No Man Left Behind

Human Complexion

Hiruta squinted his two eyes open to an ambient soft, white lighting. He lifted one of his legs—no, arms—and inspected it in front of his face. After a moment of watching the tendons and ligaments do their work, pulling and bending his digits about, he ran his new hand down his new bilateral symmetry. The feeling of skin was a strange experience, and he couldn't see how evolution decided the loose, fragile material was any proper defense against nature and the elements. Some primal signal both warded and invited him as his fingers glided across his testes.

"Mr. Hiruta," a woman's voice addressed him, "can you hear me?"

As his eyes adjusted to the room's features, and he recognized the medical facility he was in. "Yes, I can hear you." He called for his higher functions, and ghostly information manifested into his vision, showing him any kind of detail he cared to know of his body's condition: respiration rate, heart efficiency, hormonal discharges throughout his brain and body, ocular dilation, blood composition, and so on. He rolled his head on the soft white pillow to see the nurse. He didn't have the sense of it before, but she was beautiful. He marveled at the way the chemical imbalance in his system produced such feelings and emotional complexes.

"The mind augmentation procedure was a success," the nurse told him. "Our scans show no defects in your neurological structure. How does it feel to be human?"

"Surreal."

The doctors took him through a series of physiological tests; a final step to confirming their results. Humans have mastered their biology centuries ago, allowing them to manipulate whatever they pleased with their bodies. Part of the development of this science was mind augmentation, and mind downloading, and as no alien being had had their mind downloaded into the neurological structure of a human's, Hiruta was the first.

"The theory behind it is sound. Given the nature of your own alien biology, compatibility shouldn't be as big of an issue as we initially thought," a human doctor told him before his new human body was fully grown.

Hiruta ducked his head out from the doorway of the expensive, armored car and stepped out onto the hard, solar-soaked pavement. He tilted his head up to the sky. Looking through the near-invisible, rooftop structures of the city he saw—through human eyes—the Buroto microcluster orbiting above the dusk-grey cloak of clouds. His gaze shifted through the cityscape around him. Metal and glass towers rose high into the air, the tallest towering several kilometers high and contacting the atmospheric dome. The buildings' glass surfaces seemed to reflect either only the grey sky or other glass surfaces surrounding them, creating an impossible environment where light rays ricochet and redirect ad infinitum.

There were crowds drawn up by his presence, other humans gathering to have a look at him, not that he looked any different from an ordinary man. The some members of the crowd were holding small cameras and other devices plastered with the insignia of specific news corporations. Across their corresponding news networks, he knew his face was plastered just as well. Security guards, people who have had their bodies specifically sequenced for the job, led him and several other dignitaries, politicians, and diplomats along a specially fenced-off pathway, to the entrance of Madeleine's central government building. He waved to several dozen individuals at random, before entering through the building's wide, arching, stone doorways.

"The room is physically and electronically secure, Mr. President," the head of security informed.

"I am Hiruta of Nomina," Hiruta declared to the United Earth council. The president of the Earth himself had flown over a forty light-years to sit this meeting with the alien. Hiruta had assured the humans that the meeting was absolutely urgent. Politics took over, and there was no shortage of high-ranking officials composing the audience. "My species has come to yours in good faith and intentions. However, we bear with us unfortunate news."