“I don’t care why you decided to join. I will only give you this once chance to give up. If you do not take this opportunity then I expect you to fulfill your duties with every fiber of your being. No half-assed attempts, that only gets people killed,” said Chief Chesty.
“Sir, I will not quit!” said Arron, giving his best military salute.
Chief Chesty looked at Arron with approval and said, “Good. We need all the idiots with firm commitment that we can get.”
He turned back to scanning the information on the data-pad.
“How was your experience in the WHO’s branch military?” asked Chief Chesty.
“I spent most of my time either training or fixing broken things at base. I saw nothing of the front-lines, only the results of battle,” said Arron.
Chief Chesty nodded and continued to read before looking at Arron and saying, “Your SCS of B makes you eligible for team leader training if and when you pass probation.”
He finished looking over the scrolling documents and set the data-pada back down onto the pile on his desk.
“Just a few more steps before you can officially join. First, a few tips for you. Do not use the words special task force when referring to M1. The politicians from the party of mother and father attached that to our name on a whim. Now they, along with the media, use it to ridicule and mock us. You could say we have a rocky relationship with them. As for the relationship between M1 and the police, it is not bad, but there is a bit of rivalry between us. Do not do anything that would harm the relationship between our organizations.”
“Before we can continue you need to go see Dr. Octy. He’ll give you a full checkup to make sure you have nothing wrong with your body or have any illegal modifications. Come back to me when you have passed his physical check-up,” said Chief Chesty. He flicked his hand forward and sent Arron the directions to Dr. Octy’s office.
A short while later Arron was standing outside a large office. The door opened on its own and a cold female voice spoke from within the office, “Come in, the doctor is waiting for you.”
Arron entered the cold front office which was empty except for a desk and a middle-aged dark purple skinned nurse who sat behind it.
On her chest she wore a holo-name tag that read [Nurse Neca]. She wore a white uniform and her snow-white hair was tied in a tight neat bun on top of her head. Her cold staring red eyes looked over Arron for a second before she stood up and pointed to a sliding door next to her which led to the inner office.
Arron walked into the room and found that in the sterile white operating room. There was very little medical equipment inside the room. He couldn’t even see any type of bio-scanner in any of the rooms corners. There were just two sterile metallic surgery tables at the front of the room with mechanical arms hanging above them.
A man in his late 60’s with gray hair was hunched over a small metal desk that was crammed in one of the back corners. He was fully focused on his work not aware that Aaron and nurse Neca had entered the room.
“Doctor,” said Neca in her cold dead voice.
“Ah!” Her voice caused Dr. Octy to jump in fright.
Poof! Smoke exploded out from a test tube covering the doctor from view for a few seconds before the fans on the ceiling started to suck the smoke out of the room.
“Phillya, how many times do I have to tell you not to sneak up on me like that!” said Doctor Octy, as he spun around on his hoverchair and looked at her.
Arron stifled a laugh when he saw the doctor’s eyes. They were extremely large due to the magnification goggles over his eyes that were zoomed all the way out to the maximum magnification.
“Huh? Where are you?” he asked, looking around the room trying to find Nurse Neca.
“Doctor the magnification,” said Nurse Neca.
“Oh right!”
The soft sound of wiring gears sounded out as the googles retracted and metallic shutters covered the lens. He reached up to both the left and right goggle lenses and used the hinges to flip them out to the side revealing a metallic ring embedded around both eyes that were used for locking the goggles in place.
As the doctor’s eyes readjusted he noticed Arron standing next to Nurse Neca.
“Phillya, who’s he?” he asked, pointing at Arron.
“A new probation member that needs a checkup.”
“Oh? A new test subject?”
“Doctor…”
“I was just kidding… for now. Right! Step over here in front of me,” said Doc Octy.
He flipped the two goggle lenses back over his eyes. They both made audible clicks as they were locked into place.
The doctor’s hands moved in the air and started selecting options on a menu Arron could not see.
The metallic shutter unfurled to reveal pitch black lenses which now had a red light emitting from them.
The lenses zoomed out and then back in several times as Doc Octy started inspecting Arron from head to toe. While he inspected Arron his right hand was clasping his chin in a thinking pose.
Arron felt a little uncomfortable being stared at like this and shifted from one foot to the other.
“No need to be nervous my boy. You don’t have anything in your body that you shouldn’t.”
Dr. Octy moved right up close to Arron and six thin robotic arms extended out of his back. Three arms on the left and three on the right, each one had two fingers for clamping onto things.
As Dr. Octy continued to inspect Arron’s body still using his thinking pose, the six arms started to move as if on their own, each completing different tasks.
Arm one reached over to the desk and grabbed a wooden stick out of a glass jar and then shoved it into Arron’s mouth pushing down his tongue showing the inside of his mouth.
Arm 2 and 3 had grabbed onto his arms and were moving them in complex motions and rotating them testing out his limberness and muscle mass.
Arm 4 was repeatedly poking everywhere on his chest, stomach, back, and legs.
While Arm 5 was using a tool to inspect Arron’s ears, and Arm 6 was scanning his eyes.
All of this was happening at the same time.
Arron felt like a doll being played with as he was repeatedly poked and had his arms moved around making him look like he was doing some sort of ancient dance.
“Doctor…” said Nurse Neca in her cold voice.
“Right, right. We gathered enough data to add to your work profile,” said Dr. Octy. For some reason, he sounded a bit disappointed as the six arms retracted from Arron and disappeared into his back again.
“You pass with flying colors. The military sure knows how to modify the genetic makeup of their soldiers’ bodies. I sure would love to get my hand one a sample…” said Dr. Octy as he looked at Arron in deep thought.
“Is the check-up done?” asked Arron.
“Wait! One last thing!” said Doctor Octy as he held up a hand to stop Arron from leaving.
He moved to his desk and opened one of the drawers and pulled out a white stick that had something round at the end covered in a wrapper.
“Here take this,” said Doctor Octy in a solemn tone as if the item was very precious and important.
“What type of medicine is this?” asked Arron as he inspected it trying to figure out what it was.
“Huh? Haven’t you seen a candy sucker before?” asked Dr. Octy, with a confused look as he stared at Arron.
“Well, yeah but…”
“Phillya, I am running low on suckers. Please order some of the same brand… Wait! Let’s get dangerous and order a different brand. There is nothing more exciting than living dangerously by changing what people expect to receive.”
Nurse Neca stared at him with a blank expression on her face for a few seconds before leaving the room to go place the order.
“Don’t mind her. She acts cold but she is really a romantic at heart. Her coldness is probably due to her lovely name her parents gave her, Neca Philliya,” said Dr. Octy in a whisper.
“Quite fitting for her to be my assistant in my experiments. Don’t let her know that I told you her full name.”
A holo-vid popped up in front of Dr. Octy with Nurse Neca staring back at him.
“You already told him my last name several times. There is no point in whispering about it.”
After saying that the holovid winked out.
“Damn it! She’s spying on me again. I’ll have to check the settings again. You can leave,” said Dr. Octy, with a wave of his hand trying to shoo Arron away.
***
“I see you made it back in one piece,” said Chief Chesty.
“Yeah those two are… interesting,” said Arron.
Chief Chesty started to type on the holo-keypad of a secure data-pad for several seconds before stopping and signing his name on one of the documents floating lines. He motioned for Arron to come forward and sign the second line.
“With this, you have officially joined M1 as a trainee. You will need to finish M1’s training course to start fulfilling your duty and receiving pay.”
With a flick of his hand Chief chesty sent new directions to Arron.
“Head there, that is where you will be staying during your training.”
