CHAPTER 487: FLESH AND WOOD

"How would I like my own favourite tricks being turned against me? Of course, I would like that very much!"

Tabletina smiled wider.

"Great. Then wait a minute."

I knew that she sent a telepathic message to someone, but purposefully didn’t listen; instead, I patiently waited.

The wait was short—in a few minutes, the door of the workshop opened, and a bee stepped inside. At the sight of her, my eyes widened in shock.

A brief scan of her status showed that her name was Twohorn, she was over a year old line Craftsman Bee, and carried a chaotic mutation of long, sharp horns. One of them was broken in the middle, but the wound was old.

The girl was still missing ten health, but this was obviously because of the old wound she carried—her arms. Or a complete lack of them.

All four of her arms were made of wood, at least from the elbow!

These prosthetics weren’t simple hooks, but elegant creations similar to those I saw on the shelf. And they were attached right to the flesh around, which was covered in thick bandages. But I couldn’t see any straps or other supports necessary to keep prosthetics like these on.

This wasn’t some cyberpunk movie, after all. On Earth, even the most advanced prosthetics were heavy and unwieldy and often required support systems covering half of your torso just to attach something to your elbow.

This was not like that at all. They held as if attached directly to the bone... but thought a procedure like that should’ve been extremely painful to the target even if successful.

However, Twohorn walked calmly up to us, and even raised a hand in greeting—one of those where wood started from the elbow. My eyes widened even more when I saw a wrist move in the joint a little, seemingly on its own.

"Greetings, Father! Adviser Tabletina and Adviser Things-Things asked me to be the demonstration of this wonderful invention for you!" she chirped happily. "It’s such an honour! I feel like there was some luck in me losing my arms if it led me to this."

I shook my head.

"You still lost your arms, my dear! Must’ve been some terrible work accident to lose all four of them at once..."

"Oh, no, I didn’t lose them in ONE incident. There were four of them! First, the fallen brick, then a steam engine explosion, then ANOTHER fallen brick and finally burns from molten metal in a smithy!"

The more Twohorn talked, the more incredulous I became. Was this bee so unlucky or just clumsy?

"Why are you even working in all these places with so few arms, Twohorn?"

"Her superiors deemed her fitting for work. This was just some bad, bad luck, yes-yes," Things-Things said. "But now she will be able to work again! Not that she wasn’t working. She was carrying things around on her back."

I raised my brows, impressed.

"You didn’t want to become an artist, Twohorn?"

The bee shook her head.

"Noo, I don’t have the art in me! I don’t know how to do any of it. And I tried! But I can carry bags if someone puts them over my shoulder. And lift things with my horn!"

I was even more impressed.

"Your perseverance is incredible, Twohorn," I said, smiling. "And now you got new arms... How are they attached, Tabletina? Is this what you wanted to show me?"

"Yes," she said, stepping up to us. "As you can see, Father, there’s no need for extra fastenings to hold them on. At first, they were there, but by now the wood had fused with the flesh. This required removing a layer of skin over the stumps, so I covered the wounds in bandages for now. However, I think they could be removed soon."

"Fused... with the flesh? How?"

Tabletina shrugged.

"I don’t understand it myself. But... this just happened. I can show you."

She gestured to Twohorn, who obediently raised a bandaged elbow and let Tabletina carefully remove the bandages.

Underneath it was... Well, "fused" was the right word. The edge of a wooden prosthetic grew into Twohorn’s skin, and the skin started growing over it. It was a bit inflamed, but not more than expected from a fresh wound.

Then Twohorn tilted her hand, and I saw her wrist flex a bit again.

"This!" I exclaimed. "You moved it, did you, Twohorn?"

"Yeah, Father! It still doesn’t always work, but it’s much better than it was a week ago. All Physicians say that in a few weeks I’d be able to make fine things with my fingers again, as long as I keep up with my heat baths."

"This is what I meant, Father," Tabletina said. "The prosthetics made from the ice-hole tree wood can be grafted onto people like this... It’s incredible. I can’t understand what exactly makes them work like that, but they do. The fusing process speeds up if the prosthetics are heated up—they start sucking warmth from their surroundings again after being grafted, although much slower."

I touched the offered Twohorn’s arm and felt that it was eerily cool to the touch.

"This isn’t dangerous?"

"No, but it felt weird at first. Then it felt even weirder when I started to feel things with my wooden arms, too," Twohorn said, shrugging. "I’m getting used to it. It’s like my hands are constantly cold—but better have cold hands than no hands, right?"

"Right!" Things-Things exclaimed. "But why have ordinary hands when you can have better, enhanced hands, right-right? This is what I suggested to sister Tabletina."

I looked at the prosthetics on the shelf with new eyes. Although they were still prototypes that could be improved in many places, they were made with a desire not just to replace lost limbs, but to add extra functionality to old ones.

"This is a wide field for experiments, Father," Tabletina said, looking at me with a burning gaze. "But what if we could improve our bodies not only with genes, but also with science?"