Machine Man (serial)

Page 62.

I woke at some indeterminate time in the night to a terrible cramp in my right foot. I groped around in the dark, grimacing and clutching at empty sheets, trying to find my toes. Eventually, I realized I didn’t have any.

I grabbed at the light switch and hauled myself into a sitting position. I was in my bunk. I threw back the sheets, so my brain could see for itself. “There’s nothing there.” My voice sounded thin and frightened. “There’s nothing there to hurt.” It didn’t help. I gave in and pretended to massage the space where my toes would have been. As a scientist, I am not proud of this. But it seemed to help. After a while, I was able to lie back.

I had never really believed in phantom pain. I’d heard of it, of course. But it had always struck me as the product of irrational minds. I suspected that if you were to plot the data sets of people who experienced phantom pain following the loss of a limb with belief sets involving spiritual energy, you would see a fairly serious correlation. It seemed to be what you got for allowing your brain to operate without discipline.

I’d thought this because in the first weeks following my own amputations, I’d felt nothing worse than itching or crawling sensations. Well, that’s not quite true. There were twinges. Some minor cramps. The occasional shooting, blinding pain. But that had been easily attributable to nerve issues. I was, after all, doing some fairly serious messing around with the nerves, to interface them to my mechanical parts. It was perfectly reasonable to believe the occasional cross-wire would produce pain. Not phantom pain. Real pain.

But four of the last five nights, I’d woken to some kind of pain in a body part I didn’t have. And that other night, I had somehow turned myself completely around in my sleep, I think trying to find my legs. It was hard to believe this was damaged nerves. It was my brain, punishing me.

I sat up again. The cramp was coming back. It was preparing to clench tight my phantom toes. I had to give it to my brain: it had taken a while, but it had figured out how to fight back. It had absorbed an impressive arsenal of pain-dampening drugs and come back swinging.

But I had one trick left. Phantom pain, a theory went, was caused by the brain thinking the limb was still there, needing to be cared for: I had read about successful treatments with mirrors, patients staring at optical illusions of their whole, healthy bodies. Apparently that was enough for the brain.

I didn’t have a mirror. Or a spare foot, for that matter, to mirror. But I swung my thighs off the edge of the bunk and reached down for the Contours, which lay on the floor. The cramp hit when I was halfway through fitting. I had to alternate between slotting needles and grabbing at the air to massage ghost toes, whimpering. My fingers shook. By the end, I was jabbing those needles in there, hoping they hit something, gnashing my teeth against the pain. But finally I finished. The Contour extended. The hoof flexed, up and down, up and down. “Ahhh,” I said. That was better.

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