Spare and Found Parts (21 page)

R
uby calls, “Nellie?” then “Dr. Crane” and I say, “Come in; it's just me here today.” I am keeping the house together while you are healing. I even have a list of instructions: basic organization, alphabetizing bookshelves—busy work. I am not sure Dr. Crane trusts me with much more. He is out mostly and warned me not to receive any guests, but Ruby has let herself in. I did not know if I would see her again after the road, and at first I am pleased to see her. Between her scarf and woolen coat, she looks like a bundle of fabric on legs. The tip of her nose is pink, and she is sniffling; she has a cold. The night in the storm did not hold well for her.

I say, “Would you like some lemon and ginger and honey and tea, also cayenne, and I believe there is some whiskey.” I say, “You look like you have a cold, and this is a cure.”

Ruby smiles at me, then looks back into the hallway. She is nervous.

She says, “I'm fine for now. Oliver, you should come in here.”

A voice outside says, “I don't think I can.”

Ruby smiles at me again, then looks back into the hallway. Says through her teeth, “Oliver Kelly, you'd want to get over yourself!”

A thin young man comes into the kitchen then and stares at me for 4.21 seconds before collapsing onto the tiles. You humans, if you'll pardon me, are extremely fragile.

Ruby gasps as his body crumples, but he is fine. I go to the cabinet to remove some smelling salts and suggest that whiskey is a good choice for treating this boy's ailment also. Ruby helps him up. He is not unconscious, just a little pale. Shocked. She props him onto a chair at the kitchen table, and he is shaking but not in danger. I offer him a drink. He shakes his head. His pupils cannot take all of me in. He gapes.

There are several optional impulses for this situation. I could offer him my hand in greeting. I could apologize for startling him. I could laugh at the shock he is experiencing; this is a temptation, though it would not be helpful at this time. I choose to offer him my hand. As I extend it to him, he pales further, and
his lips begin to lose their color. It is my less functional hand. I can't read any texture or temperature from it; it is a little rudimentary, maybe a little ugly, but not so abhorrent that it should cause this reaction. I withdraw.

“Say hello, Oliver.” Ruby urges him. She looks to me then. “Io, Oliver is an old friend of Nell's. He was worried about her, they had a falling out, and well, I couldn't really explain, so I brought him here to meet you himself. And to see how Nell is.”

She's nervous. I wish I could put her at ease.

I tell her that you have a few days left incubating your new augmentation and that you responded excellently to the operation. Oliver is staring at me now, and I offer tea again. Ruby accepts; Oliver barely nods. Your people refuse things they want several times before accepting; this is both frustrating and entertaining in equal measures.

As I fill the pot with water to make the customary drink, Oliver whispers to Ruby. Nell, I understand that I am an adjustment and can be surprising, but I find this extremely uncomfortable.

“That's it?” he whispers. “That thing? I mean, it's—it's incredible, but I at least thought he'd look human.” Ruby thumps his shoulder to silence him. I know what he means, what this is, but it is more polite to carry on than confront him.

Oliver is not scared of me, Nell. It is a more complicated thing than this. How many of my new songs are about this strange hybrid of fears, his concern that I am somehow superior to him? His defiance, his disbelief—how I
can't be
.

The notes of emotion in the boy's voice are like picking apart a musical recording—fear upon outrage upon disgust—and the beat, steady, holding it all together: jealousy.

I serve them two cups of lemony tea, Nell, as they simmer at each other. Something in me is hurt by this, but I do not linger on the flashing light of it. Hurt, Nell, that is something for your people. There is a choice for me here; hurt does not stick.

I offer the deck of cards, a pleasing way to socialize. Oliver is now suddenly unable to look at me, rather instead peering closely into his teacup.

“Snap is a game I cannot cheat at,” I offer, but he jolts at the sound of me. I am now finding his obvious unease distinctly unpleasant, irritating even.

I run the list of reasons that his behavior could be eliciting this irritation and among the data, among my recognition of his discomfort, those words again and again. That Thing. Thing. Tango Hotel India November Golf.
A liquid
. 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111.

I am the product of the greatest minds that ever walked this planet. I am the last of my kind. Because of creations like me, your people poisoned one another to death. Might like mine draws wonder and terror, and in the year I was programmed I was as powerful as any god your people ever had. I will not let you make the same mistakes again.

The boy looks at me again, and I hear “That thing,” but I know he means, “I am afraid,” like any child who sits at the feet of a titan.

We split the deck. Oliver insists that Ruby take the first round. The kitchen is quiet and the tea is cooling and there is rainfall on the window and we play cards.

The arc of Snap is funny. I am not getting any better at it, though I feel this is because of the limitations of my physical reflexes. In time I will improve them myself, if you permit me the tools. Ruby wins because I am preoccupied.

Oliver is in love and in pain. He looks at me with curiosity and with horror. He is many things at once, in his flesh and weakness. I think that when you kissed me, it scared you that I am not human, that I am not a boy. That I am not flesh and weakness. Nell, I will never be this.

Ruby, snap, snap, snap again, quickly takes the round. She is more at ease now, delighted, demonstrating my
imperfection to Oliver, who has seemingly summoned enough courage to play me.

There are many avenues in my programming that I could select in order to appear competitive here. None of them are appropriate, though victory does open up a set of pleasing lights. His hands are shaking, and there is sweat gathering on his upper lip. He lays each card down slowly, faceup. We quickly make a pair of fours;I permit him the win. He coughs out a shocked laugh, says to Ruby, “It's not all that smart!”

It. India. Tango
Goes
. 01101001 01110100 00100000.

I lay down a two of hearts; he lays down a jack of clubs. We both place a queen, spades and diamonds, and I slam my hand down, seconds before his descends. His grip tightens a moment around my mine—my slower hand, no less—and I say, “Snap.”

Snap as if we are both the same. Snap, as if what we both bring to the table is equal, a woman looking up from the paper between our fingers.

T
he sound was different.

Nell was not quite awake but in the final silk threads of peace and sleep, yet she could hear it. It wasn't a ticking, not anymore. The steady beat of her life moving forward, the rhythm of her panic and delight, the sound, natural to her as her own breath, was gone. It wasn't the rattle and grind of her journey on the road; it wasn't sickness. It was health. She was alive.

She groggily opened her eyes to the easy afternoon light. How long had she been out? She felt rested, strangely refreshed—and good. Really good. She shifted and sat up. The world was too soft and too kind. As her head unclouded, the sound from her new chest, the new sound, became clearer. A
chime
.

Her old flannel nightshirt was buttoned up to her neck, and she undid each tiny plastic disk to see what
had become of her. The scarred landscape of Nell's chest was usually a resigned, disappointing vignette, but her silver-white scar had been remade, scarlet, bright between her breasts. Not sewn shut but stapled. Nell found herself admiring the starkness of it, how deliberate it looked. She had survived; here was crimson proof that she was made of blood.

She exhaled a laugh at herself, the familiar confidence of the Medi-Patch occurring to her. She rolled up a sleeve and saw two, placed neatly on her forearm. Smiling, she thumbed them. What a relief. Nothing would hurt. Nothing.

Something moved at the bottom of her bed, and she yelped, then giggled. “Hello?”

Kodak lifted his tiny head and blinked.

“Kodak!” she sang.

He scampered up the crisp peaks and folds of the bedsheets to Nell and nestled in her lap. She ruffled the fur on his head and scruff with her fingertips. They sat together there for what felt like a long, peaceful time, Nell surfing the crest of her strange high calm, Kodak a knot of purring affection.

Where were her father and Io? Io had brought her home, hadn't he? Her memory was fuzz, the cotton kind of ignorance that in this specific moment felt useful. Her brain was taking care of her, saying, “Not now,
Nell; maybe in a few days
.
” But Io had somehow come out in the rain, hadn't he? Nell looked over at the window, the weather calm; he'd brought her home. He'd carried her here.

She laughed again. Goodness, that was so extreme of him! So dangerous! What a kind robot he was. She probably shouldn't have kissed him, shouldn't have started down that avenue—she'd frightened herself—and while the fear had dimmed, the indentations of it were still clear, just beneath the haze.

“Can robots even be kind? I bet my father told him to come and get me. Oh, wow”—she reeled—“I'd love to listen to some music again. That was
so
nice.”

She felt calm. She felt a bit silly. She felt like going back to sleep. She looked around her room again and mimed walking one leg before the other under her bedsheets.

“I can walk. Easy-peasy. Sure. Easy!” she affirmed, lifting herself up a little, using her arms and practicing moving parts of her hips. Yes, she could absolutely go for a walk about her room. Nell sat astride the bed, legs dangling. “Sure, this is fine.”

She stood, wobbling, for maybe five seconds before her knees buckled and she sank to the floor, rag doll. Her body hit the old carpet, but she didn't feel any pain from the impact.

Io and Julian burst into the room with such fervor that Nell gave them a hello and dissolved into giggles. Her father's face was a combination of concern and relief and something else that she couldn't quite parse.

“You're awake!” he exclaimed, but rather than move toward her, he let Io step forward to help.

The strength of Io's arms was shocking to Nell as he lifted her effortlessly back into bed. The sensation of rising in Io's arms, even for the fleeting moment before being placed into her cocoon of blankets, flashed something like memory over Nell's dulled senses.

The neon burn of sunrise, wet hair, the clanking behind her sternum. Io's striding footsteps, bounding toward somewhere safe. His calm voice.

Cora's scorched wrists, the bolts in her neck . . .

“Was
I
dead?” she asked, her voice strange, like a little girl's. “Did you heat me up and bring me back?” Her words came out more slowly this time, like molasses or oil. She started to feel nauseated, the high pushing her further back into her head, her speech pulling from far away.

Julian laughed too merrily, in a way Nell had never heard before. It made her feel as though her mattress were full of liquid and the world were falling away below her.

“Ah, now, girlo, you were no such thing. Io brought you home on what was it, a Wednesday morning? And
I got an awful scare. Your cavity mechanism had done its time and started shutting down.”

Nell's eyes closed and opened again, the sound of the blink heavy, her eyelashes like a curtain rising, then falling—a beginning and an ending—too fast for their weight. Her mouth went too dry.

“Frankly I'm shocked it lasted this long; it was bound to give out at some point; but look, it's pioneer technology. Lucky Io was here to bring you back, doesn't bear thinking what would have happened to you.”

Julian took off his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his jacket, flippant. He gave a tut.

“That's what you get for straying so far with Ruby. Hopefully this shock will stop you going so far again. You've no business out on the motorway. Asking for an accident. You'll know better now.”

Was she being
scolded
? Kodak crawled up around her, chirruping. Julian's tone had a fresh edge, a wildness. Nell's tongue was too soft, and her voice was too far away to summon. This new glint in him was dangerous, a match held too near the firewood. It sounded like a threat rather than a caution. Her new chiming slightly rose in tone against her numbed anxiety.

“But in fairness”—he paused—“the new one sounds just wonderful!” He threw his arms—one spindly, one mechanical—above his head, a proclamation of his
genius. “Imagine, we had you walking around with that awful ticking for so long, when all it would have taken was the insertion of a slightly different quality of steel . . .”

He kept talking, but Nell couldn't hear him. She began to clumsily button her nightshirt back up. Her scar was now a scarlet river over the flat horizon of her skin, each staple a bridge of gold from one shore of her flesh to the other. It was red running water.

“Why don't I have bandages?” she asked, the simplest question she could pull from the thrumming wasps' nest of curiosity beyond her haze.

Io spoke, his voice a measured and gentle contrast with her father's mania. “You did. We took them off a few days ago.”

“And when—when—” Nausea began to roll a terrible ocean in Nell's gut, and she was sure that she would vomit, her forehead wet now and the blood from her face making a swift tidal departure to her hands, the weight of them.

“Ten days ago. You've been sedated through your recovery, much, much less pain this way,” Julian said, glib. “No point in being awake while your body adapts to the new system, best to just keep you in the twilight until you'd almost healed, then wean you on to something lighter. I'm glad you're responding so well to the
Medi-Patch. We took you off all the drips this morning and moved you up here. You must be very hungry!”

Ten days. Twilight. New system.

“Would you like if I brought you some food?” asked Io.

Nell nodded. Perhaps water. Or soup, broth with rosemary and toasted bread, but she didn't say anything. She didn't want to talk. She wanted her father to leave. She thumbed the Medi-Patch. She wondered foggily what she would do without this haze.

Probably lose her mind. Or get angry. She'd scream, absolutely. She had these screams inside her, but they felt so distant, buried in flannel and cotton. How much longer would she feel this way? She'd ask Io later, she resigned, smiling feebly down at Kodak.

“Well, glad you're awake all the same, girlo. I'll check in on you soon. Call for Io if you need anything. Oh, oh, I'd better tell you now: I borrowed your drawings for Io. Just so I could help if he needed fixing up. They're very good, Nell.” He turned his back to her and kept talking as he left the room and walked down the staircase, leaving his daughter alone with her benign steel giant.

After a moment Io spoke again.

“I am sorry I frightened you.” His voice was strangely dulcet, and Nell closed her eyes. “I am sorry you were
hurt. I am so happy that you are awake.”

He sighed then, a relief.

“Thank you,” said Nell, marveling at his emotional fluency. With the Medi-Patch, it was easier to marvel than to worry.

Imagine, she
had
been frightened of Io. But she was so far away from it now. He had walked out in the rain, and he had carried her home safely! For now, in the dull padded chamber of her mind, that was enough. Besides, she was really hungry and wanted to listen to some music.

“I'm hungry, and I would like to listen to some music, please.”

“I will make you a meal; then I will play you some music,” Io said, standing up to leave. “I will return shortly. I will also bring some fresh Medi-Patches, and some tea. Is there anything else, Nell?”

She shook her head. “No, Io, thank you.”

As Io moved toward the door, Kodak popped up and scampered off the bed to his feet. The creation took the tiny animal in his big, strong hands and gently petted his head with his thumb and forefinger. Kodak's eyes closed in appreciation. They walked away together.

Had Julian said something about taking her notes? Her walls were empty. Her desk was clear.