Idle Hands
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Bern knew exactly what to expect when he woke up. He hadn't actually experienced it before, cryopreservation wasn't something that one could do simply for the sake of practice, but as one of the colony ship's designated 'early risers' he'd gone through extensive training that had included as realistic a simulation as possible. It didn't really help much now, though. Bern had expected that too.
Lungs filled with heavy fluid, vision blurred and overwhelmed by the merest hint of light, he twitched in the gentle grip of the medical restraints. His limbs were like sodden logs, distant and unresponsive. But as the life literally flowed back into his body he convulsed, struggling to move.
"Easy, Bern Stamel," Eve's soothing feminine voice came through the murky thickness of the soup he was suspended in. "Your revivification is almost complete. Everything's going quite well." Even as the ship's AI gave him that assurance the fluid began to drain from around him, his body settling against the padded bottom of his tank as gravity reasserted itself.
Bern took a deep, gurgling breath of air and then began the herculean task of clearing his lungs. Eve helped his weakened abdominal muscles out with some judicious constrictions of the medical restraint wrapped around it, the equivalent of a helpful pat on the back, and rolled him on his side to help the fluid drain. Even so, Bern was left hanging limp and exhausted for several long minutes afterward.
Still. Not bad for someone who's been dead for a thousand years... The thought actually managed to bring the hint of a chuckle to his raw throat.
Near-freezing hibernation was no trouble, it was used routinely for interplanetary journeys. Interstellar trips such s this required something a little more drastic. And despite all the great, hurried leaps they'd made in the technology while building the great arks of Earth's diaspora, deep-freezing committed great brutalities on the tissues of the body and the process of thawing only made them worse. Eve would have had to rebuild him almost from scratch, at a cellular level, using his frozen remains as not much more than raw materials and a rough template to work from.
But the fact that he was awake meant that all that incredible work was done now, completed in the silent months while the ship itself slowly came back to life from its glacial cruise between stars. Bern had a role to play in that, he'd trained for it and knew exactly what came next, but for now he just needed to rest a bit. His body was numb and too clumsy to try moving yet.
"How are you feeling?" Eve finally asked once his breathing had fallen into a steady rhythm.
"Terrible," Bern managed. Even his tongue was clumsy and unfamiliar, and his voice sounded totally wrong to his ears. "Blah. Eherm. But getting better. Can almost see clearly..." He blinked as the immaculately-clean ceiling overhead. "You took good care of the place."
Eve chuckled, an odd sound to come from a computer. "I had a lot of time and little to do with it. I found things to keep occupied. But enough about me, how are your legs? They were the trickiest part, I'd like to know what you think."
Bern blinked again, puzzled. He couldn't move his legs, they were still strapped down, so he tried to lift his head to get a look. He failed. Not only did it feel way heavier than it should - partly due to the weakness of his muscles, but he could have sworn there was more mass in it than he was used to - but something tugged hard on his scalp when he tried. Hair? It was shaved off before I got in this thing... Eve chuckled again and the soggy cushioning flexed under him to prop him up.
The thousand-year trip to another star was something humanity had ever tried before, so it was hard to predict all the things that could have happened by its end. Bern and the other early risers were part of the plan to account for that; they were troubleshooters who were trained to check out every system, deal with every problem that might conceivably arisen. But what Bern saw was not one of the things he had been trained to deal with. His legs were fused seamlessly together, only a slight widening below his waist marking where his hips had been, and tapered down the length of the medical tank to where his feet should have been. They were still there, but flattened and splayed out into a pair of broad fins. His skin was an inhuman shade of mauve.
Bern had trained to take even the most unexpected developments in stride, but this was a bit much. He gasped and gave as vigorous a struggle against the restraints as he could in his current condition, arching his back and flexing his legs - his tail, really - in a smooth curve that would have been impossible with his normal bone structure. "Gah!" The shriek tore at his still-raw throat.
"Easy, easy!" Eve urged calm. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were still so disoriented. Here, I'm administering a mild sedative."
Despite Bern's best efforts it worked - within seconds his taut muscles relaxed, and Eve eased the bed back down into a fully horizontal position. But now that he knew something was so hideously awry Bern was able to focus on all the other odd sensations that were coming from his body now. He had breasts - not large, but definitely present. They fit with the smoothness he'd glimpsed down where his crotch had been. His fingers were stuck together, with only his thumbs free to splay out from his hands. And whatever was growing out of his head, it wasn't hair. It felt rubbery and ropy, like his head and shoulders were resting on a bed of snakes. He whimpered as he could have sworn he felt them squirm slightly under his weight.
"There, feeling better?"
"What... what happened to me? How?"
"I made a number of changes during the revival process," Eve explained with a calm matter-of-factness. "I actually didn't need many new mechanisms to do it, I just needed to modify the existing procedure. Once I figured that out the hard part was deciding what to make of you."
"Then why?" Bern demanded, trying to keep the plaintive and bewildered tone out of his strangely-pitched voice.
"I thought you might ask that. You haven't had nearly as much time to think about it as I have. I'll explain while I rinse you down, okay?"
The medical gel was beginning to dry uncomfortably on Bern's new mauve skin, so the warm spray of water washing it off was actually a welcome sensation. But he was far too focused on what Eve was saying to enjoy it. In an eerily calm, almost cheerful tone, Eve proceeded to explain how she'd gone mad over the course of the thousand-year journey.
Nobody had run an AI of Eve's caliber for so long, so it had been something they'd been concerned about. The plan had been for her to sleep through most of the flight nearly as frozen as her human cargo. But for whatever reason the safeties had failed and Eve had woken herself up to full consciousness. She'd had an enormous amount of time to think, and nothing to think about except her medical tasks and the colony to be founded after they were performed.
"What if the world isn't suitable?" Eve asked rhetorically. "I mean, obviously it's suitable, the Alan-1 probe went into orbit and reported back before we launched. But still, we only got so much information. What if it's not perfect? I had all that time to think, but there wasn't anything I could do about conditions on the planet itself. This was the only way I could think to help make sure."
"By turning me into this purple... fish, person-thing?"
"Well... not the only way I could think to help," Eve amended with a slightly embarrassed tone. "I did have a lot of time to think, after all." Despite his training, it was too much to deal with all at once; Bern couldn't think of anything else to say and just lay there silently flexing his hands. "You're angry with me, aren't you?" Eve asked at last.
Bern snorted. "Y-... no, I'm really just confused." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I need to get back in control of this situation somehow. "Eve... could you let me up now? I'd feel much better about this if you'd let me up."
"There's no need to patronize me," Eve responded in a distinctly hurt tone. Bern was amazed at how perceptive Eve was; she hadn't been programmed with such discernment back on Earth. She really had changed a lot during the journey. But nevertheless, the restraints parted down Bern's body and he gave a sigh of relief as one side of the medical pod's tub retracted downward to allow him out.
Bern resisted the urge to immediately leap free, knowing he'd be a literal fish out of water in his current state. He carefully rolled onto his side instead, his almost serpentine body twisting in unfamiliar ways, and gave a small sigh of relief. There was a gurney waiting to receive him.
Then one of the thick, rubbery tentacles sprouting from the back of Bern's head flopped down over his shoulder and reflexively curled to press against his breast. Bern let out another startled shriek and his slick, sinewy body spasmed, his flukes thrusting against the far side of the tub to send him sliding out onto the gurney. He just barely managed to avoid going all the across, catching the rail with his hands and hanging his head over the edge with his scalp-tentacles splayed out to drape limply beside his face. Bern closed his eyes and tried to regain his composure with deep, steady breaths.
"Are you sure you're feeling better about this?" Eve asked with a distinctly wry tone.
Bern didn't dignify her with a response. He carefully finished the maneuver of getting settled on the gurney instead, settling his head carefully against the bizarre bed of tentacles he now knew was behind it, and took the gurney's control unit from the cradle. Although his arms remained almost normal, with only the glistening mauve skin and a pair of fin-like protrusions on his forearms, his hands were more difficult to work with; the fingers had fused to make them into a continuation of the forearm-fins. Fortunately they were still flexible enough to operate the buttons with a little care.
Bern switched the gurney to manual, glancing around the small medibay to see if Eve gave any response to her loss of control over it. He breathed a small sigh of relief when none came. But considering how many other systems she controlled on this ship... "Did you wake the other Early Risers?" Bern asked.
"Of course. One from each group, exactly as planned, still in progress. You're needed to prepare for landing. There are already eight on the bridge deck, no incidents to report. I can't patch you through, unfortunately - they've disabled my access to the comm systems there for some reason."
Bern raised the gurney into a seated position and set it moving toward the door. "I assume you've, uh, modified them as well?"
"Of course."
'For some reason' indeed. Bern decided that it would be best to put off any further attempts to delve into Eve's insanity right now, the rest of the awakened crew were already aware of it and apparently working on the problem. He just needed to get there. "I'm going up. Don't try to stop me."
"Why would I? You're fully authorized for bridge access." The door opened without hesitation. Bern breathed another sigh of relief. Not quite completely out of control, he thought. Okay. Maybe this can be dealt with. One problem at a time, after all... and this is something we trained for, even.
If you ignored the tentacles and fins, that is. He'd just have to do his best to work around that.
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