"Can I get dressed?" I asked. "Ummm..., no, I'm sorry... we dont have anything for you to wear... but you wont really need anything" he contiuned - as if I had no feelings. "Maybe I dont NEED anything but I WANT something! You're dressed! Why dont you strip down and sit there and tell me how you are taking control of my life stark naked; and see how you feel?" I shot back. "I understand, but in a couple of minutes we are going to start. There's no way to put the probes in if you have clothes on, I'm sorry" he said a bit sheepishly as if my comment about him stripping seemed to make the point. "Do you have any other questions before we start" he asked. "When I come back around - it'll be 3 years from now?" I asked quietly. "there'll be a few times we bring you around before that, but just to be sure there is no damage that we dont know about. But yes, when you wake up for real, it'll be about 3 years from now." he said earnestly. "damage that you dont know about? fuck, How old will I be?" I asked. "You will be 58 by then; but we will have regressed your body 40-45 years. You will look like your something between 13 and 15... the exact age is tough to exactly predict. And yes; as you know this hasn't been... ummm... perfected yet. We just want to be sure that nothing we dont know about has gone wrong because you were anesthetized" The Doc sort of shrugged his shoulders and with his elbows at his sides rolled his hands from palm down to palms up. "And what if something has gone wrong? I ask very quietly. "Let's not play the hypotheticals game... ok?" the Doc said. "But" I responded "you KNOW the things that can go wrong, you'e calculated the odds for each thing that could go wrong and have contingency plans for each one right? Right?" I pressed for an honest answer. "For some yes, but the combinations and permutations are beyond imagination, so no we will have to address everything that goes wrong as it goes wrong" the Doc said defensively. "So you're pretty sure things WILL go wrong? And if they are bad enough you will "terminate" me?" I said making air quotes with my fingers. "Could I come out a wrecked disfigured mass without the ability to die?" I pressed. "No" the Doc said and I thought was he bullshitting me or did he mean it, until I heard the rest of his statement. "We are not going to do this, we're not, we're simply not going to do this. Suffice it to say - there is a chance that everything will go fine... without anything going wrong. That's our hope. If something minor goes, wrong that we can correct, we will. If something goes completely wrong, or that cant be fixed, you will never know it. Does that answer your question? If not, then I am sorry, I wont go down this with you; I just wont. Any other questions not related to things that could go wrong? I pondered for a second and realized I'm not sure I really want to know. Especially after he said things like "there is a CHANCE that that everything COULD go fine" and "If something goes completely wrong...YOU will NEVER KNOW IT". I knew I couldn't stop this train. If I refused I assumed a bunch of orderlies would pour out of the woodwork and insure that whatever was going to happen was still going to happen. I went back to accepting that I am probably never going to ever see the light of day again. So my mind turned to how could I forestall this or something, and he had given me the chance to push this off. He didn't seem like he was in a killer hurry. Hmmm, maybe the wrong choice of words. So he wont discuss what will happen if things go wrong, will he discuss what will happen if things go right, I wonder.
"Do you know what I will look like if everything goes according to your plan?" I asked. "Yes of course... do you want to see? I was incredulous at the stupidity of the question, "of course!" I said pointedly also feeling like I hit the jackpot in stalling-the-inevitable ideas. "Come over here" he said in an almost a giddy childish glee. We walked into another room. I couldn't help but to continue to feel weird walking stark naked and barefoot behind a fully dressed man in the fanciest medical laboratory I have ever seen. In the next room, there was a HUGE flat pannel computer screen that was more than 6 feet tall, and not made up of multiple monitors, but just one single screen. The screen began just above the floor and was taller than I was and maybe 4 feet wide. He touched the computer key board on the desk adjacent to the screen and the screen lit up. He typed a few things and a picture of a VERY young naked boy came up. The boy was short maybe 5-4 or so, very red headed, exceptionally skinny, with creamy white skin, a small turned up nose and his face and shoulders were fairly heavily freckled. The Doc said "run your finger up or down on this pad and you will see him at various ages." Without handing me the pad the doc ran his finger up and down on the pad showing me how to do it. "This is 13, and this is 18" he said. "if you move your finger sideways the image will rotate." As he moved his finger over the pad on the desk the boy would get older then younger then would spin around. I looked carefully, it looked like it was a real boy, not a CGI creation, the image was so lifelike and crisp; it seemed like you could actually touch the boy himself. "what are you looking for the Doc asked. "this looks so real it doesn't look like a computer generated image at all" I said. "That's because it isn't, it's a real picture. It's not a computer animation, but a real picture - of a real boy. You remember the device you asked what it was and you were told it is a camera, that's what took this image. Want to be really impressed? Put two fingers on the pad and move them down." he instructed. I did and we zoomed in on his body. It kept zooming until I was zoomed in on a single red hair on his arm that was nearly 6 feet tall on the screen. "That is magnified 1000 times" he said " you can tell by the number in this corner... see where it says 1123? That means that this image is one thousand, one hundred, and twenty three times its real life size... but hang on...", He typed a few things in to the keyboard and a bunch of lines and numbers, and words appeared all over the screen following the contours and shape of the boy's body. The Doc zoomed back into a hair on his arm and only a few numbers were left on the screen. "That hair is L-A-U-9-2-78-17. It says here that the physical analysis of this hair indicates that Chromosome 16 has two recessive genes Asp294His and Arg151Cys - and that the gene HCL2 is present in Chromosome 4. It also says that there significant mutation evidence of MC1R. Pheomelanin levels are 74% Eumelanin levels are 9%." There was a short silence - as I stared at the Doc and he stared back at me - and then I asked "What in the fuck does that mean?". The Doc laughed and said "well that hair is number 9-2-78-17 on his Left Arm. All the gene information basically says - its a red hair" "You mean you have each hair numbered?" I ask incredulously. He laughed and said "hold on watch". He typed a bit and said now run a single finger up and down the pad. "This is the exact same hair when he was 6 and this is it at 10 years, this is the same hair when he was 18." As I moved my finger the display stayed locked onto the one hair. You could see the skin change colors, as did the hair, but you could tell it was the same hair; over 12 years worth of images of that one hair. He typed a few other things and the image went back to the 13 year old version of the boy. He said "we have pictures with him in many other positions..." he clicked away at the keyboard "so that every inch can be seen, mapped and measured." I could sense he was indulging my my prurient interests as he put a few other images up, like one with the boy bent over and legs spread. It was amazing.
"Here is what he looks like in UV. This is IR. Here is what he looked like in a CT showing all of his hard boney structures. Here we removed all the bones from the CT to show better all of the other hard structures like cartilage. Here is the MRI showing his softer tissues. Again, I can tell the computer to only show me his circulatory system." Bam! all you could see was blood vessels. "Move your finger over the pad, it will show you him at various ages and profiles... ...Here are some dopler images showing his circulatory system... Here is a PET scan of his brain... Want to see what you looked like?" the Doc asked, "No" I said "I dont think so" then I thought for a second, and like a bolt of lightning, it struck me. It wasn't my recent intake pics he was talking about! I tipped my head to the side and said very quietly in a pissed off tone "Do you have pictures like this of me over my entire life also?" The Doc smiled and said "yes, about once a month we would bring you in..." after a long pregant silence he went on as if surprise that I was surprised "that wasnt the first time you were in the intake lab you know... everyone there knows you pretty well", he said with a sheepish, snide smile. "Anyway we are off the tracks" the Doc said, getting to the matter at hand, this was a real life boy, you are getting his genes spliced into yours. You will be him... in every way... even down to having the same fingerprints and ear shape... Except your brain, it will still know everything it knew before and everything we will be teaching it."