When he saw them for the first time, he almost vomited. He felt nauseous, and a violent stomach cramp sent the meager breakfast, washed down with coffee, he'd eaten half an hour earlier, spiraling up his esophagus. He covered his mouth with his hand and held his breath. He turned away. After a long moment, he calmed down and sighed heavily. He coughed, tasting vomit in his mouth, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He forced himself to look at the ghastly sight again. He had no choice. He had to get used to it—and quickly. After all, work is work—and you don't have to like it. You just have to do it—that's it. Otherwise, you end up on the street, where there's usually no return to your former position, because it's taken over by someone more qualified or better at pretending. No one does anyone any favors. An employer is there to demand, and an employee is there to meet expectations. If you don't like it, you can always resign. But when money—very real money—is involved, you're more likely to think twice before resigning from a well-paid position simply because you spent your lunch break kneeling over the toilet for the first few days.
Dr. Victor McDonald, however, had to admit he hadn't expected anything like this. He knew the field he was entering was controversial, to say the least—but what in twenty-first-century medicine wasn't? Risky and bizarre ideas, after a period of unanimous murmurs of discontent from the entire civilized world, became a part of everyday life, unquestioned by the average person. He ate genetically modified tomatoes and cloned chickens—and didn't complain. And science was taking more and more sacred things under the knife. In laboratories, in secret, in the back rooms of medical institutes, a systematic rape of nature was quietly perpetrated—and when the bastards of twisted ethics proved to be plump and attractive to the camera, they were revealed to the world. Dolly the Sheep. Eve, the first cloned girl. More awaited glory. And in their shadow, others—more sinister—hid from condemnation and public lynching. Of course, sooner or later, these too would surface, amidst an atmosphere of scandal, and the excuse that it was all for the good of humanity proved futile. The average person, under the influence of biased, suitably venomous articles in the unprofessional press, was righteously angry, while the Church, still grappling with abortion and euthanasia and fundamentally disapproving of anything that occurred after the writing of the New Testament, thundered and cried out for vengeance to Heaven. McDonald, however, as a medical doctor with over a decade of experience, was, in a sense, obligated to believe in progress. He had to trust that when science broke new barriers, it was doing so for a just cause, and even what was being done was contrary to nature and against God, it was for the good of humanity.
In theory, things didn't look so bad, and ethics reassured him that these weren't people. But when McDonald first saw human bodies without heads, he felt dizzy and the blood drained from his face. As a doctor, over the course of a dozen years, he had dealt with death and disease daily. He had seen swollen corpses in advanced stages of decomposition, apple-sized ulcers, patients without arms or legs, without a shred of healthy skin, or skulls shattered by bullets—and he had no time to dwell on human suffering. He had to work. He had to patiently endure the stench of rotting flesh, the screams of patients, and the cries of their loved ones. But nothing had prepared him for this sight. He felt again like when, as a young student, he was handed a scalpel and given a grade: cut open the abdomen of a deceased person and extract the liver. It seemed simple: chop chop, and it was over—like gutting a fish. Except, on the autopsy table lay a man, and a dead one at that. Someone who once lived, had family, friends, and hobbies. A dead fish isn't surprising—and for consumption, it's, to put it mildly, preferred. No one's surprised that a fillet doesn't kick. Meanwhile, the most natural reaction to a person's death is terror—and natural, obvious reactions can only be unlearned.
But how do you react to something... someone who should be dead but isn't? The people Victor watched through the glass were theoretically perfectly fine. They were tall, robust, well-built men, with no visible physiological changes or fundamental anatomical defects. Except for one: they were headless. The neck began above the sternum, and where the head should have been, the person ended. The stump had healed. As if someone had been guillotined and then kept alive, dressed, and bandaged until the wound closed and no trace of decapitation remained. A gaping hole at the neck led to the mucous-lined esophagus. There was no head, but beneath it existed a fully functional human being. The men lived and moved, completely unconcerned with the fact that they were missing perhaps the most vital part of their bodies. One might say they saw no problem.
Yet this insignificant anatomical loss—a modest fraction of their total body mass—changed everything. The headless creatures possessed an almost complete set of human features. A complete skeleton, free from any mechanical damage; straight spines and no fractures. Strong bones and seven cervical vertebrae. Only the skull was missing. The jaw and teeth. All the muscles, tendons, and glands were present. Only the brain was missing. Gray tissue and white ganglia; the pineal gland, pituitary gland, and frontal lobes—as well as eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The headless creatures could not see, hear, speak, or think, and only feel to a rather limited extent. A body weighing several dozen kilograms was successfully managed by a simple bundle of neurons, axons, and dendrites weighing a few grams. As absurd and outrageous as it may sound, such a solution was not only functional but also more natural than anything medical science had ever devised. After all, a walnut-sized brain was perfectly sufficient for several hundred-ton dinosaurs, and the vast majority of Earth's fauna coped perfectly well with a primitive nervous system without a prominent central center. Jellyfish led carefree, brainless lives, and the fact that they were merely mindless jelly did not in the least cause them any complexes. Thus, a cerebrum was merely optional in nature. Intelligence was more of a curiosity than a generally accepted tendency. It was possible to create a headless human and keep him alive using a modest brain substitute, augmented by a small chip. Except, as they argued, without a head, he was no longer human. The brain defined a human being more than any other organ. Not an opposable thumb, not a vestigial tailbone, not a lack of body hair—it was the brain. And no matter how closely something resembled a human in shape, color, and texture, it wasn't human unless it had a bowl of gray jelly, in which complex thought processes took place, as proof. Without this, mannequins, scarecrows, and even the more resourceful amoebas could compete for humanity. Unfortunately, the requirements were strict—and while the headless creatures' chances were slightly better than those of the amoebas, they still lost the race.
Definitive exclusion from human society resolved a number of dilemmas. As experience had shown, general outrage was caused by innovative endeavors aimed at humans. Opposition was sparked by cloning, implants, nanorobots, and DNA tampering. However, the less the research subject had in common with humans, the quieter and rarer the outcry became. No one cried foul over rats who had human ears sewn on, skin transplants, or injected with various abominations just to see how quickly they would die, who couldn't sleep at night because they glowed like fireflies. However, experiments on rats—no matter how fascinating and promising—were of little use to humans for the simple reason that rats weren't yet humans. To be absolutely certain that a drug would work and a procedure would help a human, it had to be practiced on a human—or something closely resembling one. Just as first aid and CPR are better learned on a mannequin than on a dachshund. A dachshund wouldn't do, and a busty colleague who would have been just right might object—but a mannequin would never refuse. Medicine, however, has always sought out just such mannequins—almost human, but not quite. It eagerly took the skin of lower-class citizens. For its own purposes, it degraded these people to the ranks of subhumans, or even lower. Experiments were conducted on the poor and slaves. Dr. Mengele performed unheard-of acts on prisoners of war. Lobotomies were primarily performed on criminals, and electroshock therapy was administered as an experimental therapy to the mentally ill. It would probably be impossible to conclude that all these inventions were pointless, only dangerous to humans, if they hadn't been tested on humans. A significant advance since then was that no one was willing to stick needles into headless people and dismember them just for the sake of the idea. Rats were examined from every conceivable angle, and conclusions were drawn. The headless creatures were created for a specific purpose: to help real people. While these creatures lacked brains, they possessed a full complement of perfectly healthy organs—and they didn't grumble when one was stolen and given to a human. It was impossible to grow a fully human heart in a pig. For that, a human—or a successful substitute—was needed. A convincing substitute. A prefabricated product. A headless human—though not human—made an excellent heart or liver donor. He was a comprehensive warehouse of spare parts. The only thing he couldn't give to a human in need was his brain.
Another significant advantage was that creatures without the appropriate "sapiens" annotation in their name were generally not entitled to humane treatment. They were not covered by the Geneva Convention, minimum wage, social security, or disability pension due to their rather advanced disability, which could be considered the absence of a head. However, this exemption from humanitarianism did not mean they were treated brutally. On the contrary, they were regularly fed and provided with a roof over their heads and their own warm home. However, little attention was paid to this aspect, resulting in accommodations that were neither three-star, two-star, nor even one-star, and the food—while nutritious and balanced, meeting the daily requirement for vitamins and trace elements—could have been tastier and more aesthetically pleasing.
The headless people lived in individual cages, each measuring two by two by two meters. Three times a day, they received bowls of loose, brown feed and water through special dispensers. They slept on the ground—completely naked—and relieved themselves on the ground. To give them the illusion of freedom, they were occasionally dragged from their cages and herded around the exercise yard. The headless prisoners trudged forward blindly. They bounced off each other, rubbed against each other, jostled, jostled, sometimes fell—then abruptly sprang back upright. Meanwhile, the guards cleaned the cages, and when the occupants returned to their clean cells, they gave them a short, cold shower with a hose—for hygiene, for health. But the headless prisoners seemed to really care. Or at least, none of them complained about the conditions or the rather rough treatment.
McDonald's job in all this was simple enough and didn't require much effort—but no one would do it for him. The guards could clean the cages—but they couldn't draw blood for tests. The large, thick-fingered men would either break the needles or sever the delicate arteries of the unfortunate headless people, spraying their blood on themselves, everything around them, and themselves. In either case, a doctor had to be present. He was the one who checked that everyone was healthy. Via chips, he monitored everyone's body temperature and blood pressure. The computer automatically reported any abnormalities. Sometimes, minor but persistent deviations occurred. In such cases, medication was added to the feed. In emergencies, when the readings began to fluctuate, an injection might be necessary. A guard would prepare the patient, and the doctor could calmly administer the medication intravenously. Such incidents, however, were rare. The headless people were, for the most part, the picture of health. They didn't get sick and didn't hurt themselves. Minor bruises and abrasions occurred, but no one sprained or broke anything. As a rule, McDonald remained at his station, behind the lectern, observing the tables, graphs, and indicators. He didn't have to look at the headless ones or touch them.
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