The Red

by Linda Nagata

  “It’s not in your leg. It’s inside the prosthetic. We’ve adjusted the output. You can’t hurt yourself.”

  “But that’s just a software fix, right? And software gets hacked. Is there any way to get in there and adjust the device so it can’t generate a signal strong enough to fry my nervous system?”

  His stony expression tells me this is not an issue he wants to discuss. “This is first generation,” he reminds me. “The system will improve with time.”

  • • • •

  It’s Sunday when I start walking again. The first couple of days are hard, not because of any problem with my new legs, but because the muscles in my back and hips and thighs have deteriorated from lack of use. I work hard in physical therapy, and I spend extra hours walking all over the hospital. The padded soles of my titanium feet make a soft clicking sound against the vinyl floor, and I get stronger.

  By Thursday I’ve learned how to handle stairs, so I slip into the stairwell, where I practice climbing and descending. No one comes to check on me, not physically, but the monitoring sleeve lets the nursing staff know where I am and how I’m doing.

  After an hour, a message from Command pops up on my overlay, alerting me to a priority e-mail delivered to my dot-mil. Halfway up a flight of stairs, I stop to read it. The e-mail contains the orders for my next assignment. My stay at Kelly Army Medical Center is done.

  • • • •

  Lissa and I have talked every evening since she went back to San Diego. We talk about her work, and she always wants me to fill her in on the progress of my therapy. But we talk about other things too: our parents and friends, funny stuff that happens, the stupidity of politics, who’s getting married and who’s splitting up . . . anything at all, except us. She hasn’t come back to see me, and I still don’t know where we stand.

  I sit on the stairs, breathing in the stink of concrete and stale air. Footsteps patter somewhere below; a door creaks open, booms shut; and then silence descends.

  I fix my gaze on Lissa’s icon and my overlay pushes through a call to her. A few seconds later her voice is in my ears. “Hey, Shelley.” She sounds surprised and a little anxious. It’s not our usual time to talk.

  “Lissa, I know you’re at work—”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “I just got my orders. I’m getting transferred.”

  “Oh God. When? Where?”

  “Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  “I’m not going far. It’s just some cyber camp northwest of Austin. It’ll be six weeks, though, with no outside contact.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “It’s the army. They can do what they want.”

  “But you said you’d get leave!”

  “It didn’t go through. Maybe there wasn’t time. Maybe they’re afraid if they let me out on the street for more than a couple of days I’ll get pissed at some yahoo and kick his guts out with my new cyber enhancements.”

  “That is not funny.”

  I draw a deep breath. Now or never. “I did get a weekend pass.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I get the weekend off. I can get out of the hospital. It’s restricted, though, so I can’t fly out to San Diego—”

  “You couldn’t get through airport screening anyway, with all that hardware.”

  “Huh, yeah. I never thought about that. But, Lissa, you can come here. We can get a hotel.”

  She’s quiet for several seconds. Then she asks, “What about your overlay?”

  And I know I’m going to win.

  “We don’t need to worry about that. When I get time off, the recording stops. That’s always been in the contract. GPS will still be active, but that’s all. So come. Please. Tomorrow. I get released at noon.”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday,” she says in surprise.

  “Yeah. I get a long weekend. We can have until Monday morning. Please, Lissa. Please, please, come.”

  She laughs softly, low in her throat. “Shelley sounds hungry.”

  “Shelley is dying.”

  “Okay, baby. You get us a hotel room. I’ll pick you up at the hospital at noon. Now go away. I have to talk to my boss and make a reservation.”

  • • • •

  Masoud ordered a daily assessment of my progress, so I have a standing appointment with physical therapy at 1400 every afternoon, but until then I’m on my own. So I go back to my floor and hit up the nursing staff for suggestions on a really fine hotel. They have fun with it, and it isn’t long before agreement is reached on a luxury suite on the River Walk.

  Then I retire to my room and pull out the service uniform that’s been hanging in the closet since it was delivered. If all goes well, I won’t have much need for clothes this weekend, but I have to wear something out of the hospital—­and I know some eagle-eye in the chain of command would have an aneurysm if I was seen walking out of the hospital wearing only my army T-shirt and shorts.

  So for the first time, I try the uniform on.

  The fit is hopeless. I’m sure Masoud knows my new height to a millimeter and my weight to the nearest gram, but there’s obviously a disconnect between his records and my uniform profile. I’m wearing clothes made for the man I used to be.

  Staring at the sagging dress shirt in the little bathroom mirror, it hits me how much weight I’ve lost. The slacks are worse. They look hollow where they hang over my titanium bones, and given that my legs are at least two inches longer than they used to be, the slacks are way too short. It’s the same with the dress shoes. My new feet are longer from heel to toe than the organic version I had before, and they’re also narrower.

  Irritation crawls across my brain. I go ahead and order longer slacks, but I don’t know how I’m ever going to make the shoes work—not that I need shoes anymore, but they’re part of the uniform, and I’ve never heard of a variance for cyber-footed soldiers.

  I change back into T-shirt and shorts, and with my dress shoes in one hand, I head out, attracting a few curious stares from visitors on the floor and smiles from the nursing staff. I share the elevator with a civilian family: dad and mom and two small girls. The parents stare at the walls, while the wide-eyed girls study my robot legs. I hope they don’t get nightmares.

  The elevator only goes as far as the main floor. An MP has to key me into the basement. I walk past the morgue to Joby’s lab and try the door, but it’s closed and locked. I pound on it. Several seconds pass, and then I hear a lock turn. I try the door again, and this time it swings open.

  No one’s there. I push it wider, and a clatter of footsteps comes trotting toward me across the room. Legs. Freestanding robot legs, shorter than mine, linked together above the knee by a crude crossbar. Joby’s sitting cross-legged on the center carpet, using a controller to guide the monstrous little toy. He makes it tap-dance around me as I cross the room, but I refuse to be impressed.

  “My shoes don’t fit.”

  “So? Get bigger ones.”

  “No human shoe is going to fit on these feet.”

  He jabs a button on the controller and the robot legs give up their joyful little dance, to stand quietly at the edge of the carpet. He frowns at my feet, then glares up at me. “It’s stupid to wear shoes. Your feet are flexible. They’re made to grip. If you lock them up in shoes, you’ll lose that feature.”

  “I appreciate the effort you put into them. I said it before, you’re a fucking genius, but this is the army. I have to be in uniform.”

  He pouts. But he gets paid by the same people I do. He knows.

  Abandoning the controller on the carpet, he gets up with a world-weary sigh and takes the shoes from my hand. “Hi, Becky.” He holds the shoes up and stares at them. “You see these?”

  He’s not talking to me, he’s not holding a phone, and he’s not using farsights. “Hey,” I say, “d
o you have an overlay?”

  He gives me a wink. “You’re not the only cyborg around here.”

  I’m impressed. This is the first time I’ve knowingly met someone else who uses one.

  To Becky he says, “I need shoes like these to fit a foot two hundred eighty-six millimeters from toe to heel. . . . Yeah, I need them now. I need them five minutes ago. Get lunch later.” He plunks the shoes down on a workbench. “This is going to be easy.” It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to me again. “We just need to make a cushioned sleeve that will fit around the mechanical foot, so it sits snuggly in the shoe.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Easy.”

  He ignores me, and rightfully so. I watch as he whips up a viscous white liquid. He pours it inside the too-small shoes, filling them to the brim. In a few minutes the liquid cools into a gel, resulting in a soft cast of the shoe interiors. Joby takes the casts to the 3-D printer, scans them into memory, and then extends the size of the digital image to match my new feet. Next, he pulls up an image of my feet from his design records, superimposes it on the shoe casts, and then subtracts the difference, leaving an image of a hollow, padded sock. He instructs the 3-D printer to replicate it and asks me if I want to shoot some pool.

  • • • •

  The next day at noon I’m waiting in the shade of the hospital portico for Lissa to come pick me up. I’m wearing my service uniform and my new, large shoes. Visitors come and go from the parking lot. Some glance at me, a few offer a casual nod, but no one stares. My legs and feet are hidden, and all anyone sees is an ordinary soldier.

  Lissa’s thumbnail avatar appears in my overlay—“I’m here”—as a white, rented sedan passes the guard station at the start of the driveway.

  I grin, wave, and grab my small duffel bag. As she pulls under the portico I can see her through the windshield. Her eyes goggle and her mouth is round with shock. “They fixed you,” she says in astonishment as I slide into the shotgun seat.

  I lean over and collect a kiss. A very serious kiss. Then I look her in the eyes and tell her, “I got us an early check-in.”

  She’s kind of breathless, so she just smiles and slips the car into drive while I tell the GPS where we’re going.

  A cheerful older woman at the front desk checks us in. Since we only have two small bags, we go up to the suite alone. I swipe the keycard against the sensor plate, and the door unlocks, opening onto a palace. High-end furnishings are tastefully arranged on thick carpet, designer features are everywhere, fresh flowers fill two vases, and fine art decorates the walls. “Wow, the staff at Kelly knew what they were talking about when they sent me here!”

  Lissa whoops and kicks off her sandals, dancing across the front room, twirling, her skirt rising like the petals of a flower around her beautiful legs. Then she drags the blinds closed, cutting off our view of the River Walk restaurants and plunging the room into shadow.

  “Nothing but us,” she says. “Nothing exists but us.”

  I want her so badly I’m afraid I’ll hurt her. The first time is just raw need. I’m awkward, and I don’t know at first how to move the legs, and the whole thing is laughably ugly. But it’s over fast and we try again . . . and again.

  The bedroom is a timeless cave. We lie together on a vast spread of creamy white sheets. I watch her breasts rise and fall as she softly breathes, half-asleep. I’m aware of her toe pressed against the flat gray metal bone of my shin and I wonder how she can bear it, but I don’t ask.

  Stop the world, I think. Here. Now.

  Why would I ever need more than this?

  She draws a deeper breath, and her eyes open. They gaze into mine. “I’m afraid of what’s coming,” she whispers. “Of what it’s going to be like when I lose you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me.”

  But gray bones are already in our bed and we both know that’s a promise not in my power to keep.

  • • • •

  “Six weeks,” I whisper to her.

  It’s Monday, predawn. We’re parked under the hospital portico, our heads together, working up the courage to say good-bye. The skullnet’s icon is aglow in my overlay, which means it’s working to buoy my mood—so I guess it’s possible to feel worse than I do. “If I can call you before then, I will, but don’t expect it.”

  “They want to play head games with you.”

  “Lissa—”

  “They want to turn you into a robo-soldier,” she insists in an angry whisper, as if someone outside the car might hear. “That’s the only reason to isolate you. They’ll try to break down your ethics and your values, so they can replace them with a new value set. And you’re vulnerable. You’re not even sure you’re human anymore.”

  “That’s what the training is about. They want me to integrate with the prosthetics, to see the legs and the skullnet and even Delphi’s voice as part of me, and not as something I have to think about or feel self-conscious over—because that kind of doubt could slow me down.”

  She gazes at me with a look that says I’m a sorry fool. “They don’t care about what’s best for you, Shelley. You’re an experiment, and they are going to want to test the limits of what you can do.”

  I sigh and lean back in the seat, but my hand is still tight around hers. I do not want to let her go. “You’re probably right. But I got through Dassari, and I’ll get through this.” Then I ask, because I have to know, “Are you going to stick with me, Lissa?”

  Her hand squeezes tighter against mine. “I don’t know how we can make this work.”

  “I don’t know either, but I want to try.”

  I hear her gentle sigh. “Call me when you can. We’ll see how it goes.”

  I should be relieved she’s not leaving me, but her hesitation feels like rejection. I try to hide my anger, but she knows.

  “Shelley, it isn’t you. You know I love you.”

  “You just wish you didn’t.”

  She looks straight into my eyes; her gaze doesn’t waver when she asks me, “Why would I want to love a soldier? Knowing you’ll be deployed for six months or a year or more? Knowing you’re always in danger? Who the hell would want that, Shelley?”

  “That’s not what it’s about. You’re supposed to want me.”

  “I do. Ergo, my problem.”

  She proves the issue with one more long kiss before we whisper our good-byes. I get out of the car and watch her drive away. Lissa needs more than love. Her logical mind requires that our relationship make sense—and it doesn’t. Not for her.

  A link in my overlay flares and fades, letting me know I’m back in the system. At 0600 I’m due in physical therapy for a strength and agility assessment, and then I’m scheduled to head out to the Center For Human Engineering, Integration, & Training—C -FHEIT. No one’s pronounced it for me yet, but I’m putting my money on “see-fight.” The army would be into that.

  • • • •

  Ten-foot chain-link topped with razor wire and watched over by perimeter sensors fences out the civilian world, but the landscape looks the same on both sides of the boundary line: flat terrain, supporting groves of low, scattered trees with brown, knee-high grass rustling between them.

  C -FHEIT is far from anywhere. In my overlay, the network icon is a red circle with an X in it, declaring the absence of a cell network. All I can do is passively receive GPS, allowing me to follow our progress on a map huddled in the corner of my vision. When I fix my gaze on it, the map moves closer to center. It’s superimposed on an out-of-date satellite image that shows the road we’re on as a dirt track running straight across empty country. In fact, the road’s been paved. It’s a generous one lane with a white fog line on either side, the asphalt so dark and smooth it looks like it was laid down yesterday.

  The red-X’d circle turns green as my overlay picks up a new network. Data streams out to Guidance, including my l
ocation, kicking into action an automatic process that notes my arrival at C -FHEIT and shuts me down. The green circle winks out. So does the map—and the promised lockdown begins. The only link I have now is to Guidance.

  I sigh and return my attention to the real world around me.

  I’m riding shotgun in an army SUV driven by Private First Class Mandy Flynn, who proceeds at exactly the posted speed limit of thirty-five. It’s eight miles to the facility. We’re nearly there when Private Flynn looks around surreptitiously with her wide green eyes and tells me, “There’s deer here.” These are the first words she’s volunteered since she picked me up at Kelly AMC almost two hours ago.

  Flynn wears the insignia of an LCS soldier. I asked her about it as soon as I saw her shaved scalp, only half-hidden under her cap. It astonishes me that she’s one of us because she’s tiny: a slim five one. Even wearing the exoskeleton, size and strength matter, but Flynn must have passed her quals and I have to admire her for that. She’s only eighteen years old and hasn’t seen combat yet.

  She risks a glance at me, and then adds, “No one’s allowed to hunt the deer. There’s a penalty if you shoot one during field exercises.”

  “You ever shoot one?”

  She looks away and flashes a shy half smile. “Haven’t had a chance yet, sir. Been waiting for the first cyborg to transfer in before we get issued our assignments and weapons.”

  I look ahead as the small facility comes into sight. There’s a concrete quadrangle, pinned in place by a flagpole. The road loops around it, dividing it from a two-story building on one side that my overlay identifies as the barracks, and an even taller building on the other, labeled as a gymnasium complex. The labels fade away as soon as I read them. At the far end of the quadrangle is the sprawling cyber­netics center: a gray, one-story building with a remarkable lack of windows.

  Everything looks fresh and newly made. The asphalt is black, the concrete is bright, the buildings are clean. The landscaping is all mulch and thin young trees, held up with guy lines. Two cars are parked in front of the barracks, both official sedans. I don’t see any personnel at all.