Chip Inside

Cort woke with a start.  He was sure that something had woken him, but the room seemed quiet and dark now.  He lay perfectly still – quite easy as he was still restrained by the semi-intelligent nylon bands – and listened carefully.  He closed his eyes after a couple of seconds; even though there wasn’t much to see in the gloom it helped him concentrate.  For a few moments there was nothing and then… something.  Something faint, on the edge of hearing.  Ah, something trying to match his own breathing.  Cort held his breath and listened harder.  Sure enough, someone breathed softly and slowly, exactly when he would have breathed himself.  There was someone in the room with him.

He allowed himself to start breathing again, aware that complete silence would be a give-away as much as if he started shouting, and twisted slightly as though trying to turn over in his sleep.  The bands tightened, but it was more of a warning squeeze than aggressive, and as they did so he stretched his arm until it reached his toes.  He’d discovered this trick while playing backgammon with Bad Kitty, as it meant he could throw the dice himself.  Curiously, after he’d done that he’d stopped unaccountably losing in the end-game every game.

With his hand at his feet he had enough flex in his arm now to reach the emergency button on the headboard of his bed, so he walked his fingers gently up the covers until he got there and reached up to press it.  It clicked very faintly as he depressed it, and then – nothing.

“You’re awake then, Cort?”  The voice was warm and friendly, even slightly familiar, and for several moments Cort thought that it was the Doctor back from the dead for a fourth attempt.  He tensed, and the bands squeezed back like a strait-jacket.  “Don’t you remember me?”

“Doctor?”  Cort shook his head even as he said it, remembering that the Doctor was dead and that he, Mr. Stretch, was in lock-down while his sentient mucus was checked-out.  “No.  Bad Kitty?”

“Getting warmer,” said the voice.  “Are you always this slow to wake up properly?”

“Yes, sort of now,” said Cort.  “Chip.  Chip Inside.  I haven’t seen you in years.  What are you doing in my room?”

“Well, it’s not really your room, is it?” said Chip.  He sounded amused, and pleased that Cort had finally identified him.  “This is one of the general rooms of Surgery 2.  They’ve got you in here in case more of that mucus turns up and they need to stop you producing more of it.”  There was an odd note in his voice, and Cort easily deduced what was meant by ‘stop.’

“As in, Terminate with Extreme Prejudice?”

“You’ve got the slang down, daddio,” said Chip.  “It’s hard to believe you’re in a retirement home.”

“It’s hard to believe you’re pretending to be normal and holding down a government job!  With a pension!”

“Yeah.  Yeah, that’s not so cool, but, well, there is the matter of the pension.  It’s tracked as well, it’s a good one.  And the work is interesting a lot of the time.”

“Anything you can talk about?”

“What do you think?”

Cort laughed, a slightly gaspy noise as the nylon bands weren’t sure what to make of the chest movements and kept gripping.

“So why are you in my room?” he said.  “Are you the committee for bringing bad news?”

“Not exactly,” said Chip.  “I’m here discretely, on other business.  Your mucus is fascinating stuff, but it looks like a one-off, one of those little oddities somehow connected with our mutations and super-powers.  It’s not about to eat London, if that’s what you’re scared of.  No, I’m here instead on behalf of Sylvestra.”

“I’m too old for a job,” said Cort.  He laughed a little again.  “I can’t even imagine what she could have in mind.”

“Not much of a job, really,” said Chip.  “But important in its own way.  And if you agree we think we can get Bad Kitty to pitch in too.”

“Oh I see, that’s it is it?  You really want Little Miss Hairball and I’m just the easiest way to get to her.”

“No.  Really no, Cort.  I want you, and if we get Bad Kitty as well then that’s a bonus, a little bit of icing.  But you’re the cake, Cort.  All of it.”

“I’d be shaking my head if these restraints let me,” said Cort.  “I don’t believe you for a minute, but let’s pretend I do.  What do you want me to do?”

“Watch.”

“Watch what?  Bad Kitty undressing?  Her burlesque days are long gone, Chip!”

“I should hope so!” Chip sounded a little alarmed at the thought of an elderly lady with too much hair dressed in a tightly-laced corset and thigh-high heeled boots.  “We want you to watch for visitors to Fizz.”

Cort stayed silent for several seconds thinking about that.  When he spoke again there was a note of fear in his voice.

“Fizz isn’t allowed visitors.”

“I know.  But we think she’s going to get them, and we need someone on the inside, someone who can let us know if that happens.  That’s all, Cort, nothing else.  Just keep the embargo on Fizz Mission the way it’s supposed to be.”

“Sure,” said Cort.  “Of course I will.  You know, sometimes I wonder just how lonely she must be in there, you know?”

“She barely knows,” said Chip.  “The drugs they have her on mean she sees one day where the rest of us see sixty.  She doesn’t have enough time to feel lonely before something happens to distract her.”

“I see,” said Cort.  “Could be a blessing, really.”

“I hope so,” said Chip.  “Will you watch her then?  Let us know if anyone tries to visit her.”

“Sure thing,” said Cort.  “When do I get out of these straps then?”

“Tomorrow,” said Chip.  “Better to go through standard protocol really.  Thanks, Cort.  Sylvestra will be grateful for this.”

“No problem,” said Cort.  “Fizz is a sweet girl really.”

Bad Kitty

Bad Kitty came to see him.  He was still strapped down but they’d loosened the neck collar so that he could turn his head a little to watch the television or look at an e-reader on a stand.  A nurse, a new one who looked extremely muscular and was stationed in his room at all times during the day, made her stand in the doorway while she was checked over and checked out.  Cort could just see her face out of the corner of one eye.  She looked furious but resigned, and she didn’t say anything when the nurse went through the pockets of her dressing gown and made her open the backgammon board up.

“Hi Kitty,” he said when she was finally allowed in.  She looked around for a chair, and found that the nurse was sitting back down on the only one.

“I need a chair,” she said to him.  One hand went to her hip, and Cort remembered that pose so well from all the times that they’d fought over the years.  It signalled the onset of hostilities, and he found himself pressing himself back into the mattress in readiness.

“You’ll have to go and get one,” said the nurse, picking up the tv remote control.  Cort didn’t get to choose what they watched.

“No,” said Kitty, and there was a trace of a purr in her voice.  “No, because then you’ll have to search me again on the way back in, and apart from that, I’m too weak to carry a chair.”  Cort had to control a laugh there, as he could remember Bad Kitty throwing actual elephants at him when they’d fought in a circus once.  He managed to catch them all too.

“I can’t leave this room,” said the nurse, his attention back on the television, looking at the program guide.

“Then ring for someone to bring me a chair,” said Bad Kitty.  “Please.”

That was it, thought Cort.  That was the defining moment when you knew you were old.  When you stopped believing that you had the power, or the awe, to make people do things just because it was you, and you started saying ‘please’.  Even though Kitty made it sound a bit vulgar when she said it.  To his slight surprised the nurse pushed the intercom buzzer mounted on the wall by his chair, without stopping browsing through the program guide.

“Can we a chair for the lady?” he said when the intercom buzzed.  “And one of those little trolley tables, they want to play backgammon and if they can’t both see the board they won’t believe there’s no cheating going on.”

“I sometimes wonder,” said Kitty, now looking at Cort, “if I’d have had more success all those years ago if I’d said please more often then.”

“I doubt it,” said Cort.  “I said please all the time, and all that ever happened was that people stopped to think about whether they wanted to do me a favour or not.”

Kitty laughed, a giggle mixed with a purr.  “You never said please to me!”

“I don’t think I said more than three words to you until I met you here.”

“True, most of the time you’d yell Stop and I’d yell Never and then there wasn’t much chance to talk, was there?”

“There was the council meetings, we talked then.”

“But that was politics!”

The chair and table arrived then, brought by two more nurses who looked stronger-than-average, and Kitty graciously said thank-you and sat down, laying the board where Cort could see it.  Cort’s nurse selected a food program from the program guide at last, Masterchef, and sat upright, alert to any movement from Cort, while watching contestants cook a variety of foods.

“Can you stretch your way out of those things?” Kitty indicated the straps and restraints as she finished setting the backgammon board up.  “They don’t look very hard to escape from.”

Cort replied by starting to stretch his arm, thinning it out to pull it out from the strap.  Almost instantly the strap tightened further, pulling his arm painfully into the bed.  He stopped, and the strap stopped binding so tightly.

“That’s clever,” said Kitty.  “I never had that kind of thing!”

“I’m glad,” said Cort, smiling a little.  “You got me tied up a couple of times!”

“How do they do it then?”  She held up the dice pot, and Cort indicated that she would have to roll them for him.  “Do you know?”  The dice clattered on the board, and a 2 and 6 showed uppermost.

“Actually,” he said, “I do.  Build me on the 8-point.”  While Kitty moved the pieces as instructed and them rolled the dice for herself, he explained what Dr. Hernandez had told him.  “There was a fight between the Cut-throat Kid and Norman Nylon that ended up with Nylon breaking his back.  He’s ended up in here as well, but he’s in a near vegetative state, and needs life-support.  But, he’s started produced his signature nylon fibres all the time, and so the staff have hooked him up to this machine, a bit like an old-time Jacquard loom, that reels in the fibres so that he doesn’t end up smothered by them all.  The fibres are semi-sentient, and when Chip Inside heard about it, he came over to take a look at it.  He ended up building them a small AI device that can attach to the fibres and instruct them on how to move.  It’s all very clever, and that’s what’s holding me down now.”

Kitty looked thoughtful.  “Chip’s still alive?”

“Oh yes, but apparently he’s a working research scientist now.  Got a pension and everything.”

“I wish I’d thought about pensions sooner,” said Kitty.  “These places are expensive!”

Cort nodded, though it wasn’t all that visible.  “I feel sorry for Nylon,” he said.  “Sounds like he’s going to be kept alive like that for a long time to come.”

Kitty looked at him oddly, a side-long glance that lingered.  “How about you?” she said.  “What if you’re producing more of that mucus and Chip comes over and weaponises that?”

Cort shuddered, and all the straps tightened momentarily.  The nurse looked up from the tv screen, staring hard at him.

“I really, really hope that doesn’t happen,” he said.

Welcome to the Glasshouse

Cort coughed, a nasty wet rattle that made people standing nearby back away, covering their own mouths and noses.  The cough lasted nearly a whole minute, at the end of which he was folded over on himself, his head down by his feet and his chest hurting with every spasm.  A warm hand rested on his shoulder, then gently pulled him back upright.

“Now then, Mr. Stretch,” said a voice, “have you remembered to take your medication this morning?”  The nurse at his shoulder was middle-aged and wore her body comfortably.  Her hair was just starting to grey, and a strand of it fell, attractively he thought, across one eye.

“Yes,” he said, shuddering as he heaved a huge breath and got air back into his body.  “Bloody yes, of course I have.”

“There’s no need to swear, Mr. Stretch,” said the nurse, but her voice was still friendly.  She said this all the time to all the residents.  “That cough is sounding worse.  I think you ought to go and see the doctor today.  Get dressed and I–“

“I killed the Doctor!” Cort jolted upright and pulled his dressing-gown tightly around his thin, scarred chest.  “Three times!”

“That’s right,” said the nurse, smiling.  As part of her job she was required to learn all of the significant events of her patients’s history.  She stepped slightly to one side, just in case.  “And the third time, he stayed dead, so it can’t be him I meant, can it Mr. Stretch?”

“Hmmm,” said Cort, unwilling to back down.  His fights with the Doctor had been gruelling, days-long battles that had caused significant architectural damage, and had taken their toll on both of them.  During the first fight the Doctor had managed to destroy the only hospital in a fifty-mile radius, and during the second they’d done enough damage to a nuclear power plant between them that it had had to be immediately decommissioned.  Cort had a sneaking suspicion that the real reason he’d won the third fight was the radiation damage that the Doctor had sustained by Cort leaving his body in a pool of radioactive cooling water.

“So you’ll get dressed,” said the nurse, “and I’ll take you up to see Dr. Hernandez in twenty minutes.  Can you do that for me?”

Cort nodded, his head bobbing and his neck elongating.  The nurse laid one hand back on his shoulder, and gently pushed on his forehead, helping him retract his neck back to a normal length.  Cort said nothing, but he was quietly grateful.

After the nurse left, he pulled the bed-covers back and swung his legs over the edge.  His hips ached abominably as they did every morning when he tried to get up, and he forced himself to stretch his legs out until his feet touched the floor and he could effortlessly stand up.  Then he concentrated, shrinking his legs back down to his normal height, and then further until he was almost just feet, knees and torso.  Finally he stretched back up again, and let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.  He wiped his eyes, telling himself that the wetness was just the effects of the coughing.

As he dressed, he resisted the temptation to just stretch his arms out across the room, opening the wardrobe and collecting his clothes.  Instead he forced himself to walk over and collect them, just like a normal person.  The word normal left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth; he wasn’t normal, and he hadn’t been for years.  If he’d been normal he’d never have been able to take on the Doctor (three times!) and come away victorious.  He’d never have been able to save eighty-two people from a collapsing skyscraper, or face down Bad Kitty over twenty-eight times, twice in council meetings!

“Are you ready, Mr. Stretch?”  The nurses were always careful to use the ageing superheroes' public names, and never their private ones.  It was a small touch of respect that the superheroes were ridiculously grateful for.  “Dr. Hernandez is expecting you.”  She held out her arm, and Cort took it, hating himself as he rested his feather-weight frame on her, and limped slowly from his room.

The room next to him had the door slightly ajar, and he could see the beautiful Fizz Mission sat up in bed, staring out of the window.  The nurses kept her on Mogadon to try and keep her away from her memories, and there were serious consequences to anyone who tried to talk to her without written permission from the matron.  After that they passed a closed door, which was General Tcho-Tcho’s room; that the door was closed meant he was either sleeping or a dimensional reconfiguration of his body had gone wrong again.  After that was a door on the other side of the corridor that was Bad Kitty’s room, and then they were at the lift.

“I used to be able to just lean out of the window, stretch up to the fifth floor and climb in the window there,” said Cort.  “I hate having to take lifts.”

“There’s always the stairs,” said the nurse, and he fell silent again.

Dr. Hernandez’s office was two doors away from the lift, and he was stood at the door, waiting to take Cort’s arm from the nurse and lead him to the examining couch.  Cort sat down, grateful for the relief from aching joints, and looked at the doctor.

“Nurse tells me that your cough is getting worse,” said Dr. Hernandez.  He was in his fifties, with oiled-back white hair, facial hair modelled on Colonel Sanders, and knotty fingers in huge hands.  “And we will investigate that shortly.  But first, tell me how your memory is?”

Cort sighed, and started talking.  All his visits with Dr. Hernandez were the same, the doctor would check his memories, check his physical condition, and perform a psychological evaluation before he’d address the reported symptoms.  Cort really hoped that if he had a heart-attack it wasn’t Dr. Hernandez who was first on the scene.  Finally Dr. Hernandez pulled out his stethoscope and listened to Cort’s chest, asking him to cough a little.  Cort, who had been trying to control his cough for the whole meeting, gladly let himself start coughing.  To his surprise, he found he couldn’t stop, and then everything went black.  As his vision disappeared, he heard a siren sound, and dimly realised that Dr. Hernandez must have pressed the alarm button in his office.

The man with the silver syringe

He was the man with the Silver Syringe, the chimera chirurgeon, sitting in the chair right in front of me.  His newspaper smile and Hollywood teeth were hidden now behind lips that were pressed tightly together, bloodless and white.  His eyes still glittered, but with restrained malevolence rather than generous bonhomie.  And his hands... his left hand was still good, still whole, and its fingers were drumming a tattoo on the chair's arm.
"You have to understand," I said, for all that he'd not understood the previous six times I'd explained it.  Even when I got angry with him for not trying hard enough.  He was clever, after all, he'd been to college, and then to university, and had collected a string of certificates, qualifications and diplomas, enough to wallpaper the downstairs privy with.  "You have to understand," I said, emphasizing the have.  "My cat is dying."
"I'm not a vet," he said, the words squeezing out from between his lips, wriggling through his gritted teeth.  He sounded firm, determined, and in control.  "I'm a doctor.  My patients are humans.  I don't know the first thing about feline longevity."
"See, those are big words," I said encouragingly.  "I don't know words like that.  I'd have to pay a man ten dollars a minute to get the use of words like that.  You know big words like that, you can help my cat."
"Who pays a man for words?" he said, sneering at me.  "That's retarded."  That made me angry again then, because I'd heard that word too many times.  Too often.  But when I get angry I can't remember anything, it's like I pass out but when I come round people say I was doing things.  Maybe I sleepwalk when I get angry.  I had an Aunt who would just fall asleep, right there and then, no matter what she was doing, when people got angry with her.  They had a name for her too, and she didn't like it either, but it didn't help her stay awake.  She fell asleep and fell into the trash compactor, so I make sure I stay away from trash compactors.
The man in the chair was looking scared, and his other hand....  His left hand was balled up into a fist and he looked like he wanted to get free from the chair.  But he knew how to do that, he just had to help my cat.
"My cat's not well," I said.  "You have to help her."
"Fine," he said, the word long and drawn out like it was somehow painful.  "Fine, show me your cat and I'll tell you what I can do for her."
"She's right here," I said, smiling.  I was really happy now.  "I put her in here," and I reached down for the black plastic sack at my feet and unknotted it, "so that she'd be all ready for you."
Something was wrong, she wasn't jumping out of the bag like I knew she would.  I thought then that maybe she was sleeping, so I jerked the sack a little to wake her up, only she wouldn't wake.  She felt heavy, and lazy, so I jerked the sack a little more, and then harder, and still she wouldn't wake up so I tipped the lazy cat out onto the rug.
Her head came out first and rolled away, then her body tumbled after, and the man in the chair started making retching noises and turning purple, and I couldn't see where her head had gone to put it back on her.  Then I saw it, just by the man's arm, and then he threw up.  On her head.
It all went black after that, and I think this time it's because I got sad.