Nth Life - Chapter 5 (Patreon)

To say Zeke was disappointed with alien medicine wouldn't be right or wrong. It was interesting and yet boring at the same time. For a start, it wasn't the high-class job being a doctor back on Earth was. On Earth, Zeke figured it took something like a decade of education to become a basic doctor and more to specialize. He didn't know for certain since it wasn't something he was interested in. Either way, it was a large commitment and took a lot of time and effort to achieve. This leads to doctors being highly respected.

Not so much for alien doctors. Though their telling of time was different, Zeke calculated that an alien doctor only required around two to three years of education. So while the alien doctor was somewhat respected as a healer they weren't highly respected at all since the commitment and effort was so much less. Then there was the way the doctors did their job.

He discovered all of this and more when he left his office to head for an examination room to meet his first appointment. Inside of the room were two beings that looked very similar to him. One adult and one child that both looked remarkably similar to himself. He didn't know how but he knew the older one was a female while the younger one was a male. 

The female didn't have anatomy that Zeke was familiar with. Meaning no breasts or obvious female characteristics he could easily and instantly recognize. The only thing he could see was that she had a slightly more feminine tilt to her facial structure. Otherwise, her body looked almost identical to his own.

The child, like most children, was young enough to look androgynous. Just a glance couldn't tell him whether the kid was male or female. Still, he knew from the records that he was looking at a little boy.

It was at that moment that he found out how the aliens communicated without mouths. Once he stepped inside, the mother's eyes flashed with light as she spoke telepathically to him, "Rzzitiy here," she gestured to her son, "should be ready for his doosens now."

The moment he heard the word 'doosens' which didn't have a proper translation to English, like names, information flooded his mind. Doosens were biological nano-machines! Once someone was old enough they would be injected with a dose of them. From there they would propagate like a normal cell within the body. Their DNA was their programming and they were programmed to keep a body in perfect health throughout their life. They even helped the body's muscles maintain maximum efficiency. No one needed to work out and no one became overly bulked up.

Of course, that wasn't all the organic nano-machines did but that was the highlights. Zeke couldn't help thinking that this alien society relied very heavily on nano-machines for just about everything. Not that he could blame them for it. The benefits were there for anyone to see. He focused back on the happenings of this strange alien life.

After having heard the mother 'speak,' he knelt down in front of the child and telepathically spoke, "Rzzitiy, you look like you're growing into a fine young man. Just let me do a quick scan to make sure your body is ready for the doosens."

Once he finished speaking, he lifted his hand and gave a mental command to his nano-machine clothing. The 'fabric' flowed around his hand until it turned into a glove with a circular device in the center. Simultaneously, some other nano-machines flowed around his neck and up to his face to construct a clear display over his right eye. He lifted his hand to the top of Rzzitiy's head and slowly moved it down toward the floor.

On the display, he could see a streaming readout along with a detailed molecular scan of Rzzitiy's body. Zeke couldn't keep up with the flow of information but he got a general understanding. Right now he was checking for any signs of genetic or growth issues in Rzzitiy that could prove to be a problem when doosens were injected. The organic nano-machines required a certain physical maturity before they could be injected and were known to cause deadly problems when met with genetic disorders of certain kinds.

Once the scan finished and gave an all-clear, he retracted the scanner and patted the young boy on the head, "You've grown up wonderfully Rzzitiy."

After his comment, he turned to a blank wall where a door opened and revealed a small clear tube with a few buttons on it. Inside of the tube was a yellowish gelatinous substance, the doosens. Once he collected the device, he once again knelt in front of Rzzitiy. They weren't actually injected into the body, oddly. Because they were all just the size of a single cell, they could easily be absorbed through the skin into Rzzitiy's bloodstream to spread through his body. In essence, the doosens were spread on more like a paste that vanished rapidly.

After that appointment, he continued through his day. He didn't have very many appointments and the majority of them were just regular checkups. Even with the miraculous doosens, it was always a good idea to visit a doctor and make sure nothing was sneaking up unnoticed. Despite centuries of using nano-machines for just about everything, the entire species had never come to fully rely on just them. Zeke felt that was pretty wise. No technology, no matter how great, could ever be perfect when created by an imperfect being.

Things sort of settled into a routine as he spent several days inside this new alien body. The longer he existed here within it, the more knowledge he obtained and the more he understood. Unfortunately, he never did learn how to make either the nano-machines or doosens from scratch. Just like on Earth, experts in their fields made the products. Just like on Earth, you wouldn't ask a medical doctor how to build a computer processor.

Zeke was actually getting rather bored watching life from his point of view. The body he was in seemed content with his life but, for Zeke, it was boring as hell compared to the last life he'd witnessed. Once the shine of nano-technology wore off it was just a boring routine. That all changed on the tenth day.

He was in the middle of a simple check-up when the entire area shuddered and shook. Lights began flashing green indicating trouble. Alien culture, different colors for alarms. The green lights indicated they were under attack and needed to evacuate. Zeke and his patient immediately left his small practice and made their way through winding corridors. The whole area constantly shuddered and shook around them making moving difficult.

He didn't have to worry about that for long. Right in front of himself and his patient, a wall exploded into the hallway in front of them. This was surprising as the nano-machine walls were stronger than anything Zeke was familiar with. The only thing he knew was stronger were the solid walls of the bunkers built into the space station. They were made of an alloy that could withstand just about anything.

From the gaping hole in the wall came a monstrosity that sent a shiver of fear down his spine and loosened his bladder. He was just a simple doctor, he wasn't qualified in any way to deal with the thing in front of him. Whatever it was, it wasn't natural. On first look, it appeared to be some sort of giant mutant insect, only it was made of metal.

A dozen glowing orange-red eyes locked onto Zeke and the patient with him and he suddenly knew what it was through the flood of fear. Bakulzafor, an aggressive alien race made entirely of sentient A.I.'s whose sole purpose was to exterminate all organic life in the universe. Normally, Zeke would think of it as some cheesy science fiction big bad, but staring one down scared him to his core.

He barely had time to process what was happening before the Bakulzafor Hunter-Killer pounced on him and his companion. Its segmented legs all ended in monomolecular blades that sliced through almost anything with ease. This was a bit of a blessing since he barely felt anything as he was sliced and diced as if he were a prime ingredient on a chef's cutting board.

As Zeke's vision began to slowly fade, he couldn't help but wonder if he was doomed to constantly experience odd lives with violent deaths at the end.