Machine Man (serial)

Page 17.

“Oh,” Lola said. “I see.”

She walked in a circle around my prototype leg three times. She stopped beside the Clamp, the big pre-fab die stamp that had crushed my old leg, although she didn’t know that. The Clamp was gleaming clean. You didn’t leave machinery of that caliber idle just because some idiot managed to lose a limb in it. It was expensive as all get-out.

“That looks heavy,” she said.

“It’s about 180 pounds,” I admitted. “It tends to dent the floor.”

“How do you lift it?”

“I don’t. It walks by itself.”

Lola looked at me.

“That base rotates. It’s essentially a wheel, on a shifting multi-dimensional axis.” I wanted to tell her its top speed, but didn’t. She would think I was showing off.

“And what’s this?” She pointed at a squat black box, which protruded from one side.

“The processor. I’m not really happy with the positioning on that. It’s a little vulnerable.”

“What does it do?”

“You know. Basic monitoring and control. GPS. Data storage. Wi-fi.”

“Your leg has wi-fi?”

“Of course. Otherwise it couldn’t interface with the Google Maps API for path-finding.”online path-finding API.”

Lola looked at me blankly.

“You shouldn’t need to keep telling your leg where to step. You should tell it where you want to go,go and let it calculate how best to get you there. That’s basic encapsulation.”

Lola looked back at the leg. I don’t think she really understood encapsulation. But she was very impressed with my leg. She knelt on the floor before it. The leg was under a lab spotlight, about three feet tall. Shelike a steel vase. It bulged at the bottom, because the foot was the size of a small suitcase, then tapered to a slimmer thigh. Lola reached out and touched it.

I cleared my throat. “What do you think?”

Her fingers ran down the chrome.metal. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

I felt myself flushing.

It was a moment before I could speak. I said, “Thanks.”

17.