-8-
Commodore Mendez and Admiral Foster stood in the observation room as the doctor came inside and laid down the facts. By the grim face, the doctor's news was not good.
"How is he, doctor?" Foster asked without preamble.
"It's a miracle he's even still alive," the doctor replied bluntly. "His body has been blasted with Delta Radiation; his vital organs are seared and are barely working. We've got him on total life support. His muscles have been so saturated with radiation burns that they no longer work, so he no longer has full use of his arms or legs, they've just atrophied away. The rest of his organs are in poor condition, but he still has a functional stomach, although if he were to survive, he wouldn't be able to eat anything substantial. His brain and eyes are the only things which are still working, while the rest of his body is now being filled with so many tumours that even if he had received even half of the amount of radiation he's taken in, his prognosis would still more or less the same."
Mendez and Foster glanced at each other grimly. Both men were experienced Starfleet officers and experienced Starfleet captains. They had been faced with many difficult decisions which could endanger the lives of their crews and risk the security and safety of their ships, but hearing this was still hard.
Fleet Captain Christopher Pike was one of the top captains of Starfleet; while he was often haunted by his choices and ideas, nobody could deny his commitment. Career Starfleet to the core, Pike had forgone marriage and companionship, and he had sacrificed so much of his personal life to the service that he didn't deserve this. Pike had recently been inspecting one of the oldest starships which was being used as a training vessel for cadets, and one of the drive plates had been badly damaged. It ruptured, blowing out a blast of delta radiation. Pike had selflessly saved the lives of those kids, ignoring the pain as the radiation began poisoning his body, and by the time the disaster had been dealt with, it was too late.
Rescue and medical teams saved him and placed him in a medical capsule to preserve his life while engineering teams repaired the damage to the plate. But all of them were surprised and impressed Pike had even survived the whole disaster in the first place, while his shattered body was hurried to this starbase, where the more advanced facilities were hoped to save his life.
But now it was looking like they had delayed the inevitable.
Maybe it would have been better if Pike had just died, it would be a mercy for him.
Still, Mendez had to answer the question. "What can be done for him?"
The doctor sighed and sat down wearily. "To be honest, not a lot," he said, "the only thing that could save his life is complete cybernetic surgery."
Mendez and Foster were brought up short by this. Cybernetic surgery was one of the most recent advancements in Federation technology, it was a controversial one since many people were not entirely certain nor sure how to cope with it. Bionic prosthetics had existed on many worlds within the Federation for hundreds of years, advancing slowly in the background on most worlds, in recent decades it had become simpler and easier to replace hearts, lungs, and even stomachs with prosthetic equivalents and it was even possible to replace eyes and ears with cybernetic implants.
But full-body prosthesis was often met with concern. Many people weren't sure about cyborgs, even if it was now considered acceptable in modern Federation society. When they first appeared, many were unsure, but now they were more common.
"Is there no other way?" Foster whispered, it was hard for him to be equated with the no-nonsense Starfleet officer and leader of so many missions into deep space and combat assignments to be greeted with this news.
The doctor shook his head. "The only other alternatives would be if he was left to either die, which is not what's going to happen, or if he was to be placed in a life support chair; if we did that, he would be encased up to his neck, or below his shoulders," the doctor explained grimly, "we would have to hook him up to a voice box, but he would never have any use of his hands or legs again. He would be fed intravenously. He would be essentially trapped in his own body."
Mendez accepted the argument. "What's the best option?" He asked, knowing there were two forms of cyborg; one was for when the patient had received terrible burns, lost their arms and a leg, and were unable to breathe without being encased in a cybernetic suit. But in this case, a living brain could be removed, and placed in a cybernetic body.
After hearing about Pike's prognosis and what kind of future awaited him, Mendez had a good idea…
"We had considered removing his arms and legs and lungs, and placing him inside a cybernetic suit, but the number of tumours and other injuries brought on by the radiation has made that option impossible. I'm sorry, there's only one way he can survive. We have to remove his brain and place it within an android body," the doctor replied.
"Is there no other way?"
The doctor glared at them. "What would you have us do, let him die? To save his life, we have to do this. We are not even asking you for permission, we have already made preparations for the operation. Aside from the fact his body is unsuited to be converted and placed in a cyborg shell to begin with, the only things that work in his body are his eyes and brain anyway, and if we do simply remove his hands and legs and replace them with prosthetics, then we might be condemning him to a lifetime of pain and discomfort anyway. He would have to have regular appointments he would not be able to miss or would be a fool if he did, just to keep watch over his radiation-related injuries. By doing this, we will truly save him."
"I see," Mendez sighed grimly, sharing a glance with Foster, telling him that it was truly for the greater good. "Make it so, doctor."
-8-
"Fleet Captain Pike, can you hear me?"
Fleet Captain Christopher Pike opened his eyes, instantly knowing something was wrong, something was different. He looked around, surprised to see numerals and letters appearing in his excellent vision; it was like having a computer screen in both of his eyes.
Looking around, he found himself looking at a man with a woman behind him, both wearing green, the colour of Starfleet intensive care.
"Yes, doctor," he said. "Why do I feel different?"
The doctors shared a look before looking back at him. "What's the last thing you remember, Captain?" The woman asked.
Christopher didn't like not getting a straight answer to a straight question, but he decided to just humour the doctors. "I was onboard an old starship, inspecting it while it was on tour with a training crew. One of its drive plates ruptured, it blew and contaminated the ship with Delta radiation," he remembered clearly, "I went in and rescued the cadets who were trapped by the explosion, and I had to fight off the effects of the radiation despite the anti-radiation drugs I took."
"You saved those kids, captain, but it's taken its toll on you," the woman doctor said.
Pike had expected something; a rise in blood pressure, butterflies in the stomach. Anything. Instead, he raised his right arm, wanting to check on his heart rate and touched his chest, but he didn't feel anything. "What's going on?" He demanded.
The two doctors looked at each other before turning back.
"Your body was saturated by the Delta rays, Captain Pike," the woman doctor said.
"We couldn't save your body, Captain," the male doctor added. "We've put your brain inside a cybernetic body, an android which was designed to resemble your original body, so there wouldn't be any emotional backlash."
As if on cue a mirror appeared, showing Pike his new body. He didn't look too different from how he had appeared before, in fact, if they hadn't told him he was now a cyborg then he wouldn't have known until he had realised his body was not acting like it had before. Slowly, he stood up, and he marvelled at how efficiently his body moved.
"When you say, emotional backlash, what do you mean?" He asked slowly.
"If you woke up and found yourself in a cybernetic body, how would you react?"
Pike thought about it, "I would probably be horrified," he said, wishing he could take away the probably; he knew he would be horrified, and he knew he spoke for virtually every human being in existence.
The doctor nodded. "Exactly. We've found that everyone is horrified by the sight of themselves, either as a complete head with body parts, an exposed brain," Pike was disgusted by the examples, but he didn't show it beyond a grimace he felt; he was surprised by that, shouldn't he not feel anything in his new body? "So we have to keep our patients asleep, and we have to either make sure they are placed in android bodies like this one to help them accept the fact."
"Why did you do this?" Anger filled Pike's copied voice; that only made him angrier since they had copied everything else. "Why did you take my brain and put me in a robot?"
"An android," the male doctor corrected instantly. "We put you into an android body otherwise you would have been placed, in," he paused as he picked up a padd and searched for something before he showed Chris, "this."
Chris looked at it closely. It was a wheelchair, except it was fully enclosed which would have sealed the body all the way up to the head, but he was stunned when he had only taken one glance at it, and suddenly his eyes were bombarded with schematics, diagrams and files on the chair. Quickly he found himself so overwhelmed that he had seen enough. To his relief, it all vanished.
The female doctor looked at him strangely. "Did you just get your brain overloaded with information about the chair? If you did, don't be shocked; your brain is hooked up to a computer uplink to the Starfleet internet."
"If we had decided to put you into this chair, you wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd be confined to a medical ward, for the rest of your life, watched over and fussed by nurses and doctors alike," he said, "you wouldn't be able to walk, you would talk but only through a computer. But even though you're a cyborg now, you still have the chance to live, to grow. That body you've got now is stronger, faster, and more durable. You can still jog if that's part of your routine, you can swim since it's buoyant. And that computer your brain is linked to can allow you to process and store information more efficiently."
Pike looked at his new hands, wondering how strong they were. "Was there no other way?" He asked.
"Put it this way, Captain, if we had used the other solution, then you would have had to submit to appointments to watch over the cancer in your original body; the tumours had spread out of control."
Pike knew that was no way to live, but as he looked down at his hands, looking at the fake skin he thought about the possibilities.
-8-
A Year Later…
Fleet Captain Pike strode onto the bridge of his new ship, the Constitution-class USS Voyager. "Captain on the bridge!" His new Number One barked, calling everyone to attention.
"As you were, Prepare for departure," he ordered as he took his seat, his gaze sweeping across the bridge, and he calmly ordered his personal computer to give him the files of all of the crew. Within seconds he had it. It had been a hard year, adjusting to his new cybernetic body, but he had gotten used to it even if he did sleep to keep his brain recharged and while he didn't need to eat or drink since his body had its own power generators, he had more or less returned to normal.
"Take us out when ready," he ordered, and he leaned back, keenly watching his new crew go about their jobs. As far as he was concerned nothing had changed, and while it had taken him a year to recover, Pike had succeeded.