Cyberpunk Trashcan

by Randall P. Fitzgerald

  The result of this sort of thing meant that the smallest, and most esoteric, of those companies was in such high demand among criminal and low-income sorts that they were perpetually out of stock. They used an open-source option for limb control and, since the upswing in popularity, had switched to much lower quality construction. Essentially, for two-thirds the price of a name-brand limb, you were buying an open-source limb controller module and the software on it. Most gangs went this route as people like Darvish were insane freelancers, but useful ones. Publicly wearable augmentations, unrestricted access to the core functions, and built to a more fight-ready specification.

  All of the hands on the table were that sort of thing. Titanium alloys and matter polymers. All of them black and dark grey. Utilitarian. Honestly, they were works of art, especially considering the shit eating madman who’d made them. He had a yard full of Hawaiian shirt robot helpers. How did he make these?

  I reached out toward one and he made a weird, chirping noise. “Listen, friend.” His voice grumbled up from angry to his normal nasal timbre as his eyes shot between my hand and the table. “The one you touch is the one you take.”

  I pulled my hand back, looking over them. I narrowed my eyes on one that had what was very clearly a hole in the tip of the index finger. They all had strange things about them. One with slits at the finger tips. Weapons? They had to be, with this crazy fuck making them. My eyes stayed glued to the one with the hole in it. I leaned my head over and saw a focusing lens just inside the tip of the finger hole.

  I pointed to it. “That one. Wha—”

  He took that to be my pick and plucked the hand up from the table, turning it over as though it were the first time he’d ever seen it.

  “Yes, yes. You like lasers, I take it. Who doesn’t?” He laughed and looked at Marine. “So… hot.” He licked his lips. “Well, let’s get you into your wonderful new hand.”

  I wasn’t even sure where to begin objecting. Lasers, though? Was I getting a laser hand? I started to get excited. He walked toward the far end of the room. The wall in the corner he was headed for showed deep scars and burns directly across from a stark black leather chair. One with straps.

  He pointed absentmindedly to the seat, his attention mostly on the hand, which he placed on a small platform. “Sit, friend. Got to see that it works, you understand? Reputation’s everything among vultures like precious Marine.” He bit at the air in her direction clacking his teeth together while he typed. “Theeeere we go. Fusion intakes fine. Yep, yep, yep. Good.”

  The platform rotated suddenly and pointed at the wall. A sharp whir sounded next to my head and in an instant a chunk of the wall exploded, rock melting around the edge.

  “Satisfied?” He was asking Marine.

  She kept the same hard expression. “Just put the fucking hand on him, Darvish.”

  He picked up the hand, disappointed and came around to my front. I looked up at him wishing he had kidnapped a sexy nurse or had a blindfold or, really, anything that made me not have to look at him.

  “So, do you… knock me out or what?”

  He smiled, happy in a way that made me regret having asked. “Oh, no. You’ve got to be awake, friend. Got to have plenty of data for calibrations.” He paused. “Unlucky me.” Darvish was poking at my tissue stabilizer after he’d locked my wrist down under a thick leather strap. “Looks like someone’s already done the fun bits. Nothing to cut.”

  He laughed and rubbed his hand down my arm a few times. He pressed his bony thumb into the stabilizer until it gave a quick three vibrations. He smiled wide again and ripped it free, taking a flap of dried blood with it. None of it hurt, so much as it felt incredibly strange.

  “Oh… no scream.” He frowned and turned the hand over to size it up to my wrist. “Plenty of time for that.”

  I will be honest. I hadn’t noticed the two rounded metal prongs that sat in the cuff just below what would have been the bend in the wrist of the prosthetic. Not until he was aiming them at my naked stump. He looked everything over, and nodded, satisfied. He turned and pulled open a small drawer bringing out a stained old hammer. Not a nice one. A cheap one. The words “Genuine Hickory” had been burned into the handle. He spun it around, looking it over.

  “Well, time we get started.” He grinned, eyes darting back and forth across my face. “Remember, try to feel as much you can.”

  He pressed the prosthetic against my stump and I felt the first pain from the wound that I had since before the visit to Doc. He bent the hand up at the wrist so that the butt of the palm was sitting flat against the extended arm of the chair.

  “Ready? A-one-and-a-two—”

  He swung the hammer and it made a dull thunk. I felt what had to be the metal prongs burrow only a short way into my marrow. My vision flushed red and I could barely hear myself scream over the blood that rushed around inside my ears. I hadn’t stopped screaming when he whacked the second time.

  “Good, good.” I heard him say the words, but they meant nothing. “Just like that!”

  He hammered the metal prongs in a millimeter at a time. Across more swings of a hammer than I would ever have been able to count. The muscles in my neck pulled themselves to pain and I had coughing fits when my throat could no longer stand to scream. When finally he was done, he went to his workstation and brought the hand to life. The prongs pushed dull spikes out into my bones until they passed through and hooked out at the far side, anchoring the hand to my arm. The edge of the wrist suctioned itself down. It felt like my arm had been set on fire from the inside. The muscles twitched wildly, spasming to try to escape the hurt. I shook in the chair as Darvish calmly went through his calibrations. Blood and fluids I couldn’t recognize leaked out onto the arm of the chair as the hand shifted itself through two dozen test orientations.

  Finally when he was satisfied, he came and unhooked my limbs from the chair. I slumped, exhausted, and he put a hand on my back, rubbing it slowly.

  “Wonderful data, just wonderful. A fine trade for the tea, isn’t it?” He laughed and walked back to his workstation. “Oh, but I forgot a test.”

  I looked at him and he gave his insane smile.

  “Point at the wall, if you would. Finger straight.”

  I did, as best I could with my arm shaking wildly as it was. He pressed a few buttons and my new hand pulsed. The wall exploded again and the rock in it began to burn white-hot. There was a pressure in my arm from the force of the heat laser firing constantly. Instinctively, I closed my hand to a fist, realizing as I did that I was going to melt my abdomen in the process.

  I winced away from the hand. Nothing happened.

  The old fuck went into mad laughter for longer than seemed entirely appropriate. “The safety functions work just fine.” He looked at Marine and the nasal voice again turned to the evil growl. “Now leave.”

  Chapter

  TWELVE

  As soon as we were outside of robot hearing distance, or what I assumed was robot hearing distance, Marine grabbed my wrist and started fawning over it, apologizing constantly. She was shaking her head.

  “I didn’t know that’s what happened. I didn’t know he was just going to…” She swallowed. “I mean, with a hammer.”

  “Yeah. Genuine hickory, though. At least I got the good stuff.”

  She gave me a bothered frown, probably annoyed I was being glib while she was trying to apologize. “He is good at what he does, at least. The manufacturing side, anyway. I’m sure there’s a better way to install these things.” She studied the hand, stopping on the index finger. Weirdly, I could feel all of it the same as I’d felt my human hand. “Where’s your laser thing?” She squinted. “There’s a little… like a door.”

  I pulled my hand over and stared down at it. A small polymer iris had closed shut over the laser hole. It would have been difficult to spot at a cursory glance.

  �
��How do I open it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well, super. I have an insanely powerful laser finger that I have no idea how to operate.” I sighed. “I guess on the positive, I have a working hand. And hey! We have more in common.”

  Marine managed a half smile at that. “You’re practically a machine now. Laze…” The smile parts disappeared. “I’m sorry.”

  “Jesus, Marine, don’t be such a blubbery cunt about it. You’re really making my sacrifice seem like it was all your doing. Oh, I lose my hand and I get a badass robot hand from an old psychopath, but crybaby Marine liked my old hand better so boo hoo hoo.”

  “I was trying to be… fucking… I don’t know. Appreciative maybe. Or… conciliatory. Prick.”

  “Yeah, well save it for the other babies at the baby store. I mean look at this thing. You know how good I’m going to be able to finger chicks with this? I bet I could write a guaranteed orgasm program for it. Wouldn’t even have to do any work.”

  “Of course that’s what you want to do with it.”

  “Now you’re mad that I’m looking on the bright side of saving your face from demon alien semen. All because I’m going to be a cervix melting master of fingerblasting.”

  “More likely you’re going to melt a cervix with the ridiculous finger cannon you chose to have installed on your stump. And then you’re going to get fingerblasted in jail. Forever.”

  “And all because I saved your life. Where’s the appreciation, Marine.”

  “Gruh, you shit… fuck… dick… I was trying to express some of it and you called me a blubbery cunt.”

  She kicked me in the shin and so I hopped around grabbing my shin because she had kicked me there and it hurt.

  “Well,” I said, still hopping. “Where are we going next?”

  She looked away from me, pouting. “Such an asshole.”

  “You like it.”

  “Sometimes.” She whispered the word, but I heard it. She unfolded her arms and turned back around. “You know that guy Doc didn’t want me to go see?”

  “Gravy?”

  “Do not call him that. I’m serious. He’ll kill you. You’ll die. Really.”

  “So that’s not his name?”

  She sighed, annoyed. “It’s Graver.”

  “But I was close.”

  “I mean, sort of. But not… you can’t call him that. Promise me you will not say the word gravy when we get there. Under any circumstances.”

  “What if he offered me mashed potatoes and a topping of my choice?”

  “Then you will fucking ask him for a savory sauce made of meat drippings and thickened with some form of flour or starch and you will not say the fucking word gravy. Laze I am being serious now you have to promise me.” She said it all as one long, hypnotic sentence before refilling her lungs and staring at me.

  “Fine. Honest injun.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “It was in a cartoon I was watching.”

  A CleanlyCar with a faded livery pulled up and I just stared at it. There was no one inside, or so the light on the outside indicated. The doors popped open and Marine moved to get into the car. I followed assuming she had called it at some point when I wasn’t paying attention. It was an old model, with vinyl seats and it smelled worse than the commercials had led me to believe that it would. The inside of the car was a wrap-around screen that tended to show peaceful scenery and you could watch a couple of channels that had paid for the privilege of being shown in the cars. More channels were free on long term trips, but that was technically a different company. Seats in those reclined. Real next-level stuff.

  You ever hear that thing? The thing about showing someone from the distant past some piece of technology and they’d think you were a witch? I was always sort of bothered by that idea. I mean, really you have to qualify a lot of substatements to make that entirely meaningful in my book. People say it sagely, too. As if you’re supposed to suddenly be impressed that you have the ability to make a phone call even though that’s been a thing since back when we cured women of hysteria. You know, the very real disease that was women being driven insane by a lack of orgasms.

  I guess the core of it was this concern that maybe I should have been freaking out about Marine being a trashcan who got the Pinocchio treatment. I wonder if she knows about Pinocchio.

  I looked at her. Stared maybe. “Do you know about Pinocchio?”

  She didn’t look away from the screen, which was showing some news thing about news things. “Yeah. Why?”

  “I mean there’s parallels.”

  She turned to me, feigning excited interest. “Which ones? The one where I was magicked to life by a fucking fairy? Or the one where I had to live in a whale? Oh, or maybe the one where I got turned into a donkey on an island for ill-behaved androids? Don’t be stupid.”

  Stupid was a bit harsh, but I guess maybe the connection was questionable.

  “You seem really touchy about the android thing.”

  She huffed and her shoulders slumped. “I know. I don’t know how to act about it. Like, if… if I just let there be jokes about it something bad will happen. Or you’ll start thinking about me like I’m not the same person… which I guess I’m not. I don’t know how I work. My brain, whatever it is. My emotions, whatever they are. I don’t know if they’re different from yours or if they’re real by some baseline requirement of consciousness. If I’m just a branching decision tree with fake meat.”

  I leaned back against the seat of the car. “I mean… what you’re talking about is sort of AI basics. I know you know that stuff.”

  She shrugged. “I guess, the theories of it. But what if I exist in my head for different reasons than you exist in yours.”

  “It’s the same thing, you’re just looking at it from the other side and worried people won’t agree for different reasons than a theorist would.” I sat back forward. “Humans are chemical response driven decision trees with a relational database. That’s the short version, right? So beyond that whole thing, the questions just have to do with baseline provable facts. Can you abstract, can you self-actualize? Like I said, it’s year one sort of shit.”

  “But what if I only seem to self-actualize?”

  “And what if I do? Humans only worry about that question with regards to AI because we like to imagine there’s some deeper difference underlying our reasons for falling down the decision tree the way we do. We’ve never been able to prove that our own self-actualizing mechanisms are anything other than a mistake that happened to creep into the structure of our brains. Hell, we don’t even do it right. We think of ourselves as something separate of our own bodies because we feel like we exist wholly in our mind. We can’t even abstract our own meaningful relation to the system that lets us operate. And admittedly, we could probably live in a jar, so maybe it’s not an error of abstraction in the true sense, but it’s an absolute denial of the value of our bodies beyond it.” I looked at the screens, the news feed was showing a shop front for some local business. Something about the drone of the reporter made me incredibly aware of the dangerously virginal path I was taking, verbally. “Has anybody ever talked like this and gotten laid after? Jesus, why did you let me keep talking?” I gave an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t know. Probably it’s all magic.”

  She let out a half laugh, looking down at the floor of the car. “So maybe they’ll skip dissecting my brain then.”

  “Oh, definitely not. They’re going to cut that fucker up into the tiniest pieces and weigh it and take scans of it and pretend it has all the answers to the secrets of human existence. And everyone else will believe it does too. For a week. Then they’ll forget and they’ll do something else. Something ethnic sounding. Something where you have to buy a lot of oils and shit.”

  “Humans are stupid.”

  “We are. Listen, if you decide
to kill us all, please let me see your labia first.”

  “Just my labia?”

  “Well everything past that gets really sort of gross.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  The car drove for another twenty minutes of awkward silence and came to a stop, popping the doors open and flashing an unsubtle message encouraging us to leave in bright red on the screen. Really, it’s sort of hard to follow self-indulgent ranting and labias with anything more exciting, so it was probably for the best.

  We stepped out in front of what looked like a dive bar that had screens flanking either side of the door. They flashed through photos of attractive women dressed as geisha. Well, dressed wasn’t right. They were naked. They wore geisha makeup and hair styles. Or maybe they were just generic hairstyles that were popularly assumed to be geisha styles. You know, I wasn’t entirely fit to speak on the subject.

  “You work here?”

  She punched me in the shoulder. I tried to hide how much it hurt so she didn’t take the labia inspection off the table as a pre-genocide last wish. Nobody showed their labia to wimps. That’s just common sense.

  “Serious time now.”

  She said the words and put on a stern face like she had at Darvish’s. I did the same, so much as I could. Mostly I kept staring at the nude women. There was a bright neon sign above the door, I finally noticed. It labeled the building Graver’s Turkish Bath and Health Spa. Right. So not a bar.