I faintly became aware of the goloss of lewdies talking, sometimes piercing the fog in my mozg. I couldn't really feel my body, really, but I felt this pressure all in my gulliver. I couldn't seem to prise my glazzies open, so I sat and listened. I heard the golosses of some doctor types, but some of them had the drawling yet clipped accent of Amerikans.
"Yeah, we've got her stabilized, she's a tough hoocher, that's for certs."
"What about that other leg? I don't think we can save it, and all this'll be fer nothin', including us coming over to this dirty little country o'yours."
"Oh, shut it!" came a voice I did recognize, as it was my own M's goloss. "That's my daughter you're yapping about, you North American hooligans. And besides, I wasn't the one that had you shipped over here to begin with. Blame that on our Administration and your precious CEO."
"Take it easy, take it easy!" went the first doctor. "Don't pay me any mind, that's just how us 'hooligans' talk. Now where's that schnicklefritz with the hardware? We'll likely have to amputate soon, and we'll have to be standing by to replace the limbs."
"Plus, I'm hungry," declared the second doctor, the one with more drawl and twang in his funny speech. "When can we get a bite and a sup?"
"After you save her!" hissed Mum, all angry like. "That 'schnicklefritz' is on his way with all your equipment, so just shut it and stand there like good lads."
"Hey, we're no schmucks, so don't treat as one," complained the first doctor.
"Uh, Dr. Barclay, I think the youngun is awake," pointed out the second doctor.
Aha, verra perceptive, he was. I managed to pull my crusty eyes open even though they felt welded shut. I could viddy only a blur at first, then it melted into a vision of my Mum bending over me. "Anni? Are you with us, darling?"
"M-m-Mum," I croaked out. I felt a strangie numb uncomfortableness all over my plot, and began to thrash about. My right hand shot up to my face, then I discovered I was strapped to a hospital bed.
"Easy, easy now," M soothed. "Take some deep breaths."
The Amerikan doctors or whatever they were gathered round, then I looked down at myself. My left arm—it was gone! A few inches below the shoulder, there was nothing. I raised my head to look down the rest of me, to find my right leg gone above the knee, and my left leg bandaged below the knee. "Wha, wha? What's happened to me? WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ME?" I screamed.
"Anni," M held my litso in her rookers to calm me down. "You were in an explosion and almost died. You suffered catastrophic burns over your limbs, down to the bone in places."
I demanded to know what sort of metso I now found myself in, and she explained I was at one of the facilities she'd been working at doing hush-hush Government rabbiting. I learned that the precise Amerikan scientist was Dr. Goldsmith, and the drawly one was Dr. Brenner, and they were here for Some Secret and Important Purpose. Turns out, that purpose was yours truly, loyal friends. And things were worse than I first thought, O my brothers and sisters. Turns out my left leg was poisoning my plot, my whole body, and if I wanted to continue to live they would have to ampootate, take it off below the knee.
I was a naughty devotchka, caught red-handed in the act, implicated in more acts of ultra-violence, and was mortally wounded during the defiance of the millicents tasked with the safety of the public. But, my M tells me, there was hope of me not being a legless cripple the rest of my life, or being put in a Staja (State Jail), and that was this program even more mysterious than Ludovico's Technique, and it was called ZP-22. I would get new clockwork limbs and a special microchip to control my violent urges, and be righto again. All I had to do was sign my agreement, and we could begin. If I didn't, they 'couldn't guarantee' the quality and length of my care, and I would be a bedridden vegetable for the rest of my time on this Earth.
Welly well, brothers and sisters, even a far-off hope of running around, doing ultra-violence and the old in-out, in-out, was better than none at all. I told them I would sign, lucky for me my right hand and arm survived and I'm right-handed.
Oooh, glass half full!
I had a minoota;s elation at being a cyborg before reality reared it's ugly gulliver. They rolled me into surgery to remove the gangrene leg, then rebuild me. Wasn't there a telly show about something like that, back in the Grand Old Days before the Third World War? Anyways, I went bedwise for a good, long while.
This time when I came to, there was a bunch of vecks from the press in the room, various doctor types including the colonial bastards I already mentioned, and dear old Mum. Flashbulbs went off and lewdies were all govereeting at once. I looked down at my previously youthful, lithe, sleek body to find a metal left arm, and robot legs. The right leg terminated mid-thigh, then continued with shiny cold metal. Same thing with the left, only the flesh ended right below the knee. I was restrained real horrorshow, but I wiggled my clockwork limbs and they responded, in fact I could sort of feel them. Some journalist stepped forward to ask how I felt.
"Like shite," I quipped. "Wot, you never seen Star Wars? I'm bout to get Darth Vader up in this bitch." I struggled at me bonds, but they had me fastened good. He slunk back, blinking nervously.
Some of them goffed nervous-like, but then they started talking to the sciency types and M, talking things I didn't rightly understand about mechanics and my behavior and how the bionics worked. I finally worked my crisp new arm loose and went to fist one of the reporters when all of a sudden my limbs froze. I raged but I couldn't move my new limbs until I calmed down, I found. When I let off the angry-switch, I could wiggle my new extremities again.
Sodding HELL.