Re-Animation

It sat, eyes open, taking in all it could. The flashes of all that the media had to offer bombarded his eyes. Noises seemed to meld into an orchestra of chattering and yelling from one side to the other. It wasn’t able to blink, although the more it watched the more it wished it could.

The dimly lit lab echoed the noises of clinking tubes and whirring gears. Professor Jean Penser, frow burrowed, found himself deep in thought about his newest experiment. Pieces of flesh sat next to oiled machinery parts. Fusing the life forces of humans and androids was no longer a feat to researchers; the challenge now is mastering the process. Until now, human android hybrids were only good for a few months, until their blood began to curdle due to the mixture with the oil and the heat of the machinery. Few researchers still deal in the hybrid game, due to its cost and return on investment being so inversely related. Penser was one of the few still dealing in intense research on a daily basis.

Maggie Penser was as cute as could be, especially when standing next to Jean. They met in college and began dating soon after. They were both biology majors, but eventually turned to animatronics and hybrid-human expansion. Maggie was the one who got Jean into hybrid research. She is also the reason he remains.

Jean began his work on what he assumed would be the most advanced hybrid to-date.
He had been working on a small-scale experiment that added a saline solution to the blood to help fend off the curdling effects of the oil and heat. In his initial tests he found success to be fleeting, but as he forged on he found the mixture slowly making advances. Within the last week he stabilized the solution to a point where he was comfortable in testing on a large-scale.

When Maggie first began on her experiments with Jean she was eager to break into the scientific community with quick results and findings. Her optimism was consistently challenged by setbacks. Jean saw it starting to take a toll on her personality, slowly turning her into a timid and quiet individual. Frustrated with her projects she started taking short cuts. Moving from small-scale to large-scale experiments too quickly. One quiet fall night, Jean left the lab to go to bed, leaving Maggie behind to finish her last experiments. Jean was awoken by a call later that night. It was Maggie, sobbing and lost for words. Jean rushed to the lab only to find her mutilated on the ground. Her leg had been amputated, blood pooling around the table, mechanical parts were in the beginning process of being fused with her remaining bones and nervous system. He rushed to her side, holding her head gently in his lap. She looked up at him with the look of despair, as if finally realizing what she had done. Life fading from her face, she whispered, “I just wanted to be known.”

Jean had prepped his lab for his large-scale attempt at human hybridization. His specimen was a preserved inmate, killed by electrocution. He always thought it ironic that machines killed most of the test-subjects that came into the labs of hybrid scientists. The brain was always modified to re-create the learning process of early childhood, losing all prior memories but able to learn at an incredible pace. Jean removed the limbs, replacing them with hybrid machinery. This was typical for preserved specimen, their limbs usually lost some function in the process of preservation, and the most humane thing to do was to reanimate their limbs with a mechanized replacement. He injected the project with his saline solution, hoping to see similar results as the small-scale sample.

It began to quiver, legs first, then moving up the body to the arms. Life began pulsing through this hybrid for the first time. This sight no longer awed Jean; he had become cautiously optimistic through trials and tribulations of past experiments. Its eyes began to open, finally taking in its surroundings. Shocked that it was still stable, Jean grabbed its arm and calmed its beating heart. Jean began to acclimate it to its surroundings. Slowly walking it around the lab, passing his wife’s body, waiting to be reanimated. Jean looked into her closed eyes, hoping this would be the advancement needed to bring her back. Jean brought it over to the media screens, where it would be taught everything needed. Jean did not review what was shown to these hybrids, he just ran media from the last thirty years of television. He figured that the people around today would be the perfect prototype for a new hybrid of machine and man.

It sat, eyes open, taking in all it could. The flashes of all that the media had to offer bombarded his eyes. Noises seemed to meld into an orchestra of chattering and yelling from one side to the other. It wasn’t able to blink, although the more it watched the more it wished it could.

It couldn’t take any more, jarring its restraints loose it stood up. It couldn’t believe what he had taken in and was finding it hard to comprehend. Feeling frustrated it began writhing and throwing items around the lab. Reaching for Jean, it was met with an electrode that short-circuited its nervous system. Jean stared at the hybrid, mechanically dead, brain still working, eyes starting to well with what seemed to be tears but were most likely residue from the saline mixture. It looked at Jean and whispered, “you made me this way.”

He looked to the tank that held his preserved wife, “I can’t try again,” he whispered.

He sat on the floor, eyes open, taking in all he could, wondering what we had become.