Happily Ever After

By Christopher Garrett

“lovely, it’s raining”, I think to myself as I pull the collars of my coat together to protect my clothes, the zip having broken long ago. The heavy, gray September skys looked as though they started at the tops of the roofs and where all that existed outsde outside the city. I’m saddened that this will be my last glimpes of the sky from inside the city and feel as though I should shead a tear, but of course I can’t anymore. Hopefully for the better.

I near my final destination, the last point of contact for anyone who goes through the process in this city. “C42 Proccesing centre”, the black letters spelled out over the reinforced steel door, contracting nicely with the glaring white of the buillding itself, putting the gray and sutt stained buildings around it to shame. The door opens with a whisper and I step into the perfectly air conditioned waiting room. The space was devoid of personality, the whitewashed walls met with the whitewashed check-in desk and the white plastic chairs, for the “costumers comfort”. The only point of colour in the room is the bright blue hair of the woman behind the desk… and the surgeory door.

“ah, back once more”, the womans voice snaps me out of myy revire. “I’ll go ahead and get everything ready, just take a seat”, with a smile she opens the door and goes through to the surgeory, leaving me alone with my thoughts, for what should be the last time. I bend to sit down but the servo in my left knee fails and instead of sitting down slowly I slum to the left side, dragged down by the dead weight of my left leg. I was told some of my parts are second hand so they may take a while to calibrate  to my nervus system.

I start up the recalibration procces while I wait. As the now familiar pattern of whirs and clicks of the calibration take place my mind drifts to those I will leave behind. Once, I could think of nothing but them and leaving them behind. Now I struggle to remember there faces, let alone there names. Well, if I can’t remember them they probably wheren’t important.

“Ready for you now”, she calls from inside the surgeory, the door still slightly ajar. “well, this is it”, I think to myself when I stand up, thankfully with both legs fully operational, and start toward the door. It really was the strangest thing, In contrast to the  rest of the modern decor of the building. The door was an old heavily varnished oak slab, almost as thick as my hand. It had an old style red leather coushing on the inside, presumably to mute the screams of those on the operating table. What was the most curious detail, however, was the rose petal in the centre of the door made from 24 carat gold, or so the woman had said on my first visit.

Once I had entred the surgeory she closed the door behind me, the thunk of a large slab of steel locking us into the room echoing around the open space. “please, lie down” as I move towards the centre of the room where the sugeory bed is located, I notice the room is much cleaner than usual, the saws and scalpes that were used in the rest of the operations are no wear to be seen, the various metal trays are missing and the walls have been freshly scrubbed, the only things still in the room are the surgeory bed and a single metal tray with two syringes, on with a clear liqud and one with a matalic looking substance, the light on the ceiling reflecting of it makes it seem as though its alive and moving.

I lie down and relax, ready for the pain. “I’m going to have to put you under for this” the woman said. This took me by suprise as the other operations had been competely free of anistetics, “eh, ok?”, said, not sure if I have much of a chiose at this point. “when you wake up you’ll be a new, better person” she reaches for the needle with the clear liquid. Seeing this as my final opertunity to talk to this woman I ask a question that has been on my mind troughout the whole procces. “why did you never do it? You have the money, you have the intilect to pass the tests why did you never become more?”. I’m embarressed the moment I say it but I was burning for an answer. She is silent for a few moments and I feel like I have insulted her but then a sly grin takes over her face “I’d rather live in hell with the keys to heaven than live in heaven with the keys to hell”, before I can ask what she means I feel a sharp prick in my neck and my optic sensors start to fade, the last thing I see is the glow of blue hair and the last thing I here is, “or maybe heavens just not that great without any feelings”.