Machine Man (serial)

At some point we stopped. It wasn’t until Lola climbed down off me that I saw where: a leafy, suburban street. It looked odd, like something from a TV show. Then I realized where I knew it from, and laughed. I had lived here, as a boy. I felt touched: I had asked the Contours to bear me somewhere safe, and they had brought me back to my childhood.

“What?” said Lola.

“I lived here once. When I was a kid.”

She studied me. “You have blood on your chin.”

I tried to wipe it with my sleeve, but that had blood on it, too, probably from my bicep. This struck me as funny, too, because it was like I was some kind of crack fighting machine. I had just outrun a whole bunch of security guards—twice, actually—and in between, I had jumped through the air and kicked a car. I sniggered, and it ballooned into laughter. Lola stared. “I’m sorry. It’s just… we got away. I actually rescued you.”

“You’re different,” she said.

I stopped. “Different how?”

She shrugged. “Confident.”

“I’m getting confident?”

“Yeah.”

“Because of the legs?”

“I guess,” said Lola. “I guess when you go leaping all over the place and kicking people, I guess you get confident.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“I don’t know.” She looked away. “I liked you before.”

I felt stung. I didn’t deserve that. I had just saved her life, probably. She was just pissed at me because of Carl. So I let it go. We had other issues to discuss, like where we were going to spend the night. But the feeling nagged at me: that Lola didn’t understand me, and my legs did.

103.