Girl Parts

by John M. Cusick

  “No.” His words were slow, sluggish. “Just . . . do the thing so we can get out of here.”

  “Suit yourself.” May ambled over. “Stand up, angel. Let’s take a look at you.” She tugged a flashlight from her tool belt. She was a few inches shorter than Rose, and stood on tiptoe to shine the light in her eyes.

  “I don’t feel . . . stoned,” Rose said. “I mean, I certainly don’t feel like there’s cotton balls in my head.”

  “No talking during the examination.” She flicked off the tiny light and held it in her teeth. Rose could smell her breath — soda and corn chips. She kneaded Rose’s temples.

  May mumbled unintelligibly.

  “I didn’t understand that.”

  “You won’t feel stoned,” May said, taking the flashlight from her mouth, “because you don’t have those receptors. In fact, you don’t have any receptors at all. Your lungs are just a pair of bellows.” Her eyes wandered over Rose’s chest. May grinned. “Nice ones, by the look of it.”

  Charlie stood. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Bring me back a candy bar,” May called after him. “And MoonPies! Bring back MoonPies, too! Poor guy,” she said once Charlie was gone. “Some people really tweak out. All right, sister. Up on the operating table, please.” She gestured to the high, skinny bed by the window. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Rose stretched out. “Will this hurt?”

  May leaned over Rose’s stomach to adjust the blinds. Sunlight fell across the bed in stripes.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” she said, scootching a stool to the bedside. “I’ve never done this before. But it’s all the same operating system. Sakora is sophisticated, but not that sophisticated. Believe me, I know.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  May smiled. Her eyes were like wobbly puddles of blue behind her thick glasses. “Honey, if I can unlock sixty lines of randomly generated code to override the Intimacy Clock, I’m sure I can cure a broken heart.”

  “There’s something wrong with my heart?”

  May paused. “Sweetness, is your satellite link disconnected?”

  Rose looked away. “I . . . broke it. The voice kept telling me to go back to David. So I jumped in a lake.”

  May scowled. “You could have killed yourself.” She sighed. “Still, I can’t blame you. Voice in your head telling you everything you do is wrong. I can relate, being a Catholic.” She laughed at her joke.

  “Thank you for doing this,” Rose said.

  May slipped her glasses into the pocket of her overalls. Her eyes were small but pretty, the big blue pools shrinking to tiny crystals, fractured by veins of green.

  “So here’s the deal. I can’t just pop open your hood and start poking around with a pair of pliers. It doesn’t work that way. Companions are programmed noninvasively, through light and sound. Part hypnosis, part fiber optics, part . . . I don’t know, subliminal messaging.” She held the flashlight over Rose’s right eye, then her left. “Just lie back and think of London, sweetie.”

  The light began to flash.

  “Am I supposed to feel something . . . ?”

  “You will. Trust me.”

  Flash-flash. Flash-flash.

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Don’t look at me; look at the light.”

  Flash-flash. Flash-flash-flash.

  “Just ones and zeros,” May said, almost whispering. Almost melodic. “Ones and zeros. Off and on. Left and right. East and west.”

  Flash-flash. Flash-flash.

  “On and off.”

  Flash-flash.

  Flash.

  There was nothing but light. The light before life.

  Rose heard voices.

  “Number?” Husky, low, tired.

  “One.” High, clipped, familiar.

  “One?”

  “The first in her series. The first and only.”

  “Town?”

  “Westtown, Mass.”

  The husky one yawned. “OK, what’s the name on the record?”

  “David Sun.”

  “As in Sun Enterprises? Is he the mogul’s kid?”

  The clipped voice paused. “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Lucky guy.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  “What’s the model?”

  “A new model.” The clipped voice was breathless, full of delight. “She’s Rose.”

  “Very good, Mr. Foridae.”

  “I’ll be watching this one very closely.”

  For a moment no sounds, just the light, the light that blocked out everything, oppressive, so heavy on her eyes. Light like stone.

  “OK. Shall I upload her?” the tired voice asked.

  “Yes. Do it now.”

  The light began to flicker, to flash.

  Gasps of black — penetrating, delicious, empty gaps to breathe in.

  Flash-flash. Flash-flash-flash.

  Breathe, Rose, breathe in.

  Breathe in!

  Rose sat up, gasping.

  “Whoa there!”

  May pulled her flashlight away and placed a steadying hand on her back. Rose felt as if a hand had reached inside her — or a pair of pliers — and clasped and twisted and crushed her insides. She clutched her chest, gasping, feeling her heart and bellows and diodes popping back into place.

  “What was that?”

  “Reprogramming,” May said. She eased her back onto the bed with gentle pressure. “Lie down.”

  “It was awful.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve never seen that happen before.”

  “I saw . . . light. And heard voices.”

  “Stimuli linked to the moment of conception.” She spoke low, talking to herself. Her fingers prodded Rose’s face, her scalp. “Fascinating.”

  “Did it work?” Rose searched May’s face for signs of relief, satisfaction, anything that meant she wouldn’t have to go back to that bright place again.

  May sat back, hands in her lap. “You’re lucky to have Charlie,” she said. “He’ll be good to you.”

  “What do you mean?” Rose started to sit up. She wanted to grab May by the overalls and shake her. Force her to say one thing that was clear, that made sense.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” she said, taking her hand. “It didn’t work. And it’s never going to. Not ever.”

  May told Rose that David was too close to the heart of her. Removing him would be like removing her heart. Clip that wire, and everything would go dark. In time, as more memories piled on top, David would be buried deeper and deeper. She would miss him less and less. Maybe.

  May said a lot of things, about how Rose was made, how she functioned. This might have interested Rose on a different day, but today she didn’t care. She was going to feel half-dead for the rest of her life — which, if May was right about Companion life expectancy, would be a very long time.

  Charlie hadn’t returned with the MoonPies.

  “He’s a sensitive type. Likes to be alone. I can tell,” May said.

  Rose stared out the window. “Yes. He’s special.”

  “So are you.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “When David first touched me, just a small touch on the shoulder, I shocked him. It took weeks to build up to a kiss. I knew Charlie for half an hour before I kissed him. And nothing happened. Why?”

  May leaned back in her chair. Her glasses were on, and as if she’d flipped a switch, the serious edge in her voice had vanished. Her personality was like her eyes, soft and wobbly or sharp and pointed.

  “Welllll . . .” She cracked her knuckles. “It could be that your separation from David shorted your security system. Or not. The Intimacy Clock isn’t an exact countdown. It depends on a lot of things. How you feel about the person. What you sense about his intentions. What you’ve shared. Perhaps you and Charlie had a particularly intense and intimate meeting. You knew you could trust him.”

&nbs
p; “He saved my life.”

  May mimed a pistol with her hand. “Bingo, gringo. That’d do it.”

  “You’ve touched me a lot today,” Rose said. “I guess that means I trust you, too.”

  May smiled slyly. “Yeah, that’s the thing. Doesn’t work the same for other girls. I guess those Sakora guys didn’t think ladies could be sexually threatening.” She winked, dark heavy lashes batting behind her thick lenses. “Shows what they know.”

  Rose smiled into her shoulder. She looked around the lab. It was pleasant there, cool and dark. She guessed it was difficult to work in such low light, especially with defective eyes.

  “You’re going blind,” she said suddenly, not sure of how she knew, but certain all the same.

  May smiled. She tilted her head down, and Rose saw a flash of blue crystal.

  “It’s glaucoma. That’s how I get the pot.”

  “And it’s . . . serious?”

  May nodded.

  The room was quiet except for the contented hum of machines and the soft whisper of May’s breath. Rose placed a hand on May’s shoulder. She felt the warmth of her skin through the fabric of her T-shirt.

  May removed her glasses and wiped them on her jeans. She raised her own failing eyes to meet Rose’s flawless synthetic ones.

  “I want to show you something,” she said.

  At the back of May’s lab was another door, this one thick, with a keypad lock on the handle. May punched in a code, and it opened with a hiss. Inside, steel shelves lined a small closet, with its single light encased in a glass dome on the ceiling. The closet was empty except for the object on the table in the center — a glass jar filled with a transparent liquid. The thing inside might have been a rare blossom in Reed’s Flora.

  “The epidermis is a latex base,” May explained. “The ovaries don’t work, obviously, and the womb is, well . . . a little simplified. But hey, that means no periods.” She nudged Rose in the stomach. She recognized it from the anatomy book in Charlie’s library. She imagined the scientific names connected by intersecting lines — labia, vulva, clitoris, uterus, ovaries, cervix.

  “You made this?”

  “Yeah.” May patted her stomach. “It’s kind of my masterwork. I mean, it’s far from perfect. But it’s modular, so,” she trailed off, but then finished her sentence quietly, almost to herself. “So it’s installable.”

  Installable, meaning one could plug it in, add it on. Rose thought of things she’d added to herself — not parts, but thoughts and ideas. Experiences. Everything she’d been at birth — what she wanted, what she felt, who she thought she was — that belonged to them. But from that moment on, every decision she made, everything she saw and learned, belonged to a new person. The person I’m building, thought Rose. Me.

  “I want it.”

  May paused before responding. “For Charlie?”

  Rose shook her head. Not for Charlie, not for David. She didn’t have to explain.

  “Congratulations, Rose.” May slipped an arm around her waist. “You just passed the test.”

  Charlie had followed a deserted street under the highway, past a vacant diner and a dusty lot. He found himself walking uphill by a brick wall, near the Holy Cross track-and-field course. He sat on the stands and looked out over the gray-green grass. A group of girls came bounding down the path in shorts and knee-high socks. They ignored him.

  Maybe I’ll move to a big city, Charlie thought. Or another country. Where it’s easier to be invisible.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a couple of the girls glanced worriedly at the sky. They jogged around the course in a loose V formation. They were long-limbed and sexy. Rain began to patter on the dusty track. Droplets dinged the metal bleachers. The girls were looping back in his direction when Rose came up the path from the gate. She saw Charlie on the bleachers and ran over, her hair bouncing over her shoulders. She stopped a few feet away and pulled it back into a loose ponytail. She was nearly unrecognizable from the spacey android who’d knelt over him that night more than a month ago.

  “Hey, I was looking for you.”

  “I took a walk.”

  She sat next to him and folded her hands between her legs. She told him about May, about the examination, and about the girl parts May would install.

  “Then you’ll really be a one of a kind,” was the only thing he could think to say.

  “Then I’ll be like everyone else.”

  “You’ll never be like everyone else.”

  Rose nodded. “That’s true. I’ll always be different.”

  “Special.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, better.”

  Rose chuckled. She put her arm around Charlie, but Charlie couldn’t smile. Rose was going to change. She had changed. She was growing and becoming more. And Charlie stayed the same. There was no May Poling for human beings, no one to give you what you lacked, make you a little better.

  “Do you think I shouldn’t do it?”

  “No, I definitely think you should.”

  The girls on the track ran by, and Rose followed them with her eyes. “OK, then.” She nodded, just a tiny little dip of the chin, and climbed down from the stands. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “See you in an hour,” Charlie said. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hesitated, and Charlie wished he had something else to say. It didn’t feel like a “see you later” kind of moment. It felt like a good-bye. And then Rose turned and ran across the field, and for a few paces she ran side-by-side with the girls in their pigeon-gray T-shirts before breaking away and disappearing beyond the gate, a flash of crimson.

  Rose lay on the table. The sky through the blinds had turned a dusky pink. She wore a loose, cottony robe that tied in the back. She shivered.

  “I’m guessing you can’t do this with just a flashlight,” she said.

  May had erected a curtain of pale, translucent plastic around the bed — an antiseptic barrier. She wore a pair of white gloves and a hairnet — what she called her “cafeteria lady” outfit.

  “Not exactly.” She placed the glass jar on the worktable. Nearby was a toolbox, the contents of which she would not let Rose see, and a complicated rig of tubes connected to a long vertical pole on wheels — Rose’s IV.

  “I’m going to put you to sleep,” she said, adjusting the blinds. “No dreams this time. No visions. A total blackout.”

  “Are you shutting me off?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens if I don’t come back on again?”

  Despite the reassuring pressure of May’s touch, Rose’s hands trembled.

  “It’s going to be OK.”

  “I don’t know what I’m afraid of,” she said.

  May gave her arm a final squeeze and resumed her preparations. A strip of black material was attached to the end of a thick black cord. A sleeping mask. The underside had two nodes, tiny flat bulbs, and when May slipped the mask over Rose’s face, the nodes lined up with her eyes.

  “Just relax. You’ll be asleep in a few moments.”

  Under the mask, Rose closed her eyes. Soft light pulsed through her eyelids. May hummed to herself as she worked. It was a sweet melody Rose didn’t know, and she tried to concentrate on its sweetness, letting it lull her to sleep.

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are,” May sang to herself softly. “Like an eyelet in the scrim, letting little blue drops in.”

  The lights pulsed, May hummed, and Rose fell, easily, asleep.

  When Rose came to, she was alone. The curtain and surgical equipment were gone. The blinking lights on May’s stereo hovered in her hazy vision. It was dark and cool. Music was playing in the next room.

  Rose stretched, felt the fabric of her robe move over her body. Something was different. A thrill raced up her spine. The procedure. She pulled aside the cottony material and slipped a hand between her legs. Her fingers felt something prickly. Hair. And then . . .

 
; “Oh!”

  The same thrill raced through her — stronger this time. She moved her hand again. Rose felt herself sinking into warm water, light dancing on the lake, the gasp between lightning and rumble. She shivered. No one had told her about this.

  Outside, in the waiting room, Charlie and May heard her. Charlie looked up from his magazine.

  “Is that her? Is she awake?”

  May leaned over to the stereo controls and turned the knob, raising the volume and drowning out the sounds from the lab.

  “Sit back, speedy. She’s not done yet.”

  Charlie hesitated, then sank back into his chair.

  “The way you, hmm hmm . . .” May sang along, quietly, her eyes turning to her magazine. “. . . buh buh sip your tea . . .”

  The Caddy’s doors were open, bass notes thumping through the subwoofer in the otherwise-empty parking lot. Artie and Clay leaned against the hood, a red bag of Cajun peanuts between them. David dozed behind the wheel.

  “Yo, Sun, you awake?”

  He blinked. Artie’s shadow fell across the windshield, blocking the sun’s rays.

  “I am now.”

  “It’s four in the afternoon,” Clay said. He popped a peanut into his mouth, crumbling the shell on the pavement. “Didn’t you sleep last night?”

  Across the grass, the Saint Mary’s lacrosse team was at practice. Their shouts floated on the wind, gusting up to the boys like leaves in the breeze. From a distance they were like a herd on the Serengeti, stampeding in one direction, then another.

  David stretched. He couldn’t shake his grogginess. He felt raw and distant, as if the rest of the world were behind smoky glass.

  Artie brushed the crumbs off his pants. “So she said we should meet up at the Solomon Pond Mall on Saturday.”

  “This your Internet girlfriend?” Clay asked.

  “Yeah, the Viking.”

  “I thought she wasn’t real,” David said. The others didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Damn, I don’t know,” Clay said through a mouthful. “Picking up chicks on the Web feels lame, but I’d love to get some boob on Thanksgiving break.”

  Artie laughed.

  “Dude, you can’t have some boob.”

  “What?’