Machine Man (serial)

“Brains are plastic,” said Lola. “That’s what we tell people who come in with a foot missing, or hand, or arm. Brains adapt. When you lose a limb, the parts of your brain that were in charge of it, the neurons, they don’t just sit there. Once they figure out they’re not needed, they start roaming around, looking for new jobs. We tell people this because it’s how you can become as mobile on an artificial leg as a real one. Losing a body part frees up resources in your brain that you can apply to something new.

“There was a woman with a transtibial earlier this year, her eyesight improved. A guy swore he got better at math. Some people start smelling colors, or sensing the personality of letters; that’s called synesthesia. It’s why we try to get people into prosthetics as quickly as possible: to capture roaming neurons for motor function before they latch onto something else.”

She shivered. “Carl said his arms had a mind of their own.” Carl still lay in the shadows of the elevator block behind her, wrapped in his mangled sledgehammer arms. “When he took me, he said his arms were talking to him and nobody at Better Future would help. And what I think, Charlie, is that these parts you made, they’re too easy for your brain. You told me once that you don’t need to think about where you step: you tell your Contours where you want to go and they figure out how to get you there. That’s clever, Charlie, that’s the kind of thing you do, but I think you put a lot of neurons out of work.

“And they’ve gone all over. Some, maybe most, went into your subconscious and super-charged it. They raised up areas of your brain that should stay below the surface. That’s what I think happened with Carl. It probably happened to a lot of the test subjects. And you’ve lost a lot more than anybody, Charlie, so I think if anyone’s hearing voices, you are. And the voices, which maybe seem like they’re coming from your parts, they’re actually you.”

171.