Error 501: Heart Not Found
1406 Words
The walls of the Star Complex were beautiful, yes—more advanced than anything they had ever known—but in that beauty was a kind of coldness, a perfection that denied flaws. The ceiling glimmered like a false sky. The beds looked like something carved out of bone, and everything smelled sterile—clean in the way nothing alive could ever truly be.
Julian sat propped on the edge of his bunk, still breathing harder than normal. The episode had passed—another in a string of strange pulses, near-faints, and freezing limbs—but this time, he didn’t hide it. Marvo had seen. Tae had seen. Even George, who normally tried to pretend everything was fine, had flinched when Julian’s hand trembled as he reached for water and nearly dropped it.
They were all there, clustered awkwardly around him like boys at a wake, and Julian was the body—alive, but not fully there.
Ren tried to break the tension, of course.
“Well, if you drop dead now, at least we can sell your boots to Maro’s stylist. Limited edition death couture. You know how much she likes you.”
No one laughed.
Julian swallowed thickly. “I need to tell you all something.”
Marvo didn’t move. He just watched. Waiting.
“I don’t remember anything from my childhood. Not before I was about ten,” Julian said slowly. “And lately… something’s been wrong. I thought maybe it was just stress, but—no. There’s something missing in me. I don’t think I have a heart.”
Ren let out a soft snort—then stopped. He looked at Julian again and realized it wasn’t a joke.
George frowned. “You mean like… you’re heartless?”
“No.” Julian’s voice was quiet. “I mean I don’t think there’s an actual heart in me. I think—there’s something else. A machine maybe. I don’t feel the same. I don’t feel… anything fully.”
Silence.
Tae tilted his head. “You don’t remember your childhood?”
Julian shook his head. “Only bits and pieces. No surgery. No injury. Nothing that could explain this.”
George shifted his weight. “That’s insane. You’re alive. You bleed.”
“I know.”
Marvo finally spoke. “Show us.”
---
The trip to the medical dome was quiet. The slums had rusted walkways and leaking vents. The elite had clear elevators and soft jazz in the air. But here, in the sector where biotech was king, everything shimmered in chrome and white.
The hospital wasn’t the bright, sparkling glass center they’d passed by before. This one was lower. Hidden. It looked more like a maintenance wing than anything medical. They went through four access points, all unlocked only because Uncle Shane had pre-authorized Julian when he’d said he’d “check in whenever he needed.”
The lights here were different. Colder. They hummed as they flickered, casting shadows against brass pipes and dull copper walls. Scavenger drones rolled past them with mechanical legs, collecting discarded parts—metal limbs, cracked bio-skins, organ jars with faded labels.
Surgery pods shaped like iron coffins. Preserved spines in blue nutrient tanks. And hanging from the walls—schematics of robot parts reassembled patchwork dolls.
It wasn’t meant to be seen.
Clinic 5 was pristine on the outside. Gold-rimmed glass and clean hydraulic lifts. But beneath the surface—once they were led inside—was a museum of horrors.
“This is… cozy,” Ren muttered, glancing at a wall vent hissing softly.
Tae stared at a glass tank filled with crimson fluid and what looked like spine fragments. “Is that blood?”
“Etherblood,” Marvo said. “They use it for synthetic transfusions. Nanites included.”
Julian moved ahead, leading them without looking back. His legs felt heavy. His breath was shallow. The deeper they went, the louder something rang in his head—like a memory trying to claw its way back but finding nothing to hold onto.
Uncle Shane greeted them just outside The Oracle Room.
“Well. I didn’t expect you'll come with company,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Julian’s not well,” Marvo said.
Shane glanced at him, nodding slightly. “Let’s run a scan.”
The Oracle looked nothing like a scanner. It looked like a womb made of light—glass and wires and floating interfaces, where patients lay inside as spectral arms examined their bodies without touching.
Julian climbed in.
“Hold still,” Shane said. “Just a basic diagnostic.”
The pod sealed.
He was alone with the machine.
The walls around him flickered, reading his breath, temperature, vein patterns, and energy pulse. Something tickled the back of his spine. A tiny light blinked near his collarbone—then turned green.
Outside the pod, Shane stepped away to take a call.
That’s when Tae moved.
He didn’t mean to activate anything, not really. He was just curious, fingers hovering near the edge of the holo-screen when he brushed the wrong glyph.
The pod groaned.
Lights blinked. Then:
"Full Biometric Scan: System Override. Activated."
“Wait—Tae—” George started.
Too late.
The Oracle began to hum louder.
Julian’s body vibrated slightly as the scan reached deeper. His nerves twitched. His breath caught.
And then the screen lit up.
A diagram.
Julian’s body.
ERROR 501: Cardiac Organ Not Found
Then the image zoomed into his chest. Instead of the familiar tangle of heart muscle and blood vessels, a mechanical core sat in the center—pulsing in a slow, unnatural rhythm. Wires had grafted directly into his veins. Artificial coolant lines replaced parts of his artery system.
Text flickered beside the diagram:
> GRAFT MODEL: 0.3—REVERSE HEART CORE, UNREGISTERED SERIAL. SCAR DATA: DEEP TISSUE INCISION POINTS DETECTED. TIMESTAMP: 17 YEARS PRIOR.
“What… what the hell is that?” Ren whispered.
Julian stared at it, unmoving.
Inside hiss chest, between plated ribs and carefully soldered nerve nets, was a machine heart. Not beating—but pulsing. Running on code. The data stream read like a song: patterns of memory, emotion, falsified biochemical feedback loops.
George turned to Marvo. “That’s real, right? That’s… real?”
Marvo’s jaw clenched. “Yeah. That’s real.”
Julian sat up slowly inside the pod. His chest ached—not from the machine, but from what he saw.
Outside, Tae looked quietly. He froze.
Julian met his eyes through the glass.
He’d seen it. They all saw it
“Julian,” he whispered. “They replaced your heart.”
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. His body knew something his mind didn’t.
Scarred memories floated just beyond reach—hospital lights, pressure on his ribs, voices murmuring, “He’s too perfect to lose.”
---
Uncle Shane returned.
“Scan complete already?”
He walked up to the monitor, stopping mid-step when he saw the screen. His face didn’t move. Not even a blink.
“Ah,” he said smoothly after a beat. “That old error again. Oracle’s been glitching since the last firmware update.”
Tae shut off the screen fast, downloading a backup to his comm-tab.
“We should leave,” Marvo said.
Shane nodded. “Yes, good idea. I’ll run some bloodwork manually later.”
He didn’t ask what they saw.
They didn’t ask what he knew.
But Julian knew. Now, he knew.He remembered crying as a boy. He remembered joy. Despair. But were they ever real?
He was never sick.
Someone had taken his heart—and lied.
---
They didn’t speak again until they were back in their quarters.
Ren paced. “You’re kidding me. You’ve been walking around with a machine in your chest? Like some creepy idol-bot hybrid?”
“Shut up, Ren,” George muttered. “This is serious.”
Tae sat on the floor, eyes wide. “That thing... it was labeled as unregistered. That means it was custom. Probably black market or private experimental.”
“Why would someone do that to a kid?” Tae asked, his voice sharp.
Julian sat on the edge of his bed again. He didn’t shake. He didn’t cry. There was nothing inside him to spill.
“I don’t know.”
But they would find out.
Because someone had stolen a child’s heart—and replaced it with a lie.
- Writer
