Machine Man (serial)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I had to bathe three times, one after the other. The first time, the water turned black as soon I entered it. “Sorry,” I told Lola. “I guess I stink.”

“Actually, I’m more impressed by the layer of grease.” She pointed at the water. “Look at that. It’s like an oil spill.”

I laughed, and we looked at each other, and what I still could not really believe was that her eyes held no vindictiveness. I had not known this about love: that you did not have to deserve it. I’d always thought I was missing something, something essential, that left me unqualified. Confidence, or a tan; something like that. And I was okay with that, because at least I was being me. I wasn’t pretending to be someone else just to be loved. But here I was, the same pasty mess of social incompetence as always, and here was Lola.

In retrospect, I wonder if this could have been a turning point. It seems possible. I could have emerged from that bath, scrubbed clean to my core, and everything might have turned out differently. Lola and I could have run away, left behind Better Future and artificial augmentation and the arc welder in the garage, built new lives in a tiny Canadian snow town, become a quirky couple, the woman and the man with a prosthetic hand and prosthetic legs and he used to be a scientist once, did you know? Lola could have baked pies. I could have repaired things. The townspeople could have called me Doc.

No. I guess not.

124.