Medicine in the Republic was highly developed and had a very clear mechanism of operation. But even in such a well-oiled system, there were sometimes glitches in the form of people who had ended up there not out of a desire to help the suffering, but out of cunning calculation, with the aim of making as much money as possible, shamelessly profiting from the pain and suffering of their fellow citizens. Artemis Fowl was one such dishonourable individual. This still relatively young man had already gained a reputation as a remarkably unprincipled and cruel person. Dr Death, as Orge now called him. However, Artemis began his career in the same way as his comrades. From early childhood, he knew that he would devote his life to medicine. His favourite game was to set up a hospital on his bed, where his soft toys were the patients. It seemed that there was no infection that his fluffy lotal cats, shiny kaadu and big-eyed porgy fish had not caught. When all the other boys his age were running around the streets, racing go-karts and playing sabakk for money, little Artemis lay on his bed with his datapad and, with a determination worthy of any adult, studied medical websites, writing down anything particularly interesting in a thick notebook. Then, with great pleasure, he practised what he had learned on his soft stuffed animal friends. At the same time, the teenager experienced such an incredible emotional high that even from the outside it was noticeable how he was transforming — his pale face flushed, his eyes began to shine, even his voice became different, deeper and more resonant. In these moments, Artemis seemed to cease to belong to himself, temporarily disappearing, ceasing to be an ordinary teenager from a middle-class family and becoming a great genius of medicine, capable of defeating any disease, even the most terrible of them, which began to tremble in fear and retreat on tiptoe, turning from a deadly threat into a hunted slug. The mere thought of this would set off a veritable fireworks display of hot sparks in Artemis's soul, elevating him to unprecedented heights. He loved to imagine how he would treat infections, but most of all, Artemis loved to bring back to life toys that their former owners had written off and thrown away, his hands trembling with his own importance. He would sneak out at night and bring home bags full of broken toys, and with a fanatical gleam in his eyes, he would set about reviving them from the ashes. Everyone saw this and was amazed at how a fifteen-year-old boy could do such a thing! It was like real surgery. With incredible enthusiasm, the boy sewed up holes, crafted missing limbs for stuffed animals and sewed them back on, replaced torn-off eyes with coloured beads, and sometimes even replaced the entire stuffing with fresh cotton wool. He carved limbs out of pieces of plastic for the plastic toys himself, soldering together torn and broken pieces. Then he arranged all his rescued toys on the shelves above his bed, which had been temporarily converted into an operating table, and looked at them all, whispering ecstatically:
"What would have happened to you if it weren't for me? You would have ended up in a landfill, but I saved you, put you together from nothing, and gave you a second life.
And his eyes would light up with such a strange fire that anyone who saw it would clearly doubt the young man's sanity. But his parents didn't see this and simply thought that the boy was just passionate about his work. No one, least of all himself, doubted Artemis' future; he was on a direct path to the Republican Academy of Medicine and Applied Sciences. He really did it, because he had been studying medicine since he was a baby. The young man easily entered the first year and immersed himself in his studies, as if he had been swimming in a small stream and had just emerged into a large, wide river, unable to stop admiring its grandeur and comprehending it day after day. He loved every subject equally, from boring theory to practice that made his knees tremble with excitement. When he visited a morgue for the first time and learned about the preparation of corpses, Artemis unexpectedly and with great pleasure realised that he had found his calling. Seeing for the first time how the head of the department approached a lifeless body and cut it open, showing the structure of each organ, Foul felt a sacred awe familiar from childhood. He had felt the same way when he repaired toys and already knew what he would be doing in the evening, staying after class much longer than his classmates to ask the professor about the possibilities of replacing limbs and internal organs. Then, in the evening, he diligently rummaged through the library, looking for all kinds of articles on transplants and prosthetics, meticulously writing down all the advantages and disadvantages of each. By the end of his first year, he already knew what he wanted to be after graduation: a surgeon. And not just any surgeon who removed appendices and stitched up cuts, but a transplant surgeon who saved people from certain death by replacing limbs and organs. He devoted all his free time to studying the possibilities of the human body, later switching to other races. When the time came to defend his thesis, the young man, awakened in the middle of the night and pulled out of a deep sleep, could without hesitation name all the pros and cons of heart transplantation and the parameters of this organ that are necessary to know for such an operation. As a result of these efforts, by his fourth year, Artemis was entrusted with complex operations, unlike his classmates, who could barely remove a simple appendicitis. He passed the entrance exams for residency with flying colours and completed the following two years of training. Artemis achieved his goal, and his graduation certificate stated his qualification: transplant surgeon. Needless to say, he was guaranteed a position at the best clinic in Coruscant, and the road stretched only in that direction. It was then that the young man's dream finally came true. He was finally able to fully realise his potential, and his sense of power over pain grew to unprecedented heights. Knowing everything there was to know about transplants, Artemis took on the most difficult cases and rejoiced that he had once again defeated death itself. Indeed, the mortality rate in his operations was much lower than that of others, because the young surgeon fought to the very end. People signed up for a year in advance to see Faul, refusing to be operated on by others. However, even if an organ was perfectly matched in all respects, a natural rejection reaction could still occur, and with it various side effects, such as the need to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of one's life and a host of other lifelong restrictions. This always bothered and bothered Artemis, and he began to rack his brains for a way around it. After long and persistent immersion in the depths of scientific treatises, he was able to find a suitable solution, in particular with the help of practical training on advanced courses. He took these courses on Camino, the very station where the clone army was manufactured. He was, of course, fascinated by the peculiarities of the development of different organisms with a single DNA molecule. When Foul asked Lama Su what to do if it became necessary to replace a clone's organ or limb, the prime minister replied:
"The problem is easy to solve. Either we transplant organs from recently deceased comrades, or, more often, we simply grow the missing part and transplant it. The DNA is the same, so there are no problems with adaptation, and no drugs or restrictions are needed.
Artemis listened to him and felt a light bulb go off in his head. This was what he needed! Cloning organs and body parts opened up so many possibilities! How many people could be saved, and how famous could he become! Foul's life changed at that moment, and now he began to fiercely and eagerly learn the basics of cloning, spending days and nights in Camino's laboratory, often forgetting to eat and hardly feeling the need for sleep. And how could he sleep when every nerve was stretched to the limit? He was soon allowed to try cloning himself, and he succeeded on his first attempt. However, he treated this clone surprisingly callously, turning it into a test animal. Artemis conducted experiment after experiment on it. He took biopsies of cells from every organ and tried to clone them, then cut out the organ from the clone and replaced it with the one he had just grown, so that he could monitor its condition. It was excellent, the rehabilitation period was record-breakingly short, and the patient returned to his former life, soon forgetting all about the operation. True, by the end of the experiment, the entire body of the clone, whom he named Mirage, was completely covered in scars, but what are external defects compared to regained health? Artemis was pleased with his success and, returning from his internship, took the surviving clone with him and made him his most loyal assistant. Possessing the obedience inherent in all soldier brothers, he obeyed the doctor in everything and did any work. Foul no longer conducted experiments on him, and why should he, when the inhabitants of the Republic learned about the sensation in transplantology and flocked to the clinic. Artemis remembers well his first patient, a little girl with type 2 diabetes, whom he cured of the disease by growing her a new pancreas. She was so happy that she would no longer have to endure constant painful insulin injections that she gave the doctor her lucky charm — a stuffed rabbit. Then there was a former prisoner who came out of prison with tuberculosis, whose new lungs gave him the chance to live a normal life. Soon, all of them became known as the Legion, and Artemis could no longer remember each patient's name. But they all remembered the young, talented doctor and constantly congratulated him on holidays. Incidentally, this work also brought in a very substantial income, and just a year after the new practice was introduced, Faul was able to buy his own house on the Upper Level, move his parents there, and provide them with a monthly allowance sufficient to fulfil all their desires. Artemis did not have a family of his own, nor could he have one. He simply did not have time to look for a suitable wife and engage in the courtship that was necessary in such cases, preferring to spend his time studying the theory and practice of new cloning methods. In the end, he succeeded so well that the chief physician of the hospital where this surgical genius worked helped Artemis open his own clinic at the middle level. The connections of his boss and the money Faul had earned over the years of successful operations did their job, and the New Body clinic began its work.
"What's so terrible about him?" asked Anakin, who had managed to forget about his vision during the senator's story. "On the contrary, he's a very good specialist. Maybe he can help me. Would you ask him?"
And he stretched out his right hand, hiding the gleam of a mechanical prosthesis in a leather glove.
"You've only heard the first part of the story — don't be fooled by Organa's eloquence — the other side of his medical oath awaits you.
"And it's often not at all what it should be in reality," added Kenobi, before fading away, leaving behind a very serious revelation.
***
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