Grey Rooms

It is a well known fact, among the classmates, that the universe consists only of grey rooms with grey walls, and grey floors, and- believe it or not- grey ceilings. The sleep room is grey, the lab room is grey, the classroom is grey, and etcetera. So it stands to reason that test room #4, one of the rooms where they are quizzed to see if they have learned what they are taught, should also be grey.

It is not. At the moment, it is only dripping, dripping red.

MX8 looks around himself in horror. His labmate, MX7, props herself on her elbows in order to better survey the viscera from her position on the lab table. Her expression is mild- that of someone who had an idea of how things would go from the beginning, and was really just there to mediate the damage.

“Well,” she says, calm. “I don’t think we passed.”

The exposed and still beating heart in her chest sprays more blood. MX8 winces as it coats the last few remaining inches of grey.

“I can- listen, I can still do this, I just cut the wrong artery, I think-”

“We’ve only got...” She glances at the clock. “15 minutes left, Eight. Might as well get started on cleaning instead.” Seeing the downcast expression on his face, she adds, “Hey, it’s not the end of the world- we’ll just retake the units until we’re ready again. If you ask me, I think they really rushed this one.”

Still stricken, he murmurs a quiet “yeah, I guess” in response, and moves to get the cleaning materials from under a cabinet. Thankfully, none of the red managed to seep into it, so the mop and bucket are untouched. Silence falls over them as they wait for water to fill the pail. MX8 tries, in vain, to wipe some of the blood off his face. It only smears further.

“...Sorry,” he says, when the quiet becomes too loud. The bucket is a quarter filled. It is, unfortunately, a rather large bucket.

MX7 gives him a curious look. “Why’re you sorry?”

“You probably would’ve passed, if you had a different partner. You don’t have to-” He swallows. The lump in his throat does not go away. The human autonomic nervous system is the worst. “You don’t have to keep asking to be partnered with me.”

She snorts. “Oh, come on. What, you think I’m just partnering with you out of charity?” He doesn’t respond. “Please. First of all, I’d rather you than the rest of those stones.”

“Three wouldn’t have messed up a simple organ removal-”

“Three also grew an ilkear intestine, thet heart, and human kidney, then tried to pass the whole thing off as a yutuk respiratory system.” MX8 laughs despite himself, and she continues, emboldened. “Listen, maybe you’re not that great at the surgery part of it, but you’re the best here at building! Look at that heart you grew!”

The heart in question sits on a nearby tray, expertly removed. It’s human, as the requirements stated, and the walls now match its color. He can admit to being proud of it- it’s beautifully sculpted, with healthy arteries and correctly placed valves. The pain in his chest almost lessens when he looks at his handiwork.

“And also,” MX7 insists, “This was at least partially my fault. I think I might’ve messed up where the aorta was supposed to go, and some of the veins were definitely out of place. You can’t just keep putting all the blame on yourself; you’re not the only one who makes mistakes.”

His eyes are suspiciously wet- he briefly entertains switching the human ones for the dryer yutuk’s, but that’d be as much an admission as actually crying, so instead he gives her a watery grin and says, “Thanks.” Though he’d never admit it, MX7 had always been his favorite classmate for a reason. 

The bucket finally finishes filling, and with nine minutes left on the exam, they begin to clean the room. MX7 had finally managed to knit her chest back together, and she gets out a second mop as he scrubs the floors. By the end of official testing time, they’d gotten a pretty good head start, and it only takes them another 40 minutes of hard work after that before the room is mostly grey, albeit wet. They leave it to dry, grab showers and fresh clothes, then join the others in the sleep room, recovering from the strenuous exam. MX5 is bragging about her skills to a bored MX1 and 4, MX2 is nervously rambling about what he might’ve gotten wrong to MX10, who is rolling his eyes in response, and finally MX6, 9, and 3 are all asleep. And eventually the talking stops, and those who remain drop off, one by one, to join their classmates in dreaming.

MX8 finds that his imagination has latched onto the vibrant red, and he dreams of hallways that are red, and rooms that are red, ones that stretch far further than is possible, so many more than he knows exist. But as test room #4 dries, reality returns, for the classmates, to what it is. A finite number of grey rooms, and only grey rooms.

The space station continues drifting in open space. At 17:30 Earth time, the hearts will be taken out of their collection boxes, and picked over by several experts. Any (and not just the ones from the MX series, but also the AJs, the PWs, all the others) that are deemed safe will then be brought to a cargo shuttle, which will drop them off at the Aaro-Ilkear Medical Market at around 20:00 or so. Doctors and patients alike, the sickly and their family members, they haggle and buy over the affordable pricing, the lush organs available for as low as five credits. Supply is, after all, flowing due to the new sciences.

The inhabitants of the space shuttle will never comprehend this process. They just know the grey rooms.