“Which is why you can click on each step and explore the decision trees.” Dr. Flint demonstrated. “See, you just drag the patient’s history into this context window. Then, it auto-calculates the odds of each adverse event, and what it would do in each.”

“And this has been approved by the ABPS?”

“You kidding? This was the largest grant in the history of the NIH. They could have John Hunter’s ghost groveling at their feet with that kind of cash, let alone some surgeon’s board.” He spun through several steps with accompanying pictures of the Multiectomy Machine performing an incision, clicking a checkbox next to each. He must have noticed my frown, a subtle grin forming at the end of his lips. “Let me guess. You’re scared it will get you sued?”

They sat in front of his observation window, staring out on Flint’s Multiectomy Machine performing its ghostly work. Damien had never thought he’d live to see such sci-fi nonsense. It moved like a legendary surgeon, its metal appendages descending with such precision. It made an incision without a tremor, nary a single twitch of the fingers, unlike Damien’s own shaking hands. “I’m scared…” he sighed. “… that it doesn’t need me.”

Flint patted him on the back a few times, then leaned back on his chair and cracked open a Celsius. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, John Henry, it’s never look a gift horse in the mouth. We ought to enjoy our twilight years, while we’re still lucky.”

Later that week, Damien made a phone call to Surge. Their team might have led double lives as vampires with how fast they pulled up to his practice. Something was off from the get-go—rather than a normal vehicle, their work van was covered in tubes, satellite dishes, and exposed wire. Eccentric decoration or surveillance state, he couldn’t tell. Beneath that was their logo, a picture of a hand made out of green-grid cells holding a scalpel. It split in two as the door opened and out from the clown car spilled some dozen men and women in their tight turtlenecks and their HR-approved short cropped haircuts. They extravasated into his lobby next. Their leader, a clean-cut blonde man in a blue suit, beamed a smile more robotic than the product they were hawking.

“Welcome, welcome,” Damien said. He tried to dole out cups of coffee he had prepared for their arrival. “Let me give you a tour of the space, so you know what you’re dealing with—”

“Please sign here,” said the leader, presenting an iPad alongside a Bluetooth pen.

Damien chuckled, stowing his hands on his hips. “I don’t know that I can just sign something I haven’t read.”

“Of course. Just be aware I cannot waive the installation fee if you do not sign.”

This had him raising an eyebrow. Surely a lawsuit would be brewing in saner times. Less so now that the government had signed their collective souls to this mass hysteria. He snatched the tablet, watching this automaton of a man with narrowed eyes as he signed. “Fine. You gonna ask for one of my organs now?”

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