How could I, lowly in the mire, be destined to meet a god like you?

What does it feel like to have one’s heart grasped? Painful, very painful, because it was sliced open the chest, grabbed with hands. Zoe was in excruciating pain, with tears and snot streaming down her face, her whole body trembling like a sieve, yet the intense will to survive made her grip the hand of the person before her tightly, begging for mercy desperately. “Money, I’ll gather all the money, please let me go, let me go… I have a little sister, if I’m gone, she’ll die too…” Her voice trembled as she humbly begged. But those around her just burst into laughter. “Repay the money? You?” “Zoe, you’re only worth something with the organs you have left.” “The Chagus family keeps a dog that eats fresh dried meat every day, one or two at a time, which costs a silver coin each, much more valuable than your daily hard-earned money.” Laughter filled the room, drowning out the boy’s pleas for mercy. Zoe was about to say something, but with a sudden tug, the hand that had been on her chest was pulled away. Large amounts of blood began to gush from Zoe’s mouth and nose. “You… all of you…” She choked on her blood, leaving only gurgling noises in her throat. Then, she heard the “thud” of her own fall, saw the dim sky, and under the sky, the debt collector hefted her beating heart. “It’s too light.” They were commenting. “Even after cleaning it out, there probably isn’t much money.” “After all, they are the rats at the bottom, people who rarely see the sun. How much can you expect them to earn?” Cheap chips implanted in the body keep the brain running on a faint current. Before she dies, Zoe sees the debt collectors closing in, operating on her body and taking away her lungs, her liver, her kidneys… everything she had. “This guy’s face looks quite decent, but unfortunately, Chagus doesn’t accept human skin masks lately.” Someone else stepped closer, lifting her chin to examine her closely. –You can’t do this, I have a sister, she has sclerotic nerves, and if I can’t go back, she’ll starve to death! She wanted to struggle frantically, to scream frantically, but her body, deprived of organs, lay limp on the ground, unable to make any noise, and could only lie there, at the mercy of others. A weak human can’t fight against this world. In the end, the strong ones packed up her organs and left, grumbling. Before leaving, they also drained her spinal fluid and dumped her in a nearby junkyard. Zoe lay face up like a rag doll, slowly lowering her eyelids. The junkyard is a corner of the city that has been abandoned, where every day piles of waste are discarded, dumped, and buried, already accumulating into small mountains of garbage. But aside from scavengers from the slums who come here every day to rummage through scraps, no one would spare a glance. This is an ideal spot for disposing of bodies; it won’t be long before Zoe rots and stinks here, eventually merging with the city’s trash. Beneath the jawline, a chip flickered with a faint red light, glowing intermittently. The stench of fishiness, rot, and dampness mingled, enveloping the filthy area. In the dying light of the wick, a tentacle-like object slowly extended, pressing against the light and connecting to the chip’s interface. Tentacles, assembled from various parts, were rusted and smelled of the unique decay found in junkyards. Suddenly, Zoe’s body jerked, and a voice with electrical interference echoed in the boy’s fading consciousness. “Finally found it! A complete body!” A surge of information suddenly flooded Zoe’s muddled mind, jolting her back to consciousness. “Who? What was that sound?!” “You’re asking me? I’m a program made of code.” The voice replied, as if speaking to the teenager in his mind. Confirming that the sound was not an illusion, Zoe was momentarily startled. After a brief pause, she reopened her eyes and slowly moved her gaze towards the direction of the tentacle. A mechanical object squatted beside her, its body thick, with limbs, and its appearance… more closely resembling that of a mouse. The rain beat against the contraption, streaming down with muddy rust-water, while only its mechanical head glowed red, strikingly clear and bright in the storm. How is that possible? How can code have consciousness? “How is that impossible? Humans started out as single-celled organisms, and eventually they also gained intelligence,” the code replied, as if understanding Zoe’s shock. “I was abandoned here and it took me several years of calculations to achieve my current intelligence.” The other party could read her thoughts, and Zoe paused, ceasing her doubts. “What did you mean by that just now?” She changed the subject. “As you can see, I was discarded in a junkyard, and sometimes halfway through calculations, I always feel like I’m missing an important formula.” The robot pointed to its head. “But outside is the human city, and it seems they really hate rats, so I need a human body to set out and find the one who made me, asking him/her to fix my equations.” So, it waited in the junkyard for two years, but every day what came to the junkyard were just scraps of metal. Even if there were human corpses, they were incomplete bodies with no useful parts for it. Until Zoe’s body was discarded. It waited, as if it had waited, yet not waited. “Ah, what a pity you didn’t die immediately.” It speaks the interjection with inexplicable regret. “… …” “But it’s okay.” The mechanical voice, as if mourning had ended, sounded a bit joyful: “I just measured your brain cell activity, and found that your brain death has exceeded 80%. Without my intervention, you are not far from death.” Zoe listened, knowing well that the other party wanted her dead, yet a small flicker of hope rose in her heart. She squinted with difficulty, gazing hopefully at the machinery before her amidst the rain. “So you mean I can come back to life? My organs were taken out, can I still come back to life?” “I can use the trash here to create organs for you. Once the abdominal cavity is sutured, it won’t be any different from normal people.” “Can you let me live one more day, just one more day?” “I have a sister who cannot take care of herself. If I die like this, she definitely won’t survive either.” Tears welled up in Zoe’s eyes, “I want to go back and see her one last time, and entrust her to my uncle before I go.” “One more day, let me live one more day.” Zoe pleaded again. The code grew silent, as if watching the tears welling up in Zoe’s eyes. In the rain, the light in its eyes flickered on and off, like the unpredictable weather. Letting Zoe die naturally, it will only take a maximum of fifteen minutes, after which it can completely take over this body and fulfill its own desires. It took a while, but eventually, it kicked away the can next to it with a single foot. “You humans are so troublesome,” it replied. “I’ll give you one day, starting now. You won’t even get an extra second past that.” Zoe’s eyes lit up slightly. The code no longer communicated, and suddenly, from behind that mechanical frame, six tentacles emerged, each holding a surgical knife, forceps, a saw, needle and thread, wrench, and grabber. They began to pick up scrap metal from the junkyard nearby, and with a series of clanking sounds, started operating on Zoe’s chest cavity. Its operation was swift, but in no time, she felt her chest begin to throb with something that beat like a heart, only more forceful than her original one. Following that, she saw the code weave a pair of lung slices with steel wire, insert them into her chest, and successively create a liver, stomach, and kidneys, affixing her skeleton with a wire running through her spine. These steps are dazzlingly fast yet undeniably real, faster than the most skilled mechanic Zoe has ever seen, and more precise than the transformation experts of Celestial City. Zoe soon regained her breath, and with the new respiratory, digestive, and nervous systems in place, the machine sutured her chest and abdomen. After a while, the mechanical creature that resembled a rat suddenly turned off its lights. At the same time, a sound rang in her mind, sounding like a joyful child. “Let’s go, Zoe, let’s get going!”