t just sew on some Doctor Frankenstein shit, it’s all cultured from your own tissue,” she reminded him. “Hell, there’s DARPA interest in it and they’ve already made it through trials. There’s servicemen who have brand new working arms because of this!”
“Yeah well. Lucky them. Me, I still remember how that research got done,” Julian growled. “Remind me, how did your abduction go? What was it, three days strapped naked to a freezing metal table?”
“Worse. But they weren’t Nofl.” Allison paused for a moment, pressed her hands to her temples, and trudged on. “I don’t care about that anyway, Etsicitty. What I care about is you and you’re being a dumbass right now.”
“…The whole idea just freaks me the fuck out, okay?” Julian confessed. He stopped limping around at least, and finally slammed himself down onto the floor with a wet thud and a slightly ashamed look on his face.
Oh. Okay, that actually made much more sense now. Allison cooled down and reconsidered. “I get it babe,” she soothed. “But he’s not wrong, you know.”
“I know!” He growled in irritation. “Christ, I’m not stupid!”
“Babe, believe me I know.” That drew a quizzical look from him, so she sighed and confessed. “Hell, sometimes I wonder if I’m actually kinda dumb next to you.”
“Wait, what? You’re not though, we all saw your scores. You’re the smartest of the three of us.”
“Barely,” she retorted, and felt a heat rise in her cheeks.
“No, not barely.” When he had his dander up his feelings could flip this way or that, and at the moment he had a heartbreakingly warm smile for her. “You’re smart, you dummy!”
“…How the fuck am I supposed to be both of those at the same time?”
“Girl power.” His troll-grin. Good.
“Oh, fuck you Etsicitty!”
“That a promise?” Now with waggling eyebrows. That was a downright unfair tactic, but right now she couldn’t give in. She had a lesson to teach.
“No. You’re being stupid, Etsicitty.”
Too far. His smile faded and he growled in annoyance, but he didn’t say anything more. Allison sighed.
“Okay. I get it, I guess. But promise me something babe. Promise me you’ll at least take better care of the new one, okay? Because one day your stupid fake foot is gonna break at the worst time and it’s gonna get you hurt, you idiot.”
“Real feet break too…” Julian grumbled, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it.
“Real feet grow stronger. That’s what Adam says anyway, and it’s why he pushed you so hard and he’s out there sulking ‘cuz one of his ‘most bestest’ friends is mad at him.”
She pointed through the sliding doors to where Bulk was kicking listlessly around on the grass like someone had just run over his dog…though if anybody ever ran over Bozo, the car would probably come off worse.
“I ain’t mad at him, I just—”
Allison cut him off. “Don’t tell me, tell him!”
He didn’t. What Julian did instead was some form of magical boy-talk, where he looked up and out through the door, made eye contact, there was a pause, and suddenly Adam was happy again and thudding off through the door and into the kitchen to go grill a cow or something.
Allison’s anger went on pause for a moment while she processed that.
“…How…?”
Julian shrugged expansively. Whatever. It sometimes occurred to Allison that maybe the reason men were so universally bad at discussing their feelings was because they didn’t need to be good at it…or maybe they just compressed all of it better. One look, maybe some video games and a beer, or maybe playfighting or an actual brawl…and they were best friends again.
Jesus. Men really were dogs…in all the ways that made dogs worth having.
“…Fuck.” Allison plopped down next to Julian and was immediately swallowed up in a moist, full-body hug. She ignored the grossness for the moment. “I just want what’s best for you.”
“I know.” He rocked her back and forth comfortingly. “And…I know I’m being a butt.”
That earned him a giggle. “Uh-huh. You absolutely are, you ass…but it’s your foot, your body. That makes it your decision.”
He didn’t reply for a while, he just kept rocking back and forth. Eventually he untangled himself and effortlessly spun her around—the stupid sexy idiot didn’t even know how hot that kind of thing was—and gave her his Apology Grin. “Maybe…no promises. But I promise I’ll try to be open-minded about this down the road, okay? Just…I don’t trust him yet, babe.”
“Well,” She thought one last attempt was smart, “Adam seems healthy…”
The man-tank was standing in the doorway and listening intently, resting his weight against the jamb with his shoulders firmly outside the opening on either side. He more or less plugged the entire door with his bulk from chest to toes.
“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Adam chuckled. “And I get it. I do. ‘Cuz the thing is, I am an experiment in a lotta ways.” There was some kind of complicated look between him and Julian. More magical boy-speak, probably. “I just wanna make sure you know what you’re doing, bro.”
Julian grumbled sulkily in reply. “I’ve been told enough times by all of you…”
“That’s ‘cuz we care, bro. But now promise me something, ‘kay?”
“Shoot.”
“You managed to snap your foot today doin’ a squat. If ‘yer gonna keep pushing yourself—”
“I am. I have to if I’m going to live on Akyawentuo and be a man in their eyes.”
“—Then if you ain’t gonna get a real foot, get a better prosthetic,” Adam insisted. “Or hell, get two! Get like some hunk of, I dunno, articulated metal or something for lifting. And keep on top of this shit, man! You’ve gotta get your real foot re-measured, you need thicker padding on your new prosthetic to match ‘cuz you’re barefoot like me all the time now—”
“Alright!” Julian laughed loudly in surrender to his nagging friends. “Christ! I’ll get the ‘most bestest’ prosthetic I can, okay?”
“Oh God Julian,” Allison sighed and rolled her eyes, “You’re even talking like them now.”
From the doorway, Adam chuckled. “You try spending time with Daar and see if he doesn’t rub off on you.”
“No thanks.” Right then Xiù walked through the front door with three truly enormous paper bags in hand, and the heavenly scent of fried chicken wafted through the room.
Julian, being Julian, brightened instantly and sprang up, hobbling over to Xiù. “You got my favorite! Did you get mashed potatoes too?”
“Bruh, that’s not gonna fit your macros.” Adam’s gurgling stomach betrayed him.
“Fuck off,” Julian said with a happy grin. “I’mma eat the shit outta this. You want some?”
“…Yeah. But I can’t. Also I’d just eat it all.”
“Your loss. God it smells so good…” They didn’t even wait. Julian had a chicken thigh out of the bucket before they’d made it to the table.
“You’re gonna feel sick eating grease after everything,” Adam said with just a hint of sulk.
“Worth it. Last meal of the day anyway. Have a piece you huge lunk!”
“I’ll make you something,” Xiù promised. “You’ve been a big help.”
“Nah, I gotta get going. It’s about time to dump the Cherries outta bed for a surprise training marathon anyway. Don’t warn ‘em, bro…”
“I won’t!” He’d somehow managed that around a mouthful of greasy heaven, and the grin accompanying it was both sympathetic and gleeful.
“‘Kay. I’ll, uh, make a call. Just in case. You call the Medtronics people right now okay?”
Xiù nodded. “We’ll take care of it. Thank you, Adam.”
Seeming much happier, the two slabs exchanged one last look of bro-love or whatever the fuck was going on, then Bulk thumped himself out of the home and down the street, presumably imagining new and improved ways of embiggening the men he trained.
Which just left Julian. Allison rolled her eyes and relented. “Okay. You get your food on. You’re a cranky diva when you’re hungry.”
Julian nodded ruefully, and started shoving mashed potatoes with cajun gravy into his face.
“Xiù, you’re gonna call this medtronics place?”
“Already on it,” she glanced up from her phone. “He’s got an appointment for tomorrow.”
“Good. I’ll go finish putting my tools and stuff away. And Julian?”
“Yesthf?” His playful grin always seemed to work on her, even and especially if he was doing something ridiculously boyish and gross. Like talking through an overstuffed mouth.
“Get your sweaty ass into the shower. You stink.”
He swallowed and nodded with a chuckle. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good boy. I leave you two to it…”
Xiù and Julian gave each other a Look. Mission accomplished. Allison turned tail with a little swish, and went to go tom-boy with her new pile of tools in the garage. Everything had to be put away after all, and a rolling tool chest was something she’d always wanted for herself.
Plus, she got to eavesdrop a little and fantasize. Sure enough she heard the water heater fire up a few minutes later…
And a few minutes after that, she heard Xiù thoroughly enjoying herself. Allison grinned and closed the garage door, and plotted when she’d tag herself in.
Date point: 14y 8m 2w 3d AV
RRrr’tktktkp’ch Applied Medtronics office, medical park, Alien Quarter
Prosthetic refitting and manufacture
Julian Etsicitty
Sometimes, very occasionally, Julian’s day-to-day life gave him the tiniest glimpse into some of the weirdness Xiù endured on a regular basis. She seemed to float through life, improving people’s days and setting huge things into motion just by being there, all through no fault of her own. And now, Julian learned that his mangled foot from years ago had completely revolutionized the prosthetics industry, and sparked a years-long interspecies collaboration between the RRrr’tktktkp’ch Domain and the Department of Defense.
The result was a prosthetic that was frankly hard to tell apart from the real thing. It had artificial muscles powered by his blood sugars. Nerves and tendons. An accurate sense of touch! He could feel hot and cold through it now, and the foot itself felt warm. Hell, even the skin felt right!
It was honestly a strange sensation, being able to wiggle his toes again and have it feel exactly like he remembered it should. Or to scratch his foot, which he did with his right-hand big toe. Why did he want to do that, suddenly? It didn’t itch…
“This was an exciting project! I never thought I would get the chance to improve on my corporation’s finest prosthetic, and then you walked into my office!” The excitable Rrrr’tk tech fella was down on his foreleg “knees” and examining the foot with some kind of Star Trek scanner while Julian sat on an uncomfortably high examination table—he’d needed to leap up and almost climb the damn thing. Behind him, a pair of Vzk’tk worked at a terminal, apparently doing something with the data being tabulated.
Meanwhile, all he really wanted to do was get the whole process over with without being rude or foolishly hasty—Julian wasn’t too fond of being poked and prodded. It wasn’t so bad, really, but the room felt too…lab-like for his comfort. And he was maybe a little overwhelmed by the situation, because the excitable Rrrr’tk had moved so fast that Julian could barely remember the fella’s name, which in any event sounded kinda like the moment a garbage disposal choked on a ball-bearing and died.
“Look, uh, ‘Kit,’ right?”
“Close enough!”
Julian nodded. “Cool. Look, I know this was a rush order—”
“No problem, we printed it out this morning!”
“…Right. But I’ve had some problems with the old model…”
‘Kit’ made a sound remarkably like if Firth had reached into his chest and shattered his sternum with his bare hands. Laughter, apparently. “The breaking bones? We’ve developed a material that very closely mirrors the real human thing. It’s interesting, because the Domain was trying nearly twenty years ago to make this kind of material, but of course, we didn’t have your species to actually model it on. We manufacture it by impregnating a nanite carbon-calcium-carbon matrix with…”
Julian nodded wearily. ‘Kit’ was one of those smart friendly fellas who had no idea when to stop or when people had checked out on the important details of whatever he was talking about, so he clattered on and on and on about every single little detail about anything that touched on the thing he was focused on. He had an obsessed and manic energy somewhat like Vemik, but with no sense of balance and far too much caffeine; Julian had the impression it wasn’t even species dependent, and he did it in the direction of anyone that he thought might possibly be listening.
“…The same tensile properties, the same amount of flex and give, the same mass, and all of that within a two percent tolerance of a genuine human bone. Much better than the polymer you had before! You should be very satisfied with it. We’ve also redesigned the tendons to withstand the much larger forces you in particular seem capable of generating. I had difficulty believing this Warhorse man about your newfound strength, but…”
The alien gestured across Julian’s sturdy legs with a wobbly sweep of his head. “I can see his point.” Julian snapped back to awareness and grimaced in mild embarrassment.
“…Right. I also gotta worry about how I’m livin’ these days. It’s pretty rugged on Akyawentuo.” Which was an understatement. The old foot had needed weekly care on its padding, and he’d noticed that his real foot was changing shape in response to everything, too. It had widened slightly and his arches were sprung a little higher. It would be…nice, to have matching feet again.
“This new prosthetic is a mirror image of your existing foot based on the scans we took earlier, right down to the callouses you’ve developed, and you’ll note that we included a more durable material on the high-wear contact points so that the skin won’t have to be replaced as often. This prosthetic is mechanically as close to identical to your real foot as our current technology allows and is wholly custom. You’re too far out of the baseline profile for us to give you a mass-produced model anyway, it wouldn’t come close to matching. It’s really been an exciting challenge to work on.”
“…Huh.” Julian rolled the ankle on his new foot. Weird sensation, that. It really felt natural, and he could even feel the tendons pop slightly in just the same way his real foot used to. The only thing that really gave it away, honestly, was the artificial white color and the very thin seam where the skin lined up with the mounting socket just above where his real ankle had been.
Actually.
“…Hey, is there any chance I can get it in some color other than white?”
“Of course! We can match your natural skin tone—”
“No.” Julian had said that a little too harshly. “Thank you, but no. I don’t want it to look real.”
‘Kit’ took the interruption in stride. “—or give you any range of artificial colors or even a nanoskin so that you can upload designs of your choice,” he finished smoothly. Apparently he was used to handling humans. “For a modest fee, of course.”
…That had potential, actually. “Hang on.” Julian whipped out his phone and sent a quick text to his ‘Misfit Trio’ groupchat to discuss the idea. “Will a nanoskin hurt the durability?”
“No. It’s the same technology used in E-tattoos. Though, I must be honest: we are going to recommend you get this prosthetic examined and possibly replaced quarterly, and that could add up to some expense.”
“Wait. Quarterly?”
“Yes, at least for the first year so we can track with your real foot’s adaptation. If it were an arm or something else that would be one thing. But human feet aren’t like RRrr’tk hooves, they change and grow and that makes them a much more difficult engineering challenge for us to solve. Your natural foot in particular presented a challenge, since it’s larger and much more robust than most males of your species and phenotype.”
“Tell me about it,” Julian grumbled. He’d always been a broad-framed fella, to the point where clothing—and shoes in particular—had been a minor lifelong struggle. He’d also been skinny as hell until he’d grown into a man so shirts and jeans weren’t usually a big problem; he and Grandpa would just hit up the thrift store and buy everything that fit, then they would spend a weekend with a century-old sewing machine, fixing holes and pulling in too-big waistlines. He couldn’t get away with that anymore though, not since Adam had gotten his paws on Julian’s training and showed him the meaning of strength. Everything he wore now came from ‘big and tall’ stores and was three times more expensive than it should have been, and he still found he had to buy a couple sizes too big and then get things tailored.
But shoes had always been a problem, ever since the seventh grade. Grandpa couldn’t afford the bill so Julian had to buy his own. Fortunately there was a boot shop in the nearby little town that could make anything he needed, even sneakers. That came at a price so much of Julian’s pocket money—earned by mowing lawns, selling beavertail, or moving rocks around rich peoples’ front yards, or whatever—got squirreled away in his annual ‘sasquatch fund,’ as grandpa joked.
‘Kit’ seemed to understand. “Every part of this prosthetic has been custom fabricated to match. And in any case you pretty thoroughly destroyed your old prosthetic. It’s somewhat impressive it held together at all. Whoever built it designed it to be rugged, but Humans really do seem to require a different design paradigm.”
‘Kit’ seemed to enjoy repeating himself, but Julian just nodded along as politely as he could manage. The alien fella was friendly but maybe just a bit exasperatingly enthusiastic. The alien continued:
“Your new design is absolutely state of the art and that will require us to monitor things closely. Free of charge, of course. Damage outside of warranty, however…”
“Hmm.” That wasn’t something Julian was anticipating. He’d grown accustomed to more or less ignoring his prosthetic unless it broke and had only agreed to all of this with the promise of something better. Which it was! But now he needed to consider maintenance. Quite a bit of it, maybe. If he’d known that—
No. Julian shook his head at the mere thought of it. No Corti spacemagic, even if Nofl was a stand-up fella by all accounts. Julian just couldn’t.
That left the price. This new bleeding-edge prosthetic was going to set him back about fifty thousand dollars even after his medical insurance picked up most of the cost. That was a fuck of a lot of money, way more that his inner scrooge was happy with. Sure he could afford it nowadays, and that was a luxury he was very grateful for, but…
Just then he’d received a picture message back from Xiù. Instead of words she’d sent a quick doodle. Doodles. Cute little cartoon doodles of Allison’s face, and Xiù, and what was unmistakably Vemik all big-eyed and curious, and Yan in an “angry” snarl, and Singer, and—
A warm smile crept unbidden across his face. “Yeah. Go ahead and do the nanoskin.”
“Excellent. If I may?”
Julian nodded and ‘Kit’ detached the foot with two careful presses, a sharp rotation to the right, and a quick jerk forward. He then unceremoniously sliced the covering off with a fusion scalpel and placed the disturbingly realistic foot innards on a pedestal at the other end of the lab. After he drained it of blood in a biohazard basin. Weird.
“I would like to authorize charges first, Mister Etsicitty.” ‘Kip’ smoothly handed Julian a tablet with an itemized list of charges. He choked a bit; God that was a lot of money.
But, in for a penny…Julian slid his card into the reader and typed his PIN. A short delay, then a ping…and now Julian was damn near sixty thousand dollars lighter in the sock.
The pedestal at the end of lab lit up, levitated his foot, and then somehow flowed a stream of something that seemed to materialize out of nowhere over every surface. It looked like it had the consistency of hot pitch but eventually formed into skin, right down to the pores.
Then it flashed a bunch of colors and patterns in rapid succession.
Then it matched Julian’s natural skintone. Uncanny valley hit hard.
“You can reprogram it however you like, that’s just there as an option.”
“…Great. Thanks.” Julian coughed to himself. “How do I…?”
“Bluetooth! I snuck the electronics in when you weren’t looking.”
“…Right. So, uh…” Julian wasn’t very tech savvy sometimes, but he eventually paired it with his phone, downloaded the app, and sent the little doodles Xiù had drawn to his foot.
Which really, was an idea he’d never imagined he’d be thinking about. And now he had a very disconcerting little gallery of bouncing drawn-heads roaming all over his disturbingly realistic prosthetic foot, crashing off each other and some unseen wall exactly like little ping pong balls.
He giggled at it, and decided to leave it as is.
“Man, wait ‘till the girls get a load of this…”