Persephone Astrid's YarrJournal

“Euuugh!” Persephone Astrid gargled as she regained consciousness. Unable to speak because of the plastic ventilation tube in her throat, she thrashed helplessly against the restraints which held her hands at her sides. She kicked, and found that her ankles were similarly bound. Panic gripped her, and her body heaved in the white tub filled with pink medical goop. Half-blinded by the goop in her eyes, she continued to gasp and thrash for nearly a minute, before she surrendered to the situation and slumped.

Okay Persephone, let’s think this through, she thought. The last time she’d been killed in her ship’s capsule, she had awaken in a similar state, except that the time before she was not held fast with medical restraints. She’d been able to sit up right away, clear her airway, and move freely in the clone room. Why would they do this? Her thoughts returned to the circumstances of her most recent death, and she felt her heart race anew as she remembered her brush with death–the screech of the capsule breach alarm, the pain of her ears popping as the capsule explosively decompressed, and the nearly instantaneous loss of consciousness that had followed as she wordlessly implored her capsule’s neuroscanner to activate.

Oh my God, that was close, she thought. I guess the scanner did fire after all, but still, why the restraints? That doesn’t make sense.

Persephone swiveled her head to the left at the sound of the small clone chamber’s door opening, but she could only see a blur through the goop in her eyes. Two silhouettes dressed in white entered. One of them spoke with a woman’s voice.

“Well well,” One of the figures said in a pleased tone of voice. “You’re awake. Congratulations for that. We didn’t know if you’d pull through or not. You’re probably wondering about the restraints. They’re for your own good. Let me explain. Oh, Leyton, be a dear and clear her eyes, would you?”

Persephone heard the sound of a cabinet opening and closing, and then the taller of the two silhouettes moved closer and wiped her eyes with a towel. Persephone blinked at the light, then her vision focused and she recognized Leyton St. Genevieve. Persephone remembered him from the last time she’d awakened in a brand new body. He’d been there to greet her upon her return to life, and had done his job in a rather bored fashion. She looked to the other figure, and guessed that she was Leyton’s superior, probably a doctor. She wore her hair in a neat bun, and her ID badge read: Dr. Cassandra Heywood.

Thought so, Persephone thought, reading the doctor’s badge.

Doctor Heywood leaned over Persephone and shone a brilliant white light into one eye, then the other, and she nodded. “Pupil response is normal, and she’s tracking us. I think she’s conscious.” She addressed Persephone: “Okay hon, let’s get this ventilator tube out. If you are ready for us to do that, nod yes.”

Persephone nodded vigorously. She was certainly ready for that.

“Terrific,” Doctor Heywood said as she grasped the tube. “Get ready, on three: one, two, three.” She slid the tube out of Persephone’s mouth with a firm continuous pull, and Persephone coughed and gagged briefly, then spat a prodigious gob of phlegm. Her first breath of fresh air felt good as it filled her lungs.

“Thank you,” Persephone croaked. “Now why am I tied up?” She flexed against the restraints again, to illustrate her plight.

Doctor Heywood sat on the stool which faced the tub and crossed her legs. Leyton continued to dab at Persephone’s face, wiping a bit of dried clone goop and saliva from her face with a small towel. The doctor took a deep breath and decided how best to proceed.

“Well,” she said. “It’s for your safety and to lessen the shock. You see, your neuroscanner malfunctioned and fired later than we thought possible, well outside of the margin for a safe recovery of the capsuleer’s brain. In short: we weren’t sure how much of you made the trip back here to the medical center. How do you feel?”

Persephone considered that. “I feel fine, I suppose, all things considered. I mean, something feels a bit off, but I can’t put my finger on it, but I remember everything that I should, you know? I know who I am, I know what I do for a living, I know my friends and my allies, and I remember everything that happened right up to, well, right up to before this moment.”

“That’s good, that’s very good,” Doctor Heywood said, obviously pleased. After allowing herself a moment of satisfaction, she turned businesslike and professional again. “What I’m going to tell you might be hard to accept, so I need you to listen with an open mind, okay?”

Persephone nodded. What in the world could this mean, she wondered, noticing how Doctor Heywood had fluidly shifted from ‘good news mode’ to ‘bad news mode.’ “Okay,” she agreed, readying herself for the bad news.

“When your data downloaded into your clone body, it didn’t take. Some part of your previous brain’s pattern had been damaged or mis-scanned, and was not compatible with the brain that waited in your clone body. There was an immediate rejection, and your clone died in the vat,” Doctor Heywood explained, describing the complicated situation in what she hoped was simple language. “We ran a comparison of the two images, the stored brain pattern in the clone buffer, and the one that resulted after the download, and there was a part of your brain that had changed, been damaged really, so we had to fast-grow another body for you with a custom alteration to the empty brain to accomodate the incoming image file.”

“So I’m brain damaged?” Persephone asked. “I don’t feel brain damaged. I feel about as smart as always.”

“Not that kind of brain damage,” the doctor explained, tapping her clipboard idly. “There’s a lot to your brain that has nothing to do with intelligence or sapience. The damage was in a regulatory part of the brain, deep in the center, in the central region of the bed nucleus of the stria terininalis.”

“I must have missed that day in anatomy class,” Persephone joked.

“Everyone does,” the doctor continued. “I would have been very impressed if you had recognized it. It is abbreviated the BSTc, and it’s the gland that determines gender identity.”

“It does what?” Persephone asked, wide-eyed. With a sinking feeling, she started to understand why she felt odd. She tried to look down at her body, but her field of view was limited by her position in the tub.

“The BSTc is usually one size in men, and another size in women,” Doctor Heywood said. “And your first clone rejected and died because of the size mismatch. We had to grow you a new clone body with an appropriately-sized BSTc, and hope that your brain pattern would work properly. It did, but there may be some adjustments to make later.”

“Just lay it out Doctor,” Persephone said, exasperated. “What does all this mean to me?”

“Your body is female in every way except for one tiny part of your brain, the BSTc. Your BSTc is male. It won’t happen right away, but sooner or later you’re probably going to want to become male. Like it or not, a large part of your identity as a human is determined by tiny glands inside your brain, and you’ve got one that’s going to tell you that you want to be a man.”

Persephone blinked slowly. They had definitely not warned her of this possibility in the Federal Navy Academy.

“That’s really weird,” Persephone said numbly. “All right, can you untie me now please? I’m too stunned to do anything stupid or dangerous, I promise.”

Doctor Heywood nodded, and Leyton removed the padded vinyl cuffs and dropped them into a plastic bag for cleaning.

“Just take your time getting cleaned up,” Doctor Heywood said gently. “I know it’s a lot to take in all at once. Look at it this way: you’re still alive, okay? You’re already doing a lot better than anyone had hoped. Once you’re ready, meet me in my office and we’ll talk some more.”

Persephone looked down at herself, and wondered how she would look if she were muscular and hairy and had. . . she shook her head, interrupting that train of thought.

“Okay,” Persephone said quietly. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. Is the shower still in the usual place?”

To be continued.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 9:32 pm and is filed under IC Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.