Chapter Text
At the turn of the 25th century, humanity had fully combined with artificial intelligence to create a sustainable, efficient, and fast-paced life. All data has been uploaded into a complex data bank called The System™, and most of humanity has merged their bodies with machines. These 'cyborgs' are the new normal, built stronger and deemed smarter than their basic human counterparts.
Still, there were some who chose to stay as they are, probably due to their religious beliefs or personal inhibitions against the progress of technology. These 'mavericks' are often shunned and discriminated against, deemed old-fashioned and close-minded.
It was exactly the case for Choi Chanhee, a newly-trained nurse. Growing up in the middle of the neo-technological revolution in downtown New Seoul, United Korea, Chanhee had always dreamed of the days where logic followed compassion. Of the times when humanity had a warm heart and not just the rhythmic beating of a metal pacemaker.
Still, Chanhee battled all odds and came on top of the vicious trainings in becoming a nurse. It was the only job that coding could never fully solve, as every body is different and even medicine has its limits; it was perfect for Chanhee. In the end, his attention to detail and unceasing patience when listening to his patients' ills earned Chanhee respect from professionals in his line of work.
"Good morning, Jacob-hyung~" Chanhee placed a box of donuts on the counter. Bae Joonyoung, or simply, Jacob, was a cyborg that worked the desk in the pediatric ward. He had a knack for keeping excellent medical charts and a warm smile for every young patient coming in, and was Chanhee's first friend in the hospital.
"Good morning, little one." Jacob graciously munched on a strawberry-jam filled donut. "You know, one limitation of technology that I'm grateful for is the inability of machines to solve hunger. I am so, so happy that we can still enjoy food like this."
Chanhee smiled, swiping along the multiple arrays of charts Jacob presented him with on a tablet. There seemed to be no new patients nor anyone with immediate concerns, but there is one 9-year old girl scheduled for a mechanical kidney transplant that afternoon. Chanhee figured he should go have a talk with the child to ease her spirits.
"Oh, by the way, we're having the weekly maintenance a bit earlier than usual." Jacob looked up from the donut box, some powdered sugar littering his cheeks. "Instead of having it tomorrow evening, Juyeon said he'd drop by today and check the wiring. Aigoo, my back gears hurt from sitting all the time."
"Juyeon's coming today?" Chanhee felt his cheeks turn bright red. He glimpsed a peek at his reflection on the shiny metal surface of the counter, patting the black strands of hair that have stood up in the humidity of daily commute. "Oh my."
"Are you ever going to directly tell the poor man that you're interested?" Jacob sighed. "Listen, Chanhee… we cyborgs may be enhanced to deal with numbers and logic but men are still stupid, you know?"
Chanhee looked away, feeling apprehensive. "He would never fancy me anyway, hyung. I'm a boring human with no cyber enhancements. Besides, I'm pretty sure Juyeon is into women as well. I just want to present to him the best version that I can be."
"Whatever you say, little one." Jacob took the tablet back and swiped on the interface to show Chanhee the work checklist for the day. "Jaeyong has been asking for you all night. I think he's having trouble walking with his new leg. Having a steel limb is heavier than flesh, I suppose."
Directly heading to private room 1104, Chanhee knocked on the door once to announce his presence before letting himself in, smiling warmly at the sulking 5-year old on the blue hospital bed.
"Hey, buddy!" Chanhee greeted, sitting on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling? Jacob-hyung said you were looking for me."
"Hyung…" Jaeyong looked unsure, fingers pressing harder onto his little metal robot toy. "Why don't you have any enhancements done to you? Why am I getting a lot?"
Chanhee bit his lip, wondering how to answer. Some of the children admitted into the hospital were actually really healthy, but their parents paid for modifications to be done to 'enhance' them. Most of the kids were very sick, though, with failing livers and brittle bones that needed to be replaced with stronger metal-- and no one wants to admit it outloud, but it's all because reproducing as cyborgs somehow degraded the quality of somatic cells. This finding was dismissed firmly, with forefront scientists assuring the world that any problem could be solved by further bodily enhancement.
As a pediatric nurse, Chanhee could see the downward spiral they were drowning in; more and more children were being admitted to be fully dependent on machinery implanted on their bodies. Yet he could do nothing because the machine modifications were the norm. In this world, Chanhee was a freak.
"Well, your parents just want you to have the best future possible, Jae." Chanhee tried to placate. "They want you to be the best that you can be!"
"Did your parents not want that for you?"
Chanhee's eyebrows were knitted and his smile was strained when he replied, "My parents died when I was a baby. I never knew what they would have wanted for me."
Jaeyong looked away, feeling sorry for asking. Chanhee immediately tried to turn the mood around by asking the child to walk around the private room with him to test his new leg. The boy's movements were clanky at first, but eventually, Jaeyong managed to regain his balance and Chanhee excused himself to go about his rounds.
At around 3 pm, Chanhee was typing in updates for the chart that day. He was tired from running around and playing with the kids all day, and Jacob had finished his own shift earlier and left, leaving Chanhee alone in the ward. Lost in thought, he completely forgot that maintenance had been moved to that day.
That is, until Lee Juyeon tapped his steel fingers lightly on the counter, shaking Chanhee out of his concentrated state. Chanhee almost bumped his knee on the counter when he jumped in surprised, and that crafted a hearty laugh from Juyeon.
"That's not funny." Chanhee mumbled, pouting.
"You looked so into work, I was worried you turned into a full robot for a second." Juyeon joked, rubbing his enhanced right eye with his real hand. "I think my eye is dry. It's being uncharacteristically twitchy. Do you have any white lithium here?"
"I think Jacob-hyung has some drops here for his back." Chanhee rolled his chair backward to reach for drawer, taking out a small grey bottle. He placed it on the counter, about to go back to filling out the charts, but Juyeon stopped him with a small request.
"Please help?"
Chanhee sighed heavily, fixing the cyborg with a weary look. "How many drops?" He asked anyway, standing up on his tiptoes to reach Juyeon's eye level. "Can you bend a little and look up?"
"Just two."
Trying not to think about how soft Juyeon's skin is under his fingers, Chanhee squeezed the bottle to force the viscous liquid out. The lubricant splashed on Juyeon's long lashes, and if Chanhee strained his ears hard enough, he could have heard the faint, rhythmic thrumming of gears under Juyeon's face.
"Thanks." Juyeon fixed him with a big smile, wiping the excess lithium off with his handkerchief. Chanhee hummed in reply, sealing the bottle and putting it back into the drawer with a mental note to tell Jacob that he used a bit of it. "How's work today? So far, I mean. You get off at 5, right?"
"I feel so bad for the kids." Chanhee found himself blurting out, unable to stop himself. "They're so confused as to why they're going under all these surgeries. You know the kid from 1106? Chaeyeon's entire nervous system is just a microchip running on binary code."
Juyeon cocked his head to one side, raising an eyebrow. "What's wrong with that? Doesn't she have muscular dystrophy? Her nerves will degrade in on themselves as she grows up. Isn't this replacement better?"
Chanhee bit his lip. How did we become like this? He wanted to ask. Why are we more machine than human, and where do we draw the line at what's alive and what isn't? But Juyeon's red-irised robotic eye made Chanhee swallow back the words.
"Nothing." Chanhee waved the topic off. Before Juyeon could protest, he added, "What are you here for, anyway? There hasn't been any issues on The System™ nodes this week."
"Antivirus patch. Usually it's automatically downloaded into the software, but there's some early feedback that some nodes need to have it manually installed because it gets detected as malware and then deleted. It's normal protocol. Sometimes, even machines make mistakes." Juyeon shrugged.
Chanhee blankly stared at him. "I didn't understand any of that."
"You're cute." Juyeon patted his head lightly before picking up his work tablet and walking towards the node room in the ward. "Hey, I might need to restart the LAN on this floor, so backup your files just in case."
Fighting his blush down, Chanhee did as he was told and saved his progress on the charts. His heart was beating loudly and he was scared the other people in the ward could hear it with their enhanced hearing. He could only hope that Juyeon would be too busy with coding to hear Chanhee's humanity.