Machine Man (serial)

The night was tough. I won’t recount the whole sweating, groaning ordeal. I’ll just say it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. I speak as someone who has had both legs crushed in an industrial die stamp. These new prosthetics, the war veteran legs, weren’t realistic enough to fool my brain. They were poles. When I waved them around, when I massaged them with shaking fingers, my brain did not buy it. It had bought the Contours. It had bought the Contours even when they were in pieces.

Around four, with Lola rubbing my back and telling me I could get through this, I realized the pain was different. At Better Future, before I’d figured out to wear the Contours at night, the phantom pain had felt distinctly like muscle cramp. Like toes I didn’t have, curling until they screamed. This was a kind of pressure ache—a lack of pressure ache, as if my legs were stretching, inflating like balloons. I didn’t think I was missing my biological legs any more. I had phantom Contours.

126.