89P13

89P13 is the first to undergo the pilot cerebral enhancement for it has displayed the most intelligence with its conditioning and training. Your team is still working out the cybernetic kinks in its spinal cord, but its brain should still be workable.  It is critical the subjects are awake for this operation as well. P13 is strapped down and tries in a futile attempt burrow away into the restraints this time instead of fighting them. It shakes its head wildly as its fur is shaved, resulting in a cut on its right ear. When you reach for the saw you have to crank the music up in the operating theater to drown out its irritating ear-splitting shrieks, every one of the pain receptors in its 3’ body firing all at once. You can hardly contain your excitement as you open its little skull, like a lid uncovering treasure beneath. A canvass ready to be worked. So much potential so much room for improvement. No number of textbooks or diagrams or graphics have prepared you for this beauty. This primal blank slate on which you can paint and mold, shape and manipulate. Granted it’s not exactly easy to make out such beauty, the knotted brain tissue under the blood and fluid. P13’s breathing goes from panicked to hyperventilating, chewing madly at its muzzle which only nicks its tongue sharply. You reach in with your scalpel aimed at the cerebral cortex.

“We don’t want to scramble its brain too badly,” you teach as you go. “We don’t want a repeat of the 89P02,” you remember seeing the data pad on that subject.  “We still want it to be functional.”  89P13’s body twitches as you work. An eye twitch there, a leg spasm here. It moans when you fix the first cybernetic implant into its neural tissue, pressing gently until it clicks, and you hook up the wiring to the stem of its brain. The little jelly like organ quivers in its fluid, thick and clear, it sticks to your gloves. 89P13 snarls and tries to snap but the muzzle. It stops snapping when you jam in the fourth cybernetic receiver into its frontal cortex. Instead it only lets out a bedraggled moan and goes rigid as a board. You check its vitals, still functioning. Drool drips from its opened mouth as you finish with the last cybernetic panel; for this surgery at least. You fix a clear enhanced glass helmet to 89P13’s head and attach all the wiring necessary. It will be suspended in the sensory deprivation chamber until all of the cranial and subcarinal cybernetics are put in place.

“Look it’s foot is jiggling like a dog!” One of the technicians observes haughtily as you supervise the post-op set up. Indeed, the subjects left leg incessantly kicks at the air. Must be a fluke, you hope that is the only defect. You seal the chamber, watching 89P13’s fur ripple in the luke-warm jelly in which it is suspended. Its eyes are closed, and you are able to breathe a sigh of relief.

___

“This is wrong,” the orthopedic specialist makes up their mind after 89P13’s fourth cerebral surgery. The subject fractured its own skull trying to get free of the restraining helmet. Presently you have your wrist embedded in the center 89P13’s brain, between the bridge of the two hemispheres. Gently of course as you place the tiny cybernetic enhancement deep in the slick tissue. The subject has since given up its mad rabid frenzy of fighting. It lets out a lethargic moan every now and then, its tail swooshing when you hit a nerve. “I didn’t come here to torture animals.” 

“Why did you come here?”

“To study, to observe, to learn. But this,” they gesture to 89P13’s bare chest. Indeed, its fur has gotten increasingly mangier and has fallen out in clumps. Its flesh raised and irritated, red from where the skin was graphed over the bulkier enhancements. “This is wrong.”

 “What,” you narrow your eyes through your magnifiers and glance up at the internal images of P13’s brain cavity; just a few more inches. You push at the soft neural receptors an meticulously attach the cybernetic chip. “What did you expect to do? Read all day? Oh no, we are doing things here. Actual things. We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”

“Pushing the boundaries of what is ethical,” the surgeon challenges. “This, this is not ethical.”  You watch them look at 89P13. You’ve seen that look before, sympathy. You retract your hand from P13’s brain and it lets out a squeal. “The doctor has been on their feet all day,” you look to the security guards standing by (P16 leapt out of its restraints mid operation yesterday and mauled an attending’s face so ever since then guards have been posted for each procedure). They approach the doctor, grabbing them by their arms and escorting them roughly from the room. “This is sadistic! Madness!” Their cries are muffled by P13’s keening as you begin to replace the top of its skull and reach for the laser to reattach the flesh. You will deal with the insubordination later.

P16 is becoming too clever for its own good. After the initial surgery it begins to respond to yes and no commands during its conditioning.

“Is that the right cartridge 89P16?” You ask through the protective glass. The subject turns to you and for the first time it nods in recognition. It is right.

“If you chew out those cybernetics you will most likely bleed to death,” you warn it after its fifth test of the day, this one a lethal maze of spikes and electricity. P16 looks at you expecting a reward but you only look down at the wretched thing. There is no fur left on it and the scars run like pink rivers through is torso. P16 blinks at you, its eyes attentive. “Do you understand me P16? Those cybernetic panels are connected to your nerves.” You point to the grey metal sticking through its skull. The subject nods vigorously when you ask it if it understands. The next morning you go to fetch P16 and it is dead in its cage, a bloody cybernetic panel lying beside it. Brain tissue still sticking the metal. Your team speculates as to whether or not it was intentional. It makes no difference to you. You are down to subjects P11 P12 and P13.