I simply nod.
She presses the elevator button and the metal hum of machinery comes from the one good set of doors.
And as I watch the lights flash from one to five, as the elevator makes its way up to our floor, I understand I’ve become another unwilling body, unfortunate enough to be scraped off the street like a dead armadillo.
By the way, after the first time you die, when you’ve already experienced it, the next time is easier.
The elevator dings and the door slides open. Mills steps into the elevator and turns around, waiting.
I step up to the out of order elevator and throw myself down the shaft.
* * *
I first stumbled across Mercedes, literally, as I tripped over a loose shoestring one overcast evening while leaving the Miller liberal arts building. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for her, she broke my fall. We tumbled to the soft, damp grass as unceremoniously as possible.
“I’m sorry, I’m an idiot,” were the first words I ever said to her as I floundered around trying to lift her off the grass with one arm while trying to pick up her scattered books with my other.
“I’ve got four brothers. I’m used to idiots,” were the first words she ever said to me.
A new wave of embarrassment washed over me at her harsh words, but when I helped her to her feet and she swept her dark hair away from her face, I saw in her brown, bright eyes the slightest hint of a smile, not annoyance, like I’d expected.
With a sudden resolve even I didn’t expect of myself, I asked her if she would take me up for a coffee as an apology. After making me wait for a minute as she mulled it over, she said yes.
We went to the campus Starbucks. She ordered a chai tea and I chose a caramel Frappuccino. It seemed the closest to a milkshake. I hated every sip, but drank two because I didn’t want the moment to end.
Dad wouldn’t have approved of Mercedes Garcia, but I didn’t care. Dad wasn’t there.
She told me about her major—music—and her instrument, the violin. She said her favorite was Vivaldi. I mentioned the closest I ever came to classical was Bohemian Rhapsody. Giggling in a way I found completely mesmerizing, she informed me Vivaldi was baroque, and then asked if Bohemian was a concerto.
I spent the next thirty minutes telling her about Queen, even singing a couple of their more well-known tunes, ones she might’ve heard.
She told me about growing up poor, about growing up in Southern Texas. She lovingly told me about how her father, a dirt-poor yard maintenance man, worked sixteen hours a day to provide for her and her brothers. At his chiding, she’d applied for a scholarship from a minority inner-city program, a one in a million chance. Tenser University accepted her. Her face beamed as she relived the moment, absently brushing bangs from her eyes, her voice soft and filled with exaggerated R’s.
The barista ran us out a little before ten and we decided to take a stroll in the park across from the campus library.
I hadn’t loved anyone this much since my first crush, Emily St. Joseph, in the seventh grade. And her I’d lost to Booger-Eater Barry Parsons, an eighth grader.
I’d had other girlfriends, but none like the first girl you think you could spend your life with.
And then, as we strolled on the campus, and as I intentionally brushed my elbow against her arm as we walked close, looking at the stars recently formed just for us, I fell in love for the second time.
* * *
“Good morning, Elijah. Glad to see you’re awake.”
It’s a woman’s voice.
Opening my eyes, I find Mills, my old psychologist friend, hunched over me, her face close to mine. She holds a small pen light and flashes it in my left eye. I wince.
“That’s quite a spill you took.” She clicks off the light and stands upright. “You received some damage, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired by good old American know-how.”
Again I’m strapped to a table, and my body is in pain, but the chemicals they’re pumping in me won’t let me feel it. I’m as high as a crackhead an hour after being paroled.
But my body is different.
Struggling against the straps, I can lift my head enough to scan myself.
The metal corset is still there.
My left leg is now metallic, like molten lead has been poured over it. Intravenous lines run from my leg to the corset to medical equipment around the table.
My left arm is also gone, right at the elbow. But there’s no replacement.
Instead it ends in a peculiar metal disc, like someone capped my arm with a futuristic hockey puck.
“As you can see,” Mills says as she sees me inspecting my body, “you fell quite far and got tangled in the elevator service pulleys. You’re lucky we were able to bring you back to life.”
Am I? Am I lucky to be alive for the third time? It would’ve been better for me to slam into the bottom, to make myself so unrecoverable they’d leave me alone, let me go to wherever you go when you die for the second time.
Maybe I’m just meant to be a cyborg, like Dynamo wants. “If I take more spills like that, there’ll be nothing left to be a cyborg.”
“As long as you’re two-fifths, you’re okay,” she says.
I give her a quizzical stare.
She takes the hint.
“The International Consortium of Ethical Machines states for a cyborg to be ‘legitimate,’ two-fifths of total body composition has to remain organic.”
I smirk at her emotionless description. “So what’s two-fifths, an arm, a leg?”
She smiles. “Usually we consider your torso as two-fifths, since most can’t live without a head or internal organs.”
My stomach turns at her calm explanation. I want to change the subject. “So when do we get started on the spokesman stuff?”
“Unfortunately,” she says, “you’ve done quite a bit of damage.” She waves the pen light over me, like I need to be shown I busted myself up really good. “After meeting with Dynamo Marketing, they determined using you for their program might not be your best fit.” Her smile was weak, apologetic.
“So you mean I’m fired before I even got started?”
She giggles, like she didn’t expect to laugh at anything I could say. Immediately she covers her mouth and acts like she’s coughing. Turning her back to me, she clears her throat. “I’m so sorry,” she says, a slight rasp in her voice, “but you’ve been selected for an even better opportunity.”
A better opportunity? Is she kidding me? I’m a wreck, glued back together with wires and metal. What can be better than this?
“You’ve been selected as a test for Dynamo’s Hot Swap Program.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “What’s that?”
“I can’t say. You’ll find out soon enough. But I think a young man like you will really enjoy it.”
Somehow, I have the feeling I’m not going to.
A young man, skinny and pasty white, is waiting in the room as I’m wheeled in. He reminds me of a kid wearing his father’s lab coat, and I can hear each breath he takes in through his nose. Probably asthma or something. He looks like the kind of person that’d be perpetually sick.
“Welcome, Mr. Elijah,” he says in a high-pitched nasal tone I imagine often gets him mistaken for a woman. “I’m pleased to meet you again.”
“Again?” I say. “I’ve never met you before. I’m sure I’d remember.”
Mills steps from behind the wheelchair, where she’d been pushing me. “Elijah, this is Dr. Brown. One of Dynamo’s premier engineers. He has worked on you.”
“You mean my cybernetics?”
Dr. Brown laughs and it irritates me for some reason. “Cybernetics, yes, but not like anything anyone has seen.”
He sees the blank look I give him, and I can tell he has the burning urge to elaborate.
“Yes,” he continues. “You’re one of a handful selected for Dynamo’s Hot Swap Program. You see how your arm terminates just below your elbow?”
&
nbsp; I wave my stub into the air. I couldn’t really not notice it.
“Yes,” he says. “I’m sure you wondered why we didn’t attach a cybernetic arm, like we did your leg. Well, how about this.” From behind him, off a table, he picks up an arm, holding it like a proud father holds his new baby. “Try this on.” He hands it to me.
Strangely, I’m attracted to the arm, as if it’s meant to complete me. I spin it in my good hand, examining it. I can tell at the end, the depression is the size of the disc where my arm ends. I’m not the smartest guy, but I can guess it’s made to fit onto my arm. I start to position it, fitting it to my stub.
“Yes!” Dr. Brown yells, clapping in childish enthusiasm. “You’re right. It’s natural for you to want to complete yourself. I knew you’d be a good candidate.”
Once I position the arm next to the disc, the cybernetic arm just clamps down on me, and I feel a tingly sensation of completeness. And with the simplest thought, it moves, like it has always been a part of me. It’s creepy, yet exciting, on a different level.
Dr. Brown glances at Mills, his evident success puffing him up. “Like I always said. The hot swaps are going to be the future of Dynamo. But wait,” he turns to the table behind him and grabs something else. “Try this one.”
He hands me another attachment, but it’s not a hand.
It’s a weapon, like a laser gun, except the end has been modified, just like the arm.
I grab my cybernetic arm, and with a mere thought, it clicks and separates from my stub.
Taking the weapon, I move it to my stub and it locks in place.
A rush floods through me at that moment. I can’t describe it, and I think only a cyborg could relate to the sensation. But it was a feeling of power, of control.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Dr. Brown says, licking his lips. “It’s our prototype ML-16 Tac laser. Infantry standard issue. Wait till you see what it can do.”
I rest the weapon on my lap and wiggle it on my leg, getting a feel for it. “I can control this? Odd, but I think I understand how it works. And I think I understand how to fire—”
* * *
“Guns, guns. I’m tired of hearing of guns,” Mercedes was saying. I could tell when she was upset because her Spanish accent would come through, making her almost incomprehensible.
While Mexican envoy Emmanuel Pena condemns the United States for the new trade embargoes, Secretary of State Samantha Reinhold makes more allegations of the Mexican government sanctioning guerrilla attacks against American tourists along the Texas border…
“Turn the TV off. I don’t want to hear any more,” Mercedes said, covering her ears.
…tensions rise as the President calls for urgent meetings with the Joint Staff…
I stood up from the table and clicked off the television.
We were on a patio outside of Las Hermanas Mexican restaurant. Despite Mercedes taking over the matriarchal role for her father and brothers once her mother died, the one thing she never mastered was cooking good Mexican food.
Mercedes sniffed as she wiped her nose. She pushed her plate away. “I don’t want to hear about fighting, about war.”
“There’s not going to be a war,” I said, handing her the blood-red rose I’d picked up for her earlier. “Even if there was, we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Remember the Okinawa Accords.”
She sniffed and nodded. “Of course.”
Four men sat at a patio table next to us. Through dinner they spoke louder as they drank. Eventually, I picked up more of their conversation than I did my own.
“…can’t stand these gringos,” said one, a large Mexican with an even larger belly. “They think they can take our women from us.”
For a second, I thought he was talking about me. But I figured I was just being paranoid.
“The only war will be fought on BattleSat,” I reassured Mercedes in my best calming voice, turning away from the loud man. “Far away from us.”
“I know, but it’s still killing.” She held the rose to her delicate nose.
BattleSat, or Battle Satellite, was the only place wars could be waged. The old timers still preferred to call it the Moon, though.
After Japan capitulated in the last earthly war, the Okinawa Accords, signed by all remaining countries, stated any future wars would be fought on the Moon, which would be renamed as the Battle Satellite. This preserved the Earth and spared innocent lives, as only machines can fight on BattleSat.
Including cyborgs.
They weren’t technically considered “human,” since they’ve typically died once, and then been brought back to life.
She shivered, and I leaned forward to take her delicate hand, clutching it tight in mine. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
She smiled. “I know. I’m just afraid I’ll never see my brothers again.”
Shortly after her father died of a heart attack last year, and with the rising tensions between the U.S. and Mexico, her brothers decided to return to their homeland.
They had wanted Mercedes to go, but she was in her junior year in college. By that time we had been going steady for eight months, and I like to think that drove her decision to stay more than anything else.
I told her I couldn’t relate to her family’s closeness. My only sister, Tracy, was five years older, and loathed my presence growing up. A day before my tenth birthday, she’d married some black Vice Store tender and fled town, never to be heard from again.
Dad said good riddance to bad rubbish, but Mom never recovered, I don’t think.
Mercedes said stories of my family always made her want to cry. I tend to agree, that’s why I never thought of them for too long.
One of the men at the next table, a man with long hair pulled into a ponytail and a greasy handlebar mustache, leaned back in his chair and tipped it backward so it almost pushed into Mercedes.
“Excuse me,” I said. I hoped I sounded tough, but doubted it. I might’ve even lowered my voice a notch or two to sound tough.
He peered over his shoulder and smirked at me. “Problem?”
“You’re pushing into my date.”
“Your date?” he hissed. “Is that what you call her? You know what I call her?”
I slid my chair back, feeling a sensation of something bad coming. The last time I felt it was when I got in that fight with Booger-Eater Barry in seventh grade.
My hand reached for the butter knife on the table.
The greasy man said something in Spanish and his three greasy friends laughed. I didn’t need to know what he said to know what he meant.
He stood.
“Why don’t you stick to your own kind, white boy,” he said. “Leave our women to us.”
Feeling no way out of this thing, this event spiraling out of control, I stood.
I didn’t look at Mercedes directly, but through my periphery, I knew her eyes pleaded with me to sit. I ignored her. “She’s not one of your women. You’re having dinner with your women.”
The big Mexican gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his beer bottle right as a distinct ambulance siren cut through the air.
The rest of the diners stopped eating and all laughing and talk came to an abrupt end. Everyone watched the Dynamo ambulance pass.
Mercedes pulled her shawl of red and green over her shoulders and seemed to hunch down, like she wanted to melt into the chair.
House Bill 776, The Deceased Fair Use Act, pushed by the President and his political cronies, established an eminent domain of sorts. Except it applied to humans.
In a nutshell, if officially designated Dynamo representatives came across a fatality, a dead person, they can “claim” the body. Once claimed, it becomes property of Dynamo Robotics, most likely to be used in their Dynamo Cyborg Program.
A few groups protested, the ones you’d expect, such as churches and civil rights protection groups. But they were politically bankrupt, so no one listened to them much anymore.
At the time, when I f
irst heard of the DFUA getting passed, I remember telling Mercedes that knowing my dumb luck, I’d end up breaking my neck and getting scooped up by Dynamo to become their next cyborg dog. I laughed, but she didn’t think it was funny at all.
The sirens faded as the ambulance turned a corner.
Big Mexican yelled, “Woo hoo!” as only a drunk can and lifted his Corona into the air.
Then he gave a salute toward where the ambulance turned. “Looks like some vato just got a one-way ticket to BattleSat.” He continued laughing as his friends looked at him, then turned away. They weren’t laughing. “Here’s to your good fortune, dead person,” he said to no one.
He upended his bottle, then tossed it onto the street. The shattering glass sounded like a gunshot and Mercedes jumped in her seat.
Pulling his chair back to the table, he sat, like he’d completely forgotten about me.
The rest of the diners resumed talking, but in hushed tones, almost whispering. The ambulance had left a pall in the air.
“Eat,” I said to her, sitting myself, trying my best to ignore the loud idiot, to make it sound like life would go on without another thought of them. “Your enchiladas are getting cold.”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
In an instant, pain seared my hand. Glancing down, I saw I had unknowingly clenched the butter knife from the table tight enough so it bit into my soft flesh. Stealthily, I wrapped my hand in the cloth napkin, which quickly spotted in blood-red, like the rose.
I took a bite of my enchiladas, but they’d lost their flavor.
Like the others on the patio, I couldn’t get the thought of the Dynamo EMTs out of my head. I pushed the plate away and watched Mercedes shiver, even though her shawl was wrapped around her tight.
Big Mexican turned the TV back on.
…Pena says any more embargoes will be considered an act of war, and he will personally petition Ambassador Gagnon to submit a Battle Writ…
* * *
When I wake, I’m in a familiar place, the surgical room. My old friends, the heart monitors and other equipment, stand guard.
The Cyborg Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 34