"This is a gold mine, I tell you."
"It's sick!"
The hispanic doctor scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest and throwing his colleague a scolding look. Quite a brilliant mind; he had to admit that, even though doing so didn't give him much pleasure; and always seeming to observe what others overlooked. Also not afraid, nor unwilling, to get his hands dirty, which often earned him some crooked stares. Ruben Victoriano had come to the facility only two years ago, and managed to make quite a name for himself quicker than anybody else did, much to everybody's chagrin; when Marcelo Jimenez first saw him, he scoffed and rolled his eyes. Young, features delicate and voice soft, Marcelo could not picture a man like Ruben survive into an environment of illness and despair. Even he, a hardened surgeon, sometimes found himself heavy hearted when fate brought a small child to be strapped to his operating table.
That's when he decided to take the young man under his wing; the surprise was, to say at least, enormous. Marcelo had to grit his teeth and swallow his pride whenever the younger man corrected him, pointed out something he missed, or just seemed to know something he didn't. The enthusiasm he harboured was refreshing however; the surgeon had gotten tired of seeing the same worn faces and fallen smiles each and every single day. His dedication motivated some, and brought some others to dislike him or even despise him. Among the latter, his own brother, Valerio. Valerio had, ever since they were children, some sort of a hero complex, and a huge ego to go with it. Competition wasn't something that sat well with him, merely an obstacle in his race to always be at the top, not just in his career, but in his personal life as well. The quarrels with his brother were countless; and some of them had, in those two years, been centered around his, he dared to call him, new friend that he's made.
"You really need to distance yourself from that freak," Marcelo scrunched up his nose at his brother's rather crude language. "Didn't you see how he cuts into those people, with that smile on his face?" At first, Marcelo dismissed him, thought his brother was just trying to be bashful, label Ruben as a threath, a lunatic in order to remove him, but one good look at Ruben's face slicing a girl's stomach open with a serene expression and a slight smirk at the corner of his lips had the image imprinted in his mind. Maybe Valerio had a point. Maybe all the gossip and the snarky comments were clouding his judgement. And while the rumors went flying in every direction, Ruben started working overtime and staying up late.
After a while, everyone forgot, and life went on, up until suddenly, just as he was packing his bag to leave the stuffy office, Ruben blurted out: "What if humans had no feelings?"
Marcelo didn't fully comprehend him, adjusting the strap length on the gray messenger bag he usually carried his belongings in. "What are you talking about?" Ruben sat perched on a tall chair, hands in his lap and hunched shoulders. He looked like a schoolboy afraid that what he was saying wasn't the correct answer.
"What if people had no feelings, but were fully functional otherwise." His eyes studied him carefully, searching for a reaction. Marcelo looked at him dumbfounded, unsure of where his younger colleague was going with this. "Just imagine, feelings no longer impairing a human's judgement, no more acting on impulse or making wrong decisions under the effect of dopamine." He jumped off his chair. "It would raise our efficiency by at least 80 percent."
Marcelo gaped at the man, slowly processing the words that had just left his mouth. "Efficiency for what, what are you talking about?" He repeated, and Ruben looked at him with somewhat disappointed eyes, as if he had expected him to understand. Encourage him even. "People can't survive like that, it's the way we were build."
"But what if we've been given something extra, something we don't need." He continued, back turned and fiddling with a scalpel he picked off a tray. "People are machines after all, you can strip one down, make it work with less parts than it originally had. You just got to know how without breaking it down for good."
"I don't see how you can refer to people as machines." Marcelo said with an iced tone, throwing his bag on his shoulder. "People are more than that, and what they feel and think is what makes them themselves. Do that, you strip them off their personality and turn them into influenceable little robots." Ruben had turned towards him at some point during his speech, with a curious sparkle in his eyes. His dedication to his work had clearly gotten to his head.
"This is a gold mine, I tell you!" The younger man didn't seem fazed by the scowl his senior threw him, now that the prospect of making money out of his crazy ideas had been thrown into the ecuation. Marcelo hoped it was just the sleep deprivation talking.
"It's sick!" He barked shortly, completely dismissing the concept. What kind of a lunatic thought of such things? Valerio could have been right about him. "Don't stay up late again." He continued in a softer, fatherly even tone, while making his way towards the door.