Monster

Chapter 8 - Birth

I am not a human. I am in fact five humans. To be specific, I am made up of the parts of five different humans. In Her mad, obsessive need for love, Dr. Francesca Von Stein carefully selected the best physical components to craft what was to Her mind, the perfect man.

As with any work of art, the first thing you choose is the canvas. Mine was the body and brain of a highly intelligent man with a phenomenal physique. I was told that he, that is I, had just learned that he had a latent heart condition that could kill him at any time. He was not a fan of waiting for death so he decided to wait for life instead. He had gone to Dr. Von Stein (because to him She was not Francesca, not his Goddess) three years before my creation with the intention of preserving his body until a new heart could be found for him.

Cryopreservation stops the heart and all organ function temporarily, until the body is thawed and "reanimated." Unfortunately the faulty heart could not handle the sudden extreme change in temperature, and stopped permanently moments before hitting the critical temperature of -165°C. The rest of the body reached the necessary level of deep freeze before the impact of the heart's death could affect it.

Mr. Unlucky was legally dead, but his body could theoretically still function if the heart was replaced. Rather than give the man's family hope on a theoretical, Dr. Von Stein told them that he had died, and showed them the waiver he had signed accepting the risk and allowing Her to keep his body for study in that eventuality.

When the time came to find a canvas for Her project, my Goddess thought of him. Years of construction work through high school and college gave him a sculpted physique that She'd found enticing. He'd been studying to be a neurosurgeon, and She'd found his intelligence appealing. Now that She was no longer engaged, and he was no longer alive, She found him to be the perfect muse.

As sexy as Francesca found this man, his face didn't quite make the cut. Pubescent acne had scarred his skin, and his nose had clearly been broken and not set correctly in the past. More importantly, a dead man shouldn't be walking the earth to be potentially recognized by those who'd known him.

So She did what any woman with a desire to see sexy men did: She turned to Instagram. My face was reconstructed to look like a combination of men based on my bone structure, but I've been told on several occasions that I vaguely resemble Gerard Butler.

Francesca's professional connections meant that a replacement heart was found unethically quickly, in about eight months. It did not take, but the second one, found a mere three months later, did. The body was reanimated, and the surgery performed. The heart was defibrillated, and after just over a year of being dead, life returned to what was by most definitions, a corpse.

The body was kept in a medically-induced coma while the plastic surgery and eye transplants were performed. Then a trusted colleague of Francesca's, a neurologist accomplished in brain pattern manipulation, erased the autobiographical memories by injecting a tiny amount of ethanol directly into the neural pathways of the right posterior temporal and occipital lobes dealing with perceptual memory retrieval. This killed the parts of the brain that remembered who he was and any specific events related to his identity. It did not affect any procedural or any other declarative memories, so I could function entirely normally with the exception of having no idea who I was.

It also meant that my ability to create new autobiographical memories was intact, but my ability to recall them was broken, so cutting-edge stem cell therapy was used to regenerate those neural pathways. Mr. Broken Heart was effectively erased, and I was born, with a tabula rasa identity.

All other organs and tissue were scrupulously checked for proper functionality, and after a sufficient time for healing was allowed, I was brought slowly out of the coma. My physiological and psychological functions were rigorously tested, and finally declared sound.

The entire process, from initial hypothesizing to final testing, took four years. None of it would have been possible if Francesca had been alone. Other than Dr. Karalynn Beaufort, the neurologist, six other people were involved in my creation: two surgical assistants, a cardiology student who aided in the heart transplant, an ophthalmologist to oversee the eye transplant, the plastic surgeon, and a physical therapist.

Everyone involved with the Prometheus Project signed a non-disclosure agreement, and was paid a large sum of money for their silence. Only one copy of all the related records was kept, digital-only, created on a computer completely disconnected from the internet, and stored on an encrypted M-Disc. Ten years after my making, She gave me the M-Disc and told me to stash it somewhere only I would ever know. Shortly thereafter, I moved to Munich and opened a bank account and lock box.

Over the years, my organs have shown signs of aging, if my outward appearance has not. My liver was the first to go, but it was replaced before I showed even a hint of jaundice. My spleen followed, and though I could live without it, my Goddess chose to transplant in order to prevent a serious predisposition for infection. Her easy access to frozen live humans, and lack of inhibition in regards to using them as an organ farm, made my body's few failings inconsequential.

The pseudo-immortality was unplanned and unexplained. The majority of my body and my face never change. My organs age, but very slowly, and I am so far immune to all disease, but not infection. I have been injured, so I assume I can be killed or die if an organ fails or is damaged and not replaced quickly. I have been careful to protect myself from anything or anyone who could threaten my strange existence. My life is a precious gift given to me by my Goddess, and so the only thing I have ever feared was losing it.

Until I lost Her.

**********
(Word count: 1,042)