He came to, very slowly.
Everything seemed to be white; a very bright white. It hurt his eyes. He was tethered down in some way. Although his entire body was almost completely numb, he was conscious of the fact that he wasn’t able to move any part of it. It was painful to move his eyes from side to side and found it best if he just stared straight out to his blurred surroundings. He could make out distant noises, a clattering of metal objects, taps running and muffled voices. He had absolutely no idea where he was. He tried for some sort of memory of where he had been, but to his utter astonishment realised that he had no memory of anything. He simply had nothing to remember!
He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew he was becoming aware of a tingling feeling, somewhere further down is body, but he couldn’t figure out where. There was an image of something, maybe a person, moving about in front of him. There were rustling noises and a voice droning incoherently somewhere close to him. He was still unable to move his eyes without it hurting and he wasn’t able to blink, but his vision did seem to be clearing. The fuzzy apparition of someone moving around slowly cleared and he finally managed to focus on a man twiddling a stethoscope and smiling amiably down at him.
“Ah! Ha! There you are,” he said, still smiling and moving to the end of the bed. He came back with a small clip-board. He stood writing for a few moments. He smiled again, returned the board and pulled up a chair. “I wouldn’t normally sit,” he said apologetically, “but that was a very long operation.” He reached across to something out of sight and came back into view holding a small beaker of water.
He took a few sips. “Yes,” he went on, “very long indeed.” He looked around. “Yes. You seem to have all you need.” He yawned rubbed his neck. “Now, rest is the very best thing; for all of us. It was, as I say, an extremely long operation and a most complicated one. There where at least nine of us in theatre for most of the time.” He massaged his face slowly. “We were in there for over twenty hours,” he said, with a look that was triumphal despite his obvious exhaustion. The surgeon stood up.
The eyes in the bed flickered from side to side.
“Yes, of course. You must have questions. Speaking may be difficult for you for some time, in fact… well, no matter, we’ll talk about that later. What can I tell you? Well, cloning humans is still illegal, but we managed to save you.”
The eyes were now watering and making more painful movements.
The surgeon smiled and nodded. “We saved you, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?”
He seemed to be looking further down the bed. “You’re probably wondering why you’re strapped down like this,” he said with an understanding expression, “complete immobility is the best thing for the time being. We don’t want to disturb anything.” He yawned again. “Excuse me! What else? Um, I’m afraid that at first you’ll need to be sedated prior to eating. We estimate your recovery time will be around six to eight months. Oh! Yes, mirrors are not allowed.”
The eyes were now jerking around frantically.
The surgeon’s face glazed over as he said, “We have broken new ground here. I hazard to guess that in the fullness of time you will be something of a celebrity; although a rather unusual one; but a celebrity all the same.”
With that, he moved out of sight, across the room. He closed the door softly.