Constellations of Flesh, Bone, and Memory

First published in Small Wonders Magazine

Safa knew that twenty-five million years ago, her ancestors decided the forests were no longer for them and left her with a coccyx, the triangular bone structure at the base of her vertebral column, instead of a tail, capable of producing daily bolts of agony and little else for her. She knew that two-point-six million years ago, her ancestors developed stone tools to crack skulls and shells and left her with opposable thumbs—one of which she could no longer feel because of a problem with her nerves. Her parents didn’t explain it very clearly. Four years ago, Safa had a small section of her parietal lobe excised—the part that dealt with sensory conditions. It dulled the aches, the pangs when she got out of bed, but not the twitching. Every year brought a new inconvenience, every morning a different decay, as her body refused to recognise itself.

And there she was, back on the surgery table.

‘Will it hurt?’ she asked the surgeon. ‘And you’re not allowed to lie to me. I’m not stupid. I know a lot of things. Did you know we get goosebumps because we used to have hair that stood all up and kept us warm?’

‘Might be a few body aches while you adjust, but they will pass. We’ll give you lots of medication to make you really comfortable after, and you’ll be completely asleep before we do anything.’

‘Can I see the knife?’

The surgeon hesitated. Other children probably didn’t like to think about what was happening to them, but Safa had lived half her life unable to not think about it. Every movement was a reminder.

‘It’s called a scalpel, and this is called a forceps.’ When Safa reached out to touch it, she held it back. ‘These need to be perfectly clean to minimise the risk of infection, and our fingers have all sorts of stuff on them.’

‘I know what a scalpel is. What do you with the forceps?’

‘It’s for holding the tissue while we operate or suture, and if we need to, we can remove some to make it easier.’

Safa also knew that sixteen hundred years ago, in the eleventh century, the Seljuks flooded into the Caucuses, over where Armenia now was. Her ancestors were amongst them, some great-great-great-however-many-parents back, and the Seljuks brought their colourful clothing and art with them. Then, in 1790, the Russian Empire extended its vast, imperial hand over their lands and forced its language down their throats. All of that had been filtered down, through money and time, to the patterns and inscription on the bracelet she wove herself around her wrist. Safa’s nervousness came out in absentmindedly pressing it between her trembling prosthetic fingers.

‘You’ll need to take that off,’ the surgeon said, gently moving her hands to her wrist.

For a moment, Safa resisted.

‘But you can have it back the moment we’re finished. I’ll put it right over there, and I’ll make sure nobody else touches it.’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘I know you’re not.’

Even her words and clothes were not fully her own. Safa, like Armenia, grew out of the rubble of Empire.

A couple of nurses soldiered in with cryogenic boxes and hefted them up onto the counter. She could see the odd bits and pieces through glass windows in the side, floating in some kind of gel. How strange to look at them from the outside, not quite part of someone else, not quite part of her.

‘All the parts were donated by healthy children,’ the surgeon assured her. ‘The arms and heart are from a Latvian girl, strong as can be. No more palpitations, no more irregular spasms. And you’ll be inheriting a lung from a Laos girl to replace the afflicted one, albeit with a slightly lower volume. Breathing will be a little harder, but no more coughing up blood. You can say goodbye to all of that, Safa. We think this will fix the worst of the symptoms.’

Safa lined her arm up with the one in the container. The skin was a tint lighter and the freckles a little lumpier, but the fingers weren’t crooked. The bones all lined up like they did on the posters in all the doctor’s offices she had been to. Soon, she’d be one of the patchwork dolls she grew up with.

‘Did any of them go to Europa?’

The surgeon squinted through her glasses. ‘Sorry?’

‘I’ve always wanted to go there.’

Safa was meant to take the long voyage six summers ago, before her condition set down its roots. Neurologically, her brain refused to recognise her own limbs and organs and was leaving them to rot. Further complications exacerbated the problem. Medication only temporarily prevented her immune system from attacking them directly.

It started with not being able to keep up with the other kids in walks between classes, left breathless and lethargic, but soon the afternoon became a blur, strung from moment to moment, and the itching set in. Safa, did you hear me? Or does anyone need me to repeat that? Safa refused to put her hand up when the teacher said that. Her parents tried to make it work. They got her leviter gradus, supervised learning, and alternative grading requirements to make sure she didn’t fall behind, but her condition always caught up and overtook her, and Safa had to drop out. Her friends went ahead, and every year, Safa promised them she’d be back the next, but next year never came. It hung over her but always moved a little further back each time. Eventually, her parents stopped promising. So, Safa read everything and anything to stay on top of her learning, as much as she could manage, a scattershot of mathematics and language and especially science.

The condition had been passed down from her mother, who got it from her grandfather, till at some point in the past someone was hit by ionizing solar rays that mutated their DNA, all so that they could pass on what should have been an early death to their descendants. It stayed dormant in their genes, apparently, until it found the ‘right’ person.

It would have been easier to accept if it were a hover accident, or falling after one of the many times she danced on the fringe of the cliffs near Qusar at sunset—a perfect line of cause and effect that began and ended with herself, but she wasn’t allowed such simple arithmetic.

‘Acquiring like-grown parts has been complicated recently with the embargo, and matching the legs was difficult, so we resorted to a lunar boy, which is a little closer?’ She was prepping while he spoke, her back turned. ‘That’s the only spacer part we’ve had to use, but he might have been to Europa.’

‘I’ve never been to the moon.’

‘You will soon, I’m sure. Also, we picked them because the hip joints are perfect for yours, but the legs outsize your own by about an inch. You’re about the grow a little taller. And you’ll need to exercise to build up strength in them before you can walk. Luna only has a sixth of Earth’s gravity.’

She liked that a part of her would have been to Luna, and another to Southeast Asia, even though she was no longer sure where she began and where she ended. Would her lung recognise the air there? Would it breathe easier, no coughing? She was always becoming something else.

The surgeons didn’t like saying her donors’ names, like they were afraid of mentioning that they were real people instead of spare parts that could be swapped and exchanged, but Safa had learned them all—Rūta, Fakru, Sascha, Nalanie—all having died in their own, tragic ways, and she would take them with her to the stars.

‘Can I watch?’

‘Watch?’

‘You could make my body go to sleep, but not my mind.’

She imagined her body being cut open and rearranged, pieced apart and stitched back together in a new constellation of flesh and bone.

‘I know it sounds exciting, but it can be a little scary when you see it happen,’ the doctor said. ‘But if you want, I can send you the recording so you can watch it afterwards?’

Safa nodded.

‘What’s the first thing you’re going to do once you’re out? Aside from letting yourself get better.’

‘I’m gonna fly to Europa.’

The surgeon’s eyes widened and spread to a smile. ‘A frontier runner.’

None of her ancestors, none of her new body, had ever ventured out that far. The hinterland of space. She had followed a lot of paths laid down by others in her life, but Europa would be purely her own, footsteps that others would follow someday, and in turn, she would be some small part of them. Fakru would set foot on a new world; Nalanie would breathe new air.

‘All the pieces are thawed out of cryo and prepped,’ one of the nurses said.

‘Are you ready, Safa?’

Safa took one last look at the hands which were no longer hers. Those crooked fingers twitched.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

‘I’ll see you on the other side.’

The operating table was suddenly soft and deep, closing up around her, drowsiness like a blanket pulled up tight around her chest, soothing her, assuring her it was okay to sleep, and Safa swore she could taste the cool Europa air, like water after mint, feel the wet soil between her fingers and the sunlight twenty-five times fainter than on Earth, till even the last pinpricks of the stars, with Europa somewhere mixed in, gave way to the dark and sleep—the tip of her dreams.