2023-07-10: Eternity
- Cutscene: Eternity
- Cast: Leah Sadalbari, Krelian
- Where: Krelian's Laboratory, Etrenank, Solaris
- Date: 07-10-2023
- Summary: A miracle occurs. But should it have?
It is not relaxing, this 'maintenance'. There is a continual pressure Leah Sadalbari feels from it, though it would be generous to suggest she has sensation in her cybernetic limbs. She is on a bed that may as well be a table, reclined, looking up with her single eye towards the ceiling. Her hands are palm-up, open and skeletal, the metal exposed for this purpose. All she feels is 'cold', as usual. Cold, weight, and pressure.
But it is important to ensure that her limbs continue to function adequately.
At first, all proceeds as normal. She does not talk to the technician, the technician does not talk to her. She may as well be a statue or a robot herself. But the technician reaches up, then, and applies a hypospray to her neck, just below her blue hair.
"...?" Leah starts. "What is that…?" Almost immediately, she begins to feel drowsy. This isn't usual. They don't usually use this much anesthetic. It's a struggle to stay awake, the world around her seeming to fall away piece by piece.
And yet, in spite of her efforts, she falls asleep.
—
Eyelashes flutter. Eyes open. Leah Sadalbari finds herself looking up again, and does not realize at first that she is seeing in binocular vision. Her blue eyes stare up towards the smooth surface of a laboratory ceiling.
"...?"
Leah feels… light. Her heavy limbs are not so heavy. Her fingers curl, and she feels the soft texture of fabric against her fingertips. She feels the hard end of a fingernail brushing against the blanket.
The Watcher opens both eyes, and looks down at herself. Her metal limbs are no more. They have been replaced by smooth flesh and blood and bone, without the burns with which she is so familiar. She realizes the strangest sensation:
She is not in pain.
"What?" she starts, and starts to move. "What is…?"
A door slides open. Into the sterile white-and-steel of this room -- a room that by inches, Leah may begin to remember -- another enters, their footsteps ringing against the floor. Whoever they are, they come to a stop soon after, pausing at a point just out of view from her vantage point atop the cot.
They must be looking at a screen. They must be reviewing something.
From a different vantage point, she has seen the same play itself out: the review of notes after a procedure was complete. Krelian had, of course, permitted his right hand to witness what he does, when he must do it.
"...So, the conversion has been a success. And more quickly than I anticipated. How are you feeling, Leah?"
Krelian. Of course it's him. His footsteps bring him closer to the cot where he looms for a moment overhead her; pulling back a chair with the softer rattle of wheels against the metal floor, he takes a seat at her bedside.
"What have you done to me?"
He is quiet, for but the moment, sucking in a breath and exhaling it, noisily. "Why, I have saved your life. Or were you completely unaware that you were dying?" He smiles, and that, as he gazes down at her from her bedside, is joined with not the slightest crease or crinkle by his eyes.
He smiles because, of course, this is a good thing to have done. But he does not smile because the impetus behind the deed has been heartfelt.
"It had been a terrible tragedy. Your injuries, of course: beyond the scope of even the bleeding edge of Etrenank's research," he continues. "The most that could be done was the installation of your prostheses, and at cost to your wellbeing and health. But," he says, rapping the back of his hand against some tablet or device in his lap, "the circumstances have /changed/."
"I still have need of you, Leah. I can't afford to let you die."
"I was aware," Leah answers. "But I never expected to live very long, after the procedures. A chance to do something worthwhile with what remained of my life… this is what we agreed to." She pauses. "..." Leah looks down, with both eyes, lifting a hand to run through her hair. It's blonde; the dye has come out. "...I'd thought my work nearly finished. And you say you still have need of me?"
"For what? I have paved the way. What else needs to be done by me, rather than those I have prepared?"
From the arched eyebrow, this was not the answer he expected."...It is true," he says at last. "There are others. There are many others, if I so choose.But I am afraid that their use to me is... limited. Many are simply... pawns, to be placed on the board to my advantage."
But she is different, he implies. He has a use for her and what she might do that extends beyond that of a 'pawn'.
He straightens, the chair creaking as he shifts his weight. "The time of God's advent is fast approaching, Leah. There is much that needs to be done, more than I alone can accomplish. And... I would have you see that day with your own eyes."
"With my own eyes," Leah murmurs in return, consideringly. She has used similar implications and words herself, of course; she does not believe he does this out of affection. And yet…
"I had been prepared to die," Leah says. "To rejoin those I have lost. But, you say there is more that must be done. That it will be 'soon'." She reflects on this, looks down at her hands of flesh once again. "And I…"
"Very well," the Watcher says, straightening her back and regarding the man who saved her from a hospital bed those years ago. "For the world that must be. To set things to rights. But…"
"But I have to know," she says, and for once, for the barest moment, there is something far more human in it than the icon she has become. "...When God awakens, can I see him again? Will that be possible?"
"Yes. It will be soon," speaks a man who has lived for centuries. "Were it not for your... afflictions, you should have easily lived to see it come about." As she has now become, she should live to see it even if it were hundreds of years hence.
Once again he is giving her time and opportunity in equal measure.
Krelian looks her straight in the eyes.
"All shall again become one in God," he tells her. "I do not think this precludes those who have been."
Leah looks right back, unflinching, unblinking. The habits she has picked up do not abate quickly. She looks for something there, in his eyes.
"..."
It might be sophistry. It is not certain, after all. It might be a kind lie. Or it might be the truth as he can see it. She has no way of knowing; she has seen him use others, and used others in turn. But this…
"Then for now," Leah says at length, "That will do."
"I will serve."