Authors: Max Barry
“What,” I said.
“I’ll be honest. What they were planning was pretty bad. They wanted you attached to the parts but not able to control them. We’d move them for you and read your sensory feedback. They said it was the quickest way to test. Which, you know, I guess it is. But still. That’s a little inhumane, in our opinion. Being connected to tech but not able to
control what it does. That’s like the ultimate user. Anyway, Carl ruined everyone’s plans. So now they let us activate you. It’s actually a great opportunity, because if you show them you can be trusted, they might let you stay active.”
“Little angry, now,” said Mirka.
“Uh,” said Jason. “Let me explain the Carl situation. Do you know Carl? Of course you do. I forgot, because we weren’t allowed to tell you about him. But we were working with Carl. Before he went crazy. So what happened was Carl came back. He turned up on the front lawn. Which was a surprise to security, because, well, they expected him, but not at the front door. There are plenty of entrances and a guard knows them all. Of course, they had people in the lobby. They put snipers on the roof, guys in mounted Hummers, prototype weaponry from Speculative Military Products. There was a sonics gun in the garage, the back lawn was sown with EMP mines, and the lobby guys had … well, an electroshock cannon. Like a Taser, firing a couple hundred darts a minute. And the problem was no one asked our opinion. If they had, things would have been different. But you know users. They never spend the time to properly understand the technology. They only want to learn the bare minimum. Enough to make it work. And that’s just not viable when the technology is this powerful. We’re really at the point where users in that sense are becoming obsolete, I think. I don’t think the world can be adequately navigated by someone who doesn’t understand tech anymore. But anyway. So Carl turns up. I don’t know if anyone told you, but when he left, Carl took some stuff. He took a Fiber Shield. Did you go to the Fiber Shield presentation? It’s a bomb, but it throws out tiny fiber strips, a fog of microribbons. They float in the air, tens of millions of them, and their ends are sticky. They’re harmless, but a high-speed projectile moving through that fog hits a ribbon
and gets pulled off course. Gets unbalanced. It might go left, right, who knows. The point is it diverts. In the presentation, they set up a target behind the fog and did a bunch of test shots and every one missed. By a lot. It was kind of awesome. It’s not exactly guaranteed protection, you know, like I wouldn’t want to stake my life on it, because the amount of diversion depends on how many ribbons the bullet hits, the angle at each collision, all these random variables. The project leader, that’s Abeline Knudsen, who did that paper on disruptive resonances in inner ear fluid … well, she said, fire enough bullets and eventually one will go straight. Or straight enough. So, actually thinking about it now, maybe the security guys knew that. Maybe that was their plan: if he uses the Fiber Shield, pour bullets into it.
“Well, Carl appeared on the lawn. We were in the labs, watching on CCTV. Carl—and you know, we liked Carl. We liked him a lot. We were sad he ran off. Anyway, Carl sets off the Fiber Shield, and boom, disappears in fog. Everyone starts shooting. So much gunfire, we could actually feel it. And you know how far down we were.
“The guys in the lobby with their electroshock cannon, they open fire. They spray these million-volt darts, which are a lot lighter than bullets, of course, and when they hit the fog they go
everywhere
. Left, right, up in the air, back at the security guys. They hit guards, they land on the roof, they spam the lobby, and everywhere they’re sparking and starting fires. It’s already chaos and then a Hummer takes one in the fuel tank. Then it’s nothing but fire and smoke and people screaming, and Carl comes in and does what he likes.
“So now everyone’s really keen to recapture Carl,” said Jason. He frowned at something on my chest, tapped it, and looked at another cat, who approached. “Since public exposure at this point would not be good for the company.
Of course they sent security guys off after him, and of course that didn’t work, because Carl is, well, Better. So now it’s your turn to go. After Carl.”
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.