Surgery

“Sleep is the refuge of the lost and the damned, the place where old regrets dwell. With the faintest hope that the past can be changed, it holds you in its open prison cell.”

-from “Waking Sleeper, Noontime Dreamer”, lyrics by Allie Brosh

An older man, probably in his mid sixties, stood in the doorway. He had wiry white hair that ringed the back half of his scalp, and watery blue eyes. Thick glasses, quite unlike the ones that Sid wore, perched on his nose. He frowned at them, but ushered them in. It was a private home. On the walls there were some tasteful pictures. It was quite unlike the home that Etta and her mother shared, but it had the common feature of the low table in the center of the room, surrounded by a woven rug. He gestured for them to sit down around it, and they did, everyone claiming their own side of the table. Yan, suspicious of this stranger, jostled with Etta for the middle position at the table. Her mother glared at them both, and they eventually did settle with Yan in the middle.

Yan sat uncomfortably on the floor in between Etta and her mother, listening without comprehension as the man had a conversation with them. Oddly, their focus seemed less concerned with Yan and more with Etta. He kept speaking in a questioning tone, and she responded nervously. Occasionally, she would raise her stiff hand and clumsily perform some motion that he demonstrated or requested. They all seemed to know each other well, though the man was gruff and Etta was clearly unhappy at being at the center of his attention.

Eventually, though, Etta's mother cleared her throat and directed the conversation back to the actual subject at hand: Yan. Yan hard her own name mentioned, and Etta's mother pulled out her tablet and showed the man the drawing that Yan had made earlier. He studied it.

They had a long, drawn out conversation, and the three natives of the planet kept looking at her. She understood a little bit better how Etta had been feeling just moments before. Yan was, for her own part, getting pretty tired of all the conversations about her that she couldn't understand or participate in.

After a while, the man stood up, grunting a little bit with the effort and with the loud popping of his knees. Etta's mother made what sounded like a joke. She laughed, but he just grimaced. He led them out of his living area and back down the stairs, just one flight, into a medical office. Yan had suspected, but not known until now, that the man was a doctor of some kind. The medical apparatuses that lined the walls of the room were inscrutable in purpose, but looked just like what was in any other specialized office Yan had ever seen in the Empire. The design language was, again, either universal or copied, and she wasn't sure which was more likely to be the case.

Her stomach turned a little as the doctor motioned her towards one of the machines. He set it up around her head, like a massive, floating crown, and it whirred to life. An image appeared on a screen on the wall. It was as much of a jumble of brights and darks to Yan's eyes as their language was to her ears, but it must have meant something to the doctor. He clicked around on a computer, and highlighted a particular area on the screen. Yan figured that she was done being scanned and extracted herself.

He had another long conversation with Etta's mother. Etta herself stood in the corner, resolutely ignoring all the action. That was until the doctor called her over to do some tests. Her face was the image of resignation. Yan watched the proceedings with curiosity. The doctor subjected Etta to a wide array of machines, shining bright lights in her eyes and scanning her brain.

Once Etta was done being given the runaround, the doctor returned to Yan. He pointed to the screen on which he had made his original observations, and to the place inside her head where the chip was lodged. He said something, but Yan's face must have communicated exactly how little she was absorbing, because he sighed and disappeared into a back room for a moment. He returned holding a fake plastic (or at least Yan hoped it was fake) model of a human head, complete with brain sitting up inside the skull. The top of the skull had a little hinge on it for easy access. The doctor held the skull up next to the images on the screen, and pointed to a place just behind the jaw bone. So the chip was not in Yan's brain. She nodded, understanding. That was a good thing. It meant that she probably wouldn't risk too much damage if someone took it out.

Yan mimed pulling it out, and raised her eyebrows to indicate a question. It was a little like signing with Sid, but much less intelligible. She missed Sid.

The doctor nodded, and said something to Etta's mother, who then looked between Etta and Yan. The doctor sighed again. He took his computer off of the tall, wheeled cart it had been sitting on, and he searched around for something. Eventually, he pulled up a bunch of pictograms, like the ones that Yan had seen used in the Iron Dreams' babysitting room, for kids who were just starting to learn how to read. The words and the pictures were put together, so a kid could guess the meaning of the sentence without being able to actually read a single word. Certainly Yan couldn't read the strange script at the bottom of each of the pictures. She wondered why the doctor had such a thing handy. He was, seemingly, a brain doctor of some sort, from the way he paid attention to Etta. Maybe he had a lot of patients who used alternative communication like this.

The doctor clicked on some of the pictures to form a sort of sentence: a finger pointing out of the screen, a knife, a person sleeping on the floor on a mattress like the one that Yan had slept on the night previously, the sun over the ocean. It took a long time for him to put the pictures together. When he handed the computer to her so that she could answer, Yan immediately saw why. The various menus to pick out these different icons were inscrutable, especially since she couldn't read the text, and the selection of icons itself was limited.

She thought that what the doctor was saying was that he wanted to take out the chip in the morning, but he could have also been saying that she was going to be asleep while he did it. It didn't particularly make sense. Or he could have been saying that she would have to take it out herself, but then the sleeping picture and the sun picture didn't make sense. And it would be ridiculous to expect her to do that. Again.

Yan selected… She hoped she was selecting yes, even though she wasn't quite sure what she was saying yes to. She hoped that these symbols meant the same on this planet as they did in the Empire. She knew that all the people in the universe had technically come from one planet, so maybe some of the basest forms of language– a person nodding, a smile– were the same here.

The doctor took the computer back and nodded at her. Yan bit her lip, but nodded back. She wasn't looking forward to going under the knife, if that was what finger pointing out, knife meant. She didn't have much of a choice, though. As soon as the Green King either recovered or recruited an ally, she was as good as dead without the power. Etta knew that. The Green King knew it, too. He probably wanted to find her as soon as possible.

The doctor turned the computer back around so that Yan could see it. He had put up another few pictograms on the screen. These ones were the pointing finger again, a person walking down the road, and a woman holding a baby. Yan absolutely could not understand what it meant. Yan looked at him helplessly.

Etta's mother said something. Maybe he was asking if she was going to stay with her? She couldn't stay with them. Maybe they could come with her, but Yan needed to get off the planet and back to the Empire as soon as possible. She didn't like being here, and she was in danger every second she stayed.

The doctor gave up on whatever he was trying to ask her, and put the computer away. He turned out the lights in his office and led them back upstairs, talking to them the whole time. Yan yawned. The day had been long. Etta's mother bowed to him when they got up the stairs, and he smiled benevolently at her. She poked Etta, who also bowed and mumbled something. Yan followed suit, looking at them out of the corner of her eye as she did so, seeking approval. Etta's mother smiled a little.

The doctor grumbled something and walked into his hallway, he opened a closet and pulled out a couple of blankets, which he handed out to the three visitors. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to have any spare mattresses like Etta's family had. He said something else to them, and then retreated further into his apartment and closed the door to the room he was in.

Etta's mother talked to them brusquely as she flattened her blanket on the floor, folding it a little to provide a cushion for herself. Yan sat down and curled up inside hers, sniffing the vaguely herb-scented fabric. People on this planet really did like to keep their linens in with smelly things. Yan couldn't imagine anyone on the Iron Dreams bothering with something like that. But then again, they didn't have terrestrial pests to worry about. She heard the doctor in the other room, behind the closed door, making a phone call. At least she assumed it was a phone call. He could have been talking to himself or had someone in there with him.

Etta turned out the lights, and the three of them settled down to sleep. They hadn't eaten, and the doctor hadn't offered them any food, but Yan couldn't complain. Both because he was offering them hospitality enough already, and because she literally couldn't say anything. She pulled the blanket up over herself. Etta and her mother curled up together like cats, and Yan was alone on the other side of the room. After a while, she heard both of them snoring lightly. Yan's mouth moved silently as she processed all her thoughts for the day. Her bad habit of speaking aloud had to be nipped in the bud, but she could still say the words silently. She felt like she had seen Kino do the same thing, once or twice.

Kino. Yan wondered what everyone out in the real world was up to. Not that this was a fake world, but it was so completely disconnected from everything she had ever know. From the moment she had been kidnapped and awoken in captivity, she had been in a dream. Not even speaking literally of her communes with the imagined Halen, but that dreamlike disconnect was what had allowed her to do things she never would have done under normal circumstances. Some of them, most of them, she regretted. It had been in vain to carve up her neck. Trying to escape right in front of the Green King had earned her nothing but a pair of broken fingers. Taking Etta prisoner had been a cruel and selfish thing to do. But she had done all these things, and they existed as part of her now. Even if she didn't want to recognize them.

"Am I a bad person, Halen?" Yan asked, whispering, so as not to wake up the other two people in the room. With half of her brain, she could still hear the doctor puttering around in his quarters.

"Why are you asking me that?" Halen asked. Her eyes were closed, and she couldn't see him, but she could feel his massive presence next to her, sense the warmth of his body radiating off of him, feel the creak of the floorboards as he shifted, and hear the way her own voice was muffled against his side when it came back to her ears. It was a comforting illusion, and a powerful one.

"Because you know the answer?"

"Am I a good person, Yan?" He leaned back, resting his body against his arms behind him as he sat cross legged on the floor. "You don't know all the things I've done in my life."

And there she was, thinking about those things again, even if she didn't want to.

"I don't know," she said.

"We're trapped inside ourselves. That's all we are."

"No, I'm trapped here."

Yan rolled over, turning her whole body away from the illusory Halen, and he vanished as she fell asleep, body melting into the hard floor.

The next morning, the doctor provided them with a little breakfast of some sort of boiled grain and fish. She was hungry, and ate all of it. He had a long, long talk with Etta's mother, and they both kept looking over at Yan as they talked. She didn't like the way they were doing it. Their glances had shifted from being appraising or afraid to looking at her like she was something that had value. More value than just being a person, anyway. A risky investment, rather than just a risk. Yan ate her porridge and tried to ignore them.

After some time of sitting around waiting, the doctor led the group out of the building and down the street. They walked about a mile. Yan was getting used to the cloth shoes. They were walking in the bright light of day, but no one paid them much attention, other than people giving Etta glances for her face and the way she walked. Etta smiled her lopsided smile, though whenever someone was particularly intrusive, Yan heard her grind her teeth. The streets were busy but mostly clean, and they made it to their destination without trouble. This was another doctor's office? Maybe?

They went around the building through alley and to the back door, near the garbage and outdoor storage. The doctor knocked, and a pale woman opened the door with a smile. She was younger than the doctor, probably around the same age as Etta's mother, and she had large wooden beads dangling from her pierced ears. She ushered them in, speaking.

They were in some sort of office portion of the building, full of filing cabinets and desks, with all the accoutrements of an administrative area. The woman pulled out some chairs into a circle, and told everyone to sit down. At least, that's what Yan assumed she was saying. They sat. Yan saw, or thought she saw, or thought that she imagined, Halen lurking in the corner of the room, peeking in behind the door. She didn't want to think about him, or anything, but it was hard to keep her attention focused on the present when she was excluded from the conversation so thoroughly. She was just going to have to trust these people.

She stared at the woman doctor (that was what Yan assumed she was) as she talked, watching her face. She seemed genuine and enthusiastic, and she explained something to Etta's mother with a picture aide. Yan looked at it, too. It didn't clarify much, aside from showing the muscles all around her jaw, and a bunch of sensitive stuff near her ear. The chip had to come out, but Yan wasn't feeling enthusiastic about it. The faster it was over with, the better.

She interrupted the conversation when it reached a natural lull. She waved her hand to get people's attention, then mimed falling asleep. She looked between the two doctors with her face in a questioning expression. They both smiled and nodded. Yan didn't like that answer a lot, but it might be better than being awake. Which would be worse: the feeling of falling asleep, knowing that her body was about to be cut open like a fish fillet, or being awake and there to see it happen?

What she really wanted to know was when it was going to happen. They couldn't sit around talking forever. Her question was answered quickly enough. The meeting broke apart, through some sort of spoken sign, and the woman doctor escorted Yan to a little bathroom. Presumably she would need to do her business before she was knocked out.

Yan looked at her face in the little mirror above the sink. It wasn't dingy, but it was old, and the lights cast a yellow tint down on her brown face, making her look ill. She pulled at the dry skin of her cheeks, feeling the slack in it from a long time of her body being mistreated. She was almost gaunt, and definitely sallow. She didn't want to be melodramatic, but looking in the mirror always held a sense of melodrama. She barely recognized herself. The flimsy and unfamiliar clothes weren't helping. It was a good thing this planet was so hot, because otherwise these clothes wouldn't have helped anybody keep warm.

She splashed water on her face, felt a little bit refreshed, and left the bathroom. The doctor was waiting for her, and she brought her through the hallways of the building until they came to a very clean, very bright room. There wasn't precisely an operating table in the center of it, but there was a chair, and lights, and a tray covered by a clean cloth that looked like it was hiding instruments. An attendant of some sort, decked out in scrubs, stood in the corner looking nervous. The doctor gestured to the chair. Hesitantly, Yan climbed up onto it and lay back as comfortably as she could. Her stiff neck made it difficult. She didn't know how the doctor was going to get the chip out if it was on the side of her head.

The doctor went out, leaving Yan alone with the attendant. She couldn't raise her neck to look at him, so she just listened as he walked around the room, seemingly as quietly as possible. Yan wished that Etta or her mother was here. It was amazing how attached to them and comforted by them she had become over just the past day or so. They were the only people she was actually trusting. They had, for whatever reason, taken her in. These doctors? Yan didn't know what their deal was. She would tolerate them because Etta did, and because they were going to help her. She hoped.

Being on this table, chair, whatever– she felt too vulnerable. Anyone could just as easily kill her as they could save her. More easily, even. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself somewhere else. It was easy. She had to stop doing this, but she couldn't.

Yan was startled out of her reverie when the woman doctor came back in, all cleaned up and scrubbed down. Yan wondered how long she had been zoned out for. The woman came over to examine the part of Yan's head where she would be reopening that old wound. When she gently pushed on Yan's neck to turn it, she frowned deeply when it didn't turn.

"It's stuck," Yan said, even though there was no hope of the woman understanding her. Yan rolled onto her side so that the correct side of her head was facing up, and she was turned away from the doctor. She put her arm underneath her head, laying in the uncomfortable reclined chair as if she was about to go to sleep. She was.

The woman pulled on her shoulder to get her to come back for a moment, and handed her a cup of water and two pills. Yan regarded them suspiciously for a second. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and swallowed them down. She hated this. The doctor smiled at her, and held up all of her fingers. Ten minutes? Whatever the standard length of time was on this planet?

Yan laid back down in the position that would give the doctor the best access to her skull. She closed her eyes and let the sounds of the room: the whirring of machinery, the footsteps and quiet talking of the doctor and her aide, the droning of the central air, all fill her mind. She sank into sleep without even noticing.

She woke up again later with a blistering headache and a fierce thirst. She was still on the chair, exactly where she had been before, and she carefully rolled over and sat up. Etta was in the room with her, smiling at her in her lopsided way. Yan smiled back, but found that a good portion of her face was numb. She tentatively reached up to touch the side of her head where the surgery had apparently happened without her even knowing it was going to start. The anaesthetic procedures on this planet seemed to be pretty different from in the Empire, as far as Yan could tell. She didn't have the brainpower to dwell on it.

Everything felt soft and fuzzy, rather like the bandage that was taped down over her jaw area. Yan poked it. The area underneath was completely numb, which was good for now. She swung her legs off the chair and stood, slightly wobbly, as though she had been back at sea. Etta stood as well, looking a little concerned. Yan hobbled over to the sink in the corner of the room, turned on the faucet, and cupped her hands to drink. Her tongue felt thick and fat in her mouth, but the water was soothing. She stood there, watching the water run for a moment, until Etta stepped in and turned it off.

Her brain was filled with fog. Etta led her out of the little operating room and back toward the offices. They passed the woman doctor on the way there, and she said something. For once, Yan was grateful for the language barrier, because it meant that she wouldn't have to think of something to say. The woman doctor held up her hand, indicating that they should wait. She disappeared behind a door for a second, and came back with two little baggies filled with different types of medicine. They had something written on them. Instructions, probably. Yan took them and clutched them in her damp hands. In the office, Etta's mother was waiting for them. The man doctor had left already, or at least wasn't there.

Someone handed Yan that cloth to put over her head. She wrapped it. Her arms felt like noodles.

Etta's mother took them back out, down the back stairs, down the alley, down the streets, out to the ocean, out to the boat, start the engine, on the water. The sun was three quarters of the way down. Yan lay in the back of the boat, trying to stay out of the way of the big moving sail and Etta as she did her duties. She stared up at the sky.

Her head grew clearer and clearer as the sun sank down, though the ache in her jaw grew with that clarity. She looked at the pills that she was still clutching in her hand, and interrupted Etta to see what she should do with them. She held them out. Etta stabilized the sail with one hand, and pointed at the first bag of pills and held up one finger, and the second one and held up two fingers. Yan took the three pills, along with a swallow of water that she got from operating the water pump.

She didn't know where they were going. Probably not back to Etta's home. The pills left a bitter taste on her tongue.

Yan experimented with the power, to see if she could reach it. There was still a tingle in the back of her head, and she didn't press her luck too hard. When she focused too much, the searing pain again returned. It was just like what had happened when she took the chip out for the first time. If she had to guess, she would say that the chip was the control unit for a bunch of smaller machines. Nanites, maybe. She knew those could be used for internal monitoring of various types. It might take time to flush them out of her system. Without the chip to direct them, and maybe with the help of the pills she had taken, they might be gone soon. She could only hope.

Though the sun was going down, Yan felt wide awake. She stared out across the ocean and watched the waves bob up and down as they traveled to another new and strange land.