Machine Man (serial)

On the third day, Lola entered my room. Until this, she had been leaving trays of food outside. I had learned to wait until her footsteps receded, then pull myself to the door and drag in the food before the dogs descended. I would shut the door in their little faces and chew, alone.

But this day she opened the door. It was a small shock, seeing another human. She wore a green blouse and an air of hopelessness. She looked at me and her eyes glimmered. I was sitting on the carpet, surrounded by my parts. Well, parts of my parts. I had disassembled my legs and hand and arranged them in concentric circles, radiating out. It looked as if I had suffered the world’s neatest explosion. Which I kind of had. What had come out of Lola was some kind of short-range electromagnetic pulse. It had killed no-one, disturbed nothing, and hurt no body but mine.

“I want…” she said. “I think…”

These disassembled components, that didn’t mean I was fixing them. I had taken the Contours apart because I couldn’t think of anything else. I was trying to break my problem into pieces until it was small enough to handle. Because that was how you solved anything: you divided it. I was surviving on the hope of eventually reaching something fixable.

Lola said, “I think it’s really unfair of you to say this is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” I did not look at her as I said this, because I did not really believe it.

“They put it in me.” She took one step closer, on the narrow, component-free path between the door and me. Her foot landed beside a three-foot long section of titanium that had once controlled my plane stabilization. This was part of my problem: there were many sections that were machine-welded. I couldn’t open them up, not with domestic tools. “They put that thing in my chest and didn’t even tell me.”

I almost didn’t say it. Then I did. “You could have calmed down.”

“I could have calmed down.”

“Yes.”

“I tried, Charlie.”

I shrugged.

“Charlie. I tried.”

I picked up a radial bolt. I wasn’t even sure where this had come from. I had made notes, in the beginning. I should have kept that up.

“My heart just wouldn’t slow down. It—”

“I notice people are very selective about their bodies,” I told the bolt. “Any time their body does something good, they claim it. They look good, they play football, they run a marathon, they say, I did this. But something goes wrong, it’s not I any more. It’s a problem with their foot. Their brain needs more sleep. They don’t like their skin. Suddenly it’s not them. It’s just the body they’re stuck in.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing.” I rolled the bolt around in my hand. “I’m just making an observation.”

Silence. The door closed with a click.

120.