Mezza saw storm clouds looming in the sky. She asked her chauffeur Rui to go as fast as she can so they reach the pet shop before the rain. “Obstructions ahead; speed controller activated”. Rui the AI Car assistant is her all-time companion since it was gifted by her grandpa. “Destination is on the right,” Rui announced. Mezza got up and moved out of the car. As she touched the door knob to open the shop, the face recognition system announced “Entry attempt; access denied.” Mezza showed her employee card at the door and got inside hurriedly.

Today at noon Mr Raman will come to collect his customized pet pup. Mr and Mrs Raman live a few miles away from the store. Since their kids moved out of town, they were in search of a pet that can cater to their parental instincts along with their geriatric needs. Mezza showed the long list of customizable pets ranging from rats and snakes to lions and cheetahs. Cyborg pets with organs and organoid transplants that can speak, love, care, solve puzzles, run your business and do anything and everything were on the list. They adopted the puppy with a human frontal lobe transplant as their baby. Hamsters with human amygdala are the hit among youngsters as they are cheap and satisfy their curiosities. Ravens-solving sudokus are the showstoppers here. The favourite pets of the elderly. They even sent ravens with messages through metaverse to their friends who uploaded their souls before death. As she jogged through her thoughts Mr and Mrs Raman appeared at the front door. She happily handed over the puppy to them and wished them good luck. In quick realisation, she looked at the watch.

“Oh! It is one already. There is a lunch date with Marti.” Thinking aloud, she quickly entered into the data-pod in the corner of the pet shop and directed it to “Café de Italia”. She never had her parents available for her. Now it is her grandpa and Marti who are her world. Marti is a short stout man in his late twenties with a beard and spectacles. He is a neurologist working for ‘Bionic Care’ Hospital. He is a surgeon-cum-councillor for those taking brain organoid transplants and other cyborgs. He is helping them accept the foreign materials in their body.

“Hey, how are you doing?” he asked.

“Hey, I am fine as usual,” she answered. And both of them looked at each other with eyes gleaming in love and joy.

As they settled for the food, the fine aroma of “Creamy Pasta” spread all around.

“How are things at Bionic Care?” She asked.

“Oh Ya, Bionic Care’s artificial wombs are the major source of their income. Thus, they are going for upgradation and diversification in services provided for customised wombs where babies are given wide different experiences. Rhythm and music in wombs, aroma therapy, wombs with spa, some are given universal experiences and the costs vary accordingly.”

“Wow that sounds wonderful. Soon my pet babies also will get such treatments.” She replied.

“Hey, I have to catch up with grandpa for his lung refill. See you later. And thanks for the lunch.” Saying bye, she headed out. Grandpa got his artificial lungs after the life-threatening phase four of COPD damaged his lungs completely. His artificial lungs’ oxygen purification system has been in trouble for the last few days and requires a regular refill. New lungs are beyond affordability for her at this moment. “I have to figure out something soon, otherwise he will get uploaded and will go to grandma,” she thought. As they were both about to reach the refill station, she received an AR call.

“Hello, Miss Mezza? Raman here. He sounded irate to her. The puppy you gifted did bite my wife and we are on the way to the hospital. What kind of pet did you give us? He turned at the aggressively barking doodle poodle. See its intelligence is faulty and it doesn’t have a pup’s sense even”. “Please take your product back and give me a complete refund,” Mr Raman said.

“Dear Sir, sorry for the inconvenience caused. It is an isolated and unexpected issue. We will figure out what went wrong and will rectify it at the earliest. And you will get a complete refund.” She replied in shock and agony.

Even though she said it was an unexpected problem, she had somehow been expecting something like this from last week. She has observed a sudden cognitive deficit in a few hamster puzzle solvers. And the “Kitty” cat was showing insomnia and aggression for the last two days. She had a gut feeling that something has gone wrong. She wanted to discuss the same with Marti but forgot in hurry. “Now others also started to feel it. Something has to be done,” she thought.

Dropping grandfather back, she hurried to the pet shop. She sent the assistant to pick up the puppy from Ramans’. Without losing a minute, she took a misbehaved hamster and headed to Marti.

“Hey, What a pleasant surprise!” “Welcome dear to my playground.” Marti was happy to see Mezza. 

“Marti, we have no time to lose. Something is wrong. My pets are showing different levels of cognitive deficit all of a sudden,” she said anxiously.

“Ok. Ok. Relax. Let me look in detail,” Marti observed the hamster.

The hamster seemed to have blindness in one eye and his gait was unsteady. He looked confused and showed reluctance to eat.

“Mezza, I have to run diagnostic procedures to identify the underlying problems. This may even involve brain dissection.” “Please register online and fill out the required forms. Meanwhile, let me go through it in detail,” said Marti and took Hamster inside. 

Mezza sat on the couch in the corridor waiting. The Bionic Care hospital is the biggest in the city. They have many production and repair centres across the country. Her last visit to the hospital was with her grandpa, to the lungs repairing unit for cyborgs in the west block. Now she is in the east block sitting across the organoids and organs transplanting unit. She found many verandahs emerging and diverging to different departments for each organ. Many hours passed. She was eager to know what is happening with her pets. As she sat restless, she saw Marti’s silhouette appearing at the end of the corridor.

She ran to him. “Mezza dear, relax and listen to me. The membrane proteins in your hamster’s brain have been misfolded and neurodegeneration happened to a considerable level. The aetiology is attributed to a group of tumours like fast multiplying nano cells triggering the protein fold changes. Thanks to the advanced MRI system, we could avoid brain dissection. We have to examine other pets to reach further conclusions that it is an epidemic or not. How it is being spread among the different genera of pets invariably? If it is an epidemic, the entire pets in your shop may need to be culled out and all those quarantine measures have to be in place,” Marti explained. 

“The crowd is just getting back from the shock of a respiratory pandemic and if this is an epidemic, the repercussions will be damaging,” Mezza thought and readily agreed for them to visit the shop and collect further specimens.  

When they reached the shop back for specimen collection, Mezza observed one thing in the pets list. The pets, those who had a neuroblast transplant or brain organoid transplants from a single source have shown the symptoms. The lots from the Iconic Hospital production centre last month were defective ones. Pets from the other production companies were not showing symptoms of neurodegeneration. In great relief, Mezza showed Marti her discovery. 

“Yes, then the source human brain has the problem. We have to soon inform them. Ask them to withdraw all the pets supplied by them. Still, to be cautious, keep all the pet shops that received their products under quarantine. Let’s inform the authorities for necessary action,” said Marti.

Marti turned to Mezza, with a mix of love and pride in his eyes for his girlfriend. “It is beyond doubt, why you chose each other in life,” said his assistant with a wink. Marti waved goodbye and got into the vehicle with the hospital team. Even though a little sad about the quarantine, Mezza was relieved and satisfied for acting timely to prevent a great disaster. She looked at Marti with an infectious smile and waved ‘bye’.

The next morning Martha was greeted by the county head, Mrs Tereza with a gift hamper and a pay-cheque for her good service to the community. She was thrilled to see the numbers written on the cheque leaf more than enough for a pair of artificial lungs.

This story is inspired by the recent transplant of Human brain organoids into Rats by a team of Scientists at Stanford School of Medicine.