Welcome to Gaia! ::

Connections to the student affairs office had tended to pay off, and the week found no exception to that rule- one of his acquaintances had alerted Quenton to the fact that it was rotationally one of the semesters where there was a seminar elective series scheduled for med students. First-year students in medical tended to have access to 70 bodies spread across nine labs over the course of a single year, with some astronomical amount of hours spent viewing, touching and dissecting. Intending to specialize out of family practice required more than that, as the finesse of a surgeon came from doing and not reading or looking at anatomy apps on iOS. The seminar welcomed anyone even out of the medical field, as long as the fees were paid on a per session basis. Quenton had taken the liberty of reserving two slots for the first 6 hour session in the rarely used medical theater.

He set an alarm on his phone to jolt him out of compositional studies on he proper day and time. Thankfully, it seemed a day that Alois had no plans to go out among the masses. The sculptor rose from his seat at the kitchenette and crossed to where the Saarlander was in one of the cushioned seats at the window. Wrapping arms down around Alois' stark shoulders and clavicles from behind, Quenton spoke by his ear. "Come out with me a few hours. I have a surprise gift for you. "

The words came quoted, rhythmic in answer, "Time turns all loves into corpses; a cadaveric dissection awaits two more bodies in the forum. Front row. No bags, and we'll have to put on cap, gowns and booties once we're there. Everything will need washing when we get back anyway- the formaldehyde smell sticks on everything. "

"We've played with bone for our project. This will help us both for study. "

Accordingly, Quenton slid his arms back slowly to allow the other up while he changed himself into the most threadbare of his shirts. It could just go in the garbage after this, and would be softer and more comfortable under the bunnysuit required of potential biohazard procedures. Once changed, he rejoined with the other to lead the way.

Quenton had lifted an eyebrow, not hiding attention to detail of his own clothes on a lover's body, nor making any fuss over it- he was aware of Alois' displeasure regarding body images. Not that he'd ever been very exuberant in his expression of emotion, but overt expressions were starting to identify as foreign after what was now months- so much effort spent pulling them apart in like dissection in his mind into current necessity, necessity of humanity but no longer applicable to his life goals, and not necessary. It was only a start, but it was progress.

Having the focus of what was necessary to express- regard, attachment, esteem and desire to a lover was proving a good foil to the rest. It would have its own troubles later, but as a catalyst it was surprising effective. It made the step of the dissection table, sharing the experience and knowledge, and the finishing of the project that much more pertinent, more wanted. There is also the faith of a gift well chosen. Seeing the pleasure in a lover's face and knowing it was brought by my own efforts. Such a simple thing. No holidays or petty excuses, just on account. It is a thing to retain- a form of altruism.

"Me wear nothing? " One eyebrow lifted in a practiced wry expression. Are you teasing me as a lover, or just with black humor? "I think everyone's attention will be on the only naked body in the room- the cadaver. "

"Which I don't expect I would make a good replacement. I haven't been seen to by a prosector, for one." The walk was pleasant across campus. The temperature was middling, neither warm nor cool, while the plants put out neon green buds. Spring was contemplating lilacs and daffodil. The plenty of a surfeit of blooms would make an attractive counterpane beneath Alois.

The thought was pushed aside as the foolishness of age and proximity. "Fragments of a life, silent, left that we will be among the last ones to know- the attending senior surgeon who will be performing the actual dissection will be telling us what can be discerned layer by layer. Salient death- the Machine pulled apart so that its gears, goggles and silent brass and black coils brought to the for. It will be helpful."

All the meat and none the man. It is less mystifying to taxidermy, maybe. He has dealt with the reality of a corpse more than I. Yet still, after hand crushing so many chicks for Faust, after the project has come so far with true human bones, it feels different to look to a person complete. To watch them pulled out and opened like so many leaves of a vellum from a scroll. When we finally lay down dead, instead of walking and dancing, we will be the same- empty eyes and no more thoughts...or should be. Silence. I don't know that the prospect of reincarnation and starseeds is a comfort- yet that is as it is... the memory and person is so separate from the body that they become veritably so much less.

Quenton matched pace to Alois, and they made it easily to the stairs of the appropriate medical hall. "Ob arm, ob reich, im Tode gleich.*"

Quenton considered, mind taking a moment along cognitive homonyms to find the correct web spindles and weaves- it helped that between them the discourse was usually German to match much of the source material. "There would be no point in telling us. We'll learn it on our bodies."

"But actually, I was referencing more of the anatomists' early philosophies and the gains of support from the church that presented the study of the body as the opening of God's machine to the knowledge of man. Or even the comparisons of man who becomes machine, degraded and meaningless as in The Metropolis. The Harrow is a goal for the living more than a body on a slab- it can learn nothing. You and I could learn everything, if we can not only survive but surpass the secret epiphanies."

The hand that laced to his own, unsolicited was firmly clasped. Rough callous on the first knuckle of his thumb was stroked over the back of Alois' hand while a tech brought around vacuum-sealed bunny suits and explained in brief the procedure for sanitary removal in before leaving through the other doors with a locker room and chute. They and others were left to don the ridiculous study suits. Losing Alois’ hand for the moment was palliated by palming the goth’s soon plasticized backside while the other was affixing the requisite booties over shoes. There was less of a trap in these pants compared to the trick jeans Stroud had sent to his place. Though when she learned Alois presence or size at my place is suspect.

It had been all of five minutes before the diener and surgeon brought out the subject.

It was a middle aged woman, average in weight. The surgeon started with introductions, the obligatory words introducing the basics of the history and expectations of the gravity of the dissection lab. An lab tech of some sort brought around one large, plastic wrapped tome of anatomy per every two at a bar-

It will be pleasant to share.

The first step was textbook- the skin incisions down the spine, across the ribs and above the buttox on the posterior of the body. The flaps were reflected out laterally from the midline. Quenton shifted hand to pages to get them to the correct diagrams, and playfully followed the cuts with a finger out of sight down Alois' back.

Step two - removal of the exposed superficial fascia and definition of the borders of the trapezius muscle and latissimus dorsi muscle. The surgeon pointed out for the room, "Anatomically, two triangular spaces are indentifiable: the triangle of auscultation and the lumbar triangle. The triangle of auscultation is bordered by the trapezius, latissimus dorsi, and the medial border of the scapula. The lumbar triangle is bordered by the latissimus dorsi muscle, external abdominal oblique muscle, and iliac crest."

The clean smack of bootie against his calf was exactly what he'd hoped for. Quenton's stance relaxed with the distinct pleasure of earning a reaction out of some ridiculousness from a lover. His anxiety was building. Reassurance and deflection of it was the correct choice. Worked. As his return play is as much a balm to me. He has become playful, or....rather has felt comfortable enough at last to show it. I think that more likely. He played from the first, on the roadside. Then all was twisted with briars. Now there are some blooms therein, cultivated and cultured, treasures to find.

Treasures like a riposte that he hadn't expected, verbal rapier sunk quickly and deep to the mark. That was a change- Alois was so careful, so prudish nearly any body, or bawdy, aspect. Play was a first step in confidence, hedging the edges and testing them to be safe. You just said that. Implied that. On these tables. in front of a classroom of medical students and a surgeon. No doubt part in your usual excuses of making trouble and looking to get reactions out of people as well, but ....there is a growth of confidence there.

It was heady as the 1963 port vintages served at his family's table in youth. There is growth. What could come of confidence ripe in this field? What mastery would you seek, Alois, removed from the fragmentary ruins? I want to see it, what you reach for and grasp. If only you could see what I can see, the clean and perfect dark as it was before it was subsumed by fears and lies like the hearts of men. Before the living dark.

There were some uncomfortable shifts among the other persons in the front row- at least a handful knew enough German to follow the gist of the comment, maybe some even knew the full of it. The surgeon didn't flinch, and continued whether he understood or no. Alois' guess was accurate, in that the muscles named were reinforced by the full of the sculptor's hand pressing them. The complications of the progression were equally present in Quenton's mind, but inconsequential to the whole of the exercise. The point was some learning, the enjoyment of a shared enlightenment in further mastery of the specifics of the meat they both commanded. It would take many more than a single dissection to learn every sinew by name, the end game. Would that we had some version of that strange corruption, to reach in without damage and lay finger on each as the agents do with starseeds. Does it work in other areas than the chest? I'm getting distracted.

The surgeon was progressed beyond the reflection of Trapezius, the spinal accessory nerve and the Transverse Cervical Vessels. He called from the front row one of the medical students and reiterated a short lesson on the proper holding and use of scalpel. Their task was to cut the latissumus dorsi, near the tendinous origin from the thoracolumbar fascia. A second 'volunteer', the next seat over, had to come down and locate the thoracodorsal nerve and accompanying blood vessels- subjects which would be dissected on their own later.

Dare I give answer? How much do I dare, weighing growth against propriety? It is a common enough conundrum anymore, my guides growing hazy in the name of movement. Can one remain a man and still go beyond the laws of them to understand their weight objectively? I think...that is one of the lessons offered by Alois' wisdom. It may not be possible. Metamorphosis requires the complete end of one thing to become another. We will not let each other fail. So postulates weighed, the conclusion is easy- I must give answer that knots my nerves and sickens stomach. Immolate the whole to find the new creature on the other side. The consideration alone breeds anxiety. I must lose this aversion, and he can help me to burn it away. But we will need to be careful of the brazen declaration. They will expect some foolishness and know us both here. He leaned over, speech at bare whisper for only Alois' hearing, "By your sight then. After hours."

too bad they won't leave the body

For most effective test, it was. For actual success rate, he had to admit to himself that he was dubious of his ability to manage just yet, as though a corpse were all the more just so much furniture. At need. The difference in respects given and liberties taken was always a fine line, but that balancing act was one he was only just approaching. I have been of the laws of this world that does not protect itself. This country that does not prepare or even know the sacrifice of its youth. No....that does nothing. There is no state of emergency called, no national guard presence. The Negaverse must hold some keys that bar the doors of even that much justice and aid to the senshi. To the youth that try to save lives against weapons, Youma, and black whorled hands. I must change the laws I follow, for these are rotten. This world is rotting. "Vestaboro."

It was a ways out, an hour or more by drive and maybe longer by bus, but like many East Coast rural regions that flanked metropolitan centers it was a dead mining town, a 'vesta' once part of a company system, full of grandparents reminiscing. Agricultural high schools with 10% who would never leave to become the next generation of waitresses, hair dressers, and poor general contractors. The only flourishing businesses were cheap Restaurants, Florists and Funeral Homes. He knew of at least a handful already that were upkept by mostly deaf octogenarians whose houses were connected by off to the side of the viewing and morgue. Places that had no surveillance, and less technology more advanced than the 1960s.

Public spaces were harrowing a challenge as it was, let alone public dissection theaters. And the illegality. Do not accept it if I pull back. I won't accept it of myself. I need someone with steady hands. Someone on the other side to pull me through as I reach. I'll mess it up, but it will be something he may tease me of. The halves of his thought caught up to each other- the dissection was still far from over and the compulsory aid had kept making its way around the room.

It was Alois' turn, the surgeon pointing scalpel once and motioning for him to come down to the center of the theater. "You're going to detach both the splenius capitis and splenius cervicis muscles. One side only, at their attachment to the ligamentum nuchae and the spinous processes and reflect them laterally."

The surgeon was clear, as ever, in his directions. "Cut the spinalis and longissimus muscles near their attachments to the spinous and transverse processes of the vertebrae and reflect them laterally to expose the deepest layer of intrinsic muscles of the back. Then you are to name the muscles themselves while indicating the processes which they attach to. "

That meant more touching than he was necessarily happy to do. Quenton considered the corpse with a severe glare, motionless for a count of two breaths before accepting the pointing rod and using it to held move flaps around. The flesh felt like handling meat at a grocer- heavy and unresistant. He used the pointy end of the rod to push just enough into the locations he was calling out to dimple the tissue. " These muscles include the transversospinalis, semispinalis, rotator longus and brevis, levator costalis, and multifidus muscles."

Once dismissed, he immediately sought Alois' face- an anchor point of focus away from the corpse smell. The odor of meat and formaldehyde really was the biggest offender. The body itself was odd, but it didn't turn his stomach as much as he'd worried. It felt as real as anything, but seemed innocent and regular, every bit as vanilla as the studies in the books they'd been paging through, compared to what he and Alois' built together. The extra length to the ribs like fingers, extra vertebrae, fine-drilled letters and silicon musculature took on a deviant, near sensual bio-mechanics that felt closer to a Giger fever dream than he'd ever really considered. As soon as he made it back to his lover's side he adjusted the pages to the final odds and ends of the exercise.

Quenton sought the pianists more delicate hand again. He leaned over as though to offer whispered words against the shell of the pale ear, but pressed lightest kiss there instead, finally allowing a deep breath. It still stank- the whole room did, but so near the others hair and neck there were distinct notes of Alois' life and personal pheromones to combat the general malaise.
Smelling like this on a bus all the way, during and all the way back. A;; the more incentive- trial by fire. Or embalming. I said yes to this. This isn't crushing peeps for Faust's dinner.

He did finally offer soft words, "We'll have no trouble getting seats on public transportation. "