Printed from https://writing.com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1951708-Strange-New-World-of-Transformation/cid/1858766-He-trades-you-a-set-of-high-tech-surgical-tools
Perhaps what they say about Frankie is true, you wonder to yourself on the bus journey home from school, as you sit next to a bloodstained leather-case of black market surgical tools.
You let yourself into the quiet, dark house and carry the heavy case through into the living room. Your parents are where they've been for the last five years, sitting completely motionless on the couches. The virtual reality visors clamped about their eyes flicker with electronic lights in the dark. Their faces hang limp, tongues lolling. It's been five years since they left you behind. One day they just logged into VR and never came back. You've survived okay well, living on in the hope that one day they'd return.
To your Velusion eyes accustomed to physical perfection, their bodies look grotesque, with bony limbs of wasted muscle and a fat belly on your father. Their hair hands in greasy, matted brown clumps. They have gone five years without rejuvenation treatment so that they are near 40 years old in appearance, positively unheard of in the cluster. They look ancient.
It is illegal to remove somebody from a simulation without their permission. It's also quite dangerous as it can damage the brain or even leave the mind trapped inside. Fortunately you have surgical tools now along with a basic level of anatomy knowledge zapped into your brain and limitless confidence. You open the case and upturn it. An array of used but well-maintained surgical implements tumbles out onto the carpet. Scalpels, bonesaws, cauterisers, you name it. You pick the sharpest thing you can find and set to work on the visor.
You start on dad first, pushing him onto his side so as best to acess the visor. His joints creak like rusty hinges when you move him. The visor is clamped to his skull so tightly that it can't be removed by hand, but you're confident that it can be cut off.
With a scalpel, you start cutting carefully away at the skin on the temples around the visor. Before long your hands are covered in blood and bits of matted hair, and the visor remains resolutely fixed to his head. As you cut deeper, hitting bone, you come to terrible discovery that the VR headset isn't just clamped on, it is in fact screwed directly into his skull.
"Fine. I hope you stay in there forever. I'm getting on just fine without you anyway!" you snap angrily, realising with dismay that there's no way you can remove it with the tools you have.
You throw the scalpel away angrily. There is a spray-on-skin applicator among the surgical tools designed for healing minor wounds. You take the gun-like device, slot a cartridge of liquid skin into it, and hold it to your dad's temple. A jet of pink mist sprays from the end of the nozzle, coating the clumsy lacerations with liquid skin, which quickly dries to form a smooth layer of new skin.
Printed from https://writing.com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1951708-Strange-New-World-of-Transformation/cid/1858766-He-trades-you-a-set-of-high-tech-surgical-tools
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