The Better To See You With

Chapter 1

The ophthalmologist plucked the nictitating membrane off the petri dish with a pair of forceps. Syd moved it around a bit until she found the right place for it in Jab's right eye. A few days before this surgery, Jab's plica semilunaris had been removed. Jab had received the call from his superior a week ago. When he had filled in the paperwork required for the transformative surgery, the procedure also mentioned that the plica semilunaris would be extended to form a complete nictitating membrane. Jab had looked at the word plica and thought it had something to do with his hair. As always, Ghan had been his source of information. The boy had been reading to him about bacteriospheres. The leviathan organisms had these hair-like structures on the surface. Jab had erroneously recalled those structures were called plica. Therefore, he had thought the ophthalmologist meant to pluck out a hair or two.

It turned out they wanted to extract the vestigial plica semilunaris and grow it into a whole new nictitating membrane. From Jab's eyes! "Do I have to be blind for this new bacteriosphere?" he had asked Ghan on reaching home. His son had looked up from the book he had been reading. Jab could not help but smooth away the strands of hair falling across the boy's forehead. "No, Dad," Ghan said as he shook his head. "They are doing the exact opposite. They are helping you see underwater." Needless to say, Jab had continued to look as skeptical as he felt. "By pulling out things from my eyes? Things that probably help me see!" Ghan had sighed at that. "Actually, the part they took out is pretty useless to us. They are going to take your useless one..." Ghan had given a small smile when Jab had looked a bit affronted at his use of useless "...and graft it with a functioning one from an animal, Calabar angwantibo. Then you will be able to see underwater, too. Well, until the modification wears off."

Syd, the surgeon-of-all-trades, continued working her magic when Jab saw her again. "Try to get Ghan to take risks," she said as she started suturing the membrane. Her deft hands moved with a beautiful blend of skill and science.

"You know you must push him to get out of his comfort zone," she insisted. Ever the polite Lucknowi, she had left out the or he won't survive Jab's death. She didn't need to say it, because Jab already knew it. He did not only know it, he lived in fear of it every second of his life. There was never a guarantee that Jab would be coming back once he left on a vetting job. Countless things could go wrong and most vetters didn't have a healthy life span. What if something happened to him? Would Ghan be able to move on or would he confine the limits of his life even more? "I know you mean well, Syd. But I know Ghan, too. My kid doesn't even wanna use another brand of cologne. He has been using the same one ever since his mother, bless her soul, started him on it. It has been twenty years now. She died when he was seven, but he just won't let go."

Syd had yet to meet Ghan. Calling her just an ophthalmologist was technically wrong. Countless surgeons claimed they could ready a person for the next novel bacteriosphere. They could, too, but Syd was the transformative surgeon you went to if you also wanted to survive the operation. At the moment, she was fixing Jab's eyes. He needed these eyes if he was going to be a part of the vetting team for the new bacteriosphere colony that had been sighted by the scouts.

That was another reason why Ghan loathed change so much — the poor boy saw so much of it! After the first time that Jab had undergone transformative surgery, he was only as good as how well his transformed organs worked in the next colony. It wasn't always necessary for Jab to have to get major transformative surgeries while hopping from one colony to the other. Nevertheless, after the Spinosaurus incident, he only returned to Ghan after the modifications had worn off. While that had made it possible for him to have a lucrative career as a colony-vetter, it had also complicated their lives. While Jab was out vetting colonies, Ghan had to stay behind on the bacteriosphere proper.

Ghan's home was the only stable bacteriosphere discovered to date. The new ones that were found lived long enough to entertain the adrenaline-junkies and vacationing rich. Soon, however, they senesced or a newer, more exotic colony came into vogue.

A new colony had just been sighted and that meant there was work to be done. Not so fortunate was the fact that the internal conditions of this new colony seemed to mimic an underwater environment. Hence, a functional nictitating membrane was just the first item of many on Jab's list. He had no worries on that score. Syd was an old hand at this. She would think of everything he would need to survive. Even if she did miss something, Ghan was sure to catch it. Jab remembered when a year or two before, when he had been about to vet a new photosynthetic bacteriosphere, Syd had forgotten to check out whether the end product of photosynthesis would be water or Hydrogen Sulfide. It turned out to be the latter and if Ghan hadn't thought of it in time, Jab wouldn't have survived.

Well, there was no use in dwelling on what might have happened, Jab thought. He looked at Syd who was moving her head this way and that, meticulously checking her handiwork. She seemed determined not to make another mistake. The kid may have not met Syd, but he never let her forget what that failure might have cost him. With every surgery, Syd and Ghan both drew up a list. Roughly the same age, it was as if they were both in a silent competition. The list would mention all the transformations that would need to be made, based on the bacteriosphere that was scouted. So far, this time, both lists had matched.