"Hey, Dan, guess what?" Cheyenne greeted him as he entered her bay the next morning. Her voice sounded excited and happy.
"What?" he asked, catching her infectious mood.
"I'm getting spider eyes!"
Janda chuckled and Lana groaned. "An eye spider, not spider eyes, silly."
"And tomorrow I get crackers," Cheyenne went on.
"Now she's just teasing us," Janda complained.
"Can't a girl be excited when she gets to see again for the first time in days?" Cheyenne asked. She writhed in the tank. Dan looked away. He had grown accustom to the burns on her upper torso and face, less so to the nakedness underneath.
"Of course, she can," Lana agreed. "It is exciting."
"So what's an eye spider?" Dan asked.
Janda held out a tiny glass case. Dan stared at it, unable to see anything in. He shook his head.
"Oh sorry, I forget, you don't have any enhancements," Janda said. He tapped the side of his face and Dan noticed for the first time the tiny gray dot in the corner of his eye.
"What is that?" he asked.
"Medical quality eye enhancements," Lana explained. "We both have them, Orotech, best in the Consortium."
"Without these I couldn't even see your heart beat," Janda joked.
"And with them?"
"Half micron resolution. We can see details down to the microscopic level, plus get a lot of analysis on what we are seeing," Lana explained. She gave him a look and said. "I can see they fixed some of your DNA yesterday, right about here." She pointed at a spot on his mid upper arm.
"Okay, I'm impressed," Dan said. "You see that much all the time? Doesn't it get distracting?"
"No, you learn to switch into and out of the mode," Lana said.
Janda laughed. "I remember when I first got mine. It took a few days to get the hang of switching. I'd be getting ready to take a bite of food and blink. Bam. I am looking at the bite in fine resolution, and you know anything outside of sterile field is going to have at least a few bacteria on it."
"Having the right bacteria in your gut is vital for health," Lana lectured.
"Still, seeing it up close and personal will put you off your feed, let me tell you."
Lana took the case from him and tapped a near by instrument to bring up a display. "A spider is just jargon for a nanobot." The display showed a tiny cylindric object. Both top and bottom were fuzzy. Lana increased the resolution another step and Daniel could make out tiny metal hairs. "These little strands will penetrate her tissue and seek out nerve endings. In this case, it's her optic nerve. There are literally millions of strands on this spider and they will seek out and attach to individual nerve fibers. For every strand there is a matching one on the other side. We can attach those to anything and the spider will transmit the impulses back and forth."
"What are you going to attach it to?" Dan asked.
"Eventually, her new eyes, once they are grown. If we could dock with another ship we would have a wide assortment of temporary rigs, but since we can't we had to make due," Janda said. He held up a pair of goggles. "Flight goggles, to help pilots see better in space. We've had to modify the software some, but they should make a passable substitute for short term."
While Janda showed Dan the goggles, Lana had drawn the spider into a small syringe with a needle. "Come up to the surface, Miss Cheyenne," she said. There was a warmth in her voice when she said 'Miss Cheyenne.' Dan felt better knowing the healers in charge of his friend's case really cared for her.
Cheyenne dutifully rose, using the stumps of her hands as paddles. Lana cupped the back of her head and held it still while injecting the spider. "Back now, for a time," she said and Cheyenne sank again. They repeated the process on the far side and then waited.
"Is it going to be long?" Cheyenne asked.
It wasn't. Janda announced he could see the spider sending the secondary strands towards the surface. Dan even thought he could see them, a tiny gray dot not unlike the one in the corner of the healer's eyes. "Before we can use the goggle we have to calibrate the spider," Janda explained. He pulled a small wire from the side of the tank and attached it to the dot. Lana did the same on the far side.
Dan set back and watched the process with interest. Janda pulled up a display. He would tap the display and alter it's color. He would then ask Cheyenne what color she saw. She was wrong more often than right, but that didn't seem to perturb Janda in the slightest. He merely tapped the display until it was the same color as she had said.
"Am I getting these right?" Cheyenne asked.
"No," Lana said, "but that's not the point. The spider attaches itself to nerves and transmits the impulse, but it has no way of knowing which nerve is which. We have to tell it that. We do that by making our input match you, not the other way around."
They had been through the primary and secondary colors a half dozen times and Cheyenne's responses became more and more accurate. Then Janda went on to lines, shapes, and textures.
"You think this is bad, wait til we do the clackers tomorrow," Janda said.
Dan knew that clackers were slang for the skeletal robotic limbs they used. The Consortium healers had replaced Fox's arm with a black skeletal arm and hand. It moved and he claimed it had feeling, touch, pain, cold, just like a real arm. The stump had been fitted with a black pouch-like device that circulated the same medical gel that Cheyenne floated in over the stump. In time, they claimed, his tissue would regrow the entire length of the arm, completely covering the device. In the meantime it made a metallic clacking noise when he drummed his fingers together, giving it it's name.
Lana was preparing a black patch as Janda worked.
"What's that for?" Dan asked.
"No doubt when she gets the goggles, she will want to raise her head and look around. Her skin can't handle being out of the gel yet, not even for a short time. I am preparing a temporary patch for her face and forehead, so she doesn't get sore or set back her healing."
#####
Cheyenne treaded water, or gel rather, while Janda strapped the goggles to her head. Joy spread through her. She had been excited to have flashes of light, colors and shapes pass in front of her, but not nearly as excited as she was to actually see.
She still struggled to believe they were growing her new eyes. It seemed so far fetched. But all of this was far fetched.
Light grew in her eyes and the world blinked in and out of existence for a moment and then she saw arms, hands working, then, a face. Janda was mid height, blond haired and had bright blue eyes. He was wearing a white shirt with thick shoulders, probably to give some hint of broadness to his slender figure. He smiled at her. "How is it?"
"Oh my god, this is so cool," she said, scanning around the room. Dan was sitting on a low cushioned couch across the room. That must be where Lana or Janda sleep at night, she thought. Dan was dressed in an earth toned shirt and dark pants. He looked tan, he'd been complaining about the sunburn from the blast but it was apparently fading. He too, smiled and waved.
To her left she spied a tall female form and turned her head. Lana had dark hair, it was up with one strand fallen loose at the side of her face. She had warm brown eyes and smooth, flawless skin.
"Hey, Lana," Cheyenne said, her voice was thick and she had a lisp due to her tongue which was still healing, "remember our conversation yesterday?"
"Which one?"
"About how some people are just attractive, regardless of your sexuality?"
"Yeah..."
"I think I understand, now."
Lana arched an eyebrow and smirked. She walked over to the tank. "You are very silly, Miss Cheyenne." She slapped a black patch over the raw flesh of Cheyenne's forehead. Cheyenne's head dunked slightly and she had to paddle to remain afloat.
She saw what was left of her hand and her mood deflated. She had a stub of the two littlest finger on her left hand. The other two fingers and the thumb were gone at the knuckle. Despite being days old the wound was beefy red, like the fingers had just been removed. Even more miraculously, there was almost no pain, unless she kept the hand above the surface long enough for the gel to drip off, then it stung and burned. Her forehead had just been starting to feel hot and tight when Lana slapped the patch over it.
She had been flirting with Lana. She wasn't sure why. Lana was beautiful. but Cheyenne had never considered herself anything other than straight. Lana's voice was low and sultry. It had been Cheyenne's almost constant companion for what seemed like a lifetime, since the blast. To find that voice attached to such a woman... to know that the super advanced race from beyond the stars considered bisexuality normal...
It didn't matter what she had been thinking. She was a patient, nothing more. She was a poor crippled girl, floating in a ocean of medical gel that was the only reason she could even live. Her legs were gone, her fingers. More of her skin was burned off then remained. Nobody could love such a thing, the best she could find would be pity.
She closed her eyes and then wondered briefly how she managed the feat given that her "eyes" were currently a pair of goggles. She opened them, casting about for something to distract her from the morbid mood that had settled on her. "Dan, you might be interested in this conversation we had..."