[Veltzeh]: 39.Fiend or Foe.Chapter 2: Who am I?

     I am Cenral Lekala, child of Alastair Lekala and a researcher in the department of advanced medical biotechnology in the Tampere University of Technology.
     We received our subjects today. My superiors did not mention how they were able to contain the two aliens, but then, I only cared enough about that way after the main courses of action had been taken. The regenians were in bad shape, one more so than the other. The one who was hurt less badly was taken away for first aid, or at least that is what I assumed – why should I assume otherwise? I received the other one as my main subject.
     My subject, a regenian named Reikatogi-G-Qem, was too close to death that night. I was informed that there had been an accident and that after the surgeons would stabilize eir condition and prepare the body, I could finally proceed. It took them long. They worked all night and all morning while I slept soundly. I was told that the operations had been difficult and demanding and that if the regenian had been a human, ey would have died. Nevertheless, the subject survived, even if survival was relative at this point. Ey had lost all of eir left arm, the left lung was barely functional, ey had extensive damage on the left side of eir head, two of eir head-tentacles were lost and one was in very bad shape, both of eir legs were almost completely destroyed and ey was in a coma. This extensive damage was why it was my specialty. We wanted to test cybernetic limb implants.
     Cybernetic limb implants were something that most of the world could only dream of. Our organization was likely the only one to have advanced this far. Nevertheless, we did not know that much about what others might or might not have achieved, because the whole cybernetic limb implant project was still very much covered. We had the technology and we were fairly sure that it worked, but we were not able to test it properly. The few cases that we had tested on animals were rare – but at least they had worked quite fine. We could not get human subjects and my superiors told me that even animals were hard to get. The issue was that subjects were nearly impossible to smuggle in. I did not know why exactly we had trouble getting real test subjects, but I was told that we had to smuggle them in because we could not test cybernetics legally due to some moral, ethical or political reasons of which I understood nothing. I had rarely been the one to bother with the immaterial, so I was not even allowed to speak on my own behalf for getting test subjects. I heard the issue was something about me being amoral and socially inconsiderate or something.
     We knew that the regenians were far ahead with their cybernetics. Soon after the regenians came to Earth, I even met one who had a cybernetic hand, and ey allowed me to study it a little. The technology was amazing and it inspired me to work harder to achieve my goal. The regenian physiology could tolerate cybernetics. They had succeeded, and now I was going to succeed. I was now going to replace my subject's destroyed parts with cybertechnology.
     It took me a long time to prepare the graft sites and I was eternally grateful to my team of assistants and colleagues who worked magnificently. However, the doctors who studied the regenian's physiology every once in a while were getting on my nerves, but that was also necessary because I would need that information in order to have perfect implants constructed. I first worked mostly on the repairs for the head with a brain surgeon since that was the most delicate place. The preparing of the graft site went well and I moved down to the arm and lung. The lung needed some work and we decided to just fix it and have the wounds healed. I only left the arm graft site prepared. The legs, while they were the easiest of the graft sites to be prepared, were problematic in the sense that we did not know what parts to keep and what not. There were some parts of eir legs left and while some were still attached to the rest of the body, some had been separated from it and were kept in cryogenic suspension. We eventually just prepared the sites and made it an exercise of total blending of flesh and technology. We did, however, discard the pieces that were in bad condition or too separate from the body.
     While I was preparing the leg graft sites, I also got interested in the regenians' reproductive system – who would not? The biology researchers that had studied em said it was a fairly remarkable system. It was commonly known that the regenians were epicines, but now the anatomy of it was clear. Most of the reproductive system is inside the body and in a simplified model they feature a pair of gonads positioned similarly to ovaries, a uterus, a vagina, some gland through which the penile gametes go through and a penis – or more precisely, the assumed equivalents of those since we have no terminology for their physiology and we do not know the common terms for their parts in the common regenian language. The gonads produce only one kind of gamete and they are released both into the fallopian tubes as well as vasa deferentia. Since only one kind of gametes are produced, it seems like the suitability for fertilization depends on how different the two gametes are. This was tested and the biologists actually managed to get gametes from the two regenians to combine, even though the two are siblings. They must not have much trouble due to inbreeding because of this safe mechanism, and it explains why they do not seem to condemn sexual interaction between close relatives. The regenian estrus cycle was also described as quite remarkable, though from a human point of view it seemed silly. Most of the time a regenian is in passive stage and is effectively sexless and asexual. In the active stage ey is, straightforwardly, active. That is also when the gonads actually produce gametes.
     I needed to study the regenian physiology for some time before I could start examining what kind of implants would be possible, but fortunately their system was more similar to ours than I had hoped. In the middle of all this thinking I actually remembered about the other regenian and made some inquiries. I was told that ey had been mostly studied to advance our knowledge of telepathy, and that it was not going very well. They asked me for some technical measuring instruments, but since I had my own job to worry about, I did not pay it all too much attention.
     I finished my studying of the regenian physiology and got the proper part prototypes constructed. The attachment went well and after I had figured how the nerve impulses sent the signal and in which form, the functionality was not an issue either. In order to receive information, however, we needed to wake up the regenian and command em to move around. At least ey was not comatose at that point, but I did not quite like the way we had to keep em half-sedated. However, until our knowledge of telepathy was greater, we could not take too many risks.
     The installation of the cybernetic implants went well and we confirmed their functionality from the regenian who was able to walk around and perform tasks requiring dexterity despite eir drugged state. The implants, while they were considerably more effective than flesh, weighed quite a lot, however. During the functionality tests I had to listen to the regenian speak, and every time the poor thing was near to a breakdown. I am not sure what exactly went through eir head, but it was not very organized or logical. Nevertheless, to me it sounded like ey was in a state of excessive depression. I did not know why that was and the psychologists and other mind research people did not tell me due to their workload. That explanation was plausible; it seemed like they were now in full action to figure out reasons for the mental breakdown of the regenian.
     The last functionality session I had with my subject ended badly. Ey actually got violent, broke some wiring and started beating a wall. The security had to knock em out with sleeping gas. This was something that somehow bothered me. We should have been able to keep the regenian off sedatives, but telepathy was still the issue that could not be left unconsidered.
     I helped a little with the devices related to telepathy where I could but here my specialty was mostly mechanics and cybernetics – I had relatively much free time. I decided to find out what exactly had happened to the other regenian. After a bit of poking around a friend of mine gave me access codes to the reports the other researchers had made concerning the other regenian subject, Reikatogi-G-Kem. As a side note, at that time I started having difficulty remembering which of them was which, so I called my subject Que and the other one Kay. In the reports, I found out that Kay's mind had been excessively messed with. I did not know all the psychological terms they used, but it was obvious that they had tortured the poor thing to some extent. Ey had been mostly kept drugged, but there were times, especially later after they had figured out how to isolate em to prevent eir using of telepathy on the researchers, when ey was fully conscious and aware of what had happened. However, the researchers had afterwards drugged em again, which caused the memories of the so-called clear sessions to go very blurry for the regenian. They had irritated eir brains and messed with the endocrine system – at that point I realized that most of the knowledge we had about the regenian reproductive system, sexual behavior and especially the estrus cycle had come from the studying of Kay and not Que like I thought. They had performed some hormonal experiments that had had a surprisingly negative reaction in the regenian. They had also performed some experiments with a telepathic inhibitor prototype and that had really messed up eir mind. The clear sessions where ey was not drugged kept changing more and more non-clear as the experiments continued. The last reports mentioned something about a mental breakdown and an unstabilizing of brainwaves. At that point the psychologists were reluctant to continue testing and were just wondering what exactly went wrong.
     I, then again, read the reports over and over again and could not believe how Kay had been treated. Previously, I had thought that Kay had agreed to this studying, but it was clear that ey had not been asked at all. In Que's case I knew we had not asked any kind of permission, but as ey was in a comatose state in the beginning, it was not possible. Nevertheless, while ey was kept sedated, I had never actually tortured em like Kay had been tortured. At least I really hoped that was the case, that Que would not think that I had been torturing em.
     I read one more report. It was fresh, just finished today, and as a summary, the psychologists had tried to verbally hammer sense into eir head and the results had been disastrous. This was something I did not allow. Reading an old email from my twin, I realized that this must have been how ey felt when ey left the department and went to work in a hospital. Torturing innocent creatures like this when we knew it caused damage was not in the best interests of anyone. Even our research was halted because our subjects had broken down. I could not support this anymore and I wanted to do something about it. I thought up a number of different courses of action that I could take. The easiest course of action was of course to do nothing, but it strongly seemed that the regenians would not be able to handle anything more. The second easiest way was to resign and move on, but the administrative board would be very suspicious about that. The third way was to uncover the whole thing and tell the police what had happened. However, that would cost me my career and property and I would have to go to prison, along with all my colleagues. The three other options involved the regenians to some extent. I could reveal the whole scheme to the regenians but I had no clue how they would react to it; as far as I knew, they could torture me, rip my mind apart and who knows what else. I could take the two regenians with me, try to get them to see my side of the whole setup and then contact the other regenians. Or, finally, I could just take them, run and keep on running.
     It had been just over seven months since the accident had happened. The regenian officials had believed that all the three regenians involved in the accident had died and had not searched for them. Of course they were suspicious, but I do not know whether they went beyond expressing their suspicions. I had decided my course of action. I had a way to get the two broken regenians out of the research facilities. I unofficially told a colleague of mine to request biological parts and technology from my department. Ey did me that favor and sent an official request. The request went through and instead of preparing the equipment that was asked for, I constructed a simple container that would outwardly look like said equipment.
     My goal was to smuggle out the regenians in that container and then drive off somewhere else. It was no problem for me to drive instead of our couriers because the equipment needed instructions and I was very skilled with it – and I did not have very many duties at the moment. I anesthetized the regenians and got them out of the research facilities without problem – internal security was something we had never had any problems with. I suppose I was the first one to cross the line this far. I drove the university van to the destination city, Rauma, left the car in a fairly safe place, rented another car, put the regenians in the rented car and took the van to Rauma hospital and walked back to the rented car. I left then and drove off to Hämeenlinna, then Helsinki, Pori, Keuruu, Oulu, Kemi and finally Sodankylä, and I even changed cars in every city. I was exhausted after the driving and I was not even sure that my distraction technique had worked in any way.
     G-Qem would wake up fairly soon. That was my intention, as I knew that ey was not mentally as badly messed up as eir sibling. I only hoped that ey would listen to me and trust me that I did want to help them even after what I had done. But they would know it either way. I just did not know how to think about a situation where the other person could read the other one's mind. G-Kem had the prototype of a telepathic inhibitor on eir head. I did not dare to remove it – I would need G-Qem's help to restrain G-Kem in case ey would be crazed once ey woke up.
     I had probably just thrown away my entire career, maybe even my life, and now I would have to trust these two broken aliens who could read my mind. I would be wanted soon enough and I did not know what to do. My home was now alien to me and therein lay a similarity to these two strangers I had in the back of my rented car. At least I was in a dark, silent and safe place.

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© by V. E. "Veltzeh" Lehkonen.