Son of the Stars

Chapter 201 Hell
The rescue on Mars came to an end temporarily, and the still-alive Zheng Yan was thrown into the directional culture tank of the forward base. It was indeed a very rough "throw". In order to save time, the medical robot directly pulled the outer buckle of her space suit and threw Zheng Yan directly into the culture tank that had been opened long ago.

The thrilling action of falling into the life capsule with the space suit woke up Zheng Yan, whose condition had improved slightly: the extremely weak state after losing too much blood and then replenishing it made her drowsy, and the blood flowing in her veins was too clean and lacked sufficient glucose and hormones, which made Zheng Yan very uncomfortable.

Human beings have long been accustomed to living under various hormones and transmitters, and now suddenly everything is gone... It actually feels very uncomfortable.

Fortunately, Zheng Yan's blood sugar is not high - she basically maintains a state between fainting and wakefulness. Every time her body obtains a little energy from fat, her organs will take a little away. For Zheng Yan's body, the best "treatment" now is to add a liter of 10% glucose to her blood vessels, and then give her enough oxygen to let her sleep.

There are still limits to what modern medicine can do, and more often than not we still have to rely on the body’s own potential.

However, the medical AI supporting the landing mission does not think so. Letting Zheng Yan, who has only one leg, lie in the medical lifeboat is not conducive to the implementation of the manned landing mission on Mars.

Medical treatments for different purposes have completely different processes and goals. Palliative care and symptomatic treatment, experimental treatment and diagnostic treatment all have different means. If it were on Earth, Zheng Yan would be placed on an ICU bed with numerous life monitoring devices for at least a week of treatment and observation. After her vital signs stabilized, doctors would allow her to leave the ICU and go to the surgical department for targeted limb regeneration treatment.

But on Mars, medical resources are very scarce. Even if she lost a leg, Zheng Yan, who had just danced several songs on the Martian underworld table, could not occupy medical resources for too long. The treatment process formulated by AI for her was this: throw her into the lifeboat, complete the regeneration of the broken limb in the shortest possible time, and then throw her out of the lifeboat.

There are still eight astronauts outside, so it is necessary to keep at least two lifeboats ready for use. In any case, the body's own blood coagulation function is relatively limited in low gravity, which is not a big problem for Zheng Yan, whose limbs have been repaired.

The decision-making process of AI is short and black-box, but the result will not be opposed by anyone - people on Earth are busy with their own affairs, and the medical experts on Mars have exploded into ultraviolet light. Once it makes a decision, there is no room for doubt.

Zheng Yan, lying in the lifeboat, could neither live nor die.

The technology of targeted limb regeneration is of great significance and has benefited many patients, but this technology can only be carried out when the patient is completely anesthetized to the point of being unconscious.

The biggest difference between a human limb and a piece of rotten meat is the delicate and irreplaceable nervous system. Muscles, skin flaps, and even blood vessels and bones can be reattached through crude surgical methods, but the nervous system cannot.

A limb without a nervous system has no value - it is just a burden.

But advanced biological technology has solved this dilemma, and nerve damage is no longer an unsolvable problem. By extracting the patient's own somatic cells and then using genetic engineering to reverse-differentiate the somatic cells into stem cells, these stem cells will be mass-produced and used to attach to the patient's severed limbs - the stem cells will be directed to differentiate again, so as to grow various limb tissues and even organs that no longer exist.

During the differentiation process of the severed limbs, a large number of nerve cells are also generated. These nerve cells have the same functions as normal nerve cells. They can manipulate muscles and transmit signals to the spinal cord and brain. These newly born nerve cells cannot feel other nerve cells and muscle giant cells that "should exist", so they will frantically send out "pain" signals from the moment they are born. As other cells begin to be generated, the nerve cells will be briefly confused - the damaged tissue that did not exist just now is back? Then don't report the pain - it doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt, it's okay!

This signal pattern of crazy pain in one second and turning into "it's okay, it's okay" in the next second cannot be directly distinguished by the human brain, so every conscious patient feels a mixed feeling of "itching" and pain.

Itchy and painful, itchy to death, painful to death. This mixed feeling will accompany the entire process of limb regeneration, and the intensity will hardly be alleviated - the wrong information transmitted by the new nervous system will continue for a long time, and then the brain will gradually learn how to "ignore" these obviously wrong information.

If it were on Earth, Zheng Yan would be injected with sufficient doses of anesthetics and analgesics out of basic humanitarian considerations. She would fall into a deep sleep like all other patients receiving treatment and would not wake up until her limbs were fully grown.

But this is Mars, and the primary goal of medical AI is to save lives. The Mars Forward Base has not yet been officially opened, and the material synthesis machine is still in a cold state.

Too many coincidences led AI to decide to skip the anesthesia process. Zheng Yan's entire body began to twitch the moment the treatment began. She was not fully conscious, but the instant muscles tightened up in her body did not require any brain involvement.

Zheng Yan was actually awakened by the feeling of suffocation caused by muscle spasms - the strong contraction of muscles all over her body made it impossible for her diaphragm to complete the breathing action normally, and the process of oxygen exchange that originally relied on oxygen-rich fluoride liquid was interrupted.

AI responded quickly, injecting Zheng Yan with a considerable dose of muscle relaxant to relieve her whole body muscle spasms, and then used forced pumping of fluoride liquid to complete the oxygen supply.

The muscle relaxant was so powerful that Zheng Yan quickly lost all control of her body. The mixture of severe pain and unbearable itching, coupled with the fear of completely losing control of her body, completely swallowed up Zheng Yan's sanity in an instant.

But the astronauts who were "separated by a wall" from Zheng Yan didn't notice that their commander was going crazy. Having just completed the first and only "rescue operation on another planet" in human history, the morale of these astronauts was high. Despite being physically exhausted, they still decided to move forward quickly. Such a decision was certainly not very scientific, but these astronauts insisted that "we have done the rescue on Mars, so this little fatigue is definitely nothing."

"We will split into two groups. The Mars rover will take Watanabe, while Jin Yuzhe and Silva will take him." Field made arrangements. "You will go to the second landing point to set up the seismic wave detection array. The rest of you will follow me to install the detection array at the third landing point. We will try to complete the survey and set up the forward base before Sister Zheng wakes up."

There were eight people landing on Mars. Except for Zheng Yan, the other seven people who were able to move were all assigned different tasks. Soon, the desperate Zheng Yan was the only one left in the Mars base.

And the communication information from Earth is flashing on the screen.

(End of this chapter)