Saint James

I've been working on this for weeks now, in spare moments I've been able to steal. It's...maybe not quite perfect, but that's okay.

This is some insight into the surly cyborg character of James Makarios. This relates certain details of his life from the years xx34 until xx39. (The main Onieros story begins in xx41, and James will be introduced early in xx42.)

Now...Jimbo is...very special to me. To say the least. This was a great pleasure to write, but also somewhat frustrating. I couldn't go into depth as much as concerns his emotions as I would have liked...First, to try to keep this from becoming unbearably long, and second...I was afraid that it would then come across as being preachy. James' spirituality is one of the most important elements of his character (as it is with any character, I think.) To not mention these facts would be to ignore an important development in his life's history, but proselytization was certainly not my goal in writing. Thus, I hope that these words will be seen in light of an attempt at informing, rather than convincing.

Also, also...I apologize, but you might need a dictionary in order to follow Jimmy's conversation with his mother. Vestians aren't the only ones with a, er...distinct way of expressing themselves. (Pluto is a country populated entirely by lawyers...XD)

Happy reading! <3
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Saint James

James Paxon Makarios entered the hospital when he was fifteen years old. He left, for the first time, when he was halfway through eighteen. The words above the doorways shone with polished white plastic placards bearing the hospital's slogan "Aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur"--"Is is said for a sick man, where there is life, there is hope." However, little hope was reserved for James. He was dead--or, at least so near it there was no telling the difference--when he arrived on the stretcher as a mass of quivering red and liquid black and bones sticking too sharply white through charred and shredded flesh.

The medical staff of St. James First Medical Centre of Phoenix would have merely called the time, but no doctor existed worth the title that was foolish enough to dream of that. After all, the Makarios family supported a full fifth of the hospital's budget from personal donations alone, and if anyone could be said to have the money to buy the favour of God, it was the man whose younger son was now no longer recognisable as human. As it happened, it was the staff who were most surprised when somehow, a faint pulse was resurrected, even with their most sincere and devoted efforts to achieve that very thing.

The first week was comprised of a kind of agonising tension for all parties involved. Round-the-clock consecutive surgeries managed to somehow mine through the charred bulk that had once been a torso in order to stabilise the frantic heart with a network of electrical wires and machinery. They removed the last shreds of a frayed lung, replacing it with a new one donated by a readily-available philanthropic pig, and further damaged organs were supplemented by a tangle of tubes and wires leading to external processors. Bones were twisted back into place from where they reached unnaturally into the air like towers of some Gothic cathedral of flesh, until finally the boy was set indignantly into plaster and wrapped in a king's ransom of bandages. Then there was little to do but watch the monitors for any changes in his vital signs, and wait for him to emerge from his coma.

For three months, James slept contentedly in living death, his slow, shallow breathing and faint heartbeat kept regular through an army of machines. At length, the lid of his one remaining eye flitted and opened, and the direction of his sight betrayed consciousness, if an understandably hazy one. The family was thrilled, and doctors toasted the lad the "miracle man" with congratulatory champagne as they patted one another on the back for their historic accomplishments.

James' mind was intact, and as he was recovering strength in a steady increase, plans were now set in motion for the future. The boy knew better than to protest.

Piece by piece, James' left side was reconstructed in polymers and metals, replacing damaged organs and shattered bones. Muscle tissue and skin were grown in cloning beds and melded back into the original flesh with the aid of strengthening steroids and protein glues. The end result was not pretty, by any stretch, but it was self-contained and self-supporting, powered by natural blood sugars, and perfectly amiable in the system with the help of a nonrejectant medication.

James had the best room in the hospital, a spacious private suite with a glorious view of the city of Phoenix, the dome wall, snow fields and vacuum sky beyond, crisp white on black on white on black. As a neck brace prevented his turning his head to see it, James instead spent most of his time sleeping, which proved a far more pleasant experience than remaining awake at any stretch of time. The morphine injections were ice cold in his arm, but they made him feel warm, all over, and safe, and beautiful. When he was awake, there was nothing to do but stare numbly at the wall ahead and count the shades of white, and wonder at the novelty of the itch of his phantom limb.

It was tedious work, healing, and James was indifferent to it at best. He was perfectly content with dying. It seemed so much less bother than this long business of hospitalised survival, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty for all the hassle and work he caused in his upkeep.

James didn't bother to count the surgeries—making additions, making removals, making adjustments to what had been done before. He did, however, count the ceiling tiles of his room. There were one hundred and seventeen. He knew them by heart. Each one was off-white and punctuated by sixty-four tiny ventilation holes, but James knew the truth. Some were eggshell, some ecru. Some had their rows of standard holes punched off-centre by millimetres, or smaller fractions. One had a crack running down its centre, and it was his favourite.

The television made him dizzy, with its swiftly blinking lights and pop-out scenes and advertisements. The canned laughter made him nauseous and even soft-light computer screens had a similar affect on him. He was glad in his second month when he could move his neck to look out the window, and was gladder when he recovered the ability to turn the pages of printed books another month after that. The hospital had never had such a library within its walls as James' room. He read voraciously, happy to ignore everyone besides the characters who came to him from throughout the centuries, the only friends he had, who never looked at him with pity in their distant eyes.

Sometimes female nurses would make small talk with the boy while they attended to his indignities. Occasionally, they’d flirt and tell him how cute he was, but James knew they were lying and would ignore them, keeping his attention firmly between the pages unless absolutely necessary.

The only actual company that James found tolerable was the visits by his family, and the only that he enjoyed were by his brother and sister. His father came only rarely, busy man that he was as Princeps of the entire Makarios jurisdiction of Pluto. When he was present, he remained in a preoccupied manner, broken by short, direct questions to confirm the practical matters of James' caretaking.

His mother's visits were similarly short. She had so many engagements, and her son needed to appreciate the time they could spend together, as she made sure to remind him. She was getting on in years—not that one would think it to look at her—and she had so many visits to make to her own doctors...but she was glad to be afforded the opportunity to prescribe to her son all of the useful health-related advice from her own experience, and good thing, for as far as she could see, he was in sore need of it.

The extended family, and James' few friends from school or clan business functions, could all go to Hell, for all that he cared, for all their brief shows of awkward, halting conversations and averted gazes. James hated every one of them.

The siblings, though…they were another matter, completely. It was true that James at first resented the visits of his elder brother, recognizing in him so much of that same harried nature of leadership that characterised their father. However, in time, the sheer quantity of visits overtook the expectations of even very great politeness, and John's concern was finally determined in being actually in earnest, and even the note of condescension in his voice was realised as being an unintentional tone meant only to convey an honest sympathy and frustrated desire to be in some way useful.

James might be said to have truly come alive, though, when his sister Liliana visited. As she was only twelve years old when her brother was first injured, it was some time before she came to see him unchaperoned by some older family member, but once permitted to direct her own free time, her trips only increased in frequency until she was seeing him several times a week.

Lily, in all her adolescent cheek, would push right into the clear plastic oxygen tent suspended around her brother, and often came with gifts, despite the protests of the nurses on duty, concerning cleanliness thereof. She found a kind of pride in being able to do something so thoroughly grown up as make these visits, and at the same time she was overjoyed to have someone who took such an eager interest in her affairs. Her mother worried that spending so much time with her invalid brother, rather than with her peers, might impair Liliana's own social development, but the girl found in James equal parts of the ideal academic tutor, living diary, and sage of advice, and was happy to ignore any maternal concerns in lieu of long conversations spent in the same spotless white room.

It was after a standard year and a half that James took his new first hobbling steps on atrophied legs. He didn't want to. He didn't want anything, except to sleep, or maybe to finish his passage in Milton. Walking hurt and it was hard. Though his pelvis had been bolted back together where it had been snapped in two, his left leg would catch on a mass of calcified scar tissue in its socket, and not fully rotate. The limp seemed to echo the clumsiness that had come to define him entirely, that had caused the condition in the first place. But that was only insult on top of injury. With every step, his muscles burned like they were on fire, stretching again after the long period of disuse. He stumbled again and again, trying to keep himself aloft with his one remaining, equally shrivelled arm. He was terrified to fall, certain that he would shatter like porcelain. After a few sessions of such physical therapy, the pain became so intolerable that James began to make a voiced protest, though it came to nothing. The time had not yet come when he would appreciate the ability to walk again that made the ordeal necessary.

As the young man approached age seventeen, and had begun eating solid food again, he was deemed sturdy enough--though a little dispirited and listless in temperament--to have a replacement set in for his missing arm. The original had been severed from his body at the shoulder blade, in the same instance of fiery confusion that had seen his lung ripped through. A cybernetic prosthetic was prescribed and affixed, a light plastic model boasting the latest advances in artificial sensation and motor control through its liquid cell layers of chemical synthetic nerves.

James had never been in so much pain as the day where he was first instructed to flex a finger of his new hand. He obeyed and concentrated hard on forcing movement in the strange new appendage welded to his frame, but no sooner had the index finger even begun to twitch slightly, then the young man was doubled over, screaming, from the spasm of agony that shot up the length of the arm. The pain was a lasting one, its sharpness only at length fading into slow burn, an itch, and then a sort of infuriating numb prickle.

To his horror, the boy was made to repeat the experience as soon as his sobs had begun to quiet. And again. When his sister arrived later in the day, James had her sent away without seeing her.

As unpleasant as learning to walk had been, it was nothing in comparison to the slow build-up of control over his arm. The artificial nerves registered temperature, pressure, and movement, but every sensation was played out too strongly, obtusely, all volume and no delicacy. The feelings rolled up his arm in red and white-hot waves of pain, punctuated by sharp, icy-blue stabbing shocks. It was excruciating, a lasting kind of agony. With every new task—moving the fingers, moving the wrist, holding the arm aloft, rotating the shoulder, picking up and holding objects—new areas would be activated in fresh doses of anguish. It was only after months that his brain would finally become somewhat used to the feeling, and filter out some of the information, leaving only an omnipresent dull tingling feeling, at least for the most part.

James was exhausted, and now would not permit even his sister to see him, most days. Everyone else was turned away as a rule. After hours of therapy, he wanted nothing more than to curl away into a chemical cocoon of painkillers and sleep. He tried his best, when left alone, to lose himself in dreams, to silently fade away from existence, to die. He quietly cried himself to sleep long nights, wishing he were dead. He'd come so close. It would be so easy…but no one asked his opinion about that.

One late afternoon, in September, James made the first of several decisions that would shock his relations. It was his day off from mandatory exercises, and as his arm was behaving at a tolerable low throb, he was in as clear a state of mind as could ever be said of him. He'd spent the day satisfying his need for entertainment with a collection of ancient spiritual writings that had been dropped off by a local temple at some forgotten earlier point. It was the standard package that well-meaning little old ladies assembled for the invalid, with an assortment of mawkish booklets describing in no specific terms that he was worth a form-letter's love, and how all his life's worries would disappear if he devoted his life and pocketbook to assisting the charitable orders of the faith. Along with these cheering sentiments came the predictable paperback copy of the Book of Holies--the assembled collection of spiritual sweet-nothings that comprised the meditations of the good Enlightened Ecumenicalist.

James was not, in fact, particularly devoted to his faith. He had never been a sentimental man, and though he perfectly comprehended that most people must find an excellent emotional comfort in attending weekly communal meetings with cheerful music and sermons on how wonderful life was, he was still left with the distinct impression that religion was a terrible bore to be suffered through--like so many other formalities--for the sake of social propriety and appearance. But, no matter. Ritual was, after all, as the scriptures told, to be performed by each person according to their own convenience, and as long as his life's actions were marginally well-behaved, the Great Oneness of the Universe would reward him in an afterlife with everlasting bliss, or else reincarnate him to a better plane.

For now, though, James was content merely having something to read. He had already made his way through the XXIV High Teacher's treatise on the Great Oneness, the XXVIII High Teacher's famous speech on the Truth of Absolute Relativism and the books of inspirational poetics and few proverbs that made up the bulk of the text. Now, he was breezing through the other sundry essays and anecdotes of the Guides that brought up the rear, when something caught his eye. Wedged between an essay by Baudrillard and a collection of Einstein's equations was a small selection of excerpts from the letters of Paul of Tarsus. It was only a scant few words that stopped him, but that slight fraction of a second's comprehension was enough to make James do a double-take to read further.

"Anyone who has died has been freed from sin."

James paused, stared at it a moment, read the line aloud, and was silent once more.

He was not sure which word intrigued him more, "died" or "sin", or if it were, perhaps, the alien impolitic bluntness with which they seemed to be delivered, especially in conjunction with one another. "Sin" was hardly a popular word to be used in any context but that of irony. To see the concept considered in a way that appeared serious was nigh unheard-of. He scoured the footnotes to find the original source of the line, and promptly rang for assistance.

The arriving nurse on duty came prepared with a dosage of analgesics, anticipating the usual request, and was thoroughly surprised to find the young man alert and even uncharacteristically somewhat pleasant, despite his sudden imperative request that someone or other bring him a copy of some obscure ancient text. Despite the inconvenience of it all, however, James' plea was assented to, and he was graced with the writing the next morning.

The small book contained the full copy of the letter, written by the man Paul in the first century C.E., to a congregation of people in that distant past's city of Rome. With every line, James only became more intrigued. The book was written in a thoroughly forthright manner, expressing death, and failure, and lacking. The boy squirmed reading it, almost embarrassed, though he didn't know why he should be, but at last, he found the line he had been searching for in the sixth chapter. It had been a fragment from a longer sentence:

"For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him."

James devoured the rest of the book, and called again to request more of this man's writing. He needed to know more; he didn't know why. Something felt unresolved.

The young man had suddenly become transformed. He went to his therapy sessions quietly, and did at once as he was told, without the usual mewling protests at every step. He now had a certain determination to the tasks, a motivation to get them done quickly, in order to retreat to his room. He called for book after book for his own time, and while this was nothing so very different, he now read with voraciousness, a true passion to unravel the mystery that puzzled him. He read through the entire writings of Paul, and managed to locate the rest of what comprised the holy scriptures of that ancient Christian religion, followed by books of history, and comparative theology and philosophy.

A few days before New Year, both James' parents found time to visit him to extend their early seasonal greetings. The demands of social engagements prevented their ability to actually see their son on the holiday, itself, but James was understanding. His parents were less so, when he informed them of his decision to be baptized as a Christian.

His mother was irate, and spared no words in informing him of her feeling. His father reproached him for causing a scene, and led the hysterical woman away to be comforted, with a stern promise to James that they would discuss the matter later. Once they were out the door, the boy fell to a stagger from where he stood barely propped up on a walking cane, and quietly vomited.

After this, the young Makarios became the subject of joking among the hospital staff. The building's name of "Saint James" was an ancient one, holdover from the past days of Roman Catholic missionaries to a Pluto that was still in its Colonial period. It was retained now out of a sense of tradition, and a gently patronizing nod to the few remaining nuns who still frequented the medical centre, offering assistance as in keeping with that archaic faith. Now, to actually have some man by that name who had seemed to have proven himself as being some kind of miracle like from those mythologies, and now to have him making such a conversion...the coincidence brought on a marvelous strain of amusement.

James, himself, tried to take the events in stride. The humored nudges of the staff were good-natured enough, but relations with his family only intensified in proving distressing. His mother berated him almost daily for the decision, horrified that he would make such an obviously foolish amendment to his lifestyle. James' therapists tried to calm her, explaining that it was hardly uncommon for persons to discover religion after facing a life-threatening situation, that it was a healthy coping mechanism…but Catherina Makarios would not be dissuaded, and remained beside herself with grief. If her son needed religion, he had one already alongside the rest of the family--the good, proper, true faith in all faith. She could not abide the thought of her boy lowering himself even further by joining some horrible, barbaric, secret cult, being brainwashed by dangerous, Pythagorean elitist dogmas that a sensible man should recognize as belonging to a bygone, backwards era. The family patriarch gave the boy a stern command to think of his poor mother, which was sullenly ignored. John awkwardly tried to retain good terms with both sides, encouraging each to be willing to compromise…to no avail. Liliana was firmly forbidden to visit her second brother until he came to his senses, and the situation grew so extreme that one of the family bodyguards was assigned to make certain that she complied.

Though James proved to be an eloquent speaker when arguing his position, he was continually struck by the inerasable air of futility that his circumstances stained him with, nevertheless. He found that any sense of authority in his words were treasonously counteracted by his physical frailty, and that a case for ability to think clearly was besmirched by the fact that for the past three years his entire life had been a kind of second infancy, and fogged by painkillers.

With such thoughts weighing on him, James made another decision. His room was no longer a sanctuary; it was a prison. He was spending nearly almost all his waking hours, now, in an entirely lucid state, and he was noticing more and more…how little there was to notice. The one-hundred and seventeen ceiling tiles hung low above like they intended to smother him. The hallway circuit bore the same permanent stains every day on its tight loop carpet, and the wall paintings never varied. Cabin fever was settling in, and hard. The feeling was not unlike the insatiable itch of a phantom limb.

The middle of February brought James' eighteenth birthday, with the rights and privileges of legal adulthood. First thing that morning, he celebrated by obtaining and filling out the necessary paperwork to cancel the ocular transplant surgery that had been scheduled for a few months later. He'd grown accustomed to operating without depth perception, and adjusting for his blind spot had become second nature. He found the idea of more time in surgery, in recovery, and in therapy to learn to use the new eye--more time in the hospital--distasteful to say the least. A new eye would be a matter of vanity, more than anything, and James was sure that even with the transplant, he was unlikely to win any beauty pageants. Besides, as his looks went, he was more concerned about other matters. He had finally gone through a long enough period after his last cranial surgery to where he'd managed to actually grow hair, and he'd been watching its length increase with pride as a measurement of his time since the latest operation. James' mind was made up.

Upon her arrival that afternoon, James' mother now had another cause for complaint with her younger son. It was as though he were trying to purposely send her to an early grave. It would be difficult enough for him to function in society as it were; there is no difference between politics and appearance. A lack of grace was an unforgivable crime, and he was only going to make things harder for himself.

James listened quietly to her lecture as they sat facing one another in lightly-cushioned cream-colored chairs in his room. He was...very tired.

"Think, filius," she rapped. James noted the touch of Catalan accent that appeared in her voice when she was most put out--a last trace of her birthplace in the URE. "Do you suppose that no one will notice this? That they'll all just be content to just...ignore this...feature of yours?"

He sighed. "I'm sure, my dearest mother, that some modicum of politeness will prevent any unduly rude comments. And I have some measure of confidence in my own emotional fortitude, should they prove unable to fully contain themselves."

"Your injured feelings are not what most concern me regarding this matter."

I never would have guessed, James thought sarcastically.

"What will be said of you outside your own presence?"

"Perhaps an expression of some measure of wonderment that I'm able to walk."

"I am your mother. I know you. This will not benefit you."

"...Or they'll be too curious with questions about my fancy new arm to even notice that I'm missing an eye. Really, ma'am, if I'm content with my own face, I don’t see why other people's opinions on the subject need to being of any great importance."

Catharina seemed ready to fly into the air with frustrated anger. "Will you never be married, James?! Does this not concern you? Do you not want children?!"

James' face dropped into a small, cynical smile, and he laughed dryly. "Ma'am, in fact, I long ago resigned myself to certain realities. You've been acquainted with my medical records; I need not relate to you the pleasant details. No...I apologize, but you'll have to content yourself at present with grandchildren by the line of your better son. I know you're aware that John and Autumn are expecting a second."

His mother scowled, and then James suddenly broke into a grin. "Perhaps I'll excuse my celibacy by entering a monastery."

At this, Catharina broke into a fit of sobbing. Her son's expression softened.

"Forgive me; that was a joke--"

"It was not! Cruel boy! Ferreus! You wish to make me suffer! You have no compassion! To make your own mother suffer! Pudendus...!"

James exhaled heavily, bowed his head, and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, recalling the passage in Matthew he'd reread the night before, and so many times, now. Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me...?

He looked up again. "Mother--"

"James, I forbid this!” Catharina broke in. "I am your mother, and I forbid this. I will not allow you to cancel this appointment. You are a Princeps' son!"

"You can't forbi--"

"Etiam, I can. I have handled all of your appointments, and I will see this one carried out. You will listen to me."

"But as of today, I am an adult, and the decision is mine...not to mention the face in question."

"It is not your decision if you're unfit to make sound judgments. And it is obvious that your rationality is impaired."

"Di prohibeant! I assure you, I’m in excellent mental health."

"I do not think so," she smiled, smug with triumph.

James gazed at his mother for a long moment. He was so tired, and tired of the fighting. If he could just have her leave, he could curl up, sleep...The way out was easy. Lesser resistance; it seemed to be his signature move. He could just agree with her, and this would stop. He could have a shot of something numbing and drift away from the memory of this confrontation. What would another year of dreaming mean? What was it worth...?

He took a deep breath, and then stated very calmly and very clearly, "My dear mother, if I cannot personally convince you of the thorough sincerity of my decision, then I shall have to enlist the aid of a professional jurisprudent to advocate on behalf of my legal rights."

Catharina stopped short in surprise, and then gave a short, croaking laugh. "...Ha! Ain tu? You're actually threatening litigation against your own mother? And with whose monetary benefaction, might I be so bold as to inquire? You'll use your own parents' money against them?"

Her son smiled serenely. "I shall apply for a loan."

A court battle never ensued, having been deemed in certain opposition to the family's best interests. Seven months later, James was released from the hospital for the first time since his admittance, and he returned to live at the Makarios family estate with a black cloth patch politely covering the sealed lids of an empty, sunken-in eye socket. After six months of regular weekly returns to Saint James, with no complaint, it was deemed that the young man could be said to be recovered, and further medical appointments need be administered only on a basis of need.

James remained a frail creature, and it was some small measure of comfort to his family that he made no complaint when his mother took the liberty of checking him in to different clinics and spas. The boy obstinately refused to his duties of public social appearance, and none could say whether this was a benefit or detriment to the family’s good name. Thus, an excuse of his necessary interment for his health was a favorable occurrence.

There was a general degree of comforted relief when the problematic young man announced a thought that perhaps his composure would be benefited by the fresh air and warm sun of a health spa in the URE, and the idea was readily assented to with some degree of enthusiasm. The happy thought of James excusing himself abroad for a sizable period was so pleasant, in fact, that checking over the specifics of his arrangements was somewhat overlooked in the process. But, of course, what real cause was there for worry? Their son was redeeming himself by taking this leave of absence, and when he came back his judgment in all degrees would certainly be improved. How wonderful, how sound, how responsible of him to make this decision...

What James' family was unaware that their son had lately purchased a new cruiser model Blacksparrow "Hell Bender" touring aerospacecycle, and that no reservation had been made with any Earth health spa.