The single ward uses white and yellow as the main tone as the decoration style. Warm yellow tones and a home-like decoration style can slightly reduce the psychological pressure of patients in terms of environmental cues. However, the medical and life-support equipment installed on the large white tile floor still ruthlessly revealed that this is the reality of a hospital.
There is a central control panel for ward facilities at the door. Wen Yue adjusted the equipment parameters with seemingly familiarity, hoping to straighten the hospital bed. As she clicked, the central air conditioner blew out hot air and sprayed cold air, and even pulled out a prosthetic maintenance machine from under the floor tiles. Just as she was wondering which UI interface this thing was hidden under, she turned on the toilet and toilet hygiene system for paralyzed patients, but she still couldn't find the button to adjust the height of the bed?
Wen Yue simply stopped looking, took the casual holographic tablet provided by the hospital, sat back in the chair and crossed her legs. The small blanket was spread on her jade-white calves. She swayed her legs carelessly, and her white cotton slippers hung half-hooked on her toes and began to sway. Although there was air-conditioning blowing, she still felt that her legs were too hot when folded, so she simply leaned down and crossed her legs, not caring that if someone passed by the door, they might see the pool of spring water.
Unexpectedly, as soon as she lay down like this, Wen Yue saw a crank handle at the end of the bed, and she suddenly felt dumbfounded. He threw the tablet onto the bed and shook it twelve times before adjusting the bed to a sitting position.
Who knew the security bureau was even equipped with such an old-fashioned hospital bed crank? It feels like a house with a gorgeous, delicate and complicated rococo style, with a robot servant in a tuxedo, but the quilt on the big bed is a big red mandarin duck quilt.
The bed board was pressed against Wen Yue's shoulders, coldly. She looked at the chair at the door. It was a family chair, but it was destined not to sit on her relatives.
She remembers very clearly that when she was a child, or just when she first went to school, she would sit on the family chair in the ward and watch her grandpa's face grow grayer day by day. When she wasn't suffering from cancer pain, her grandfather would ask Wen Yue to help and turn the crank together. A pair of big hands covered with age spots covered a pair of small fleshy palms, and then the hospital bed was shaken upright with a "squeaking" sound.
More than twenty years have passed, and Wen Yue realizes that she no longer remembers her grandfather very well. Most childhood memories are not continuous, but sectional. Wen Yue tried hard to recall, except for the impression of turning the handle together, that she was standing outside the crowd gathered on the hospital bed, trying to see clearly what was happening in the crowd.
So she understood what death was very early, and at that time she would not use words such as going to a far away place to explain the departure of relatives to children. After all, more than 20 years ago, departure usually meant sacrifice. It is glorious and noble. It is often heard that so-and-so’s father and so-and-so’s mother sacrificed their lives for the motherland in the war between alien beasts on the surface.
Wen Yue moved her eyes away from the crank. She raised her face sideways, her cheeks glowing with luster, and she looked out the window calmly. The curtains are double-layered, one layer of thick velvet and one layer of thin gauze. When the false sun reaches its peak at noon, sparse light seems to be transmitted. There is no fruit or kettle on the coffee table, but there is a porcelain vase with a plastic flower without emotion. In fact, it does not matter whether it is a real flower or a fake flower. A real flower will not live long in this room where the temperature remains constant without modification, and the price of a real flower is still not cheap.
She couldn't remember what her grandfather said to her before he left. Wen Yue could only imagine what her grandfather said after he kept repeating "Yue Yue". Most of them were about honoring their parents and being a useful person to the motherland. She couldn't remember this kind of cliche, but she remembered the sound of "Yue Yue".
Yes, she was first called Wen Yue, with the word "王" next to "Yue", the legendary gem.
Until twelve years ago, it was her turn to see a group of soldiers holding an urn and the logo of the Home of Invalids at her door. She was not surprised that her father died in the battle on the surface, so she did not collapse at the door like her mother. She hugged her trembling brother and protected him behind her like a hen. Wen Yue remembered that at that time, she had very long braids, like braids, and was held tightly by her brother, which made her scalp hurt, just like the pain she feels now.
But what she didn't expect was that after her father's funeral, her name suddenly dropped the word "王" and changed it to "月". The reason was that jade was too hard and it was better for girls to be softer.
After that, Wen Yue was really like the moon hanging in the sky. She scored extremely well in both the assigned examination and the unified examination. Along the way, she went to Chaoqiu University, second only to Yongshan University, and studied very "soft" literature. Then it was her turn. After serving in the military, gentleness never came back.
This memory passed by so fast, it seemed that when the electrode needle shocked her brain, the memory was confused. Wen Yue tilted her head, exposed her tiger teeth and stroked her back and forth, thinking about herself in the past, whether she was the one with long braids. The round moon, or the hard crystal with short hair.
Her head hurt when she thought about it, but she inadvertently saw herself on the projection wall opposite, looking like she was mentally retarded, so she couldn't help but laugh until she burst into tears.
She jumped out of bed and pulled out the holographic panel. Before the video connection, she suddenly thought that she was wearing a hospital gown, which was obviously inappropriate. So it turned into a phone call.
After the buzzer, accompanied by noisy voices, a slightly hoarse female voice reached Wen Yue's ears.
"Hey, who are you?"
Before Wen Yue could reply, there was another scolding voice, "I'm on the phone, wait a minute, oh, bring it over and sign it, right?"
"Hey, who are you?"
Wen Yue covered her lips with her hand, slid it down slowly, and finally said, "Mom, it's me, Xiaoyue."
"Xiaoyue, girl, I haven't called you in a long time."
Although she was in the Security Bureau, a confidential department, in an underground city, Wen Yue might not have a suitable occasion to make a private phone call for several months in a row. Besides, both she and her family were used to her disappearing from the world. First she served on the surface, then the Security Bureau. For six or seven years, she could count on one hand the number of times she had returned home.
Every time I go home, there is no good news, so why go back?
Who told her to have such a hard life?
"Did you sleep well in the workplace? It is even more important to sleep well when you are under pressure. Don't always stay up all night and not make up for it during the day. If you are under great pressure at work, take a nap during the busy schedule..."
Wen Yue only said one sentence, and then many words were said on the other end of the phone, mixed with a lot of overtones. The Guanri District Municipal Engineering Management Office, which is responsible for street maintenance, is never short of people.
Wen Yue listened quietly to her mother talking on the phone for more than ten minutes. Wen Yue only said five or six sentences in total.
Until the mother was about to be called away, she yelled "Wait one more minute!"
"Call your brother when you have time. Just call the Disabled Soldiers Center on the street from home. Please advise him to get a prosthetic body and find a job."
"I'm rich, Mom, very rich."
"How can he, a man, ask you to take the money you earn with his life? Please advise him, if that doesn't work, go work for your uncle."
"Xingxing only has one leg, so why would he go to the surface? He has been in poor health these past few years, and it's so cold on the ground that he can't bear to go there."
"Then he has to find a way to survive, right? You've already put a prosthetic body into your body, why can't he do it? He has to use a cane? When you get married and start a family, can you control him for decades?"
Wen Yue knew she couldn't explain to her mother the difference between the second-generation semi-internal exoskeleton and the prosthetic body. In her mother's eyes, there is no difference between the two. Besides, the Guanri District is not the Zixia District and is isolated by the Boundary Bridge. Changing the prosthetic body does not mean anything special.
The voices of the mother and daughter gradually became shriller. Obviously, Wen Yue's character did not come in vain. A good conversation turned into a hasty hangup after one party said, "We'll talk about it when you get home."
Wen Yue let out a sigh of relief and lay back on the bed. There had been a lot of trouble in the family for four or five years about whether her younger brother Wen Xuan was pretending to be a prosthetic body.
As an agent of the Security Bureau, Wen Yue deals with prosthetics at close range. Why don’t you know the pros and cons of prosthetics?
How could she be willing to equip her loved ones with things that would reduce their longevity?
The Security Bureau divides prosthetics into three types: bionic prosthetics, tool prosthetics, and combat prosthetics.
Bionic prostheses are basically used for disabled people to replace disabled limbs with bionic products that are completely consistent in appearance with the original viviparous limbs. In order to ensure maximum connection with the body's nerves and to operate like an arm, bionic prostheses will use biological materials as much as possible to be consistent with the original body in strength and function. Therefore, in terms of price, good bionic prostheses are much more expensive than combat prostheses, making them a minority among prosthetics.
Moreover, since flesh and blood alien bodies were first used on the surface of the earth, the performance of biological materials derived from alien animals has proven to be superior to that of synthetic biological materials produced through traditional formula processes. However, the underground has always maintained an absolute prohibition on any form of flesh and blood, and the same is true for bionic prosthetics. Ordinary people will be shot if they use it.
Although the use of bionic prosthetics made of exotic beast materials by senior officials of the Longjiang Group and members of the seven major branches is considered an open secret in the Security Bureau, for such a wealthy and noble person, the prosthetic materials are naturally the best among the best. There is no such thing. What genetic mutations have the potential to cause large-scale public harm.
Wen Yue naturally wants to install such a top-level bionic prosthetic body for her brother, but how can she have such a level? In order to configure such a top-notch prosthetic body, one first needs to adapt cells and genes to customize a unique prosthetic body, and then slowly select from a large number of exotic animal materials to create muscles, bones, skin and other elements.
After the elements are manufactured, they are sent to the laboratory to begin assembly. But it is not the final product, just a verification product. The final product was a limb capable of cell division that was quickly printed within 12 hours. After successful adaptation, it was almost the same as the original viviparous limb. Hair and nails can grow normally. Of course, if the buyer is willing, customization is also possible.
Sound familiar? Yes, this is human cloning and printing technology, and there are serious controversies in terms of ethics, morality, and legal public order. But even the transplantation of animal limbs is prohibited underground, so how can it be possible to accept the transplantation of cloned limbs?
At the very least, Wen Yue and her brother, Wen Xuan, would not be allowed to receive cloned limbs.
It's not about money and technology, it's about power. One day Wen Yue can become the director of the General Bureau of Security, below the first level and above the ten thousand level, of course.
As for the other two types, tool prosthetics and combat prosthetics, the main difference lies in their uses. Broadly speaking, the former directly replaces limbs with tools, such as prosthetic arms, and bolt cutters instead of palms, which can be used and replaced to maximize work efficiency.
The combat prosthetic body is like Ning Qing's projectile launcher, which mutates an entire arm into a grenade gun. The upper arm stores ammunition and the lower arm is the barrel. The mantis knife, gorilla hand, and monomolecular arm are the three most widely used military combat prostheses. A large number of disabled soldiers have been transformed to ensure that they are not forced to retire.
But the price is heavy. Everyone knows not to come into direct contact with chemicals. Meat is wrapped in iron, and iron is wrapped in meat. The iron is full of heavy metals. For the sake of reliability, it is a common method for all conventional prosthetics to forcibly shock the physical nerves to sense the electronic nerves.
A mechanic who installs a prosthetic wrist tool lubricates his robot hand every day. No matter how good the protection measures are, contact points will inevitably leak after a long time. If the wrist muscles at the contact point are necrotic, then fine, cut off the necrotic part, and then connect a piece of prosthetic body to the elbow, and if it's bad, connect it to the shoulder. Until nothing can be done, there are no more prosthetic contact points or mounting points on the body.
At this point, there is no value for transformation at all. This kind of people are the people at the bottom of the underground surface, prosthetic/alien pariahs.
Wen Yue has seen too many tragic cases of cyberpsychosis from the bureau's files. Even if it is the army that supports the prosthetic body the most, how many soldiers among them have sincere praise for the prosthetic body? Especially prosthetic doctors, except for the necessary modifications to the prosthetic body for surgery, no prosthetic body can be seen anywhere on the body. When Wen Yue was undergoing brain stimulation surgery, she was awake and saw that the surgical team, from the chief surgeon to the nurse, were all operating with bare hands and eyes.
It's all out of necessity.
In such an environment and under such circumstances, why would Wen Yue let her brother switch to a conventional prosthetic body? In her mind, even if her brother spends the rest of his life as a disabled person, it is better than wearing a prosthetic body, being normal for a few years, and then suffering from the complications of the prosthetic body and dying painfully from cancer for the rest of his life.
As a liberal arts student, she could have been exempted from military service, but she chose to join the army and joined the most difficult hunting unit. After she was discharged, she went to carry a gun and went to the Security Bureau. Isn't it just for the motherland, ideals, and family to serve like this?
At this thought, Wen Yue originally wanted to make a video call with her brother. After entering the phone number of the Disabled Soldiers Center, Wen Yue put it down before dialing the number.
Tell him when you can do it.
Wen Yue pursed her lips and let herself relax for a while. When her dull phoenix eyes glowed again, she contacted her doctor in charge and told the doctor directly that she gave up her sick leave and ended her treatment with the shortest and most convenient course of treatment. !
"Do you think I want to live to be sixty?" Facing the doctor in charge who rushed over in a hurry, Wen Yue spoke calmly, but could not refuse.
Brain electrical stimulation surgery is a minimally invasive surgery, and what is time-consuming is the observation of behavioral status after surgery. If Wen Yue is willing, skipping this step will not make it difficult for the hospital.
Wen Yue looked at the pothos on the bedside table and said to her heart, sister, if I want to do it, I will also be like the towering tree outside!
