by Simeon Mills
This was madness.
I wasn’t a cheater. Up to this point I believed if I followed The Directions to the best of my ability, I would be rewarded with a happy life. Now I knew the truth. My life was nothing but a game for the amusement of humans. One that I was losing. Getting blown out. But worst of all? Kanga was excelling at The Game. My brother, who had ignored The Directions since being switched on. Which all added up to this: The Directions was a sham. A distraction. A phony set of commands that had nothing to do with a successful life. I should have listened to Dad. He’d trusted no one, especially Gravy. The single time he trusted someone—me—I double-crossed him hours later. Sorry, Dad. I guess I just proved your point. My life until now had been wasted, but it wasn’t over. I was still here. Still alive. And for once I had an advantage, because if this was indeed The Game, then shouldn’t there be The Rules?
I searched Dr. Murphio’s office. His desk, his bookshelves, his filing cabinets. I found nothing that pertained to The Game. Could it be that no rules existed? Then what was the point to any of this? Who was judging me? How? My fan was running at top speed. I felt eyes on me, but it was just a portrait on the wall: Dr. Murphio, his beautiful wife, and his five perfect daughters. I recognized the oldest daughter as the basketball player from the picture in the hallway. My creator. Was the answer key to my life somewhere inside her brain?
I felt a sudden urge to look behind this portrait.
I leaned the enormous frame away from the wall and—bingo! A secret cubby containing a thick manila folder. This had to be the information I was looking for. A stack of documents. I looked at the first sheet of paper, and the secret to The Game was . . .
Ma?
The Chinese basketball star?
The documents detailed the specifications of Ma’s body. They were thorough, including full-page diagrams of his skeletal architecture, his lubricant circulation, his musculature, and so on. Disappointingly, my insides looked nothing like Ma’s; for instance, his exhaust system ran up and down the left side of his body, while mine (according to The Directions) was on the right. But that didn’t matter when I flipped to a page that showed Ma’s full, naked body in painstaking detail, with Mandarin characters to indicate exact measurements of every exterior piece of him. I couldn’t look away, even as my shame multiplied. Ma was a gorgeous machine. My processor fluttered. Then I had to look away for fear I might accidentally fold up that piece of paper and slip it into my pocket to look at later. Each page was stamped with a Mandarin marking, “Top Secret,” which led me to assume these documents had not been created by Gravy Robotics. But what did that mean? Had Dr. Murphio stolen them? Were they a gift? Had Gravy somehow assisted in Ma’s creation? And most importantly: How would this help me win The Game? I flipped further through the file, finding a diagram of Ma’s central processor. It resembled a farm, with its distinct silver memory barns at the center, surrounded by a vast green garden of nodes. Unlike other pages, there were scribbles of English in the margins, which I assumed to be Dr. Murphio’s handwriting. The phrases themselves were a hodgepodge of fatherly nonsense:
are you my son?
now finish your plate like a good boy
do your homework and I want to see it when it’s finished
you can’t lie to me because I know when you’re lying
go to your room this instant
Trying to deduce meaning from these bundles of words made my processor ache. Then I heard a sound in the reception area of the office suite. The front door was unlocking. A moment later the front office lights buzzed to life.
By instinct, I crumpled the illustration of Ma’s processor into a ball and crammed it into my pocket. I quickly returned Ma’s folder to its secret location behind the family portrait, flicked off the light switch, and fell into the hallway, jamming my fingers into the wall outlet just as Betsy appeared, carrying a black duffel bag.
“Whoa! Is that how you guys do it? All sprawled out like that? I mean, whatever. I would read a book or something.”
This was the first time my left pointer and index fingers had ever tasted juice from an outlet, and they were getting spoiled. Detroit electricity had a deep, steely flavor—somehow both rusty and elegant at once, with hints of rainwater. A mere nip of the stuff had enhanced my odor receptors. From the floor, I caught a whiff of Betsy’s hair grease. She still hadn’t showered since I last saw her.
“My dad left your new hand on the front desk.” She frowned, holding up the duffel bag. “I mean, it’ll probably be better than nothing, right?”
“Why? What’s wrong with my new hand?”
“First of all, it’s a used hand. And second of all—” She bit her lip.
“Tell me.”
“Okay, don’t freak out, but the hand isn’t the right age for you. It’s, like, a man’s hand. It’s hairy, and, um . . .”
“Show me the hand, Betsy.”
She set the duffel bag on the hallway floor. She unzipped it and paused, staring inside. Finally, she reached in and pulled out my new hand. Or more specifically—
Dad’s rubber hand.
After a split second of revulsion and paralyzing guilt for my role in ordering my father to the chopping block, something clicked in my processor, and I fully accepted my fate. “Okay,” I said to her. “Let’s do it.” Because I deserved Dad’s hand. He no longer needed it; that was my fault. And if I was going to survive in this world—if I was ever going to win The Game—I’d need to be more like my old man, not less. “I’m ready for my new hand now.”
Betsy wasn’t.
“It’s solid rubber!” she shrieked. “And it’s hairy!”
Spikes of black hair were growing from the rubber, especially near where Dad’s wrist would be, and even sprouting from the cut edge, where the hand had been separated from the rest of Dad’s rubber arm. A yellow shaft, like a central bone, protruded from this cut edge, ending with a ball. I recognized it as the sliced yellow piece in my wound, meaning that that old piece would probably be yanked out by Betsy so the new one could be inserted, and that was how I would be reconnected with my dad.
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” she said.
“Please don’t, Betsy. Stay calm.” I was a one-handed robot sitting in a dirty hallway and sticking my fingers in an outlet, but right now I was the voice of reason. “I’ve seen hands like this before, and they look pretty real if you don’t stare straight at them. This is hard for me too, but we can do it. We’ll work together. Do you have the instructions for attaching the hand to my wrist?”
“My dad left the instructions in the bag,” she said, breathing regularly again. “I guess that thing’s more realistic than your hair.”
I smiled for her. “And I bet I can wedge a pencil between the fingers and write with it.”
“Don’t get carried away.” Betsy gripped the yellow shaft on the hand, making it an extension of her own. She scratched her knee with it. “I think you’d better hide this thing whenever possible. Wear gloves, or shove it in your pocket. Besides, can’t you just, I don’t know, write with your other hand?”
I’d never seen Dad write with either hand, period. There were a million things I’d never seen him do. No wonder he was so cranky and cynical all the time—which was exactly what I had to look forward to. “I’m a writer, Betsy.” Doubt was creeping into my processor. “I’ve been right-handed my whole life. Everybody’s seen me right-handed, and suddenly I’ll be writing with my left hand? What if I can’t do it? What if my signature is different? What if every sentence I write has five similes? What if—”
“Relax.” Now Betsy had to calm me down. She tested Dad’s rubber fingers, pulling them apart and letting them snap back into place. “Whoever had this hand before you didn’t bite his nails. Be thankful for that. Come on. Let’s do this back in your room.”
Removing my fingers from the outlet was torture. The bite still had its teeth in me; I needed ten more hours of juice. Then again, what did it matter? With such a worthl
ess new hand, I might as well have been obsolete. Maybe Betsy should just do me a favor and switch me off—
No! Coach Knight was shouting at me. You’re still on the board! You’re still playing, you wussy! Now, get in there! I followed Betsy into “my room,” where she’d already set the duffel bag on the cement floor and removed the instructions and tools: a pair of goggles, forceps, a small towel, a large jar of yellow putty, and a spray bottle.
As she put on the goggles, Betsy asked, “What happened to your old hand, anyway?”
“You won’t tell Dr. Murphio, will you?”
Betsy thought about this for a moment. “No. I won’t.”
“I wanted to prove I was a robot. To this other robot. To my brother.”
“Weird.”
“With a butcher knife.”
“I’m basically skipping breakfast to do this. Just so you know.” She held the instructions up to her goggles, scanning for what to do first. “Do you want to watch?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Take off your shirt.”
First, she had to remove the broken yellow shaft that was still in the center of my arm, the one I had split with the butcher knife. To do this, she pressed hard on the inside of my elbow.
“Ow,” I said.
“There’s supposed to be a button in here.”
I felt a drop of Betsy’s sweat on my cheek as she made a fist and rocked her full weight onto the inside of my elbow. The button finally clicked, causing my right forearm to go numb, as well as, inexplicably, my left earlobe.
“Got it.” She then used the forceps to remove the old rod running through the inside of my arm. The ball at the end of the rod brought with it a white, spongy substance that fell to the floor in chunks. I was surprised to see only a few drops of lubricant. Betsy patted the wound once with her small towel, then asked, “Ready?”
Dad’s hand went on quickly. Betsy merely pressed my elbow button again (it was much easier the second time) and drove the yellow shaft inside Dad’s hand into my forearm. I braced my processor for a profound jolt upon receiving Dad’s hardware—a psychological change to match the physical. Instead, all I felt was exhausted. Packing the yellow putty around the point of operation took Betsy the longest. She kept adding a teaspoon more, smoothing it with her fingers, then reexamining her work. Eventually this patchwork of fake flesh resembled a real wrist—it looked even better than the hand it was connected to.
Suddenly, it was no longer Dad’s hand but my own.
While the putty dried, Betsy went into the main office and called her boyfriend. It turned out his best friend’s dog died last night. Betsy said “I’m so sorry, Kevin” seven times. Then she hung up, came back, and tested the putty with a finger. She grabbed the spray bottle and aimed it at my wrist. “Close your eyes.” She spritzed me.
I heard the putty fizz and tighten, hardening into a layer of skin on the surface. When I opened my eyes, Betsy was blowing gently on my wrist. She tested it with her finger again. She shrugged. “Put your shirt back on.”
I guided my new hand down the sleeve of my game-day shirt, feeling nothing in the hard rubber fingers.
“Let me get a look at you,” Betsy said, standing back. “Okay.” She shuddered. “What you’re doing right now? Letting both hands just hang at your sides like that? Never do that again. Okay? Never let anyone compare one hand to the other. That’s your new rule. Got it?”
I put my new hand in my pants pocket. “Got it.”
Betsy wet a finger and patted my hair with it. She fixed the collar of my shirt. “I almost forgot—” She knelt down and grabbed something else from the duffel bag. “Take this. It’s for showering.” In my good hand she placed a long rubber sheath. “You need to put it on up to the elbow so nothing gets wet.”
Never in my life had I seen anything that looked so much like a condom.
“So you’re all good now,” she said. “Okay? Okay.”
Betsy was escorting me through the empty office, and I came to the crushing realization that I might never see her again. Right before the elevator, I turned and gave her a hug, squeezing her with both arms. “Thank you.”
“Oh—” she said, and I felt her cold fingers on the nape of my neck. “Okay.” She sniffled. Then she was crying. “Renee made you a little too real, didn’t she?”
“Renee. Your sister. Does she still work here?”
“No.” Betsy shook her head. “No.”
“Does she still live in Detroit?”
“She moved to—” Betsy almost answered, but she caught herself. “She moved away for a reason. I understand why. I’ll probably move away too, when I get older. When I get done here. He’s not a horrible father, okay? It’s just the work he does. Gravy. We never asked for any of it. Not my mom. Not my sisters. It’s all him. But he’s paying for my college, and his only condition is I have to work in this office for a couple of years. And make one of you. For him. And then I’m free, so here I am!” Betsy stepped away from me. “You have to go now.”
“Please tell me one more thing about Renee. Does she play basketball anymore? For fun, at least?”
Betsy walked over to the elevator and pushed the button. She smiled. “Her daughter does.”
• • •
The bus taking me back to Hectorville seemed aware that I was late for school, passing big rigs and ignoring stops it had made going the opposite direction, all in an apparent effort to get me to the bus station with enough time to enjoy the last two periods of the school day. I’d left my suitcase back at Gravy, but I didn’t care. The catalog was still tucked into the front of my pants, but even that felt like a relic from more innocent times. The Hectorville bus station was a mere mile from school, and I arrived between fourth and fifth periods. In the hallway, I read everybody’s mind: “Where was that kid for the last day and a half?” “Why is his hand stuffed in his pocket like that?” “What’s that pink stuff on the sleeve of his shirt?”
Kanga was at our locker, digging around for books. I approached cautiously. I had no clue what to say to him. My entire body felt like my new hand, like a boxer’s punching dummy. I whispered, “Excuse me.”
Kanga spun around at the sound of my voice. He looked me up and down. “Brother—” He assaulted me with a hug. “I was worried sick about you!”
I couldn’t hug him back. Both of my arms were trapped beneath his. I was airborne, my legs swinging around the hallway. This was not the Kanga who had left me alone in the kitchenette. In fact, I’d never seen this version of my brother before.
He set me down. “It’s so great to see you, Darryl.”
I managed a “Hi.”
“We’ve got so much to talk about. Let me start with this: I’m sorry. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. The championship is tomorrow, as you know. Everybody’s been counting on me. And then you got hurt. And then . . .”
“Don’t cry.”
“I didn’t know where you went.”
Now I was consoling him. One-armed. I’d seen Kanga cry many times, but never about me. I didn’t trust it. The whole thing seemed like an act, like he was auditioning for the part of “Brother” on a TV show.
“I should have helped you when I had the chance, Darryl. Maybe I had to lose you for a couple of days to realize that. But listen. I’ll never do that again. From now on, it’s you and me. Nobody else.”
“Okay.”
“Because I’ve got it all figured out. The rest of our lives. The future. I’m going to make the NBA. I’m going to be a millionaire. I’ll get you whatever you want. You break something else, a leg or your head, I’ll get it fixed. All the doctors and hospitals it takes. I’m going to look out for you, brother. There’s so much more I have to tell you, but the bell’s about to ring. I’ll see you sixth period. I love you, bro.”
• • •
In art class, I grabbed a fresh sheet of paper, sat down at my table, and wrote my name at the top with my left hand: Darryl Livery. To my relief, my left-handed si
gnature looked nearly identical to my right-handed signature. Which meant, just like that, I could pass as a left-handed human. This anticlimax left me vaguely disappointed. Hadn’t there been anything special about my old right hand? I wrote my name a dozen more times with my left hand—once under Mrs. Asquith’s critical gaze. “Nice artist’s signature,” was all she said. “But next time, try finishing a drawing first.”
Kanga arrived late to class. He tenderly squeezed my shoulder and took a seat at Brooke’s table. Brooke arrived a few moments later, and they proceeded to play with her clarinet reed for the rest of class, passing it back and forth, putting it in their mouths and blowing to hear what funny noises they could make.
When the bell rang, ending the school day, Brooke hadn’t looked at me once.
I was walking down the hallway alone when I felt a different hand on my shoulder.
“Take a knee, Darryl.”
Mr. Belt pulled me into an empty classroom. Not his room, but another science teacher’s room. The lights were off. Mr. Belt shut the door so we could be alone.
“Come in here and get comfortable. Take a knee. Or stand if you like. Relax, Darryl. Close your eyes and imagine you’re a man such as myself. With a wife, two children. Both girls. My daughters are much younger than you, but, heaven help them, they will grow up to become ninth graders such as yourself. We all get older. Some would call me an old man. I’m forty-four. But my father is still alive, so can I truly be considered old? I talked to your father this morning on the phone. He told me all about the stomach virus you had—”
Dr. Murphio. It had to be. He had called Mr. Belt and pretended to be Dad. And why not? Our real dad had never set foot in a school, never picked us up, never volunteered to serve punch at a school dance. Mr. Jacobowhite was the only teacher to ever converse with our “dad,” and he’d been talking to me. This phone call was Dr. Murphio’s way of preemptively addressing any questions Mr. Belt might have about my absence. To the doctor, I was just a pawn in his Game, a game he wanted Kanga to win, not me. Apparently, he would do anything in his power to make that happen.