Carla frowned as she looked at the chessboard. She was doomed. There wasn't a single move she could do without Steve winning the game. "Okay, get it over quickly," she said as she moved her piece.

Steve smiled as he quickly took her king. "And that's a checkmate."

Carla just shook her head. "I should have never bought this game."

Steve grinned. "All is fair in love and war. How about another game?"

Carla looked at the clock on the wall. "Another time. Rudy should be here any moment now."

Steve gave her a curious look.

Right on cue, Rudy entered carrying a large, long case in one hand and a magnifying lamp with the other. "Good morning, Steve!" he said as he placed the case on the floor and the light on the over-bed table.

"Can you set this up?" he asked Carla.

"Yes, doctor," Carla replied as she proceeded to clamp the lamp to the table and plug it in.

Rudy turned to Steve. "How are feeling this morning?"

"Fine."

"Good," Rudy paused for a moment as if trying to decide what to say next. He took a deep breath. "Steve, I have to commend you on your patience. I know being bedridden this long hasn't been easy, but I want you to know that we are getting very close. In fact, I have something I want to show you."

Rudy pulled the overbed table closer and turned on the magnifying lamp. He then pulled a small metal container out of the pocket of his lab coat. Opening the container, he took something out of it and placed the object under the glass of the magnifying lamp. He adjusted the lamp so Steve could see. It was an eye. An artificial eye. And it was the exact same shade of blue-grey as Steve's real eye.

"This is your eye," declared Rudy. "As you can see, we've matched it to your eye color."

Steve stared at it intently. "What will it look like when it's in place?"

"Just like the other eye. No difference. And we'll match it perfectly."

Rudy moved the eye back and forth so that it looked like it was looking right and left. Then he moved it up and down. "You can see that it has the ability to swivel back and forth and up and down, giving it the ability to mimic your natural eye's movement."

Rudy turned the eye over revealing a post with screw threads. "A ball bearing at the base of this post is what allows it to have that kind of movement. Now, what we're going to do is insert an interface connected to a computer into your eye socket. Once that is in place and healed, we'll screw this eye into the interface." Rudy showed Steve the end of the post. A small piece of gold metal covered the end. "You see this connection point? Once the eye is fully seated, this connection point will touch the connection point in the interface, which will communicate with the computer, which will communicate with your brain. The computer will translate the signals coming from the eye into a form your brain can understand, and you'll be able to see out of this eye."

"I thought we were talking about a glass eye."

"Well, they used to think that that was impossible because the eye normally rejects any foreign bodies, but they've done a lot of operations on pilots that had pieces of broken windshield in their eyes, and they've discovered they we make jet plane windshields out of a kind of plastic that the eye does not reject."

Rudy handed the eye to Carla, who placed it back in its container. She then turned the lamp off and moved the lamp arm out of the way.

While she was doing that, Rudy walked around the bed, picked up the case that was on the floor, and placed it on the overbed table.

"I want to show you something, Steve," Rudy said as he unlatched the case and opened it, revealing a mechanical arm. "This is your arm."

Steve stared at it. Only the hand of the arm was covered in skin, and the hand looked exactly like his hand. It looked like someone had cut off his own hand and attached it to a machine arm. It was downright spooky looking. "That's it, huh?"

"Uh, hum. We're rather proud of it," Rudy exclaimed. "There's a manual that goes with it that has 840 pages. I'll give you a copy."

This was just too much for Steve and he suddenly and forcefully pushed the table away.

Carla looked at Rudy in alarm, but Rudy just shook his head.

Steve closed his eye and turned his head. He couldn't look at it. He didn't want to look at it.

Undaunted, Rudy continued. "As you can see, it's not finished yet, but I just wanted to give you a sense of the basic structure. Look at it, Steve," Rudy encouraged him. "There's nothing else like it in the whole world."

Steve opened his eye, turned his head, and looked at the arm with trepidation.

Rudy pointed to a small red component in the arm. "Now this is a nuclear-powered electrical generator that runs this motor," Rudy said as he pointed to another component in the arm. "Now this motor provides power for the manipulation of the arm, the hand, and the fingers. It's infinitely more powerful than your own arm."

Steve stared at it, but it was just too much for him to handle. He covered his one eye with his arm, refusing to look at it.

Rudy picked up the arm. "This is your arm, Steve. It will be covered in skin that will match your skin in color, texture, the number of hairs on your forearm. The skin on the fingertips will have your fingerprints on it. Look at it, Steve," Rudy ordered.

Steve's emotions were spiraling and all he could do was shake his head like a stubborn five-year-old. He didn't know how to handle this. What had he signed himself up for?

Rudy wasn't having any of it. "Steve," he said sternly. Then more gently, "this isn't something alien. This is your arm."

Steve slowly pulled his arm down and looked fearfully at the arm.

Rudy put the arm down. "Now, I'll tell you what we're going to do. We are going to put you back on the operating table. We are going to connect this arm to you permanently. It will take orders from your brain. It will be alive to do what you want it to do."

Steve didn't say anything. Fear was etched all over his face.

"Now, Steve," Rudy continued, "when we're through. When we're through. When you've finished learning how to use this arm the same way that a baby has to learn to grasp, put down, pick up. When all this is done, you'll be able to hold a woman in your arms, and in no way will any of her human senses be able to tell her which arm you were given. Not by sight. Not by touch. Not by skin temperature. No way."

That caught Steve's attention as Rudy knew it would. Rudy knew of Steve's reputation with the ladies. He was considered a bit of a playboy. But Rudy knew that Steve wasn't that shallow. He was a man looking for true love. The kind of love that would last forever.

Rudy wanted to reassure Steve that in all respects he'd be a normal man again. "And we'll also give you two legs. And you'll be able to walk up to her, take her by the hand and, if it's what you want, you'll be able to dance with her."

Rudy watched as the fear melted from Steve's face and was replaced by hope. Steve had given up on the idea of ever having a relationship again. But now, Rudy was giving him hope. Hope that he desperately needed.

Finally, Steve spoke. "When?"

"We're shooting to have the bionic limbs finished in eleven weeks. But before we attach the limbs, we need to reinforce your spine. As you know, we've already reinforced your pelvic bones so we don't need to do that. We'll also start minimizing some of your scars. We've got an excellent plastic surgeon on staff for that."

"Eleven weeks?"

"Yes, that's for the actual bionic surgery. We'll perform the spine reinforcement in one week."

Steve took in a sharp breath.