Puff—
The entire glass cover filled with white mist in an instant.
Then, as the sound of a fan rose, a pungent smell of disinfectant spread from the surgical pod.
After the white fog cleared and the prompt [Disinfection procedure complete. Beginning scan] passed, a red laser lit from one end of the capsule, slowly swept across Alice’s body, and vanished at the other end.
[“Fluoroscopic scan complete. No obvious skeletal damage. No obvious organ damage. No obvious damage to major cardiovascular system. Intracranial hemorrhage detected.”]
[“Skin tissue ruptured. Integrity 26%. Moderate muscle-tissue damage. Integrity 90%. Impaired respiration detected.”]
[“Warning: subject does not match vital-sign characteristics of any Eden organism. Re-searching…”]
[“Subject retrieved as matching human-species vital signs. Surgical operation will be executed using the human species as the blueprint. If not, please say no.”]
[“No negative answer received. Executing surgical operation using the human species as the blueprint.”]
[“Surgical plan: intracranial hemorrhage drainage. Airway clearance. Treatment plan: dermal and epidermal reconstruction using artificially produced tissue cells.”]
[“Executing intracranial hemorrhage drainage…”]
The string of prompts left me unable to keep up.
Every character was Chinese that was not hard to understand, but strung together they only made me feel I had no idea what was being said.
In a room that did not even have one intact chair, there was this complete piece of equipment dripping with high technology.
Lucky was probably the only word for it.
Perhaps because the power had been interrupted, the temperature in the room felt as if it were slowly falling.
Shut in this almost completely sealed place, aside from being able to guess that we were under the desert, I knew nothing.
There was clean water.
There were aquatic creatures moving in the water.
The words [Eden Network] floating in the upper right of my vision only filled me with curiosity about Eden.
What kind of place had this been?
Achoo—
Only then did I remember my clothes were still on Alice.
The room growing colder made me sneeze, then I hugged my own shoulders without thinking.
It really was not my imagination.
It really was getting cold.
A red laser shot from a probe-like device floating inside the capsule pod and landed precisely on the top of Alice’s head.
After a flash, dark-red blood flowed from the crown of her head, yet the instant it fell on the platform it was absorbed by the platform.
It was truly unbelievable.
No matter what the outside world was like, at least this much was clear: the technology of this place called Eden was far, far higher than the world I had originally lived in.
Eden, in our world, was the paradise God created in the Bible.
Whether this name had any relation to the stories passed down in our world I had no way of knowing.
But even this medical pod, abandoned for who knew how long, was enough to make me recognize how convenient the lives of the people who once lived here had been.
After a slight pause, the prompt tone came again from somewhere in the room:
[“Executing debridement procedure.”]
A silver half-ring popped out from one end of the capsule.
Then an electric arc flashed along the inner side of the ring.
As the ring lowered toward Alice’s body, the arcs touched her like so many rootlets.
Where the arcs fell, the clothes on Alice decomposed and vanished the instant the current touched them, exposing her skin riddled with holes.
I could not watch anymore.
The way she looked, lying there motionless—
Only a little while ago she had been showing me that brilliant smile.
A person’s life is very fragile.
A car accident took my parents.
When I saw their cold bodies lying in the cold morgue, I had already understood that deeply.
Alice lying in the surgical pod before me was the same.
Even though she looked so strong, in the face of injury and illness she was still this fragile.
I could not help thinking it.
If our world also had equipment this advanced, could my parents still wrap me in their warm arms?
But there are no ifs.
[“Executing tissue reconstruction. Loading quantum models of relevant tissue cells.”]
[“Producing cells related to dermal tissue. 10% 20% 30%… 100%”]
[“Executing dermal tissue reconstruction. Preparing aerosol. Complete.”]
[“Executing dermal tissue reconstruction…”]
The entire room was enclosed by metal walls.
On the ceiling was a rail-like object.
It looked as if curtains or something similar had once been used to screen the surgical pod.
The rail was recessed into the ceiling.
In the dim light I could only see that a section of it seemed to have fallen out, which was probably why it was not working now.
The room was actually very messy.
Some wheeled shelf-like racks had long since lost their function and lay scattered across the floor.
On the ground there were also bent metal plates and shards of glass that looked as if they had fallen from the ceiling.
Deeper in the room there was likewise a surgical pod, but the support connected to it had already broken, leaving it lying on its side.
An orange-red ring suddenly lit on a slanted console jutting from the wall to my right, yanking my wandering awareness back in an instant.
Right after came a prompt tone:
[“Error. Offline archive missing part of the epidermal-cell quantum model. Unable to complete production. Quantum model number: CENK-LQ8A9453VF66”]
[“Error. Unable to establish connection with the Archive Bureau. Searching nearby active mirror servers.”]
[“Error. No active mirror server in the area.”]
[“Attempting to establish connection with nearby factory units. Active factory in area found: 1. Request sent. Request-approved reply received.”]
[“Human epidermal living-cell composite cluster. Specification net weight 3.2 g. Preparing aerosol. Complete. Specification 15 ml sterile bottle. Canning complete.”]
[“Error. No active transport unit in the area. Unable to complete product delivery.”]
[“Error. Ether Initiation Factor¹ of this medical room’s built-in Construction unit exhausted. Unable to complete subsequent steps.”]
A string of errors I could not understand sent a wave of panic through me.
Warning content matching the voice prompts floated on the band of light ringing the surgical pod, displayed in an orange-red window that shed orange-red light.
Then the surgical pod continued to warn:
[“Please have the operator check the connection with the Archive Bureau or the status of mirror servers in the area.”]
[“Please have the operator check the transport units in the area and the status of the transport-unit master control service.”]
[“Or proceed manually to Factory DKN-045 to obtain the product canister and the Ether Initiation Factor canister. Coordinates as follows. Product-canister loading instructions as follows. Ether Initiation Factor canister replacement instructions as follows.”]
Three windows.
One displayed a map with the factory’s position marked.
As I approached the map window, [Sync complete] flashed through my vision, and then the map displayed in the lower right of my field of view.
The other two windows used illustrated text to show how to load the product canister and how to replace the ether canister.
Compared with the flashing orange ring on the slanted console, it was very clear.
Factory location: DKN-045.
Distance from the medical room: 12.8 km.
If I flew, it was not actually far.
Even if I could not understand it very well, I had already seen prompts like [Lost connection with the Archive Bureau] too many times.
That problem was probably not one I could fix.
But going to the factory to fetch the product and the ether canister was still not hard for me.
If my guess was not wrong, the epidermal cells the surgery needed had already been produced at the factory.
Whether there was a so-called quantum model or not, as long as I got the product and the ether canister and successfully installed them on the surgical pod, the surgery could continue normally.
Right away…
Wait…
My clothes.
…………
***
¹ Ether Initiation Factor:
Although during Construction part of an object’s mass is converted into energy to supply subsequent steps or is fed back into the power grid, the starting step of Construction requires enormous energy to split atoms.
Therefore, because of insufficient power output, small Construction units generally cannot start Construction on their own.
They need ready-made Ether Initiation Factor to synthesize the first pair of atoms, thereby triggering a chain reaction that allows the Construction steps to proceed.
In theory any factory can produce Ether Initiation Factor, but the Ideal Ring ordinarily has a dedicated district used specifically to produce Ether Initiation Factor in order to meet the needs of the large number of small and mid-sized Construction units on the Ideal Ring.