by Max Barry
The chains around my arms rattled to the floor. Both limbs moved smoothly into a loose resting position. From this angle, I could see that my left arm definitely did not have a hand. It had a hole.
“Arms online in ten.”
I said, “Why. Does—”
“Five. Four. Three. Two.”
“Stand by,” said Jason. “This might feel weird.”
“Arms online.”
I felt a distant prickling, like somebody telling me a story about my childhood. My right arm, the one with tripod fingers, twitched. I realized I had done that, and was immediately struck with a bolt of agonizing phantom pain. I screamed and tried to grab the arm, to unbend the muscles. My other arm swung in an arc. Jason ducked. My metal limbs clanged together. I tried to cry out but had no breath. Jason shouted. Lab assistants attacked laptops. The bulbous arm made a rapid clicking noise, like a nine-year-old riding a bike downhill with playing cards stuck in the spokes. I had seen a boy cruising like that once, when I was a kid. I had thought it the coolest thing ever.
“Dr. Neumann! Stop that! You’ll damage the hammers!”
“Dampening! Full spectrum!”
The pain subsided. I whimpered soundlessly against its return.
“Sorry,” said Jason. “We’re still feeling our way around here. Don’t clench your left fist. That’s a mental command for firing.”
My teeth chattered. “Firing. What.”
“Aha. You have an MAC-701 rotary cannon in that arm.” He grinned. “Nice, huh?”
I began to shake. “Take. Them. Off.”
“Dr. Neumann—”
“Don’t. Want! This!” The gun arm rattled, stopped, rattled.
“Dr. Neumann! Dr. Neumann!”
A window opened in my head. Through it poured Jason, and his desire for me to calm down. I felt his compassion and excitement and awe, and when I did calm down, I felt his gratitude. It was extraordinary. What had Jason called it? Better Voice. That was underselling it. That was like calling sex Better Hugging.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
“THERE’S A lot of ammunition in that arm. But it’s not unlocked. That was one of Cautery’s conditions. We can enable it when you’re clear of the building. And just so you know, we can remotely disable it. That was another condition. Which sucks, I know, but we won’t need to do that. Just try to, you know, not shoot anything except Carl.”
“Connecting subsystems.”
Muscle spasms ran through my legs. Before I could inhale, the pain was gone.
“Better,” said a boy in a white T-shirt. “We’re getting this.”
“Responses verified. We have a solid feedback loop.”
“Screen is green.”
I found the window in my head, the one Jason had climbed through. I pictured his face in it and poured a message through: No no not doing this.
“Uh,” said Jason. The window closed. He turned to Mirka. They eyed each other silently.
“Fine,” said Mirka. She handed off a laptop and approached. “Dr. Neumann …” She brushed a hair from my forehead. “The thing Jason has not told you is that once Carl gained entry to the building he came here, to this room. He stood beside you. You were unconscious. Your arm was detached. It seems to us that Carl thought you dead. Or that your death was imminent. He left. He located your friend. Lola. And he took her. I am sorry.”
“It’s highly likely she’s still alive,” said Jason. “I mean, we don’t think he took her to cannibalize her parts. We think it’s more an affection thing. We spent time with Carl during recuperation and he talked about her a lot.” He looked at Mirka, then back at me. “Okay! Well … I think that’s everything. Do … do you have any questions?”
“Any,” I said. “Questions.”
“Yeah.”
My lips stretched. I exposed teeth. I felt dizzy. The Contour Threes bent and the hoof came forward and met the ground and fired locking pins into it: snack-snack. Jason and Mirka hopped back. I stared at my foot. The hoof. I raised it and swiveled it. I wiggled a flat metal toe and it did as I meant. I had not made this but still it was interesting. I watched the toe move back and forth. Jason cleared his throat. Mirka put her hand on his arm. I kept moving the toe. I lowered it and raised the other hoof and set it back down. I looked around at the cables and tubes coming out of my body. I swung my pronged claw arm in an arc and swept half a dozen cables off me. One sparked and I felt a temporary heaviness in my parts followed by a lifting warmth emanating from my abdomen. I stepped forward. Cords popped from my metal skin. Lab assistants yelped and scrambled out of the way. “Shut him down!” someone said, and Jason said, “No. Wait.”
In the steel finish of a cabinet I saw my reflection. I saw it with Better Eyes. My head was metal. Black bands ran across the bridge of my nose, my forehead, and my chin. These glimpses of skin were all I had. Everything else was metal.
I said, “Am. I. Wrong.”
Jason crept forward. “No, Dr. Neumann. You’re not wrong. You are not wrong.”
I nodded. Servos in my neck whispered. I felt scared. But okay. I said, “Where.”
I CLOMPED through the Better Future corridors escorted by cats and security guards. From the expressions of the guards, I was either an awe-inspiring technological miracle or the worst thing they had ever seen. I was not quite sure myself. They led me to stairs and I hesitated but the Threes took the steps easily, cantilevering to maintain a solid footing. There is something deeply satisfying about a system that works exactly like it’s supposed to. I’m not sure everyone feels this way. It might be an engineering thing. But by the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, I was kind of in love.
They led me to the underground garage. This was to avoid being seen by emergency services people who were crawling around aboveground. I didn’t understand how the garage was supposed to make any difference, since it exited in the same general area, but that wasn’t my problem. The garage had its own generator and halogen lights making everything blindingly bright or lost in impenetrable shadow. Better Future vans and Hummers idled in the dark, chrome reflecting like supernovas, tailpipes belching fumes. I blinked and the scene normalized, my Eyes adding information from infrared and ultraviolet, filling in fields and illuminating motion.
“Hold here a second,” said Jason. The cats swarmed. I was interfaced with. I felt impatient and my legs hiccuped forward. “Whoa,” said Jason. “Wait up.”
He thought it was me. But it wasn’t. I remembered Cassandra Cautery asking: Your legs didn’t start talking to you, did they? But that wasn’t anything to do with me. That was a software glitch. Maybe these Threes had the same software. It wouldn’t have been rewritten from scratch. The glitch could still be there. It could be in everything.
“Dr. Neumann.” Mirka approached. “Just while we are running through the final checks, there is one thing I must raise. There is potentially an issue with Lola’s Better Heart. The military function. The EMP draws a great deal of power. There is a safety margin, of course. Even after EMP, the battery has much power to maintain heart function. And the EMP will not fire unless the battery is full. Except … that part is perhaps not fully functional. We do not think it anything to be concerned about. But … well, management said there was a woman on the table who needed an install and we were forced to act before we were ready. The EMP should not have fired twice. It definitely should not have done that. I saw the subject, that is, Miss Shanks, and … perhaps this was the light, but her skin looked gray. Which to me suggests the battery has drained to the point where it impacts heart function. And please do not look so worried, because the Heart needs only a little power to pump. It will definitely not stop, we think. But if the safety mechanism is nonfunctional and her heart rate rises above the trigger threshold then the EMP might fire. Again. Which would be bad. The battery does not have that capacity. So, again, this is just a precaution. I do not want to make your life harder and I know you have a lot on your plate. But if you do find Lola
Shanks it would be extremely good to avoid making her scared or excited or engage in any kind of exercise.”
“ALL CLEAR,” said Jason.
A van door opened and a woman climbed out. I had seen her outline in infrared but not realized who it was. A neat rectangle of plaster covered her left ear. Her hair was gray. A thin rivulet of dried blood traced a curve from her hairline past her cheekbone.
“Charlie. Before you go …” Cassandra Cautery stopped. She stared at my crotch, where Elaine was kneeling, studying a device jacked into a flip-up port. “What is that?”
“It’s a simple way to interface with—”
“You put a port in the dick?”
“The main transport bus—”
“Shut up,” said Cassandra Cautery. “I went to Yale. Did any of you freaks know that? My advanced antitrust lecturer said I had a relentlesh deshire to organize. Her words. She said she would follow my career with interest.” Her voice shook. “And look at thish shit!”
No one spoke. Elaine unplugged her device from my groin with a pop.
Cassandra Cautery shook her head. I felt awkward, because unless something happened soon, there was a real risk I might run through her. “Charlie …” She inhaled. “I just wanted to say, please be careful.”
She walked back to the van. Doors slammed. The cats shuffled away. It was time.
I FOLLOWED the black van up the ramp. It moved slowly, as if afraid of leaving me behind. I felt insulted. Didn’t they know what I was? Kick it, suggested my legs. Not in words. But I could feel their desire.
The window in my head opened. I thought I could close that window, if I wanted. I was developing a feel for the interface. Dr. Neumann, we’re almost at the top. Are you ready for some acceleration?
Yes, I thought.
The van sprang ahead. I didn’t need to instruct the Threes: they shifted into a lope by themselves. The first time I’d run on artificial legs they had tried to shake every bone out through the top of my head, but this was a river cruise. Improvements to the gait model, shock absorption through the torso … and, of course, I had fewer bones.
A rectangle of light appeared. As the ramp broadened, Hummers slid up on either side. Fresh air slapped my face. I was outside. The cars turned onto the road and the Threes followed. I got too close to a Hummer and my gun arm clanged against its side. The Hummer rocked. Its tires squealed.
I thought, Was that deliberate? I was talking to my parts. They couldn’t hear me. They weren’t conscious. But it was the best model I had for this behavior, so I was going with it until I figured out something better. Okay, then.
I veered left. My gun arm kissed the Hummer’s door. I pushed, gentle but firm. The Hummer fought back. White smoke streamed from its tires. The Jason in my head radiated alarm, and I gently closed the window on him. I pushed the Hummer until it popped out of formation and spun in a smoking half-circle. Then I accelerated through the gap and left them behind. Wind blasted by, tearing at my eyes. For the first time since I had gained consciousness I felt glad to be alive.
ONCE AT university I fed a dollar into a vending machine, pressed C and 4, and nothing happened. So I pressed the buttons again, with more authority, then cancel, then many buttons at the same time. I cursed and slapped it, because I was nineteen and someone was coming down the corridor, and I said, “Fuckin’ machine.”
Later I saw another guy staring at it. I opened my mouth to tell him it was busted, but before I could, he slapped its side, the exact place I had, and said, “Fuckin’ machine.”
I guess it’s always uncomfortable to discover you’re not as individual as you thought. But it really bothered me. From one perspective, I was an independent animal, exercising free will in order to elicit predictable reactions from an inert vending machine. But from another, the vending machine was choosing to withhold snacks in order to extract predictable, mechanical reactions from young men. I couldn’t figure out any objective reason to consider one scenario more likely than the other.
I tried to raise this with a philosophy major at a floor party. She said, “Oh, you’re a determinist.” Her tone implied that this was naïve and funny. I knew what the word meant when applied to algorithms but not people. “You don’t believe in free will,” she said. “You think everything’s gears and levers.” She had a lollipop and at this point she sucked it. I didn’t think I disbelieved in free will but as we talked I learned she thought brains were magical consciousness fairylands so maybe I did. Before we got anywhere she went off and made out with a guy I didn’t know. I felt lonely and unsatisfied and went downstairs and sat on the floor in front of the vending machine. I didn’t know why, exactly. I just felt we had something in common.
THE STREET turned to meet the main road and I followed it, moving between cars. A horn blared. A yellow sedan was in the lane ahead and I saw the driver’s eyes flick into the rearview mirror. Then the car leaped into the SUV beside it. Glass popped. I pounded past. I was supposed to be keeping a low profile, but that wasn’t my priority. My priority was finding Lola before her heart stopped.
Something went clunk in my gun arm. I thought, Oh-oh, because maybe this was how they remotely shut me down. Then I remembered what Jason had said about unlocking my ammunition. I felt an urge to test this hypothesis. I should wait. I shouldn’t start shooting things on a major roadway. But on the other hand, it was really tempting. The day I bought my phone, I had a major report due and tried hard to resist playing with it. I held out until nightfall but by six a.m. was still awake and discovering new features and I had to call in sick. This was like that, only attached to me, and with bullets. I should test it now, I thought. I couldn’t wait to learn how it worked until Carl was running at me, swinging sledgehammer arms. That would be really poor planning. I looked around. Coming up on the right was a giant billboard. On it an attractive family in bright clothes laughed and draped themselves around a game console. I thought, That.
I raised my gun arm. I clenched my mental fist. The arm barked like a chain saw. It sounded angry. The billboard burst apart. Shell casings jingled across the asphalt beside me, jettisoning from my arm in a flume of white gas. Pieces of billboard fluttered to the ground. As I ran through them, I thought, I am a Lola-rescuing machine. And something inside me replied, I am a Lola-rescuing machine. I smiled, because if that wasn’t an echo, it was pretty clever.
ON OCCASION Jason appeared at the window inside my head. Each time he imparted an impression of location and I accepted this and closed the window again. I didn’t need to plot a route. My legs could do that. It left me free to consider what I would do when I encountered Carl. Although, after the billboard, maybe I was overthinking it. The facts were I had speed, strength, smarts, and a gun. Carl had arms. What was he going to do, punch me in the head? Actually, maybe yes. I should be wary of that. But that was surely the extent of the danger. All I had to do was keep my distance.
The Contours left the roadway and leaped nimbly over the railing. I flinched, but they knew what they were doing. My hooves dug into a concrete embankment and I heard the locking pins fire. Twin jets of concrete dust spat by my face. I was damaging a lot of city infrastructure here. The Threes tensed and sprang across a wide concrete storm drain. I braced but it was like landing on a sofa. We ran beneath a bridge. I heard a helicopter and wondered if it was for me. Ahead was a storm tunnel, big enough to drive a car through, but its face was protected by an iron grate. My legs slowed. They felt hesitant. Oh, I thought. Sorry. I raised my gun arm and clenched and the grate disintegrated. The Threes picked up speed. My abdomen rotated in three ringed sections and I passed through the remains of the grate sideways, then swiveled to face forward again.
My hooves slapped through low water. It was black in the tunnels but on the electromagnetic spectrum the walls were edged in fluorescent blue and the water flared motion white. The tunnel turned, forked, and forked again. Finally I stopped. I looked around. I didn’t see what was so special about this section of tunnel. Then I noti
ced a hatch twenty feet above my head. A ladder ran up the wall. But I wouldn’t be needing that. I raised my gun arm.
Then I reconsidered. Carl was close. I shouldn’t alert him. I lowered the gun arm and studied the other one, the one with the triple prong of claw fingers. I hadn’t tested this yet. I wondered what it could do. I pointed at the hatch and thought, Remove that.
The claw fired out of my arm, trailing metal cable. It popped the hatch out of its housing, bent it in two, and pulled it back down into the tunnel. The cable ratcheted back into my arm but before I could flinch at the sight of a folded metal hatch rocketing toward me I was holding it. I looked at it a moment. That was pretty good. I placed the hatch on the ground and looked up. The access hole was not wide. I wasn’t sure I could fit through there. But of course this wasn’t something I needed to figure out. At least, not with my brain. I had parts for that.
The Threes settled and sprang. My arms folded tight against my body. We scraped against concrete and a constellation of sparks blossomed near my face. Then we were through. The Threes spread and my hooves locked on to solid concrete floor. The crack of the firing pins echoed like gunshots. That was a shame.
I was in a multilevel parking garage. Cars filled the bays. From my last contact with Jason, Carl was here somewhere, but I didn’t know where. I chose up. As I rounded the first level, I began to feel nervous. This was not a great environment for spotting Carl. The concrete shielded EM and infrared was polluted with recently active car engines. I slowed. I decided to abandon my surprise plan. I was feeling pretty unstoppable, at this point. I sucked in air and shouted: “Lola!”
My voice bounced back at me. Nothing. I inhaled again.
“Charlie!”
I ran. Two levels up, a brown sedan backed out in front of me, its red brake lights steaming, and I pushed it aside with my gun arm. I didn’t mean to hit it hard but the Contours braced automatically and the sedan bounced into the wall. I rounded another corner and stopped because there was Carl.