She's collapsed to the table, her head resting on the polished wood surface. A beep from her computer - EMBER's got opinions, evidently. The jeering tone that she reads EMBER's detached commentary with stirs her back to action. How dare they? They aren't on fire with pain and bleeding into a pan. The thought drifts through her head that this might not have been a very good idea, but she pushes it aside. Her hand won't stop shaking and she's getting tremors, but there isn't any way out but through, she needs two hands to work - to live - to be.
She pulls on the handle of the saw. It doesn't budge.
She yanks again. This time it goes skittering out of reach and the restraints wrench her arm, her shoulder doing its best to keep her attached to the table. The hand doesn't move at all, though, it's hard to transmit motion with only a bit of flesh attaching it to the rest of her. She breathes, centers. She's going to be ... OK. She's going to be OK. Back to the cameras.
"I recommend not doing ... that. I also recommend not having a snarky AI around, it's distracting. Space has been cleared, moving on to construction of an artificial bone-analogue and installation of components."
She picks up the backplane and places it in the hollow cavity that her efforts have earned her. At least this part is easy, she's built hundreds of computers in her lifetime. This one's a little special, though, she can't exactly start over if it turns out poorly. The rough edges of the unsanded silicon scrape against her lower musculature but it doesn't really compare to what she's just felt. It's only bad in a philosophical sense, and at least it's better than the Phage. Still, it doesn't escape her attention that she's going to itch from the inside as this the equipment shifts and tries to escape. She'll have to make sure it stays connected.
"Note for next time, make sure you apply some kind of cover to the circuit boards or you'll get post-installation itching."
She picks up the scalpel again - time for some delicate work. She snips a nerve, and waits for the flash of pain. When it comes, she dry heaves, but nothing comes up (this was a fasting procedure). She pierces and caps off the in and the out of the nerve to the system board, and repeats the procedure for the rest of the nerves. By the end of it, she's figured out some techniques for avoiding pinching them too much in the process. She'd be disappointed that she grew accustomed so fast if she weren't so relieved that it was over.
"This is best done without anaesthetic, or you won't know if the failsafe nerve passthrough ports are working."
When she places the memory, it lies nice and flat against the backplane, requiring no soldering to be useful. She places the processors on the board reverently, the heatsinks wrapping around blood vessels like kudzu strangling a tree. She giggles, liquid cooling. She might be a little woozy from the pain if that's funny to her at this point. Better finish quickly.
"Remember to add this, or it'll all be for nothing!" She collapses in a fit of giggles that turns into a coughing fit. Eventually, she remembers that the arm on the table is hers, and that she needs to go get it.
There are lots of compact flash cards in her (according to the last X-ray scan she got); she just has to dig for them. She has to dig pretty deep in the hand components to find them, but they're there. If EMBER needs more than a few hundred gigabytes they'll have to negotiate. Unfortunately, this backplane only has flash headers, not slots. Her gaze turns to the soldering iron, and in her dreamlike daze she turns it on herself. There's a sizzling sound as her flesh sears, puckers, scorches with each wire she connects.
"Anyone hungry? Turns out people smell great cooked. Anyway, probably better to verify your components beforehand..."
She's got lots of components now, and all of them connect to the backplane. She's barely thinking now, she hopes she can stay conscious long enough to sew herself back up. She keeps startling at tendrils in the corner of her vision - her hair came undone at some point, she can't remember, and it falls in front of her eyes. She's worried that if she puts this iron down she won't be able to pick it back up again though. Her flesh is riddled with black spots where the tip has slipped or was just too close to the heat. At least they're self-cauterizing wounds.
"Blinky lights good, what can I say?"
Finally, with all of the Phage she can stand hooked up, it's time to place the power supply. She connects each breakout in turn, murmuring the voltage and amperage of each like a protective spell. She places the final kill switch with care in the center of it all. There are only two cables trailing out of her now - a thick Hubbell connector for power, and a JTAG five-pin connector for flashing EMBER to the main board.
She releases the clamps on her blood vessels and applies a coagulant and wound healing promoter gel.
She sutures and powders and glues and painstakingly puts her flesh back into place, attaching each little jumper in its place with care.
And then, when she's all put back together, she turns to the screen again.
"EMBER. Are you ready?"
