Illustration by Sam Weber. Click for larger image.The surgery to give Mr. Dapple the wings of a crow was scheduled to take twelve minutes. Chief Resident Riel, the youngest surgeon at the Kweskatisowin Hospital, which was the largest rural hospital in Iiyiyuushii, had already upped the anesthesia. Dapple had ordered the most expensive unconsciousness available, a full and clean f-trip with a personalized fantasia. Professor Enoch Samaritan — arriving late from his Montreal commute — entered the operating theatre just as Riel was putting the dream in the man’s head through the earworm, and tried to smile. He couldn’t bring himself to apologize, though. Riel was his least favourite resident — good looking, always in full war paint and headdress, and early to every metamorphosis. His youth was tiring just to look at.

“Any guesses?” Riel asked his elder, who he noticed was wearing the same jeans and feather-collared strut as the day before.

“Guesses about what?”

“The fantasia.”

“You know you’re not supposed to look at the contents of a patient’s fantasia, Riel. It’s illegal.”

“He’s chosen a dream where he becomes a crow,” Riel said. “Can you believe it? A crow flying over a forest. Talk about a limited imagination.”

Before his senior colleague even had a chance to check the cleanliness of the sightlines, Riel began pushing the patient into the allscan, the rubbery grey tube that would sheathe the patient for the duration of the procedure. He resented a workday longer than half an hour. Nonetheless, he guided the body into the machine slowly and carefully. Dapple’s flesh was soft from multiple surgeries, and his back had been pre-broadened and pre-rippled, though the nervous system at his bio-age was no doubt robonecrotic anyway. Samaritan approved of Riel’s vigilance. It was the one remaining characteristic that distinguished a top surgeon.

Once the patient was inside, Riel set the tarp under the allscan. He reached for the g-drones on the side table, and handed a cup of them to Dr. Samaritan, who unceremoniously poured the container over the patient’s back. The robotic goo spread over every square micron of the exposed back, dripping in oily streams down and along Mr. Dapple’s thick sides.

Corvine transplant was a boring metamorphosis. The whole of the back needed to be droned, and it left the two surgeons with a few minutes of dead time, and nothing to do with their hands.

“Did I ever tell you about the day I made kiwew?” Riel asked. “The day I crossed the border?”