Work Text:
Just a few cycles aboard Rodimus’ ship and already his dramatics are getting to you. That’s the only explanation you have for turning your back on Pharma as he dangles over the edge of the roof of Delphi’s medical facility, why you decided to head back inside without waiting for him to fall, leaving yourself vulnerable for him to try to shoot you in the back. You did it for the drama, that’s all (it wasn’t because you didn’t want to see him fall, no; it wasn’t because if you never saw him dropping to the ground you didn’t have to acknowledge that it had happened and you could spend the rest of your life lying to yourself about Pharma’s fate, pretending that he was still holding onto that roof), and it almost cost you your life.
One second you’re walking towards the door and the next moment is a blur, you’re only aware of someone tackling you, a shot passing though the spot where you’d just been and the sound of wires snapping, metal breaking (a joint giving out).
Then you gather your wits and you realize you’re on the floor, that Drift is dying on you and that all that’s left of Pharma is his right hand, still holding on to the roof. There’s an odd sensation that settles deep into your spark after you realize what has happened, like you are out of sync with the universe, that whatever just happened has changed something in your life and now the universe is having trouble trying to fit this new you in it. If you were superstitious (if you believed in anything greater than a bot’s own ability to make his own life) you would say that it’s an omen, but since you aren’t, you quickly dismiss it as the product of a mind that just went through a harrowing experience.
Your remaining hand isn’t moving how you wish it did, so pushing Drift off and dragging him downstairs is harder and takes longer than you’d like, long enough for your holomatter avatar to finish the climb carrying the cure for the plague. You (both of you, Cybertronian and falsely Human, both of you imperfect and unbalanced under the weight of valuable cargo that you’d fight and die for) walk into the building and put your life, Drift’s and everybody else’s into First Aid’s hands.
Almost as an afterthought, you go back for Pharma’s hand and ask First Aid to replace your right one with it. You weren’t going to do it, what’s the point of having only one functioning hand? You still have to retire. You’re still useless. But the war taught you not to waste resources, so you take the hand.
Drift looks disappointed when he sees your mismatched hands. You won’t ask because you don’t really care why he disapproves of you trying to get back a fraction of your skills, but Drift talks anyway.
“I could have cut them off,” Drift says, his eyes going from Pharma’s (your) hand to your face. “I thought about that as I was pushing you to the ground. I could have cut off his hands, thrown him to his death, saved you those dents you got from where I hit you.” He smiles wryly, making a general gesture towards your frame. “Maybe you could have gotten the set then and you wouldn’t need to make First Aid the new CMO.”
You scoff. If you were better with words, you would be able to voice what you’re thinking. How grateful you are to Drift for saving your life, how proud you are of him for doing so in a way that didn’t directly hurt somebody else. You try to see Drift as a patient, not as a crewmate, not as an acquaintance, you try to channel some of your bedside manners into the right sentence, but you come up blank, because it’s been thousands of years since you last were able to see Drift as a regular mech, leaving you to face him (to avoid facing him) in the same way you face everyone you care a bit about: imperfectly, without balance.
“We don’t know that,” you say. “In the state you were in, you might have ended up missing his hands and then we’d both be dead on that roof.”
Drift smiles slightly and that’s that. Matter settled.
.
.
.
.
As soon as you’re back on the Lost Light you show First Aid and Ambulon the medibay. You tell them where everything is kept, you explain your filing system, you warn them about the equipment that’s in less-than-stellar condition and about which resources are limited. You tell them everything they need to know to make the medibay theirs and then stay as they get acquainted with the place, put their own tools in order, get their own desks and settle with a random file. You stay until you don’t have a good reason to do so.
Then you go to your hab suite, telling yourself you need some rest, but when you open the door you find that the only real difference between this room and the medibay is that there’s only one recharge slab. Everything else is medical (data pads stacked on the desk, on the floor and next to the berth, spare tools kept for emergencies, souvenirs from places where you served, mementos of medical facilities and patients) and the itch to go back to the medibay to do something, anything, is nearly unbearable. Maybe you could help clean up, maybe you could act as the surgical technologist during procedures, maybe you could assist in some way (your pride rebels against being demoted to a mere assistant, but it’d be better than sitting among the reminders of past glories).
You manage to stay in your room that day, but you’re back at the medibay by the next one and the one after that, pointing out diagnoses, re-reading files and being a nuisance (you can’t pretend you aren’t: you never liked to have people doing nothing in your medibay, you can’t expect First Aid and Ambulon to be happy to have you there occupying space). You should be thankful they don’t kick you out. You should take the smart, healthy course of action and stop going, but the truth is that your retirement plan had never gone beyond “find a suitable replacement” (a part of you might have hoped you wouldn’t find one, that you would be able to keep working until something killed you and Rodimus had to take up the task of finding someone to look after everyone; a part of you, naïve, dumb and wide-eyed, might have hoped you’d get better and you wouldn’t need a replacement) and your room is a shrine to the emptiness of your existence.
Ratchet, Chief Medical Officer. You don’t exist outside of that title.
The functionists would love this.
.
.
.
.
What you need is a change, so today you head to Swerve’s instead of the medibay (what you need is help, you know it; Rung has casually informed you that he’s going to have a free hour today, if you feel like dropping by for a chat. He makes it sound like he’s suggesting a social call, and you make up an excuse for why you can’t go).
“Ratchet! Just the bot I was looking for!” Brainstorm says before you can go in. He’s standing by the door, looking as inconspicuous as Bumblebee’s paint job.
“Really?” You deadpan. For the first time you wish you had eyebrows like Rung’s, just so you could raise one in disbelief.
“Sure. You or whoever showed up first. Can you buy me a drink?”
“Can’t you buy one yourself?”
“Swerve won’t let me in with the briefcase,” he says, raising the object in question. “And usually I don’t mind because I don’t drink much, but I need some engex right now. It’s important.”
You narrow your eyes.
“Are you making a weapon with engex?”
“I don’t know yet. Depends on how the latest trial goes.” He shrugs. “So, can you get me a drink? I’ll pay you.”
You buy the drink because you figure that he’ll get it through other means anyway and bring it back to the door. He empties the glass into his own container, hands it back to you and then tries to give you the money. You’ve kept your left arm almost entirely immobile these days, not seeing any reason to move it now that you can’t use your hand for anything, so it takes you a few seconds to raise it, your joints nearly frozen. Your wrist’s range of movement has diminished from disuse, leaving your hand slightly tilted, so the shanix fall off when Brainstorm drops them on your palm, your fingers unable to curl to catch them.
The two of you are left staring at the money on the floor for a moment.
“I’ll get them, you get that glass back to Swerve,” Brainstorm says as he kneels. It looks so easy, fingers curling and pressing an object between them and the palm to keep it in place.
When you get back, Brainstorm is playing with one of the coins, rolling it across his knuckles, his eyes intent on the movement.
“Want me to make you a new hand?” he says as he puts the money in your right hand.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“No, you aren’t. If you were, you wouldn’t have Pharma’s hand attached to you.”
“It’s different. Pharma’s hand isn’t artificial.”
Brainstorm blinks, looks at your hand, shakes his head slowly.
“…I think I see what you’re trying to say, but if it is what I think it is, then it’s a stupid thing and you’re supposed to be somewhat smart. So… what’s wrong with an artificial hand?”
“It’s not the same as a forged one.”
“Yes, an artificial hand would at least move , unlike your very frozen forged one. So, again, what’s wrong with an artificial hand?”
You open your mouth. You close it. You open it again.
“I came here for a drink. See you later, Brainstorm.”
.
.
.
.
Brainstorm’s waiting for you when you return to your hab suite. He’s nonchalantly reading from a datapad and he would look innocent if people had the habit of hanging out in empty corridors and leaning against the door to other people’s rooms.
At least he doesn’t embarrass either of you by continuing the pretense once you’re in front of him.
“I’m making new hands for you,” Brainstorm says. There’s something in his voice that gives you pause, how he says it with absolute conviction, how it sounds like he’s challenging you, the fact that he’s not asking for permission nor collaboration.
It makes you furious.
“You have no right.”
“I’m making them anyway.”
“I’m not wearing them.”
“Then don’t. But I’m making them and you’ll be angry you didn’t have hands like that during the war.”
“This is my decision. You can’t run over my feelings on the matter just to prove how good an engineer you are.”
“One, yes I can and I will. Two, I would think more about that if the reason you don’t want new hands wasn't simply that you don’t want non-forged ones. Three, you don’t have any feelings on the matter, what you have are prejudices against constructed hands.” He raises a finger for each item and then closes his hand into a fist.
You would like to object to the word 'prejudice'. You are not prejudiced, you are certain, you have seen the way forged medics move while operating, the way their hands perform complex movements and procedures without trembling, without ever applying an imperfect amount of pressure.
You try to think of yourself as your own patient. If someone had come to you and refused a treatment, an imperfect treatment, yes, but still better than none, how would you feel?
Brainstorm hasn’t moved from your door. You could turn on your heel and leave, but then you’d find him a few days later holding a new pair of hands and insisting you try them on. You could reach past him, tap in your access code and let him fall as the door opens, but that’d be immature. (You could accept his proposal. Right now even having a claw would be better than your left hand. You have seen Whirl, he can at least hold a glass.)
“And fourth, I’m flying over your feelings, not running over them.” Brainstorm breaks the silence and makes you groan.
“Fine. But I’m not using them.”
“Sure, sure. Whatever you say.”
.
.
.
.
“Tomorrow at 6 in my lab,” Brainstorm had said before leaving.
Now you find yourself standing in front of Brainstorm’s door, telling yourself it’s not too late to go back to your room (or go to the medibay. You haven’t been there in almost two whole days, they might be less inclined to kick you out after the breather).
You open the door. The first thing you see is a board on which Brainstorm has written: If a forged hand is superior to a constructed one, then. The rest of the sentence has been erased.
“The scientific method!” Brainstorm (very, very loudly) says from his desk, where he’s examining several 3D projections of hands. There are different types, some big, rough ones (clearly a miner’s), ones with needles at the end, others with what looks like web between the fingers, even claws like Whirl’s. Each projection slowly spins in place, allowing Brainstorm to see them from different angles. “Theory! Constructed hands aren’t as good as forged ones.” He turns to you quickly, one of his wings disrupting the projection nearest to him. “Do we have any proof? No. You have never had non-forged hands, and the constructed cold medics have never had forged hands. Therefore, nobody can tell us for sure whether or not forged hands are truly better.”
He stands and practically skips to you, still standing at the threshold.
“My own theory is that all the constructed hands you've seen so far have been the work of inferior engineers. But now you are in front of Cybertron’s greatest mind and I will make hands like you have never seen before.” He’s shaking a bit, with what you think is excitement. “They. Will. Be. Masterpieces.” His voice gets high-pitched at the end - perhaps ‘giddiness’ would be more accurate than ‘excitement’.
You look over at the hand models on his desk and then around the lab, looking for any signs of a weapon’s design (this is Brainstorm, you can’t imagine him designing something without a gun attached to it), but after scanning the room three times you have to accept that there isn’t a hint of one.
“You are only making hands,” you say. The direct approach is the best one, if you can use it. “No weapons on them, no secret compartments, no secret guns. Just hands.”
Brainstorm sighs.
“I had some hope you wouldn’t say that,” he says, walking back to his desk with you following him at a small distance. He grabs some of the datapads on the desk, piles them up and pushes them to a corner. “Not much, but some. Any chance I can change your mind?”
“No. A surgeon’s hands are meant to heal.”
Meant to. The war might have forced you to kill, but now that it’s over you figure it’s good to remember what you were always supposed to be (even if now that it’s over your hands won’t let you become what you were always supposed to be).
Brainstorm doesn’t look pleased, but he doesn’t push the matter, which is worrisome. Scenarios where you accidentally kill someone with the new hands cross your mind.
“I mean it, Brainstorm. No weapons in those hands.”
“I heard you the first time, Ratchet. My audials work perfectly, as you already know.”
Patients lie all the time, so out of reflex you start mentally going through his file, just to be sure this isn’t one of those times. Genitus of Operation: Solar Storm, alias Brainstorm. M.T.O. Hasn’t showed up for a proper check up in years, but at least the last time his audials were indeed working perfectly.
“Anyway, didn’t you say you weren’t going to use them? What does it matter if I put a gun in them?”
“Somebody else might use them and I don’t want them killing themselves or somebody else by accident.” Or on purpose, but the universe still has nasty surprises left, nasty surprises for which the best solution is a bullet.
“Uh-huh. Fine. Just hands. Got it.” He grabs the pile of datapads and shoves it into a box. “It will be a fun challenge.”
He returns to the desk and gestures for you to put your hands on it. He takes out a magnifying glass, grabs a datapad from the table and some measuring equipment and starts examining both your hands, taking notes every now and then. He mutters to himself, sometimes he seems to get into spirited discussions with his own train of thought, but he’s methodic in his process, checking each joint, each finger, even the paint. After an eternity he leans back, sets down the datapad and points towards two new 3D models that you recognize as your hands.
“Do you want the new hands to be like Pharma’s, or like your own?”
You hadn’t really thought about any possible differences between one hand and the other, besides the side of the body to which they belonged. You look down at them, not seeing any differences (although you can feel them, how Pharma’s hand is slightly heavier than yours, throws off your balance so subtly you barely notice you’re constantly adjusting your position, while your own imperfect hand is familiar even after having betrayed you with its immobility). Brainstorm has kept talking, unaware of your surprise.
“I only need the left hand, so make it like Pharma’s,” you say, cutting him off in the middle of an exposition on what he thinks could be improved in the design.
“Good then.” He nods and stares off into the wall, seemingly lost in his own thoughts for a minute, leaving you unsure about whether to leave or wait for him to say something else. “Can you leave Pharma’s hand with me for a few days?”
“No,” you say without even stopping to think about it.
“It’s necessary for the process.”
“No, it isn't,” you say, crossing your arms to hide Pharma’s hand under your left arm, as if not seeing it might make Brainstorm forget about what he just asked for. “You've already studied it, you don’t need to keep it.”
“Yes, I do. I need a closer look at a forged hand.” He gestures towards you arms.
“Then you can have one of mine.”
“A forged hand that actually works, Ratchet,” he says slowly, like he’s explaining something to a particularly dense mech.
“No.”
“Come on, this is part of the scientific method!”
“How?” you say, far too loudly, unable to keep your disbelief out of your voice.
“You said that the best hands are forged. By that logic, nothing I make,” he raises his own hands, shakes them in the air for a moment before continuing, “can be as good as what I could make with a forged hand. So, I need your forged hand to make your new hands so you can believe that they’re best they could possibly be.”
“You started this to try to prove that constructed hands were as good as forged ones. If you use a forged hand to make them, aren’t you sabotaging yourself?”
“No, my point is that I can make constructed hands that are better than forged ones. How I make them doesn’t matter.”
“In this case it does, you want to take my one good hand for however long it takes you to build mine. What am I supposed to do during that time?”
“You can have one of mine in the meantime. They may not be forged,” he emphasizes the word, puts enough venom in it to make you uncomfortable, “but they have built weapons that are considered masterpieces. They should work well enough.”
You feel revolted by the idea. Pharma might have been a killer, but his hands were a medic’s anyway. Brainstorm’s are a soldier’s hands, a soldier turned weapons engineer. Those hands have only ever been good to hold a gun and you don’t like the idea of that attached to you. You also don’t like the idea of Pharma’s hand, a medic’s hand, attached to someone like Brainstorm – it’s the last good thing that remains of him and you don’t trust Brainstorm to only build a hand with it, you don’t trust him not to get distracted and build a bomb or a cannon or some other instrument of destruction.
“You’re not borrowing Pharma’s hand.”
Brainstorm glares at you.
“Fine, give me your old one then,” he relents.
So you do.
.
.
.
.
The next morning you’re called to the medibay. You wonder if they have come across a difficult case and they need your help with the diagnosis, but when you arrive you find Brainstorm sitting on a berth, holding your old hand, and First Aid looking bewildered.
Brainstorm waves when he sees you.
“Hello, Ratchet,” First Aid says, sounding too tired for how early it is. “Brainstorm said it was okay to call you to verify what he’s saying.” He rubs his face with his hand and sighs, pointing at the other mech. “Please tell him what you asked me to do.”
“I asked First Aid to temporarily replace my right hand with your old one.”
“To be more exact, he came in here and asked me to replace his hand with this one and when I recognized it as yours he assured me you’d given it to him.”
You cover your face with your hand and give yourself a moment to gather your thoughts. A part of you wants to laugh – you should have seen this coming after yesterday’s conversation. Another part wants to sigh exasperatedly, turn around and leave Brainstorm to deal with First Aid alone.
“I let him borrow it as reference. He’s making a new hand for me.”
First Aid’s face makes it difficult to read his expressions, but there’s a tilt to his head that tells you he’s giving you a surprised look. You can’t blame him, you’re still surprised by yourself (you might have spent most of the trip from Delphi to the Lost Light talking about how you were retiring because your hands would never be the same again).
“What I don’t understand,” you say, turning to Brainstorm, “is why you want to get this hand attached to you. It’s useless.”
“I told you yesterday, it’s research. I need to know how a forged hand feels. I might not be able to do anything with this, but I can get an idea of how it works. Maybe there’s a noticeable difference in the wiring? Or perhaps in the pain receptors. Or the pressure plates!”
“What was that about pain receptors?” First Aid asks before you can do the same. He enunciates slowly, his tone and volume sounding so controlled that you know he’s having a hard time keeping them so. He resets his vocalizer, adjusts his posture and says, “What are you planning to do to that hand?” with the deceptive nonchalance used by doctors everywhere when they’re trying to get information they need but which they suspect the patient is reluctant to give.
“Nothing unfixable,” Brainstorm says in a tone that you suppose was meant to come across as reassuring but which only manages to worry you. “I know what I’m saying, I’ve already done it to my own hand,” he adds, raising his left one, which has clearly been recently painted. Brainstorm has also moved his briefcase’s chain to his left wrist.
You open your mouth to berate him for stupid behavior, but First Aid has gotten ahead again, telling Brainstorm how science is not a good reason to hurt yourself, no matter how reversible the damage. You doubt any of that got into Brainstorm’s processor.
“Fine, fine, doctor,” Brainstorm says, waving your hand in the air in a placating gesture. “No messing with pain receptors. But I still want to know about the wiring and all that. So… can you make the swap?”
First Aid turns to you.
“It’s your hand, Ratchet.”
“Go ahead. Let me know if I can help in any way.”
“I’m good, but thanks for offering.”
“Actually,” Brainstorm says when you take a step towards the door, “can you stay for moral support?”
You do. You have to bite your own tongue during the surgery so as not to offer any (most definitely unwanted and actually unnecessary, considering First Aid was the one to attach Pharma’s hand to your wrist and he’d done a perfect job) advice.
.
.
.
.
Brainstorm spends the day going around the ship wearing your right hand and muttering frustrated curses every single time he drops something because he has forgotten that that hand doesn’t work properly, and every single time his right wing bumps against the wall because your old hand is heavier than his own and he keeps leaning to that side.
You spend the day with him, catching what he drops, forcing him to fix his posture every now and then and telling yourself you’re doing it because you don’t trust him not to mess with the pain receptors if left alone (it’s not because you’re worried about the possibility of Brainstorm hurting himself more than he expected to if he starts toying with the pain receptors).
If you had to look at the bright side of spending the day watching over Brainstorm, it’s that constantly worrying about the way your hand makes him lean to the side has made you aware of how Pharma’s hand has the exact effect on you, so it’s easy to remain upright throughout the day.
In the afternoon the both of you return to the medibay, where First Aid puts Brainstorm’s hand in its place and sends him on his way. Brainstorm takes your old hand with him because he says he still needs it for reference.
First Aid gestures for you to follow him to his office, points at a chair and sits down. You remain on your feet.
“New hands? I thought you were completely against them.”
You shrug. “I’m not planning to use them, but Brainstorm was going to make them anyway. I thought it would be better if I collaborated.”
“Are they going to be just hands or is he going to put secret weapons in them?”
You slowly move your head from side to side as you say, “I told him not to, but I’m still not sure he will listen to me.”
“We can always get Perceptor to look them over before attaching them to you.”
“I’ve already said I’m not going to use them.”
Another head tilt, but this time you think it reflects disbelief.
“So you’re going to spend the rest of your life with a hand that doesn’t move? You’re retired, Ratchet. How good a surgeon you are no longer matters. If the new hand isn’t like the old one, who cares? It’s still better than what you have now.”
“Brainstorm said something similar.”
“Normally I’d be worried about agreeing with him on something, but in this case…” First Aid makes a vague gesture. “If two entirely different people think you’re not making any sense, they’re probably right.”
You want to argue. You are going to argue. You open your mouth to do so, but First Aid says, “Swallow your pride and get yourself that new hand, Ratchet.”
.
.
.
.
You don’t hear from Brainstorm after that and you don’t see him around either. On the fourth day you decide it’s been too long and head for his lab, where you find him surrounded by dozens of models of your hands. In over half of them they have some sort of weapon attached.
“I said-”
“I know. No weapons. I know!” With an abrupt gesture, Brainstorm turns off all the models, then slumps on a chair. “It’s just so easy, you know? So many weapons you can build, so many places to hide them, so many different ways to activate them. Endless possibilities for such a small thing! But you don’t want any weapons, you just want hands. But not any hands, you want the best hands. I can make the best hands. Easily. But I can also make weapons. So many weapons…”
He brings up a 3D model. There has been a re-routing of the energon flow so that it can be shot.
“I started fine. The hands were perfect. But then I thought, ‘Maybe just designing a weapon to put in here wouldn’t be bad. I can just design it, there’s no need to include it in the final product.’ So I did. And then I designed another one and another one and another one. I came up with all these designs and the perfect way to integrate them into an already existing hand faster than I mapped the wiring of the new, harmless one you want.” He crosses his arms, looks up at the model. “Are you sure you don’t want just one gun? A small one. It doesn’t even have to be functional.”
“Why are you so adamant on me having a weapon?”
“I'm not, not really. It’s just that I am a weapons engineer and you’re not letting me engineer a weapon.” He brings up a translucent 3D model of what looks like normal hands. “These are the ones I’m making for you. No extra stuff; just regular metal, regular energon, regular wiring, regular everything.”
You walk closer to the models and examine them both. They are works of art, you can see the detail that went into each joint, the delicate connections, the adjustments made on pressure plates.
“What’s that?” you ask, pointing at the extra wiring that’s present in every finger.
“A better control system. Allows for more delicate movements. It’s also connected to an entirely different section of your nervous system, so it’s also kind of a backup. If something happened to the motor area of your brain module so you couldn’t move your fingers, well, the truth is that you would still be able to because those wires are there. There’s also a remote control! If someone cut off your hands, you’d still be able to move them.”
Well, that’s slightly disturbing. You just nod and turn back to the models.
“Is it possible to see more of the design?” you ask.
“Are you admiring my work?” Brainstorm asks, his tone making it obvious that there’s a smile there. You don’t want to turn to look at him, you can almost feel the smugness and the pride radiating off him.
“It is certainly impressive,” you say, your eyes not leaving the index finger of the right hand, on which there is what looks like a groove. “And what’s this?”
“It’s to help keep the tools in position. It should make them stay in place with less effort when you use them. It’s something I noticed in human surgeons, that because their fingers are soft and squishy, their tools sink a bit into them when they’re using them and it gives them a better hold, while in our case, sometimes the metal of the tools slips over the metal of our hands.”
“That’s a good idea,” you say, nodding. You wonder if he could add the groove to the index finger of Pharma’s hand. There’s nothing wrong with a minor improvement upon the original.
Brainstorm hands you a datapad and you sit down to go through the design for your new hands. They look perfect. The only remaining question is whether or not they will be up to your standards when it’s time to use them.
But, as both Brainstorm and First Aid have pointed out, they are bound to be better than what you have right now.
.
.
.
.
The hands are finished in three days, which you spent with Brainstorm in his lab, discussing the possibility of tailored hands now that the war is over. The idea is simple: better hands for the job you have, either made from scratch or the product of modifications on the ones you already have. You think he might have finished making your hands sooner if he hadn’t been constantly distracted by the conversation and the need to stop what he was doing to take down notes of what was being said.
You feel like there’s something that you should be saying, something about taking a weapons engineer who no longer has a war and redirecting his skills. Maybe there’s a parallel you should be drawing somewhere, but it’s not a perfect parallel and you don’t like it, so you let the thought pass.
Brainstorm insists on making the set instead of just the left hand, carries the right one with him to the medibay even though you’ve purposely left it behind when you go to get the left one attached.
First Aid doesn’t hide his amazement at what Brainstorm has done.
“These are beautiful,” he says, turning them around, examining the details.
Ambulon comes closer as well, praises the design and the extras he can see directly, like the groove.
Brainstorm doesn’t hide his pride, talks about the process throughout the entire operation and only shuts up when it’s time for you to say what you think of the new hand.
You flex the fingers (your fingers), grab some tools to get an idea of your range of movement, poke at the palm to test the pressure plates and pain receptors. It’s a really good hand. But something feels odd.
You stand up and walk around, your balance still slightly off, just like before the surgery, the weight of Pharma’s hand throwing you to the right. This shouldn’t be happening, not when you asked Brainstorm to make the new hand like Pharma’s.
Ah, of course. This hand wasn’t modeled after Pharma’s.
You turn to give Brainstorm an angry, reproaching look and again you wish you had eyebrows you could raise, but he shrugs. You’re sure that if he could, he’d be smiling smugly.
He got you. He set out to prove constructed hands could be better and he’s forcing you to either get the set or live the rest of your life with a mismatched pair (imperfect, out of balance). You don’t appreciate being manipulated like this.
You groan. You don’t want to lose, but you also don’t want to have mismatched hands (not that it matters now that you’re retired). And it sounds nice to be yourself (even if the constructed hands end up not being better, at least they feel yours).
You raise your arms in front of you and study your hands. They look the same, you’re the only one who knows the difference between them (the true difference, not details like which one weighs more or what changes Brainstorm did in the design). But Pharma’s hand is heavier and you’re getting tired of carrying it around, you’re getting tired of constantly adjusting your posture, you’re getting tired of carrying that last good thing that remains of him (like you can separate a mech’s actions from his entire being, like he hadn’t used those same hands to create the virus and kill). You don’t have to do it, nobody asked you to, nobody even knows that that’s what you’re doing and sometimes you ask yourself if it’s even worth it to do it, if Pharma deserves it. Frankly, you don’t have a single good reason to continue using that hand.
Except that this hand was forged and the other one wasn’t. That’s still a very good reason. Yes. It definitely is.
(But you could be truly whole again. Swallow your pride and take the new hand, Ratchet.)
Fine, then. If you need reasons, you can give yourself reasons.
What had Brainstorm said about the scientific method? That you needed proof.
Theory: forged hands are better.
Have you ever worked using constructed hands? No.
Can you prove your point with the information you currently have? No.
Conclusion: further study is needed.
Fine.
Swallow your pride and take the new hand, Ratchet.
This is my Vow:
To perfect my medical art and never to swerve from it so long as God grants me my office, and to oppose all false medicines and teachings.
Then to love the sick, each and all of them, more than if my own body were at stake.
Not to judge superficially, but by symptoms, nor to administer any medicine without understanding, nor to collect any money without earning it.
Not to trust any apothecary, nor to do any violence to any child.
Not to guess, but to know.- Paracelsus