"Off."
Scott awoke shivering with something cold and hard beneath him supporting him high above the ground and a bright light shining through his eyelids. There were many urgent voices surrounding him, one of them confident and commanding the others in a complicated procedure. This one scared Scott, deeply. "He's on the move; secure the patient."
Scott wanted to lash out, to strike at the threatening voice, but quickly thought better of it. This was not the time, something told him, to be a hero. Besides, he could barely twitch a finger, much less make a fist. Fists were all he had. He felt his platform move, shifting on smooth hydraulic limbs, to a position closer to the ground; the movement brought a rush of air over his body and he realized he was naked. He still couldn't open his eyes. There was a prick in the crook of his elbow. "I've started the IV-drip, doctor."
"Good. Prep the area and we'll begin."
Things were getting pretty scary; Scott tried to squirm over onto his side, but was instead consumed by a warm wave of drowsiness coming over him and the sensation of something cold wiped on the side of his face. "I've administered sedation, doctor."
"Don’t tell me about it, just do it, nurse. Now get that eye open."
Light exploded into his world as one of the bizarre creatures peeled his eyelid back and inserted a curled metal comb to hold it in place. He was surrounded by odd shapes in white, indiscernible in the drug-induced haze dragging him back towards darkness, but he had time to make them out as human beings in O.R.-scrubs, with masks over their faces and concern in their eyes. The head doctor, though—he looked at Scott as one would regard a bug whose legs were about to be pulled off. More than anything, Scott wanted to get away from that one. Nothing good could come from that man.
"Hand me the impeller, and get another fifty cc of the morphine-drip into him."
"Doctor, shouldn't we wait until the anesthetic kicks in?"
"He won't remember any of this. Don't second-guess my instructions."
The comforting red haze of oblivion tugged at him, but Scott still resisted. He tried to yell, he tried to sit up and pull the IV's out of him, he tried to punch the doctor in the face, he tried to rip the thing off his face and run away; instead, he lay prone and watched the long stainless-steel rod approach his right eye. He felt the orb pushed to the side, felt the rod pushing into the socket, felt it detach something that pinched onto some part of his inner workings, felt the rod slide back out devoid of its payload. All he wanted to do was scream; all he was able to do was to rail inside his head.
The doctor was pleased. "It's in. Start the recorder and make sure the uplink works."
The blackness swallowed him whole.
Ella hung up the phone and put it down on the coffeetable, between a plate of oozing brown bananas that was slowly devolving into a fly-colony and a plastic tray full of marijuana leaf-clippings. What the hell was wrong with him? He was such a loser. She didn't know why she'd ever let him shack up with her. He only did so he could leech off her, she knew it. Well, not anymore; she was taking charge of her life. She'd thrown his sorry ass out for the last time, and Scott could just learn to get along in the world like a big boy now. She was staking charge of her life...
She sifted through the bowl of leaf-clippings. There'd be a few good bits, parts of buds the trimmers had passed over, she knew it. Damn Scott, for making her so mad she couldn’t think—she needed to get her head straight. After she'd had a little bit to smoke, she'd be able to deal with the shit.
It seemed like that was all she got these days, shit and more shit; she knew who was to blame for it all, too. If she'd never met that asshole Scott, if she'd never agreed to come back home with him to this shithole town where everybody hated her, if she'd never made the decision to hitch her wagon to his train—if she'd never done any of these stupid things, her life would have been better. Things were supposed to go a certain way when you got married, and things had not gone that way, not with Scott. He was such a loser. He'd never gotten off his butt and gotten a real job, the kind that could support her and a family, and now he'd lost everything. Served him right.
The leafy-stuff was a crappy substitute for the real thing, but it did the trick if you smoked enough of it. She coughed hard, swallowed back something that was immediately put out of her mind, and put the pipe back down. It was getting pretty clogged up with resinous goo from the leaf-cuttings. Damn Scott for making her smoke this nasty stuff—she deserved better.
When they'd first met, she'd had very different ideas about him. The sun seemed to glint in his eyes no matter which direction he was facing; his skin was smooth and bronzed; he stood tall like a mountain and seemed every bit as solid, the veins in his arms ropy and his chin held high. He'd told her he was going to make it rich with his vehicle-restoration company; he had a plan and everything. First he'd start by getting his engine-repair business off the ground, get himself a small garage to start with and then hire people to do the work for him once it started paying for itself. He was good with engines, too; he really could have made it if he'd only applied himself. Instead, it was failure after failure and Scott blaming it all on the whole world and everybody but himself, and then it was welfare and the food bank and standing in line for handouts and everything undignified and damn it she deserved better.
Not to mention the fact that he was rock-stupid to boot; he couldn't take a hint. She'd tried yelling, calling the police on him, she'd even thrown a set of knives at his back; when she stayed out all night and came home smelling like sex and he didn't even blink, she knew more drastic measures would be needed. She'd been keeping diaries since before they'd met and she knew Scott was well aware of them—she'd chewed his ass for three months the one time she'd caught him reading them and she knew he'd never done it again. This time, she left them out with several passages marked with a yellow highlighter pen. Some of the entries were fake, created purely for him, but not many.
She described in minute detail all her sexual trysts, both real and imagined, and detailed the growing love she was coming to feel for one of them. Not all of it was made up.
She'd written that she was pregnant; that was made up. Gahh. She couldn't get pregnant any more; she'd tried.
Thinking about it gave her a headache. What she needed was some coke.
Ella coughed; it was getting worse, and starting to worry her. Scott would have normally appeared at her side when she had one of her coughing spells with a cup of hot tea or some noxious herbal potion—he was so controlling. Every little thing wrong with her was amplified a thousand-fold in his presence, as he would try to fix whatever was 'wrong' with her. And there was always something wrong for him to fix. He was like that, always meddling and sticking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted and always always always making her feel like she was flawed. She had enough problems with her flaws without Scott putting them up on display. He probably thought he was being helpful, from up on his high horse.
Who the fuck did he think he was? She could open a door for herself, for Chrissakes.
She'd been an independent woman ever since her fifteenth birthday, when her mom kicked her out of the house and told her she'd have to start making it in the world on her own. It had been a school-night, too, as if that had mattered. Her mom was a bitch, but she was dead now. Ella cursed her mother's name, cringing with guilt but unable to curb the hatred. She must be a terrible person.
She had to be a terrible person, considering what she'd done for Scott, out of fear.
She'd thought at the time that she was doing the right thing for everyone. Scott needed to learn how it was to deal with the real world, and Ella wasn't doing him any favors by letting him nest down with her, nor did he deserve the free ride. All she'd ever wanted in her little world was to raise a family, and Scott had taken all that away from her. Now he was going to learn about consequences.
The headaches were getting worse by degrees; this was by far the worst one yet. She couldn't think any more. She went to the bathroom to hunt
for an aspirin; there were too many bottles of pills behind the mirror. Most of them had to be Scott's—he still had his crap spread around the apartment, even though it'd been weeks since she'd told him to get lost. He needed to get his stuff out of her space.
The first time she'd gotten pregnant, she'd expected Scott to be overjoyed like she was and ready to start their new lives together. He'd been less than ecstatic. The more he talked, the less excited she'd been about it, too. He'd been right, no matter how much she wanted it otherwise. They were poor. They didn't even own a car. They were too young. They were stupid. They’d make bad parents. She'd make a bad mother. The whole situation would end up being so awful that he'd have to leave her, eventually. It would all be her fault.
Always talking talking talking, until she heard the words all the time, even when she was alone. They had a way of working their way into your head, of beating themselves into you.
He was right, and she knew it, and so she did the only thing that occurred to her. She waited until he'd gone out job-hunting and then made a phone-call. When the day of her appointment came, she hustled him out the door and went to the clinic by herself. A couple hours later, she returned to their apartment, shivering and lighter by a few ounces that weighed as much as a world. She never told him, never brought up the subject of her pregnancy, and lied to him about a miscarriage when he asked several weeks later. He'd bought it—hook, line and sinker, just like he was supposed to. And she hated him for it, but she never brought it up and never let on to it. This wasn't how things were supposed to be.
She'd stayed with him, then, though everything in her screamed non-stop at her to get out. She wanted to have a family, that was all she'd ever wanted, and if Scott wasn't going to be the one to provide it for her, then she'd find someone else who would. She was going to do it, had gotten herself ready on the inside and started to lay out the path to a different, real life with a different, real man, when Scott got hit by a car. Hit by a freakin' car! She'd felt so bad for him, he'd gotten real messed up this time with broken bones and bloody wounds, that she’d had to change her plans and take care of him instead. Like a baby. The irony turned her heart to flint, a heavy stone inside her that she hefted late at night, standing over Scott in the bed while he slept, and thought about bashing his head in with it.
God, she needed an aspirin.
She rummaged through the pill bottles in the cabinet, the rage mounting; half a dozen of the little amber bottles later, she still couldn't find what she was looking for and realized that it was because she wasn't thinking straight. She already had what she was looking for right in front of her, didn't she? Scott didn't need the pills anymore, she did. It was as simple as that. Two tablets went down with a palmful of water drawn from the bathroom sink. Fuck him anyway.
The second time she'd gotten pregnant by him, she hadn't been so quick to tell Scott about it. She knew what he'd say; he'd say, "This is why I keep asking to use a condom," and "Why can't we discuss this and make the decision when we're both ready," and a million other little things that she knew were true but didn't want to admit. He was the one sticking his penis in her; he was the one who should have to knuckle under and take responsibility, like the man was supposed to. She waited an entire month before she brought it up, this time preparing all her arguments beforehand so she wouldn’t be caught by surprise again without a comeback. She knew she was ready, and that was all that really mattered. She knew what she wanted, and that was all she needed to know.
Once again, Scott took her by surprise. He was so quick with his reasons for not wanting to have children, it was like he'd been preparing, too. She couldn’t actually be sure he hadn't. In fact, thinking about it, she was sure he'd known about it before she told him and must have been practicing for the big moment at the same time as she'd been. All her arguments fell on deaf ears; she just couldn't bring him around to her point of view. This time he'd suggested the abortion first. But she'd already been planning it. Someone on the telephone had helped her decide.
She wasn't supposed to think about that.
They'd been very convincing, though. She hadn't wanted to do it, this time; they'd made her change her mind. It was her duty.
As a reward, they let her see the shipping van that came to pick up the remains. She thought they were giving her a chance to say goodbye, to the life she'd dreamed for herself, to hope, to expectation.
The third time had been the last; for her, for him. Three strikes and you were out, right? That's what she'd told herself.
Scott still hadn’t gotten a job that could actually support them, still hadn't gotten his shit together and quit drinking, hadn't done anything to turn their lives around or made any kind of name for himself as an auto mechanic. It had all been bottled nonsense, a story he told himself and her, that he was gonna make it someday and all their problems would be over. Instead they sank deeper and deeper into debt. She'd sold all her nice clothes, her books, the furniture and heirlooms passed down through her family. He'd sold his plasma. It was never enough, and so they took the final dive, sold off their pride and went on welfare. Her, on welfare, like a bum! How could he have done this to her? How could he make her live like this?
And she'd gone on contraceptives for him, even though she hated the thought of it, and hated him for making her do such horrible things.
A year went by and she ran out of her birth-control pills. She didn't bother getting any more, thinking that the new motivator would be the push he needed to finally get moving and do something with himself, do something for his family, but when she told him about her scrip running out, all he'd said was “Okay." Just "Okay." like he didn't care or didn't believe her. Just "Okay." It wasn't okay.
Two months later when she knew for sure, she told Scott about how she'd stopped taking the pill. Didn't he remember? He'd said he'd thought she'd get more. Typical. She told him she was pregnant again. The look he got on his face told her everything.
This time they let her see the cart, and the little white package with the red labeling on the side, as it was loaded on to the back of the van; she knew she was meant to see it, because the driver and the men loading the van all stopped what they were doing at the same time, just as she was leaving the clinic, and paused to stare mutely at her for a full two minutes before just as suddenly going back to their business. She'd let out a wordless, animal scream at them, but they'd ignored her and carried on as though they'd heard nothing. She was sure she'd made a noise, but just to make sure she screamed again. They didn't even look up. Maybe they were used to that kind of thing. The memory brought a blush to her cheek.
She'd wanted that child.
She was sure that cocaine wouldn't solve the problem, but it would help her stuff it down for another minute...
Christ, she was going crazy thinking about this shit. It occupied most of her day, thinking about it all over and over and over and all of it and more, and the crying. All the crying. In the bath, on the couch in front of the TV, on the bus on her way to school. Shit, she was a middle-aged student nurse, and she was crying in public. She needed a breath of fresh air; she could take all the drugs in the world and turn her brain into sludge and it still wouldn’t make the crying stop. What she needed was to clear her head, and she needed wide open spaces for that.
What was she going to do? Without Scott, how was she going to pay the rent? How was she going to...
There were ways.
All she had to do was take another pill, and await further instructions.
She looked at the trees on the hill and took a deep breath, and the air tasted something like kerosene; the skyline was ragged with tall buildings, distant skyscrapers, the flashing beacons of radio-towers; a jet plane coursed over the horizon, leaving a long string of exhaust fumes that stretched back off into the distance as far as the eye could see.
It had never had a name before, in any of the bodies it had known, only ever a batch-number; had it possessed a name then, there would have been no one
calling it. But this time would be different.
It had gone into the light, had seen a magnificent brilliance and chosen to leave behind everything it had ever known, and become a part of that light. The voice of the Queen had gone, leaving a engulfing silence in its wake, but it had found another voice to take Her place. This other voice was quiet, so quiet HfX7qe2179A9 had to still its own internal chatter in order to hear it, and gentle, like a soothing hand on the side of its face. It had never known such tenderness in any of its other lives. The Queen had been harsh, demanding of total obedience never to be questioned; this other presence was soft and suggested where the Queen would have commanded.
"William."
It would be called "William."
The light had taken it to strange beings, pinkish and mushy, looking at it with an expression that it had cataloged endlessly but never fully understood, or experienced.
Love.
These creatures were its parents, and it was now human. Hands that had once been claws stretched too many fingers towards its new guardians; they made unrecognizable sounds at it and HfX7qe2179A9 knew only a profound frustration. Weren't these creatures supposed to upload the knowledge-base immediately upon its containment in a new mobile? How else was it supposed to know its function? All the information it was receiving right now was unintelligible.
One set of phonemes stood out from the rest, however, two-and-a-half syllables that seemed to resonate through its entire newfound frame: "William." It supposed that would have to do. If not its function, it would at least serve as an identifier, something to help it distinguish itself from every other mobile around it.
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