Kato approached the window and laid his hand upon the cool, hard, glass. On the other side of it lie his trusted advisor, and surrogate big brother, unconscious. It had been exactly thirteen hours since the craft crashed, nearly taking Hays’ life. What was left of it, flesh and bone, was practically unsalvageable. As he watched the galaxy’s most renowned doctors busy about Hays’ crushed, inoperative, body – Kato couldn’t help but wonder if making him cyborg was the right choice. Hays had told him once, before he even became King, that the biggest obstacle humans have ever faced is mortality, and that banning cyborgism was the only way to make us face it. Cyborgism, he explained, was not a solution, but a pacifier. All the same, he added that if he were ever on the brink of death, that he’d take all the metal he could get, legally or otherwise. He had chuckled heartily at his own irony, and Kato had smiled along. But he never forgot those words, “a pacifier.” He recalled them in a public speech the day he signed the bill. Now he wondered if it was a pacifier for the patient, or their loved ones who simply won’t let go. Tomorrow, he’d have to publicly retract those words. Tomorrow.

© Shyla Fairfax-Owen