Machine Man (serial)

Page 60.

I swiped for access to the Glass Room. Already I could see my assistants inside, tapping at terminals and peering at screens.

I didn’t want to get carried away, but in the back of my mind, a lot of ideas were percolating around Lola. Like how she had lost the heart her father gave her, and maybe, one day, if things went right, I could give her one of mine.

for a guy whose last serious relationship was in high school, what we had going was something. It was really something.

I wasn’t getting carried away. It was early days. But this thing with Lola, it was something. It was something.

My work was fulfilling, my employer supported me, and, for the first time ever, I had something resembling the beginnings of a love life. I mean,

already the most significant romantic liaison

<< Give her a heart. >>

But Lola had opened up to me; she had . I had seen her heart. That was pretty good.

I had an engineering project that interested me, a supportive work environment in which to conduct it,

For the first time in my life, I had not only a promising

<< He maybe goes back to the lab. Eager to see if his equipment is there. But it would be good to set up a dynamic with Lola, too. Maybe leave the lab for next week. >>

<< Charlie back in the lab. CC. She’s not willing to risk Charlie sever more parts of himself. He says, what’s the point of making artificial limbs if I can’t attach them anywhere? >>

And then I realized I hadn’t seen Carl in a while.

The next weeks flew by. I spent my days in the lab and my nights sleeping in one of the private bunk rooms. Sometimes it was the other way around. I lost track of daylight for a while there. There wasn’t much of it, in the labs or bunk rooms. I learned to tell the time by the ebb and flow of lab assistants, the way they were quieter and more focused in the mornings, scattier and prone to risk-taking at nights. I had twelve of them now, too many to remember. They were very deferential. That was nice.

In between, I visited Lola. They had moved her to a live-in suite in an upper section of the building. It was a managerial level, I think, although I never saw any managers. I did see lots of potted plants. Those cheerful splashes of green made me a little wistful, and I felt like installing some plants in the lab, to brighten it up, although of course I couldn’t, because of contamination. But I decided to take one from beside the elevator and put it in the corner of my bunk room. I could do things like that, now I was important. The plant sat there for a while and I kind of forgot about it until one day, or maybe night, I noticed it slumped over the side of its pot, brown and limp. I hadn’t watered it. Also, the lack of natural light may have been a problem.

As I sat on my bunk and looked at that plant, I felt annoyed. There was something pathetic about an organism that couldn’t even live if you left it alone a while. This was maybe a little hard on the plant, which after all had been removed to a hostile environment, but still, it reminded me why I was doing this.

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