Is it heaven or hell?
Depends on how much money you have.
Mercy Hospital - San Francisco - Earth
NEARLY TWENTY SIX YEARS EARLIER
He was five years old, holding onto his fathers hand as they wheeled the gurney through the old hospital corridors. The indomitable old man refusing to let go despite the fact that the doctors were running an assortment of medical equipment over the boy to find out what was wrong.
"You'll be all right." His father swore as they pushed their way into the OR, a surgeon already switching on the diagnostic equipment and gesturing to the orderlies to heft the frail boy onto the bio bed.
They had though he couldn't hear them, adults forgot so easily that children could understand most of what was going on around them, especially when emotions ran hot. Even though he was only a child, his father's emotions were strong enough to scream his thoughts all over his face.
Darien was going to die. At five he knew what death was; he could read it instantly from his father and knew what it meant. He should have been terrified, and part of him was, but his father had his hand and would do what ever it took to keep him alive.
The conversation with the doctor kept replaying through his father's thoughts, "It's an unexpected complication. I'm not exactly sure I know how it came about, but it's like his mind is necrotizing. Similar to Parkinson's disease, except it shouldn't be affecting someone this young. I can't explain it, but the neural pathways are degrading at an accelerated rate..."
"There must be something you can do," his father had demanded desperately.
"There is a procedure, but with the tenants of the Hegemony law, genetic re-sequencing is illegal. I can't rebuild your son's neural pathways, I'm sorry..."
"But there must be something..."
"There is another procedure. I could skip the genetic re-sequencing and try to rebuild the pathways the old fashioned way, but this procedure only has a five percent chance of being successful..."
"Do it..."
"I can't here," the doctor whispered, "if they catch me even mentioning this to you, they will arrest me. You have to go to Mars." The doctor busied himself with a chart while a nurse drifted too close to the conversation, carrying out her duties. The doctor waited until she was gone before he continued. "There are side affects to this procedure, Mister Taine. Darien could be permanently brain damaged, and there is always the risk that the rebuilt pathways could begin to degrade again. Neurological failure is inevitable; it's just a matter of us delaying it awhile."
"How do we do it?" His father had asked.
Down the hall a man lurked in the shadows of an IC unit, his blue eyes glittering through the polyurethane screen that separated him from the desperate father. He nodded, pulling on the heavy blue robe as he glanced at the woman dying beside him, resting a hand on her arm and easing her suffering just a little. She'd been kind enough to him while he had waited, the least he could do was show her compassion.
"Are you a priest?" she asked with laboured breath. "Doesn't the Hegemony ban them?"
"They cannot ban me, Sirrah," the old man replied with a warm smile. "But I am no priest. I have had my fill of confessions and of gods..." he looked up at the child on the gurney. "The only faith is found in man."
He pulled his hat back onto his head, shifting the beads as its brim cast his face in darkness again. Melting back as he swept away from the past, at last understanding the damage that had been done.
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