"Esther?"

The creature at the waiting room door stared up at me. They were short and mammalian, with spotty cow-print fur and a pointy muzzle and plenty of other features that I couldn't quite place, and like most of the moon's peculiar inhabitants, incredibly fluffy. With that and their black beady eyes, they reminded me of some puppet or cartoon character; it took me a moment to remember I was at the hospital and they were speaking to me.

"What-- Oh, that's me, sorry."

To my relief, the creature laughed. Well, it was better than accidentally insulting them- I'd figured out pretty fast that the strange people of the moon found some mischievous delight in bewildering visiting Earthlings. "Right this way," they said, leading me into the stone halls.

It was a beautiful building, made of fused regolith layed down as a continuous brick, like the organically-curved layers of old 3D printing at a grand scale. I couldn't take my eyes off the creature -- the doctor -- though, they moved like nothing I'd seen, undulating almost like they were swimming as they walked. Being this close to animals this big on Earth was not usually a safe encounter.

"Thank you for coming. I'm Aditi," they chirped, pulling open a curtain and showing me in. If I ignored the scintillating chaos shining in through the window, it was a normal office. Extremely normal. Disconcertingly normal, even. Aditi scampered around the boxy sheetmetal desk and hauled themself up into their seat, gesturing to the other chair for me.

It wasn't too far from a standard spinny office chair. But the backrest was small and raised way off the seat, with its support bar off to one side to fit a tail- I might've thought the forty centimeter or so gap excessive if it wasn't for some of the impressive tails the Shoalites seemed to like.

"So! You're here to get implants for mental piloting, yes?"

They didn't bring up any files, the desk was scattered only with toys, spinning things, and little paperweights that'd probably never seen a paper, but that honestly wasn't too different from some of my colleagues' desks. I wasn't sure whether they just had a good memory or a computer hidden in their head, but by the way they grinned with dawning excitement, I guessed the second.

"Yes," I answered, quickly adding "I think orbital patrol's suggesting the think-link."

The think-links were fairly old, minimal implants. Classics! As non-invasive as brain surgery can get— I wasn't eager to come home with a skull full of machinery or stranger, as most visitors to Shoal seemed to. Not that I had anything against the chimeras or cyborgs, but I wasn't exactly looking to grow a mane of fiber-optics or whatever just to fly the rescue ships.

And it was a bit weird how people keep coming back from Shoal different.

Aditi, though, immediately made impressively complete use of their long muzzle to express skepticism.

"Are you sure? Those old things aren't any better than silent voice controls. Literally! They monitor your vocal centers and use the same voice command interpreters. It can be a useful replacement for typing, but as far as flying, you can do that already."

I frowned. Voice controls for a ship are horrendous. Moving levers and reading screens was barely fast enough to keep up with ships these days, having to wait for complete instructions would make orbital patrol's problems worse.

"Oh," I muttered, wondering if this is how everyone's unintended transformation begins. "What other options are there?"

"Well." Aditi managed to politely avoid sounding too excited. "The first choice for interfacing with technology is usually the virtual-cortex implant. It extends your senses and motor centers, so you... With a ship, you'd see through its sensors as if they're a new set of eyes, and operate its engines much like your own legs."

That was a little closer to what I expected the think-links to do in the first place. And it didn't sound like too radical a transformation.

"Oh, good. How, um, involved is that?" I asked.

"It IS a fairly dramatic brain surgery," Aditi admitted. "Here, do you want to see how it'll work?"

I nodded, and they leaned over the desk, a holographic brain flickering into view between their paws.

"So, first, this is the unmodified motor cortex..."

The crash-course on neuroscience led into cybernetics. Plates bristling with artificial nerve fiber appeared in the projection, inserted around the motor and sensory cortices with their wiring woven through most of the rest of the brain— so much medical detail would've been nauseating if Aditi wasn't so cheery about it. Them looking like somebody's imaginary friend kind of helped.

"...And with these supplemental processors expanding your motor center, you can consciously control a whole lot more body than your six hundred or so voluntary muscle groups. So, what do you think? Any questions?"

My first thought was purely pragmatic, to my own surprise. The same kind of thing I'd ask about any surgery: "How safe is this?"

Aditi smiled. "Perfectly! ...Well, actually, that kind of depends, on your position on mortality and injury..."

"On *what*?"

"Right, so. Are you familiar with our backup systems?"

I think I grimaced involuntarily. Existentially unnerving backup brainscans were all but ubiquitous off Earth, and I wasn't eager to be swapped out for a copy of myself. If that's how they ensured their patients' survival, I might've considered leaving the orbital patrol before I considered that. But Aditi must've known what I was thinking, because they held their fuzzy paws out diplomatically, quickly shaking their head.

"Oh, no, we aren't going to have to restore you from backup, even if something goes wrong," they said, gesturing the holographic brain closer to themself. "At least, not... Completely."

Aditi continued, "The installation *is* very safe these days, but in rare cases, electrochemical failures can... Make the areas of the brain a part of the implant is attached to stop working. It'd be similar to a stroke. But we continuously save copies of your brain architecture as we work, so that if anything does go wrong, we can restore that part of you to working order."

I didn't know what to think, of that. Being destroyed and replaced all at once sounded tantamount to death, just with someone very like me appearing after my demise. But this was... Blurrier. I'm a little embarrassed to say that it was the first time I really felt Theseus's Ship. So I wouldn't die.

But I struggled to voice my concerns. "What, uh... Does it feel like, if that happens? Do you know?"

Aditi frowned a little, and nodded. "I do. It happened to me when I was getting a pretty similar system installed, these complications were more common sixty or so years ago..."

I tried to look sympathetic rather than surprised at their age- The chimeras always surprised me, they didn't wear their years quite like humans. Whether or not they noticed, they continued:

"My motor cortex... Well, died, and then grew back just as fast. It felt like... You know a hypnic jerk, where you're falling asleep then suddenly it feels like you're falling and you bolt awake? It was just like that, at first. I think I got rolled back to a slightly old idea of how my body was arranged, so it felt like I jumped."

"Wait, you're conscious during all this?"

"Oh, yes. It's vital for brain implants like this, we have to ask you questions and verify your brain function as we go! Is that alright?"

I almost said 'sure, of course' purely on reflex. I was starting to feel self-conscious— Doctors cared, sure, but I wasn't a little girl any more and they didn't have the patience to hold my hand and ease my fears. At least, they didn't on Earth. Maybe it was just the friendly fairytale beasts, but something here felt different, Aditi wasn't rushed or harried in the slightest. They must've noticed my conflict, they looked worried— I tried to at least sound calm as I asked, "Will it hurt?"

Aditi quickly shook their head, their little ears flapping. "No, not at all! We'll numb the outside of your head, but the brain doesn't have any pain receptors, so you're all good there..." they trailed off, staring curiously up at me.

"Uh, what is it?" I eventually asked.

"Oh! Sorry. It's just, there are some contingencies you might find reassuring or alarming and I'm not sure which."

I chuckled and sighed, "Well, now I have to know."