The Girl in the Tank: Galactic Consortium, Season 1

Episode 2: A Shaky Start, chapter 8

James Runningbear lay on his bunk. His head ached and he was sweating again. God Damn Others. Everyone else in the crew were in awe of their superior medical technology, but they couldn't seem to figure out what was wrong with him.

He'd told the healer this afternoon that he was still in pain. The woman just gave him a blank look and insisted he wasn't. Could she see how he felt with all that technology? He didn't fucking think so. Yet the other healer had said the same thing.

That last doctor back on Earth hadn't been much better. He, too, insisted that James's pain was all in his head. He would have had to endure the last leg of their tour in agony if Jenkins hadn't had some pills left over from a tooth extraction.

He couldn't ask his bunkmates anymore. He'd borrowed pills too many times and his old friend, Fox was getting suspicious.

God Damn, Fox, he added to his litany. Fucker had always been the same, a cop at heart. Even as a kid on the playground, he always had a chip on his shoulder. His dad was one of the reservation cops, an Navaho who choose the white man's ways and rules over blood.

"Hey we're heading to supper," Riker, his bunkmate, called out.

Runningbear grunted and rolled over.

"Whatever," Riker muttered as the three of them left, leaving him alone with his headache and his dark thoughts.

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The supper mess was already being served by the time Fox got there. His bunkmates, Clower and Davies were facing him. He shushed them with his left hand as he approached their table. Dan, Madsen and Kleppie were sitting with their backs to him. Fox laid his new metallic arm on Kleppie's shoulder. "Hey guys, how's it going?"

Kleppie turned towards his greeting, spied the arm and let out a squeal as he propelled himself back and away. Fox roared with laughter.

"Holy crap!" Clower said.

"Nice, isn't it?"

"And you can control it," Dan said as Fox displayed the arm. "Incredible."

"Yeah, they grafted it to the bone and used some sort of nano tech to hook up all the nerves. Took all day to figure out which nerve was which, but it's worth it."

"So, you going be like a cyborg now?" Kleppie asked.

"Naw, they say the soft tissue, muscle and skin and what not, will grow over this," he explained, "from here." He gestured at the black patch around the stump. "The slang term they use is clacker. Cuz," he snapped his fingers together, the metal on metal making a clacking noise. "But the weirdest part is the sensory nerves. Man, you can't believe it but it feels like my arm. When I look away, it's like...my arm. It's just there again."

After supper the majority of the men excused themselves and headed back to their quarters. They looked wiped, despite having done nothing all day. You couldn't hardly blame them.

But Fox was awake and restless. It had been a long day, but he felt good. He'd spent the lions share of the day in a tank, nutrients and god knew what else absorbing through his skin while they prodded his new arm and attuned the nerves. It was like he'd rested most of the day. He felt as good as he had since the blast and the explosion that took his arm.

Excitement about having this new arm might be part of it as well. He had just started to think about what life as a one armed man might be like. Certainly following his father into the reservation police force would have been out of the question.

It was still hard to believe they'd replaced his arm and harder to believe that his own skin and muscle would some day cover this metallic thing. But it didn't matter. It felt like an arm. He could move it like an arm. He had some problem with fine motor control, but they assured him that would get better as the nano bots and his brain jointly decided where each neural impulse was supposed to go. They had given him some exercises to do, to speed the process.