Machine Man

by Max Barry

  “Four days later, it happened again. Another accident. The same arm. He lost it up to the elbow. We visited the hospital and Mom cried and said we were cursed. But Dad didn’t look sad. He got ten weeks’ recuperation. When it was over I said, ‘Are you going back to work now?’ and he said, ‘We’ll see.’ It was two days. The die stamp, this time. Some toes. Mom couldn’t bring herself to visit him. She was losing her mind. But I went. And I was worried, because he looked really hurt. His foot was bandaged and he was missing his arm. I climbed into bed and hugged him as hard as I could. I cried and said he was dying. He said no, I was wrong about that. He told me about the payments. He had a little booklet. He said, ‘See, Lola? The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.’

  “That was how it worked. The death payout was a hundred thousand dollars. But if you added up the individual body parts, they came to a lot more. Even the hand, if you lost it all at once it was fifty thousand, but each finger was between ten and fifteen, and the thumb was twenty. You could maximize the numbers.

  “He said he’d been silly with the hand. Losing it all once. Now he knew what he was doing. He was getting me a new heart. He kissed me and said it would make everything okay forever.

  “The company sent a man to the house. Asking questions like: Was my father depressed? Had he talked about killing himself? They couldn’t see that he was happy. I lied to them. I helped Dad plan his next accident. We had a notebook. We did sums and figured out which parts to lose. When he tucked me into bed, his eyes were full of joy, and I knew I had the best Dad in the world, because nobody else’s father loved them this much.

  “Mom found the notebook. I woke and she was screaming. I came downstairs and she was wild, hitting him. The next day she kept me home and gave me a talk about how Dad was sick. In the head. She’d had him committed. I was so angry. She was trying to tell me he didn’t really love me. That he was just crazy. We yelled. I wished her dead. We were never the same after that.

  “Dad came home after a while. They tried to keep him there but he outsmarted them. And his work couldn’t find a reason to fire him, so he went back. They had a guy follow him around, a tall man with a mustache. Even when Dad came to pick me up from school. Dad said they went to the bathroom together. The way he described it, it was funny. Like playing spies. We flipped through our notebook and added up the numbers and figured we were almost there. We knew how much we needed, with bank interest, for a new heart. Just a little more. Just a foot.

  “It took him three weeks to find a moment when the man with the mustache wasn’t there. But something happened. Mom came to school and took me to the parking lot and said Dad had died. He’d been crushed under an engine block. I didn’t believe her. I ran home and dug out his notebook and it was right there. It was only supposed to be the foot.

  “The company gave us a check for a hundred thousand dollars. The death payout. He would have been so annoyed. A hundred thousand for the whole, when the parts were worth so much more.

  “We invested it. And it grew. When I turned eighteen there was almost six hundred thousand dollars.

  “I told the doctor I wanted something to last forever. Something steel. Because it was all I had left of Dad and I wanted him to live in my heart for the rest of my life.”

  Her face contorted. Her fingers dug into the cotton covering her chest. “And they took it out.”

  ONCE LOLA had fallen asleep, I wheeled myself out into the corridor. Cassandra Cautery emerged from a door ten feet away. “Well,” she said. “That was some story.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m always curious about what motivates people to choose their careers. It’s never what you think.”

  I said nothing.

  “She can have the heart. We haven’t disposed of it. So if it has sentimental value … well, she can have it.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Silence fell.

  I said, “I want to continue the project.”

  “Yes,” said Cassandra Cautery. “I thought you might.”

  THE NEXT day, Carl wheeled me through the corridors of Research to the labs. There was not much talking. While waiting for an elevator, he said, “I was very happy to hear Ms. Shanks is recovering,” and I didn’t say anything.

  He took me to what used to be a lab in an adjoining project before we took it over. We stopped before the door. “I don’t have my pass,” I said. This was an accusation, because I’d had it before he shot Lola. They had taken it while I was sedated, along with my hand and legs.

  Carl swiped his own ID. The lock’s display blinked green. I was surprised, because as far as I knew, we did not grant lab access to security guards. Inside was a large room with many shelves. On slabs of gleaming steel lay half a dozen sets of legs in various stages of completion. The Contours were among them. On my right was a smorgasbord of fingers. Next to those, some hands. Until this moment, I had not really believed they would let me have my parts back. I had been bracing myself for Cassandra Cautery to slide into view and say there was a last-minute problem. But no.

  “Should I fetch you a sweater?”

  I jumped a little, because I’d forgotten Carl was here. “What?”

  “You’re shivering.”

  It was true. “Oh. No.” I put my hands on the grips and pushed myself toward the Contours. Carl did not stop me; did not close his hand on my wrist and say, Choose something else. I ran my hands over the metal, checking connections, making sure everything was there.

  “You really like those things,” said Carl. “They can press, what, a ton?”

  “Something like that.” It was four tons. Which, frankly, was nothing compared to what they would do once I implemented some modifications I’d been thinking about. But I didn’t say that, because Carl was trying to engage me, and I didn’t want to be engaged.

  “You can never be strong enough,” Carl said. “That’s for sure.” He placed a card on the steel bench beside him: my ID. “I’ll leave you to it.” That was the last time I ever saw him. All of him, I mean.

  I CHOSE a selection of metal fingers and snapped them into a hand. It wasn’t a full hand. It was more like a glove. In the accident I had only crushed three fingers. It seemed worse at the time. The glove allowed the artificial fingers to slot easily into position, driving the nerve interface needles between my knuckles. This hurt about as much as you’d expect, but not for long. What I had discovered was you could get used to anything. I had the feeling of being connected to something large and cold and distant and my synapses popped pleasantly. I looked at my metal fingers and they moved.

  I wheeled myself back to the Contours and pressed for them to retract. Once they were a comfortable height, I lifted the nerve interface mat out of the sockets. The great thing about the hand was the fingers did not tremble. They slid the needles into my flesh as precisely as lasers.

  When I had finished wiring myself, I hauled myself into the sockets. Three weeks ago I hadn’t been able to do this without assistance. I had come a long way. I got comfortable and closed my eyes and the pistons hissed. The Contours’ hooves thunk-thunked against the floor. I won’t lie, it was one of the most sensual experiences of my life. As much as I had missed the legs, I had underestimated how good it would feel to have them back.

  I took a step. Thunk. The way they’d borne me through the city, screaming out of control, I had probably imagined most of that. These legs wouldn’t betray me. They were reliable. I could tell. They were practically me.

  My eyes fell on the wheelchair. That thing looked like a joke. I walked to it, raised a hoof, and positioned it on the seat. I pressed down. The chair’s metal struts popped and squealed and it splintered like firewood.

  I WALKED to the elevators. While I waited, hands behind my back, I hummed a little. The elevator doors opened on two assistants wearing Z-specs. “Good morning, Dr. Neumann!” They moved aside to make room.

  “Hello.” I couldn’t remember their names.

  “Are you coming b
ack to work?”

  “Yes,” I said. “No.” Those milky lenses were a little creepy. Of course, I was half machine. But still. “Soon.”

  “Good.” The tall one grinned. “We have some things to show you.”

  The doors opened. I stepped out. I was curious about those things. But I wanted to see Lola more. It was funny, because an hour ago all I could think about was my parts. And Lola was almost certainly sleeping. There was nothing productive I could do there. Still, I made my way to her room and ducked under the doorway. Her eyelids briefly fluttered open and she smiled. It was a small smile but very beautiful, and I thought about this afterward: this perfect moment, which could not be improved.

  I READ once that you need two things to be happy: any two of health, money, and love. You can cover the absence of one with the other two. I drew comfort from this idea while I was fully bodied, employed, and unloved. It made me feel I wasn’t missing much. But now I realized this was unmitigated bullshit, because health and money did not compare with love at all. I had a girl in a hospital bed who liked me and I didn’t know where that might go but I could tell it was more important than low blood pressure. It mattered more than a new car. With Lola in the same building, I walked with a spring in my step. That was true literally. But I mean I was happy, happy on an axis I had previously known about only in theory. I was glad to be alive.

  WHEN I reached the Glass Room I noticed a lot of Z-spec-wearing lab assistants. They were grinning. At first I thought they were pleased to see me but by the time I reached my desk I suspected they were playing some kind of joke. “Hello,” I said to one, and she said hello and her lips stretched wider. I settled the Contours and poked on my computer. They hovered, eight or ten of them. When I couldn’t stand it, I said, “What?”

  “Notice anything different?” I realized this was Jason. I hadn’t recognized him at first because the Z-specs occupied half his face. I wasn’t used to identifying people by their lips. I looked from one set to another.

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like us to take off our glasses?”

  “Not really.”

  Someone stifled a giggle. “All right,” I said. “Take them off.”

  They pulled off the specs. Underneath, they had no pupils. That’s how it looked. “We can’t,” said Jason. There was laughter. “We’re still wearing them.”

  I rose in the Contours. Closer up, I could see flat silver circles swimming in his pupils. Tiny silver floating suns.

  “We miniaturized. Now they’re lenses.”

  “Z-lenses,” corrected a girl.

  “Silicon and gel on flexible polycarbonate wafers,” said Jason. “You don’t use your eyebrows to control the zoom. You blink.” His eyelids fluttered. His silver pupils swirled like mist.

  “I see,” I said.

  “No, you don’t.” More laughs. “Not without Z-lenses. Not really.”

  I looked at their proud, smiling, pupilless faces. I was being less enthusiastic than they wanted. But it was weird. “Okay,” I said. “Good work.”

  I WORKED on parts during the day and visited Lola every evening. Sometimes she slept. More and more she was awake. She lay with hair exploding across her pillow and put her hand on my arm as we talked. She could laugh and tell stories but she tired quickly and it was always over too soon.

  “I’ve never liked my ears,” she said. “Look. They’re way too high.”

  “Too high for what?”

  “For …” She smiled, let go of her hair, and slapped my arm. In the setting sun, she looked very warm. “For looks.”

  “They look great.” I touched her ear. I couldn’t quite believe I was allowed to do this, but I was. I was. “Your helixes follow the golden ratio.”

  “That’s good?”

  “I can prove it mathematically.”

  “I wish you’d gone to my high school.”

  “Your ears are excellent,” I said. “For biology.”

  “Ah.” She nestled a little lower in the pillow, which meant it was almost time to go. “I suppose you could do better.”

  “Well …”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. No. I couldn’t.”

  “You could, though.”

  “I like your biology,” I said. “You have great biology.”

  “But …”

  “Well, functionally …”

  “Yes?”

  “There are areas for improvement.”

  “Tell me some.”

  “Well …” I glanced at the mirror. It was hard to know how private we were.

  “If you had to change something.”

  I hesitated. I touched her shoulder. “The clavicle. I guess that’s obvious. It’s not very strong. That goes for bones in general, relative to modern metals. We know how to do lightweight and strong a lot better than bones.”

  “I don’t want to break.” She probed her clavicle around my fingers. In the sunlight, her hand glowed red.

  “Exactly.”

  “I like that you see past bodies,” Lola said dreamily. “To … something else.” She closed her eyes. I stayed a while, her hand on mine, watching her breathe.

  I MADE Lab 3 my own space, forbidden to lab assistants. I couldn’t concentrate with them around. They had always been loud and energetic, laughing at nothing, exclaiming over trivia like they were the first people in the world to synthesize a mated compound, but I had found this more tolerable before they had silver eyes. I began to dread walking into rooms, because of how they would look at me.

  They offered to make me a pair of Z-lenses. I said I was busy. The truth was I didn’t like Z-lenses. I should have. They were marvels. I might have built these. But I hadn’t and that bothered me. I guess that sounds selfish. But I did not like technology I couldn’t modify. I was not a user.

  In Lab 3 I tinkered with the Contours, sifting through software, tightening code. For fun I drafted some arms. I was just playing around. I didn’t plan on replacing my biological arms. Not right away. But the fact was I had artificial fingers and there was a limit to what you could do with those while they were attached to a biological arm. It was the bottleneck problem again. So I dabbled. It was the best way to work: with no particular goal in mind. It allowed me to explore the most intriguing ideas, not the ones most likely to meet spec.

  One of those kinds of ideas came to me in the elevator after leaving Lola. I rode down to Lab 3 and locked myself inside. I took out my ideas notepad and began to doodle. It was just a thought. I didn’t know much about this area. I didn’t know what was possible. But still, I liked it. The idea was to make Lola a heart.

  LOLA MOVED to a live-in suite in the upper section of Building C. It meant that to reach her I had to leave one elevator and circumnavigate the atrium, passing by the lobby. As I clomped along, Contours pistoning, hooves clump-clumping on the carpet, heads turned. Mouths dropped. People in suits backed out of my way and people in white coats edged closer. They wanted to ask questions and tell me about related projects and ask if I would pose with them for photos. I didn’t mind the attention but I was eager to see Lola and it slowed me down. So I found a back way, avoiding the high-traffic areas. Some of it was tiled and on my first step it splintered into a web of cracks. I hesitated. Then I continued.

  “You should do a presentation,” said Cassandra Cautery, leaning against the wall outside Lola’s suite. She had been waiting for me. “Everyone’s asking about you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.” She laughed a little. I felt annoyed, because I didn’t want to do a presentation. “How is everything? Are you happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve seen a report on these, ah, these glasses.”

  “Z-lenses.”

  “They sound wonderful.” She smiled. “I’ve never needed glasses myself. I’ve always had twenty/twenty vision. Just lucky.”

  “Z-lenses are better than tw
enty/twenty. They’re about twenty/two.” Cassandra Cautery looked confused. “Twenty/twenty vision doesn’t mean you have perfect eyesight. It’s not twenty out of twenty. That’s a misconception. It means you can see as well over twenty feet as an average human.”

  “I did not know that.”

  “If you have good eyesight, you might be twenty/eighteen. That is, you can see from twenty feet away what the average human can see from eighteen. Very good eyesight for a human is twenty/fifteen. Maybe twenty/twelve. But you’d need to be descended from a nomadic tribe.” I eyed her blond hair. “I don’t think you’d be twenty/twelve.”

  “Oh.”

  “Twenty/two is about the same as a hawk.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well.”

  “I’d like to see Lola,” I said. “If that’s okay.”

  Cassandra Cautery nodded. She seemed preoccupied. I left her in the corridor and went inside.

  LOLA’S SUITE had a little table. At nights a nurse wheeled in a trolley and uncovered pasta or slices of unidentifiable meat. It was not particularly good food but it was the best part of my day. I cut things with a blade installed in my machine fingers and Lola watched me do it.

  One night I reached for the salt but Lola had already moved it to her side of the table. I looked at her. She was drinking from her glass of water. “Salt,” I said, but she just nodded and kept drinking. She drained half the glass. When she set it down, she picked up a napkin and dabbed her lips. She tapped salt into her soup and handed it to me. I stared. “What?” she said.

  “Nothing. It’s just … nothing.”

  “What?”

  I put down the salt. “You locked the salt while performing an unrelated task.”