For the first time in a seeming eternity, Isaac awoke with an overpowering feeling of optimism. The pain and the fear were still there, but today they were partially obscured behind a barrier of what Isaac was eventually forced to admit was hope.
After living in pain for long enough, the pain becomes a part of you. It shapes and colours every aspect of your daily routine, and taints any experience that might otherwise be pleasant. Like a favourite meal that has been almost imperceptibly spoiled by a rogue ingredient. You know you should be enjoying it, but you can't ignore the bitterness.
Today though, the pain felt like purpose. Months of working through it, had finally paid off, and today Isaac would take the first step towards his recovery. Towards his evolution. In his dream he had been a robot, and now sickness had forced him into making a choice to, at least partially, realise that dream. Excited and terrified in equal measure, that losing his fragile human form would also eventually make him lose his humanity, today would see him changing irreversibly. Only time would tell if the change was ultimately for the better.
It felt like a facile enterprise, choosing clothes - in part because, irrespective of his appearance, no one would see him besides the medical staff - but also because Isaac knew that upon arrival at ersaTzLabs, he would be immediately required to change into hospital clothes. Yet he found a weight of expectation of himself on this, his last day as an entirely human being, to dress accordingly. He had never followed fashion, and was no more aware of what was the current vogue as would be a bushman on the Serengeti, yet he always strove to be stylish, drawing instead on the fashions of a hundred years ago.
Though the clean cut of his early 20th-century waistcoat and breeches was marred slightly by Isaac’s recently acquired stoop - brought about by the pain which was now ever-present in his abdomen - he felt markedly more prepared to face the world for being properly dressed. He also enjoyed the fact that the illness had given him one unexpected boon, in the form of an excuse to use the ornate cane which was a family heirloom and one of the few pieces Isaac owned which was actually from the era he aspired to emulate. Before the illness it had been a recurring source of melancholy to him that it stood, unused, in the corner of his modest lounge. Isaac would not be going to work today, but he still took pride in being properly presented.
