Machine Man

by Max Barry

  Dr. Angelica set a bag on the floorboards. This was one of those rare situations where the social rules were obvious: I should give Angelica a minute with her dogs before asking if that bag had painkillers in it. I waited silently at the end of the hall, not making anything of the fact that every organ in my body was weeping. Finally she looked up. “Meds?”

  My teeth were chattering. “Yes, please.”

  “YOU SHOULD have been tapering the drugs.” Dr. Angelica drew clear liquid from a vial. “There’s no reason to still be on such a high level. Who’s your doctor at the company?”

  “I am.” I smiled at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was high on anticipation. My body and I were in the roller-coaster car, ratcheting up the slope.

  “That’s not right. These are addictive.”

  “Addiction. That’s, what, low levels of dopamine in the brain? Fixable.”

  “What?”

  “I can fix my brain.” I trailed off, because Dr. Angelica was no longer looking like she was about to inject me. “Are you …”

  She moved to the bathroom door and shut it. She stood there. My brain began to suggest ways of getting that syringe out of her hand without breaking it.

  “You’re not done. You want to replace more parts with prostheses.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t like the word prosthesis. It implies a poor substitute. I’m improving. Did you know I can just think of a destination and these legs will take me there?” I threw this in because Dr. Angelica, as a surgeon, was supposedly a woman of science. I didn’t expect everyone to be on board for a totally artificial body. But pathfinding legs, come on.

  “Last night you woke screaming because you couldn’t sleep without your prosthesis. That’s not improvement. You’re getting worse.”

  My legs stepped forward. Dr. Angelica’s eyes widened. So did mine, because I hadn’t quite intended that. I had just been thinking about getting that syringe.

  “The biological part of me is having trouble adjusting,” I said. “That’s not an argument against the technology.” Dr. Angelica’s arm moved. I thought, Oh God, she is going to smash the syringe. “Wait! I appreciate your concern. But this is my body. I can make my own decisions.”

  “I don’t care about you. You can dice yourself into bite-sized pieces, for all I care. I care about Lola.”

  “Well, Lola’s fine. She’s safe now.”

  “Is she?”

  “Yes!” I was beginning to panic. That syringe was right there. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say that Lola’s perfect just the way she is.”

  I hesitated. Is anyone really perfect? You can’t be mostly perfect. You can’t be perfect some of the time. You are either perfect or not. And I don’t think biology does perfect. Biology is about efficient approximation. It’s about good enough. A vacuum is perfect. Pi is perfect. Life is not.

  But I saw this would be a tough sell to Angelica, who anyway was not really asking if I thought Lola was perfect-perfect but rather biological-perfect, that is, good enough. And the answer to that was clear. “Lola is perfect the way she is.”

  “You hesitated.”

  “What?”

  “What’s to think about? You either want to cut her up or you don’t.”

  “No. Wait. I had to translate your definition of perfect.” Medicine. They called it a science, but it was more like arts and crafts with Latin names. “I don’t want to cut up Lola.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t even understand what I’m doing. This isn’t about cutting. Cutting is an unfortunate prerequisite for enhancing functionality.”

  “Does Lola know you want to enhance her functionality?”

  “I don’t want to enhance Lola!”

  “Bullshit.” Angelica raised the syringe. This time I was sure she was going to smash it. My legs hiccuped forward.

  “I swear to God—”

  “I can tell you’re lying!”

  “I’m not!” My legs took another step, a big one. Dr. Angelica backed up against the door. My legs were going to kick her. They were going to kick her right through the door. “Wait!” I yelped. “Stop! There’s no problem! I promise, everything is okay, I swear, I swear it!” The legs did not move. I closed my eyes. Happy thoughts. I was relaxing here in the bathroom, by myself. I did not want to go anywhere. I did not want to move, definitely not.

  Dr. Angelica sniffed. This was going to hurt me, losing control of my legs. I wasn’t sure how to put a positive spin on that. But when I opened my eyes, her expression was softer. “Well,” she said. “That was sincere, at least.” She looked at the syringe, then set it on the sink. “Clean yourself up when you’re done. You smell.” She opened the bathroom door and left.

  It took me a moment to figure out. Dr. Angelica thought I’d been talking to her.

  “THEY’RE ASKING everyone about you,” said Dr. Angelica. She reached across the kitchen table and speared a potato. “At the hospital.”

  Lola froze, a forkful of lettuce halfway to her mouth. “Who is?”

  “Better Future,” said Dr. Angelica. “They’re all through the place, telling us to report any contact.”

  I was not paying attention. I was talking to my legs. Hello? I said. Can you hear me?

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing.”

  Lola glanced at me. I remembered I was supposed to be eating, and stabbed a carrot. “What should we do?”

  “I already told you.” Dr. Angelica bent down and scooped up a dog that was whining at her feet. Its bright eyes fixed on me across the tablecloth. “Go to the feds. Say they’re conducting illegal medical trials. That takes care of Better Future, I guarantee it.”

  Give me a sign. A twitch. Something.

  Dr. Angelica stroked her dog’s ears. “He’ll be in trouble, but that’s unavoidable. He killed a man. The point is it gets the company off your back. And they’re the threat. You don’t know what they’re capable of. Get the authorities involved before they destroy evidence. While there’s still something for the feds to confiscate.” Her eyes flicked at me.

  My right Contour bounced up and hit the underside of the table. The setting jumped an inch into the air and clattered back down. The dog bolted from Angelica’s lap and took shelter in the doorway and stared balefully at me.

  “Charlie?” said Lola.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  I STOOD in the bathroom, brushing my teeth and looking at myself in the mirror. My legs were not conscious. That wasn’t possible. I would believe they could think for themselves when I opened them up to find them powered by tiny elves. You didn’t combine a bunch of inert materials and get personality.

  And yet. Something was going on. A glitch I hadn’t anticipated.

  Lola came in, smiled, and fished around the sink for a toothbrush. Her hip brushed mine. She came up with a short blue one, eyed it, and squeezed on toothpaste. “Did you know there’s a condition where you find your own saliva disgusting?” She poked the toothbrush into her mouth and spoke around it. “Imagine that.”

  “Mrph,” I said.

  “Ah had to schlee on the schofa las nigh.” She shook her head.

  “Schlee?”

  “Schlee.” She angled the toothbrush and tilted her chin. An ocean of toothpaste sloshed inside her mouth. “Sleep.”

  I felt a subtle, invisible tugging.

  She leaned forward and spat. “Let’s pull that mattress off Harrison’s bed. I can sleep next to you.” Harrison was Angelica’s son. He visited two weekends per month. Lola had told me this earlier, her eyes hot with outrage, before launching into a story about people I didn’t know doing things I was supposed to care about. I always have trouble with those kinds of stories because they contain no useful information. I was sorry to hear that Rod prioritized his own career over Dr. Angelica’s. But I didn’t know Rod. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do with that information. “Maybe we c
an … get to know each other.”

  I went to spit into the sink but the Contours didn’t move. They were rigid. I thought, Tilt.

  Lola’s fingers addressed a wrinkle on my shirt. “Come to bed.”

  A thought whispered inside my brain: The legs don’t like Lola. That was silly. But it fit available evidence. They’re jealous.

  “Come.” Lola’s fingers found mine. She opened the door and peeked out into the corridor. I followed her to Angelica’s kid’s bedroom. Her back looked small and vulnerable and I had the sudden thought that the Contours were going to kick her. I stopped. Lola turned around and beckoned. I felt dismay. I had spent a lot of time thinking about going to bed with Lola. A lot of time. But I did not want to kill her. “Come on, Charlie.” She came back and pulled me into the bedroom and closed the door. Her arms snaked around my waist. Her face tilted.

  “Just a minute.”

  “Mmm,” said Lola. She rose up on her toes, her lips seeking mine.

  “I’m not sure—”

  Our lips met. I forgot about self-aware legs. Or, at least, they seemed less relevant. The important thing was to get closer to Lola. Then I realized I was getting closer to Lola. The attractive force was rising, tugging my metal fingers toward her heart. Lola’s eyes sprang open. Her hands pushed against me. “Charlie!” For a second, she couldn’t separate herself. Then she took two stumbling steps backward. Her chest rose and fell. “It’s back!”

  I had three data points now. One: in her suite, when we had first found ourselves alone. The second, when I had rescued her. And now. “It happens when your heart rate increases.”

  “What?” Lola clutched at her chest. “What does?”

  “Oh. Wait. Don’t get scared. That will make it worse.”

  “What is it doing?”

  “Try to think about something else. How about those dogs of Angelica’s? They’re so cute.” At this moment, they all began howling. A set of paws came scampering up the corridor, baying. Those useless fur sacks. “Okay. Let’s think about this.”

  “It’s a bomb. Oh God. They put a bomb in me.”

  “Maybe,” I said. Lola blanched. “No. That wouldn’t be cost-effective.”

  “What?”

  I had to raise my voice to be heard over the dogs. “You want to blow something up, is the best way to do it really to go to all the trouble of surgically installing—”

  “It’s shaking!” Lola’s teeth chattered. I became aware of a tone: a whine so high-pitched it was only just entering my detectable range. That explained the dogs. “Charlie … I think … you should … run.”

  “We just need to lower your heart rate. Concentrate on putting yourself into a calm state.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You can. Lola. You control your body.”

  “Run, Charlie!”

  The whine became so loud it was difficult to hear anything else. “I’m not running. What we have here is a technical problem. And we can solve it. Together—” There was more to this sentence. I was going to say we were two rational people and logic could move mountains. This would either reassure Lola or bore her; either way would reduce her heart rate. I still think this was a good idea. But before I could get it out, Lola exploded.

  SOMETHING BLEW through me in a gust, like a wind made of needles. My legs twitched. My ears rang.

  The house fell silent. I looked at Lola and she looked at me and we both seemed okay. Lola said, “Are you …” and so did I. She took a step forward and nothing bad happened. We smiled. Lola fell into my arms. “That was scary. What was it?”

  “Something that didn’t work, I guess.”

  “I thought we were going to die.” She shuddered. “I thought I was going to kill you.”

  A moment passed. There was an odd scent in the air: something acrid.

  Lola looked up. “The dogs are quiet.”

  We listened.

  Lola reached for the door handle. I went to step out of the way, but didn’t. I tried that again.

  “Charlie?”

  That scent was familiar. It was what you got when you plugged a circuit into a power supply it wasn’t designed for. The smell of fused transistors.

  The digital clock radio on the bedside table had gone dark. On a shelf, a small stereo that normally glowed red from a power button: nothing.

  “Are you okay?” Angelica’s voice floated toward us. “The power’s out!”

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no.”

  Lola touched my arm. “What is it?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “My legs.”

  “Your …”

  “EMP. Electromagnetic. Pulse.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You killed my legs,” I said.

  THERE ARE five stages of grief. The first is denial. For example: My legs can’t be dead. They can’t be. Next is anger: You killed my legs, get out, get your hands off me, et cetera. There is some screaming and raging in this stage. Some unfair accusations. Tears and bruised feelings.

  Then bargaining. Quieter. Just let the battery be all right. Please let the battery be functional. Fourth, depression. They’re dead. I’m dead. This is a kind of wallowing. A shutdown. The final stage is acceptance. I include no example because I was a long, long way from acceptance.

  ON THE fourth day Lola entered my room. Until then she had been leaving trays of food outside. I learned to wait until her footsteps receded, pull myself to the door, and drag in the food before the dogs descended.

  But this day she opened the door. She wore a green blouse and an air of quiet misery. I was on the carpet, surrounded by my parts. Parts of my parts. I had disassembled them and arranged the pieces in concentric circles. It looked as if I had suffered the world’s neatest explosion. Which I had. What had come out of Lola had killed no one, disturbed nothing, hurt no body but mine.

  “I think …” she said.

  These disassembled components, they didn’t mean I was fixing them. I had taken the Contours apart because I couldn’t think of anything else. I was trying to break my problem down until I reached something fixable. That was how you solved anything: you divided it.

  Lola said, “I think it’s unfair to act like this is my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I did not look at her as I said this because I did not really believe it.

  “They put it in me.” She took a step forward and her foot landed beside a three-foot-long section of titanium that had once controlled plane stabilization. My issue was so many sections were machine-welded. I couldn’t open them with domestic tools. “They put that thing in my chest and didn’t even tell me.”

  I almost didn’t say it. “You could have calmed down.”

  “I could have calmed down.”

  “Yes.”

  “Charlie. I tried.”

  I picked up a radial bolt. I wasn’t sure where this had come from. I had made notes, in the beginning. I should have kept that up.

  “My heart wouldn’t slow down. It—”

  “People are very selective about their bodies,” I told the bolt. “Anytime their bodies do something good, they claim it. They say I did this. But something goes wrong, it’s not I anymore. It’s a problem with their foot. Their skin. Suddenly it’s not them anymore. It’s the body they’re stuck in.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing.” I rolled the bolt around in my hand. “I’m just making an observation.”

  Silence. The door closed with a click.

  I FOUND a skateboard beneath the bed and heaved myself onto it. With one functional hand and one half-useless one I could wobble along at extremely low speed. It was difficult and degrading but I could do it. When I was sure nobody was around I opened the door and edged into the corridor. Halfway to the bathroom a dog trotted up and sat on the tiles. I knew it couldn’t have helped me if it wanted to but
it still felt rude. I dragged myself into the bathroom and shut the door. My breathing was harsh and ragged. I had become incredibly unfit. I put my half-hand on the toilet seat and my full hand (my good hand, now) on the nearby bench and strained. The muscles in my arm trembled like frightened girls. I flopped over the toilet seat and my lips kissed porcelain and I didn’t care because at least it was progress. I wrestled myself upright. As I began to urinate I felt proud.

  When I emerged, three dogs were sitting on the floor outside. They didn’t look scared or curious. They were just there. “Shoo.” I pretended to lunge at them. One stood, looked at the other two, and sat down again, as if faintly embarrassed. They were communicating telepathically. As individuals they were stupid but together they formed a single intelligence. A pack mind. And it was planning something. It was gathering observational data for later use. As I rolled toward my bedroom, I felt Dog’s many eyes burning into my back.

  I TALKED to my parts as I worked. For example, I would pick up a mirror plate and say, “And what’s your problem?” Or, when contemplating a radiation shield: “You need an arc welder. That’s what you need.” They didn’t answer. I wasn’t crazy. It was just a way to focus. But sometimes I heard footsteps outside the door and realized this might not be obvious to anyone else.

  I regretted what I’d said to Lola. I told the Contours that. “She tried to calm down.” This was late one night, after a frustrating few hours prying apart transistors. “She didn’t want you to die.” Then I wrapped my arms around my chest and cried, because I was really tired.

  The next day, I decided to apologize. I would make things right. I didn’t want to wallow here, a filthy, stinking, grieving thing, dragging itself around. I didn’t want to make Lola sad. Then I sat up and parts of the Contours fell everywhere. I had slept with them to stave off phantom pain. Don’t ask me why that worked. It just did. I thought, I’ll just fix one thing. If I could do that, take one step toward restoring functionality, the Contours wouldn’t be dead. They would only be temporarily disabled.