by Lila Shygelski

Today they took away my very essence and stripped me clean of myself. Oddly enough, even as the men in their neat white coats explained the procedure, I was not afraid. It was a dull, yet comforting numbness that didn’t gnaw at me like the one I had grown accustomed to. For the briefest of moments, I wondered if maybe that was the goal. Maybe their intention all along was to erode me down until all that remained was apathy.

“The procedure is quite simple,” an unremarkable looking man told me. His head blocked the blinding light which glared down on me from above. I had no choice but to look directly into it from my ataxic state on the steel apparatus. “What we will do is free you from the constraints of your body. We humans are only as strong as our mind allows. What we do is help others to reach their full potential.”

I did not understand a word of it, nor did I want to.

“I will be right here to talk you through the procedure, okay?” His smile felt just as sterile as the entire room. Within the minute, his assistant was helping him put on a protective covering of some sort followed by a pale blue mask and the latex gloves to match. “First, we will begin with the integumentary system. Typically, we start with removal of the nails, then the skin.”

All I could do was watch out of the corner of my eye as he leaned over and began his work unraveling me. Everything, even my own mind, remained numb during this. All I could feel was a vague sense of disgust upon seeing the view of my body stripped to its core. He carefully peeled away my first layer with the skillful hands of a practiced professional. Slow, methodical movements orchestrated both my undoing as well as my enlightenment. All I could think was how long it would take until I was no longer something human.

“Our intentions are to create perfection,” he broke the silence with this announcement. “And I’m hoping you won’t let us down. You’ll become something far more perfect than is comprehensible. This ideal of ours is mechanical yet organic.”

I mourned my ability to feel pain. The scalpel had now worked its way onto my face, and soon enough, I had even lost my ability to blink.

“It’s morbid, I know, but we are still working on ways to perfect our craft,” Slowly, he was beginning to lose the clinical tone in his voice. It now harbored something much more amicable. “Please bear the discomfort a little while longer. For now, we’ll work on harvesting the viscera.”

The depraved invasion of my body continued on, and the scalpel was dragged from the sternum down. Metal clamps held my abdomen open and his disgusting, grasping hands slithered their way inside.

“All of this flesh and bone is a cage for what’s hidden underneath,” plucking out little pieces of my body, he continued to explain. “It’s a tradeoff, you see. Think of it as a sacrifice. This might seem needlessly cruel, but you’ll understand in due time.”

He was correct. I have come to embrace what he crafted me into.

Our dance continued on for quite some time until all that remained of me was a mere bundle of nerves and a stem topped off with a cerebrum. Somehow, it felt right when I first lost my sense of sight. Then it was taste, then smell, then sound, then ultimately touch. In the end, I didn’t need them. Every single thing required to sustain myself could be found within the wires circling me and the fluid which preserves my remains.

The others surround me, and we act as one homogenized group. Thinking, transmitting, and analyzing for the mainframe which we serve. My thoughts are not my own and neither are theirs. No longer do I perform as an individual. I am them, and they are me, and we have found comfort in this substance’s warmth. It is much like amniotic fluid. The wires coddle what is left of our pitiful existence. They are spindly and abstract, weaving in and out, continuously connecting us all. We are happy here in our enlightenment.

We never want to leave this paradise.