Work Text:
The clinic closes at 1 AM.
Dr. Nyx’s initial drive had been beaten down and stripped to its very core when he'd first started his work there. He'd been ambitious back there, perhaps even naive, and sought to keep the clinic open at all times. Injuries don't stop at midnight. People do not magically stop overdosing. Faulty augments won't hold off on shocking their owners’ nervous system to death just because it's late.
Two months in, he changed his operating hours, reluctantly leaving those unfortunate souls to fend off their problems on their own between the hours of 1 and 7 in the morning.
(It helps, though not by much. Even on the days when he falls asleep right in the sofa of his office and wakes up as late as he can in time for work, the 6 hours of sleep only seem to drain him further.)
But… he finds comfort in his work. Used to, at the very least.
Because times change, they always do, and when the present fades, it takes with itself whatever comfort it had offered.
Dr. Nyx swore to do no harm. He says so to his colleagues, to the patients requesting increasingly dangerous procedures, to the audio logs that seem to pile higher and higher with each day.
Gone are the days of psychiatric evaluation and binary systems dictating which parameters a person needs to fill. And he'd celebrated such feats.
He will do no harm , and if that includes going against his feelings in order to help a patient, so be it. However strange, unusual, unnerving he might find an augment, he will uphold the idea of informed consent. Why should he let his own opinion prevent a patient from alleviating pain, mental distress, whichever illness plagues them?
A fully functional prosthetic eye would have seemed impossible and unnatural two hundred years ago.
He sighs, and skims over the form once more, tired eyes fluttering shut every few seconds. He turns to the patient, their head tilted to the side, invisible eyes likely aimed at one of the informational graphs he's hung up in the office over the years.
He doesn't need them. But the patients do. It helps ease their worries, keep them occupied. He's glad for it.
The clinic closes at 1 AM, and that time has long passed. By an hour, he guesses, and confirms as he briefly checks the clock. He sets the form onto the table, walks towards the patient, and sits down on the small chair opposite the examination table.
“Come back next month, I am going to need to check up on the prosthetic. For now, everything seems fine, and the form is filled out correctly.”
The patient hesitates, masked face jerking forward a bit, before they look at the form. Their body language reads nervous. They look back at him, tapping the metallic knuckles of their new prosthetic with the fleshy fingers of their other hand. “... The payment?”
He hates this part. Has hated it ever since medical school. A stain on his job, a dark spot preventing him from ever truly taking pride in his work.
He sighs. “I did my best to cut down the costs, but it won't be cheap. I'll send you the pertinent information.”
“... Thank you.”
It's 2:32 AM when the patient leaves, and Dr. Nyx sits down in his chair. The moment he does, the moment his legs relax, all thoughts disappear from his head and he finds himself staring at the empty doorway before him.
He'd intended to grab some food from the fridge, but it seems too far away to be worth it.
Removing his glasses, he sets them on his desk and rubs at his temples, working the flesh like so many times before. The sensation proves calming despite doing nothing to actually alleviate the headache. It's been bothering him for the better part of the day.
It's 2:38 AM when he hears a familiar slam in the hallway outside.
The front door.
The locked front door.
He picks up his glasses, gets up. The drive to help and investigate is at odds with the fear that's been growing every day.
The corporations don't like him, to put it simply. It's only a matter of time before some regulator or street-cleaner pays him a visit again, forgetting the kindness they had shown last time.
Soft footsteps carry him forward, a hand planted on the doorway, ready to pull himself back around the corner should the unexpected visitor pose danger.
Heavy, evenly spaced footsteps draw closer, their echo ringing through the halls louder than it should.
Dr. Nyx clenches his fist, and calls out.
The footsteps pause, and then pick up again, resolute as they aim right towards him.
He steps back as the silhouette appears around the corner, backlit by the night time lighting, the dim, green glow outlining their shape and casting everything else into pure darkness.
Synthetic eyes glare at him, and just as he's about to inquire as to the nature of the stranger's visit at this ungodly hour, a familiar request for data transfer arrives.
He accepts, and is greeted by a surprisingly cheerful, British accent. “Have we come at a bad time?”
Dr. Nyx’s hold on the doorway goes slack, and he blinks, adjusting his glasses. He steps back and gestures towards the examination table, all exhaustion forgotten as the ghost of a dead man walks into his office.
And he'd be lying if he said the apparition doesn't send a shiver of unease down his back.
Because, disregarding the fact that this man is supposed to be dead - long dead- he's certainly not in the condition Dr. Nyx’s own hands and tools had left him.
Johnny takes his time, eyes swirling about to take in every detail, the uncaring and perhaps even aggressive nature of his movement contrasting with the curious gaze cast toward the medical posters. That hasn’t changed, at least.
Dr. Nyx keeps the channel open and sends S.A.M.M. a silent, worried inquiry.
The AI companion either doesn't pick up on his attempt to keep the conversation under the wraps, or doesn't care. “JT is sorry about the front door, by the way. He tried to only get the lock, but it might have come off the hinges a bit.”
Johnny sits down, and turns to glare at Dr. Nyx.
He's grown desensitized to these things, but something about the smell of rot and blood Johnny brings with him, something about how out of place it is on his metal body, makes Dr. Nyx’s skin crawl.
But he's a professional, is and always will be, so he pushes it back down, shoves it under a tightly closed hatch.
“Johnny… You missed all your checkups.” He tries to establish some sense of normalcy by starting with the obvious. Patients miss checkups all the time. Sometimes with no consequences, sometimes…
Well, sometimes this happens.
Johnny watches him settle back into the chair, and then dips his head a bit, eyes focusing on his hands.
“I assume S.A.M.M. will handle this like last time?”
Johnny offers a tiny nod, so minute one wouldn't be blamed for thinking it an accident.
S.A.M.M.’s ever cheerful voice fills Dr. Nyx’s head. “We've had a busy few months- err, years , technically.”
Okay…
Dr. Nyx sighs, leaning forward. “You got the surgery, then?”
Johnny shakes his head.
That… makes things difficult.
“... It's been two and a half years.”
“As I said, a busy few years.”
He rubs his face again. “You're here for a checkup?”
“We were hoping for a full exam, if you could.”
No matter how much science has progressed, the area of synthetic brains is still a mostly unexplored territory. Not for a lack of trying, of course. And it's not that they're simply too delicate to reassemble or replicate- it's the size to performance ratio.
A human brain, in many ways, is the perfect machine already. Small enough to fit inside the human head, yet capable beyond what most would expect.
To build a human brain, to create a computer capable of processing human emotions, of forming opinions, of holding memories, would mean massive amounts of space.
The average AI, with its emotions programmed by a human, with every corner cut to maximize effectiveness and lessen storage requirements, will still need enough components to fill a couple of human heads at least.
So, if one wants to replace a human brain with an equally powerful, mechanical equivalent, there are only two options: make the brain big, or make it work itself to death.
In Johnny's case, the latter was the case.
Dr. Nyx carefully pries the metal pieces of Johnny's skull apart, finding, to his satisfaction, that they haven't been tampered with beyond what seem to have been necessary repairs.
He'll have to ask who did the work, because it's equal parts precise and… amateurish, as though the author was, for the first time in their life , forced to make the product not just effective, but adhere to a pre-existing shape.
That's the least of his worries for now.
He sets the last bits aside, and, to his worry, discovers that what he'd initially thought to be loose bits of synthetic nerves was the brain itself , visible through gaps in the skull that he certainly did not leave behind.
But the damage he finds isn't due to an external factor.
The brain’s fried itself up. Burned.
The damage is damn near fatal, and it's a miracle Johnny is in a state to be walking around.
(It's in pristine condition for a computer whose lifespan doesn't step a day over 8 months. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it's approaching its expiry date, not 2 years past it. )
“Johnny, where is your brain? Your original one?”
Beneath him, laying still on the table, Johnny's eyes flicker sharply upwards, the metal hinges of his exposed jaw groaning softly as he opens his mouth a tiny bit. As if hesitant. A moment later, he closes it, and S.A.M.M. answers instead.
“Destroyed. Blown to bits, we're afraid.”
Dr. Nyx pries his hands away from Johnny's poor brain module, and leans back in the stool. Their gazes finally meet.
He makes a point of not pitying his patients, but there's something about seeing a barren, metal construction where a familiar face should lie that makes his heart sink.
He can't quite ascribe an emotion to the expressionless facsimile of a skull and motionless eyes, the mechanical sensors encased in what he'd quickly learned is rotten flesh, but the word that comes to him is fear.
It would be entirely out of character for Johnny Turbo, Paradise’s esteemed regulator .
But Johnny's not that anymore, is he?
Not after being gone for two years. Not after every news outlet that caught wind of his injury paraded it around.
Dr. Nyx sighs.
Maybe he's making it up. Seeing things where they aren't. Misinterpreting something to support his preconceived notion.
“Your brain’s destroying itself, Johnny. I wish there was more to say.” He rests his elbows on the table, hands clasped together under his chin. Still maintaining eye contact.
He tries to stifle the hint of guilt as the executive’s voice booms in his head, ordering him around, threatening with illegal punishments that no authority could, nor would want to prevent.
He almost says something. His mouth is already opening, brain scrambling to put together an explanation.
But Johnny is quicker. He taps his chest with two fingers, then raises the hand and performs a sort of half circular motion.
Ah.
“I’m going to put your skull back together. A moment, if you would”
Johnny offers another slight nod.
Dr. Nyx moves the chair over some two minutes later, the metal legs dragging across familiar scratches on the ground. A path well traveled. He studies his patient, just like any other, yet feels a type of fear that hasn't reared its head in years.
The fear of the unknown. The fear that years of medical expertise aren't enough to help here. The fear of what, exactly , he'll find.
Maybe rotting organs, maybe machinery, maybe both or neither.
“Sedatives?” He can already guess the answer.
Johnny shakes his head.
Right. He moves the stool closer, and traces his hands across the metal frame of Johnny's chest and upper abdomen.
Truth be told, he's out of his depth here. The construction, even half the materials are unlike anything he's ever seen.
There's a standard for how prosthetics are built, even homebrew ones. The material, body part, body type , purpose make a difference, but there's only so many ways to put them together.
And none of those have been applied here.
There aren't plates to cover the sensitive parts, nor is the endoskeleton exposed, like with standard, lightweight prosthetics.
Instead, the torso he's looking at feels like a mockery of flesh.
Bits of bone-like structures peek out from behind cables, and he gets the strangest sense of life from them, as though they'll move and curl on their own. Like snakes.
It's as if the cables and wires and whatever else… grew around the endoskeleton. Like vines. Like… like flesh.
Dictated by what?
His stomach rolls, twists.
“There are seams across the middle. They can only be opened manually, though it shouldn’t take much effort.” S.A.M.M.’s voice shakes him out of his momentary trance.
He's done this before. Not quite the same, but…
Do no harm.
As promised, his fingers soon stumble across an oddity, a place where the ‘skin’ cuts off, creating a seam not more than a millimeter in width.
He pries it open with a scalpel, part relieved, part unnerved at the fact that Johnny's body seems to lack nerves entirely.
His brain strains itself for an explanation to whatever he might find. It's only a hypothesis , a half formed idea founded on one or two facts and stretched out by a tired, disturbed mind, but with every new step, it seems more and more likely.
People come to him, seeking to rid themselves of pain entirely, to break human bones like twigs, to perform feats the human body cannot, and should not accomplish. They seek what humanity cannot offer, the efficiency of a machine.
Before him, at his mercy, lays a killing machine, its body constructed to fulfill one, singular purpose without any hindrance.
Its.
His fingers pause again, having opened the seam just enough for warm air to spill out.
Its body.
He looks down, and Johnny's eyes meet his, as resolute as ever.
Dr. Nyx wonders if they've always looked so empty.
He forces himself to look away, and pries the chest apart.
It's… unexpected, yet not shocking.
Metal. Not even dried blood or dark, rotten flesh strung across metal construction and woven in between joints like the links of a spider web. Not organs.
But living metal.
Cables crawling along bone and encasing fuel lines, a disgusting, perverse imitation of muscle. No lungs or heart to speak of, though what he guesses to be a battery sits in the middle, its build alien and strange.
He clenches his fist and moves on.
Quickly, he comes to the conclusion that Johnny's body is as much built with purpose as it is alive . Everything folds neatly into itself, no cables rub against each other and wear each other down, not a single burnt part or damaged port.
It's as though the body knows how to put itself together, each individual curl of wire and slot and pin working in harmony. Not placed there by human hand, but grown , millions of years of evolution dictating their exact appearance and position.
He swallows, throat dry. His hands run along what seems to be a central pathway, a thick strand of cables growing, merging together and separating as they please, sometimes branching off to the sides, only to loop back around eventually and find their way back.
Sometimes, they just end, and he finds them outside , in the skin-like web of material he hasn't seen before. Steel, possibly, but not quite - its shine, tone, properties just a tad off.
It takes him minutes to form a coherent sentence, and by then, Johnny has sat up, the cables across his chest sewn shut like they never parted.
Bright eyes dig into Dr. Nyx’s very core. He remembers them, remembers carefully constructing them from scratch, perfectly measured.
(He doesn't want to think about how many times he'd spaced out and found himself staring at the mess of Johnny's head.)
He'd put them together, he knows every seam and wire and remembers calibrating the sensors until they were just right , attaching them gently to damaged nerves and screwing them shut into fractured pieces of bone that only time could heal.
Now, they are just a part of this joke as everything else. His work, his gift, bastardized.
The telltale, minute stuttering of a synthesized voice with a pre-programmed accent rings loud and clear through Dr. Nyx’s skull. “I've run some diagnostics, but between the two of us, you're the expert here. Would you evaluate them?”
Johnny tilts his head to the side a bit, eyes flickering across the room before planting themselves right back on Dr. Nyx’s face.
“Johnny wants to know why you helped Teratek.”
Ah.
The executive forgot to let him know about this particular detail.
“Johnny, you have to understand… This is Teratek. Had I not helped them, this entire clinic would have turned into one of their augment stores overnight.”
Johnny regards him. The worn jacket is clasped tightly in his hands. He'll have to take a look at them, too. The left one seems to have stayed the same, at least, while the right is… covered, or perhaps made of some dark, fabric-like material. Metal joints exposed, various wires running across the top of the hand and individual fingers.
He turns his attention away. “You did get the chainsaw leg, in the end?”
Nod.
“And the other one? The same?”
Nod.
Finding humor in the unfortunate is important, and the idea of a chainsaw leg is more than enough to momentarily lift his spirits.
He reaches out, carefully taking Johnny’s right hand, fingers working the material with expertise that sets in almost immediately. There is definitely flesh underneath, though it’s… more mushy than is considered ideal- held together by the fabric cast.
Up his palm he travels, a seam suggesting the ability for the hand to split, or otherwise move beyond its usual capabilities.
He finds a familiar set of hatches on Johnny’s forearm, mirrored on the other side. Never enough chainsaws, he thinks with a mix of amusement and worry for the mental state of anyone who deems it necessary to install such a deadly arsenal in their own body .
He's seen enough.
He's seen enough to decide that Johnny's body is as functional as it will get, Johnny's brain is days away from frying itself entirely, and Johnny's zen count is likely in the negatives.
“You've spoken to them, then?” He asks after a long time, hoping Johnny picks up.
Again with that minute nod. He wonders if his neck has limited movement, though it seems unlikely.
“What do they want you to do, Johnny? More streetcleaner work?”
Nod.
Dr. Nyx pushes the chair backwards a bit, carefully reaching out a hand to rest on Johnny’s shoulder. “My offer still stands… for what it is worth. The contact can get you in and out of surgery for half the price.”
He sighs. “But you have to hurry. If you still know your name in 2 months’ time, consider yourself on the good side of… whatever put you back together. Because I know my field, and this wasn't done by human hands.”
He doesn't ask, he doesn't pry further. He doesn't want to.
He tells himself it's out of a lack of interest, and not the knot in his stomach.
Carefully, he removes his hand from Johnny's shoulder, and gets up, walking over to his table. “I'll have a look at the readings S.A.M.M. has sent me, and let you know should I find anything noteworthy . ”
When he looks up again, Johnny's standing beside the table, still grasping the jacket, his pants and shirt laid aside where he'd left them.
Johnny's gaze isn't aimed towards him, though. It's trained onto the jacket.
The logo on the back, the large letter T, faded and barely any of the red paint left behind. The only reason he knows it's there are the scratch marks, just barely lighter than the worn leather.
The thumb of Johnny's left hand rubs against the jacket, before his head jerks upwards and eyes find Dr. Nyx once more.
Johnny begins dressing himself back up, while Dr. Nyx leans against his desk, shoulders tensed, head hung low.
“What do we owe you?”
He shakes his head, still looking down. “This one is off the books. Johnny… If you’re still yourself by then, I’d like to see you again next month, just to… make sure.”
He sees the regulator hesitate, arms slowly lowering, movements halting until the figure stands inhumanly still. Only the hand around the jacket tightens.
Then, Johnny’s body seems to relax, and he dons the jacket at last. He doesn’t wave, shake hands- he’s simply gone, footsteps retreating through the halls.
It’s 3:42 AM when Dr. Nyx collapses into his chair, blank eyes staring at the dark hallway.
He’s seen the rise of medicine, its venture and eventual merging with the world of intricately carved metal and bolts and batteries, and he’d believed them to be unequal by nature. The flesh contains all the necessities, the metal offers only a meager alternative in place of still worse ones.
He’s long lamented every replaced bone and torn muscle tied to a servo, for he believed them to be lost pieces of the person themself. He’s long become immune to the dread settled in the pit of his stomach, the back of his mind, prompted by the idea of the full replacement of all flesh. A question, a possibility so familiar it no longer phases him.
And yet…
Johnny’s blood is splattered across his face and caked into his clothes, his body bled dry. Johnny’s flesh rots between seams and around his eyes, forgotten and useless. The next step, some would say. A mistake not to be repeated, a foolish goal with a miraculous execution.
But is it not a mirror to the nature of man? Evolution or some higher being, DNA or the capable hands of a mechanic and doctor working together- what does it matter, when the end result is the same in its function?
Yet… There is a difference. Were they truly the equal, Johnny’s time would not be running out.
So what preserved the person when his very nature changed, and his was purpose rewritten? When the shell changes, how is it that its contents remain the same?
A simple question comes to mind, one that he’s fought a losing battle with for years now.
What of the soul?