Machine Man (serial)

I felt hungry. I felt nauseous. I felt euphoric then furious and none of this had anything to do with me. That was what I realized. At first I tried to sort the real emotions from the chemically stimulated ones; then I saw it didn’t matter. Maybe I felt rage because Carl had taken Lola, or maybe it was a side-effect of something I’d been injected with, or random feedback from the nerve interface—whatever the source, what I was feeling were neurochemical reactions. That was what emotions were. And I no longer needed my body to tell me to rest or eat or cool down: I had onboard systems for that. My emotions were obsolete.

“Hub online,” said Jason. “Okay, Dr. Neumann, this is going to feel a little weird.”

Even the higher emotions, like joy and desire, weren’t they just neurochemicals your body manufactured in order to encourage you to do things that would benefit it? To survive, find a mate, procreate? I was not my body. I had never believed that. In that sense, then, there were no real feelings. They were all external and equally irrelevant.

“The hub allows us to maintain contact with you. There’s a little camera right here, in your chest, so we can see what’s going on. This little dot next to it, that’s a microphone.”

It didn’t matter how I felt. That was insignificant compared to what I did. I wouldn’t get Lola back by feeling. I would get her back by applying my logical mind to extract maximum efficacy from the resources at my disposal.

“You can also use it to track Carl. I’m going to activate that right now, okay? Your abdomen will register a distinct cold sensation, like a draft, from his direction.”

So I had been trying to talk to my parts. It wasn’t easy, given all the emotion crashing around. It was like trying to whisper in a thunderstorm. I hadn’t heard any response. But something had been there in the original Contours. I thought something was probably here, too.

“Okay, the weapon. Well, you’ve clearly figured out how to fire it. But, for reference, the mental command is to clench your fist, hard. We’ve loaded it up, but we’re not going to unlock it until you’re clear of the building, if that’s okay. To, uh, be safe.”

An idea occurred to me. Instead of calling to my parts one at a time, I imagined them as a single entity. I thought: Hello?

Something stirred.

“Well!” Jason looked around. “I think we’re about done. Are you ready to do this?”

I asked: Are you? My parts said: Yes.

157.