When the Hero Comes Home by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Dragon Moon Press
Published: 2011-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

Scar Tissue

Chris A. Jackson

I stand in front of a thousand people, and they watch as I am eaten alive.

They don’t know it, of course, but I do. I know the little monsters are inside me…devouring me.

A woman wearing a flowered dress closes her eyes and tilts her head back, radiant in the summer sun. A man in uniform sits with his head in his hands, his shoulders heaving gently. A barefoot boy runs across the grass, enthusiastically waving a small flag, too young yet to appreciate its sentimental value…its power. They look at me up here on the stage and see a hero—a man whole and hale, rebuilt from a pile of human wreckage—but they don’t know what’s inside me.

Ten billion little monsters chewing away, eating me alive, twenty-four hours a day.

My stomach clenches and I feel a wave of familiar nausea. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, trying to banish the images that my imagination conjures. They’re not there, I recite my silent mantra. They’re not there. They’re not—

“Lieutenant Gary McAnders.”

The general’s voice snaps me out of my reverie and I open my eyes. He stands tall in front of me, his back ramrod straight, his blue uniform crisp and pleated; the epitome of military dignity and protocol. He knows what’s inside me; he’s got them, too. He must have the same doubts—the same fears—that I have, but he hides his emotions well behind a wall of pride and honor. I want to ask him if he ever worries that the little monsters will just keep eating until there’s nothing of him left, but this isn’t the time and he isn’t the person I should ask. He’s holding the medal that will go over my head: a long blue ribbon with thirteen stars, tipped with a larger bronze star that will rest against my chest. I bow from the waist at full attention, and he puts the ribbon over my head.

“In reward for valor under fire…” he continues as the medal comes to rest against my chest. My reward for saving forty-two Marines.

My reward…

For a moment I consider the reward my country has bestowed upon me. Ten billion little monsters eating away at me. If they stop, I’m a dead man.

By all rights, I should be a dead man. Take one V-lifter, add an enemy surface-to-air missile, five hundred feet of altitude and a rocky hillside, and you have a recipe for death and disaster. But behold the miracles of modern medical technology.

The docs brag that if you have brain waves, they can save you. Heart, lungs, limbs, bones, internal organs, external organs—yes, before you ask, I lost that, too—can all be repaired or replaced. Nano-interface prosthetics were wired directly into my nervous system, a bundle of carbon-fiber nanotubes for each of my severed axons. There’s no bulky computer interface, just my brain doing what it’s always done, telling my muscles to move, so there’s no limping or limited movement. Organs were grown from my own stem cells and used to replace their injured counterparts, as easy as inserting tab A into slot B.

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