A Fish Under a Cat's Knife

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The laboratory room in the Epsilon sector was at that moment filled with two sounds. The first was Vivaldi's Spring. Its beautiful melody was carried all over the room from the source which was the surgeon's phone. The second sound was the ear-aching sound of a circular saw cutting apart bone plates. Both these melodies fought for the domination of the room. Every now and then the louder violin of Vivaldi's spring made itself felt, and with a harder piece of bone plate the saw showed its dominance.

At the beginning, doctor Ryszard Kot was reluctant when he heard an offer to help with the research on the bottom of the Baltic Trench. Darkness and ruins was not something that attracted him. However, when he was asked for help in investigating a local anomaly, a representative of an extinct species who somehow cheated death and lived on, doctor Kot immediately left his office at Site PL-49 and on the same day in the evening he was in the foundation's port in Hel.

In the room, apart from Kot, was the anomaly itself. It was dunkleosteus. Before the operation began, four spears, a dozen or so pieces of gilded gratings, and additionally a few crystals stuck in the body of the fish were pulled out of his body. The thing that doctor immediately noticed was that some of the pieces of the bars pierced the fish's brain, so much so that at times the ends of the rods came out on the other side, despite this fact the dunkleosteus continued its basic life functions.

Melodically to the gentle movement of the violin, a falling piece of bone plate hit the floor, nearly hitting the doctor in the leg. Kot knocked the plate away with its foot towards the other, four more such plates, lying in the corner of the room. Dunkleosteus tried to thrash with pain from the doctor's actions, but was unable to do anything. The fish were held firmly by metal supports; although the dunkleosteus tried to use every remaining muscle in him to free himself, he was unable to. He was trapped.

The surgeon, using the panel next to him, lowered the surgical machinery from the ceiling, although he had always preferred, as he put it himself, a personal approach to the "patient" on the table. However, this time he decided to use high-tech equipment. The music on the doctor's phone, after the end of Vivaldi's spring, passed to Johann Strauss II, more precisely the piece Frühlingsstimmen.

As the orchestral waltz began, surgical blades slipped from the machinery near the ceiling. At the beginning, doctor Kot, carefully operating the machine with the rhythm of the melody, started shifting it sharply to set it in the right position, then gently, like the title "Voices of Spring", he began to make cuts in the fish with the blades. Which immediately, in the rhythm of the cylinder, enveloped the arms of the machine as research samples, these in turn were placed by the arms in the center of the machine. And sent straight for analysis.

What perhaps disappointed the doctor a bit was the fact that the fish did not bleed, despite the fact that all vital functions were normal, this specific dunkleosteus did not contain a drop of blood. There was something about the blood-covered tissues that fascinated him, the lack of this element seemed extremely unnatural for him, slightly disrupting the rhythm of the procedure.

After Strauss was over, an alarm rang on the phone. The doctor sighed, letting go of the machinery stuck with the blades in the body of the fish. Doctor took off his rubber gloves and walked over to the table in the corner of the room. There was a white mug on the table with a picture of doctor Kot and his wife on it. The surgeon took a bag of black tea out of it and threw it in the basket next to it, then sweetened it with two teaspoons of sugar. It moved with the swivel chair closer to the fish's head.

The phone, after turning off the alarm clock, played music again. Yo the rhythm of the melody, doctor Kot made gentle circular movements with the spoon in order to dissolve the sugar. Looking at the head of the fish, he sipped warm black tea. So far, samples have been collected and some bone plates have been removed. The list also includes stomach content tests and fish brain tests.

Doctor Kot put the cup down and began to put on the gloves. The room began to be filled with the sounds of the song from the 3rd act of Nabucco, Va, pensiero, more widely known as the "Choir of Hebrew Slaves". The surgeon returned to the machine console. With it, he pulled out the stuck blades. The arms began to move to the rhythm of the choir, then the drill came out. Driven by doctor Kot, it lowered itself into the body of the fish and began to drill inward.

Yes, it was possible to insert the camera and machinery through the mouth of the fish, but the doctor did not want to risk damaging the machine with bone plates serving as teeth, the grip of which could damage delicate equipment. After drilling the holes, the arm retracted, another appeared precisely above the drilled hole and began to lower inwards.

A moment before the surgeon turned on the camera with the flashlight in the machine, it can be said that he was lost in music, he remembered the time when he was with his wife at the Viennese opera, watching Nabucco. He remembered her beautiful dress, smile, her joy that she was there with him. One tear ran down the surgeon's cheek, then another. He knew that they would not be able to repeat it anymore, due to her being practically bedridden, all she could experience from opera was recordings.

The doctor started to think again, he should have been the most injured in the accident, he should be bedridden now, he should be there, not her. With a slightly trembling hand, he took off his glasses to wipe the few tears with a handkerchief. There was nothing he could do now in this situation. The lack of a signal here prevented him from calling his son to make sure that everything was fine at home and that Mrs. Kot health did not deteriorate, nor was he able to carry out further examinations with a trembling hand.

He got up from the console, put his glasses down on the table, and reached for his tea cup to calm himself down. Damn Nabucco, he shouldn't have added this song to the list. The song ended, the next one began. It didn't matter to the surgeon what it was, he put his tea cup down, put on his glasses and went back to the fish. He turned on the flashlight and the camera inside.

"What's this…?" Doctor Kot said, seeing a humanoid in practically perfect condition inside. It had a transparent, slightly greenish skin, sky-blue hair, visible inside, and wings that looked more like fins.

After moving the camera closer, the doctor was also able to notice the eyes of the humanoid as black as the night, he ejected a blade from the camera, with which he cut out a piece of the body, immediately sending the data for analysis. This creature was practically ingrown with the dunkleusteus with its hands, by its external features it could be judged that the humanoid was a female.

Kot took pictures of the humanoid and saved them for documentation. Tapping his fingers rhythmically on the consoles, he stared at the mysterious being. A small saw emerged from the pipe, with which the doctor began to cut the humanoid's hand from the dunkleosteus. The fish tried even harder to free itself from the metal grip, it was not the reaction the doctor expected. First hand released. The surgeon moved the machinery to begin cutting off the other hand.

Dunkleosteus thrashed with each movement of the little saw, making Richard's work more difficult. The Doctor suddenly heard the metal shift, one of the handles loosened, the jaw of the Dunkleosteus suddenly closed. The fish tried to turn its head towards the doctor to attack him.

The hand was cut off the body. Dunkleosteus stopped suddenly, as if relieved. Suddenly, freed from the pain of his existence, he calmly lowered his head and froze motionless. All his vital functions stopped. At this point, the results of the research on humanoid samples appeared.

Most of the humanoid genetic code was consistent with Homo sapiens sidhe.

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page revision: 11, last edited: 20 Aug 2022 20:59
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