BZRK (BZRK 1)

“Do we want to see what’s down there in color?” Plath asked.

“In a battle it’s very, very helpful.”

“I guess we’ll just move right past the fact that you have no right to be planting anything in our brains,” Plath snapped.

“Yes, we will,” Ophelia said. “We don’t have a lot of time. So let’s get to it, shall we? We’re going to activate one biot for each of you, and then place them. Down in the meat, as we say. I’ll have one of my own biots accompany yours, Keats. A guide.”

“Wait. What? Now?” Keats asked.

“Plath, you have the simpler task. Yours is a simple tour. But our friend Keats here is needed to take on an important job almost immediately.”

“Important job? What job?” Keats demanded, as Plath tried to avoid feeling like she was being slighted.

“Plath,” Ophelia said. “I have three biots working at the site of your aneurysm. The Teflon weave was dangerously weakened by multiple traumas last night. I’m like the boy in the story, the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. I’m holding it together, but I have other duties. And we need someone who can remain close to you.”

Plath hated the look of shocked concern on Keats’s face. It looked a lot like pity.

“And Wilkes will walk you through your own tour, Plath,” Ophelia said. “If she ever gets here.”

“I’m here.” Wilkes climbed out from a dark corner, rubbed sleep from her eyes, did a simultaneous smile and yawn, stretched and said, “Just have to pee first.” They heard her clattering down the stairs.

“Now listen to me, both of you,” Ophelia said, leaning in to them, clasping her hands like she was considering a prayer. “You’re going into a very, very strange world. What you see can be quite disturbing.”

“I’m already disturbed,” Plath said. “I can feel that … that thing … in my head again.” Then seeing that Keats had misinterpreted her, she snapped, “No, not the damned aneurysm. The biot. Mine. My biot.”

As though Plath had said nothing, Ophelia continued. “We all have this view of ourselves as a body and a mind. We think of our mind as a sort of thing outside ourselves, like a soul, a sort of essence of us. What it is, is a computer made out of synapses. A staggeringly sophisticated computer, but still in the end just a few pounds of slimy pink-and-gray tissue kept alive by oxygen and nitrogen carried there by superhighways of pumping blood.”

“You don’t believe in a soul?” Keats asked.

“I believe science is in this hand,” she held out her right, palm up, “and religion is in this hand.” She held out her left, but curled it to conceal the palm.

“I’ve seen too many MRIs of my brain to doubt that it’s just an organ,” Plath said.

“The greater surprise is the rest of the body,” Ophelia said. “We think of it as a body. A singular thing. Skin over organs and bones, but all of it ours. Human.” She shook her head slowly, dark brown eyes glowing. “We are not all human. We are closer to being an ecosystem. Like the rain forest. We are the home to thousands of life-forms. They live in us and on us. Like jaguars and frogs in the rain forest. In the human ecosystem there are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites.

“And we, even our human parts, the things that are us, often appear as if they are separate living things: and they are. Each blood cell is alive, independent of the rest of the ecosystem, at least somewhat. You’ll understand when you see a cell splitting right beneath your feet. Or someday if you end up in an artery, God forbid, when you see antibodies—they’ll look no bigger than pieces of gravel to you—flying to attach to a bacteria.”

“Lovely,” Keats said.

“Actually, it is lovely. Your body is under constant attack from microscopic enemies, and your—”

“Tell them about the mites,” Wilkes said. They hadn’t heard her come back in. To Plath and Keats, in a conspiratorial tone, she said, “Ophelia loves the cells. Loves her some enzymes. But that’s not what will give you nightmares.”

Wilkes sat on the table of the MRI machine and crossed her legs. This would have afforded an uncomfortable view but for the fact that beneath her skirt Wilkes had on bright green tights. “Yeah, see, you don’t go down into the blood highway unless you have screwed up bad. If you do, say to escape from nanobots, find yourself a teeny, tiny capillary to drill in, because a vein or an artery? That’s like diving into a crazy rockslide or something. That’s an avalanche, there. And who knows when or if you get back out. But. But that’s not the daily meat.”

“She’s right,” Ophelia said. “We spend our time in eyes and ears, in the brain itself. In order to reach those targets we travel through hair, across faces, eyebrows, and eyelashes. And along the way—”

“It’s like crossing a desert drawn by Dr. Seuss or Salvador Dalí,” Wilkes interrupted. “Wrinkles and crevices and hairs the size of trees.”

“And parasites. The two you’ll encounter with some frequency are mites—dust mites and demodex. Dust mites are about the size of your biots, but taller. They’ll look quite large to you in m-sub. Micro-subjective. Demodex are smaller. They’ll look like alligators crawling.”

“Jesus. Are they da

ngerous?” Keats asked.

“Naw,” Wilkes said, and waved that suggestion off. “They eat dead skin cells. They aren’t lions. Or tigers. Or bears. Oh, my. Pretty fucking creepy, though.” The fact seemed to delight her.

“The thing you need to understand is that you are visiting what might as well be an alien planet.” Ophelia tried out an encouraging smile. It didn’t work. So she sighed. “Plath, you and Wilkes will go walkies around Keats’s face and eye, and maybe the ear.”