this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

"Oh. Well, I like my hair."

[from_scratch]

"Then you can keep it, assuming you haven't done anything weird to it that you aren't telling me about which won't come through in the copy."

[wormcan]

"Nope, it's just hair."

[from_scratch]

"What's Hatchet Face's range?" Cam asks.

[wormcan]

"Twenty feet or so. Enough that capes would want to stay away from me so they don't lose their powers."

[from_scratch]

"Hmm." Cam pulls out his computer, does some figuring. "I can probably do my own brain in a jar setup - well, head in a jar, simplifies things - that'll last for at least until I can find a biotinker who isn't you and owes me a favor who'll do it. But I am planning for your entire transition to a less terrifying body take place here in this spaceship which you cannot drive with no company but me and it doesn't have that much room. Is this enough room for you to work or do I need to make an addition anyway?"

[wormcan]

"I'd need more room, especially if you're making the jar ahead of time. Can't do brain surgery on myself around him."

[from_scratch]

"All right." There is a delay, and then Cam opens the door to reveal a capsule with a surgical gurney and everything. "Lemme know what tools you need. In general kind, like, 'scalpel', not 'my entire kit', please." A cylinder somewhat larger than a human head appears, more than twenty feet away from the gurney.

[wormcan]

"I'll need, um," she steps away from Cam and outside the Hatchet Face's range. "Wire scalpel, sonic bone cutter, brain wave reader, enough cameras that I can see what I'm doing, and the disassembled pieces that make up that jar. Other things I'll think of as they come up, and I might ask you to connect the new body to my brain bit by bit instead of all in one go."

[from_scratch]

A tray of tools appears. The surgery is peppered with cameras.

[wormcan]

Bonesaw steps back toward Cam and the jar containing the faceless Hatchet. There's a crunch, and she spits out a liquid that sizzles on contact with metal or plastic or Cam. And blades spear from her wrists in case the acid doesn't do the job.

[from_scratch]

Cam sizzles. A little. He is scratched. Slightly.

"You done?" he asks, when this has healed.

[wormcan]

She stops. "Why aren't you done, you should be dead! Hatchet Face is right there!"

[from_scratch]

"What were you going to do if you'd killed me? Float up here forever? You can't pilot the ship. Maybe you'd eventually figure out why you can't pilot the ship, but that wouldn't let you actually do it."

[wormcan]

"Jump out and survive reentry with whatever I can make out of those tools, this ship, and your body. I'm not sure how, but I bet I can."

[from_scratch]

"Riley, you can't even open the door. Maybe you have enough of that acid to melt a little hole, but only a little one."

[wormcan]

"I could make more. Or get out some other way. Can't is a bad word to use when you're a tinker. It's like Mannequin always, well, not said, but you know."

[from_scratch]

"I actually have no idea how he communicated, but I'm sure he had his ways. Anyway. Are we going to have further problems with you trying to murder me and possibly other, squishier people or can we move on with our lives?"

[wormcan]

Bonesaw looks down and mumbles. "No. Sorry about trying to murder you."

She leaves the jar's radius, sits down, and starts performing brain surgery.

[from_scratch]

Cam makes her a blank. Blonde with the boosted eyes and the pain gadget and a few tracking devices hidden here and there and otherwise standard issue human. Alive and twitching a little bit with unfocused eyes and entirely autonomic breaths.

[wormcan]

It twitches more often as Bonesaw tests new nerve connections between it and her own brain. Soon she's piloting both bodies, sitting face to face with herself with both heads thoroughly immobilized.

The new one is crying.

[from_scratch]

[wormcan]

The original keeps working and occasionally asking Cam to add some nerve here or blood vessel there. The copy helps with the operation, though its movements are nowhere near as steady.

[from_scratch]

Cam places bits where asked.

[wormcan]

Eventually Bonesaw explains. "Her reactions—or mine, now, my other set—they aren't under conscious control. Is that one of the things I can't fix?"