Machine Man

by Max Barry

  The driver leaned out the window and screamed abuse. This was when I saw he was shirtless. He wore mirror shades and chunky jewelry, which flew around as he gesticulated. I tensed, in case he was about to get out and beat me up, but he only stabbed fingers in my direction, punctuating insults I couldn’t hear over the torrent of high-fidelity music pouring from his stereo.

  Finally he put the car in gear and drove off. I watched him slingshot around the next corner, already up to forty or fifty miles per hour. I walked on. I felt vaguely outraged that such a bad person had such a good car. Because the car was the culmination of a thousand-odd years of scientific advancement. But the guy was a dick. I wondered when that had happened; that we had started making better machines than people.

  MY ASSISTANTS arrived in the Glass Room holding coffees and talking about something they seemed to find funny. They saw me and froze.

  “Dr. Neumann?” said Katherine. I inferred this from her lip movements. I was on the other side of the polymer glass and she hadn’t toggled the intercom. I waited for her to realize this. “Dr. Neumann … what’s in the syringe?”

  “Morphine.” This came out muffled because I was holding my shirtsleeve in my teeth. But I think she understood. I completed the injection and let my sleeve drop. “For the pain.”

  Katherine and Jason shared a glance. Jason leaned toward the microphone. “What pain is that, Dr. Neumann?”

  I felt disappointed. These guys were supposed to be the brightest minds of their generation. Yet here I was in the Clamp with a syringe of morphine and they couldn’t figure it out. “I think that will become obvious.”

  On one wall of the Glass Room was the Big Red Button. If you flipped up its clear plastic panel and pressed it, everything lost power. A sign said EMERGENCIES ONLY. A while ago somebody had taped beside it: DO! NOT!!! PUSH!, because lab assistants are curious. Jason’s eyes flicked at the button.

  “Please call Medical,” I said.

  To his credit, Jason made it look like he was going for the phone. He leaned in that direction and picked up the handset. Then lunged at the Big Red Button.

  But my button was closer. It was in my hand. The Clamp was powered up, humming on standby. Its steel plates were positioned about—well, a foot apart. I was sitting on one edge. My left leg, the biological one, dangled.

  It was just as well I took care of this in advance, because the morphine was already seeping into my neurons, fogging my synapses. If I hadn’t been prepared, Jason would have reached the Big Red Button before I could activate the Clamp and crush my leg. But I was, and he didn’t, and I did.

  I WOKE but not in the hospital. It took me a while to figure this out because I couldn’t focus my eyes and because I really, really should have been in the hospital.

  “… on its way,” said someone. It sounded like that guy. My boss. D. Peters. “Two minutes, or thereabouts.”

  “Everyone’s off this level?” This was a woman, familiar but hard to place.

  “Except Medical, yes.”

  I felt sensations. Hands on my body: firm and professional. They did not belong to the voices. The voices were farther away. They were observing while the hands worked. The woman sighed. “This is disgusting.”

  “You don’t have to be here.”

  “It’s a mess. I’m a mess cleaner. I’m here.”

  D. Peters cleared his throat. “Not an accident this time, I’m guessing.”

  “No.”

  “Well … that’s good. Isn’t it?”

  “It’s great. We have a suicidal employee.”

  “I mean—”

  “Do you know what our workplace injury rate is like before we add people who deliberately throw themselves into the equipment?”

  “I just—”

  “Maybe you should front the investigators, Dick. See how you do. Because there will be investigators.”

  “Cassandra, I’m not trying to—”

  “When it’s an accident, you show the investigators who screwed up, how they did it, and the initiatives you’re putting in place to ensure it never happens again. Initiatives solve the problem. Everybody likes initiatives,” said Cassandra Cautery, the crisis manager. “What’s our initiative for this? Who screwed up?”

  “I guess he did.”

  “That answer gets us a tribunal. Did we pressure him to return to work too soon? Did we provide enough counseling? What was our process for monitoring his mental state? Did he feel we provided a welcoming workplace?”

  “I see.”

  “Honestly, it’d be easier if he bled out.”

  The hands hesitated. I tried to raise my head, but only managed to half open one eye. A sun hung over my face, angry and brilliant. It looked familiar. A lab light.

  “He moved,” said D. Peters. “Did you see that?”

  Another sigh. “I hate mess. I hate it.”

  “But you’re so good with it.”

  “I know,” she said.

  I DRIFTED in and out. I’m not sure for how long. I felt content. Warm. I had an urge to scratch my leg but could ignore it. At some point I opened my eyes and saw the familiar ceiling of my old hospital room and so I went back to sleep. Everything felt okay.

  A NURSE came and fiddled with something beside my bed. She was large and beautiful. I remembered her as Katie. Hello, I tried to say. I was happy to see her again and wanted her to know. My hand flopped against her dress. She turned to me and folded her arms. “Yes?” Her eyes flicked over me without feeling. Finally she turned back to my bedside table and slid the drawer home with an aggressive thunk. I didn’t know what I had done to Nurse Katie but apparently it was something pretty bad.

  WHEN I was less drugged, I pulled aside the sheet to inspect the damage. I thought it wouldn’t be so terrible the second time around but it was. Before, I had been able to see the space where my leg should be. I had been a man missing a leg. Now I was a creature that ended at the thighs. A different life-form. I was small. I closed my eyes and cried because it was suddenly obvious that I had been very stupid.

  BUT LATER I remembered I wasn’t legless. I had legs. I just wasn’t wearing them. They were state-of-the-art and I had built them myself. They were already more functional than my biological legs and soon they would be even better. It was easier to keep this in mind if I avoided looking at my stumps. Everything would be fine once I got my new legs, I told myself. This wasn’t loss. It was transition.

  NURSE KATIE came back. It was dark outside. The hospital was quiet except for the squeaky shoes of nurses. I was groggy but not so much that I didn’t know my phone was missing. Last time they had brought my personal effects with me. But now nothing. I was thirsty for internet. I itched for something with a processor.

  Nurse Katie inspected my drips wordlessly, even though I was lying there, looking at her. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello.”

  “Have you seen my phone?”

  Katie set her wrists on her hips. “Your phone?”

  “It was in my shirt pocket. I can’t see any of my clothes in here.”

  “You can’t have your clothes.”

  I hesitated, because this wasn’t an answer. “Do you know where they are?”

  “Yes, and you can’t have them.”

  I tried again. “I don’t need my clothes. I need my phone. Can you see if my phone is in the pocket?”

  “No.” Katie circled the bed and lifted my sheet. I couldn’t see what she was doing but she had to be checking my catheters. I had two: a urinary catheter and a bowel catheter. Nobody had explained this to me. I had figured it out myself, when the pressure to relieve myself had become too great. It was a relief in every sense. You would think a bowel catheter would be disgusting but it had major functional advantages over a bathroom visit. Everything was sealed and sanitary. When you thought about it, it was the regular system that was foul.

  “Can you tell me why you can’t give me my phone?”

  Katie dropped my sheet. “Because you’re on suicide
watch.”

  I was too surprised to respond. She turned and squeaked away down the corridor.

  SO THAT explained where my underpants had gone. But it didn’t tell me why everyone was angry. It wasn’t just Katie. When Nurse Mike bathed me, he was subdued and noncommittal and made no jokes. Nurse Veronica let my dinner tray clatter onto my table trolley. I was too intimidated to pursue my phone. Instead I lay in bed watching TV with the sound down, so as not to annoy anybody.

  MY SURGEON visited: Dr. Angelica Austin, with the frizzy hair and impatient manner. “So you’re back.” She rolled aside my sheet without asking. Her fingers pressed. I couldn’t feel them at all. She could have been tenderizing steaks. “Healing well.” She sounded regretful.

  I looked down. The difference between my stumps was kind of amazing. I hadn’t thought the right was healing much but compared with the new one it was rosy with health. The other was puffy, shiny, and stuffed with tubes. It would take a lot of time before I could get that into a prosthetic without screaming. Or a lot of drugs.

  “I suppose there’s no need to discuss the recovery process,” said Dr. Angelica Austin. “That should be fresh in your memory.”

  “I’m not suicidal.”

  Dr. Angelica Austin ignored this. “How’s your pain?”

  “Very bad.” Not completely true. But the nurses were being lax with my medication, forcing me to compensate by demanding it earlier and in greater quantities. “I’m not suicidal.”

  “Discuss that with psych.” She gazed at my stump. Her expression reminded me of a time in high school when out of nowhere a girl I hardly knew said, “You have beautiful eyes.” The next thing she said was “What a waste.” “Not my area.”

  “When do I get a psych consult?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?” This didn’t get an answer. I changed tactics. “Can I have my phone? I don’t see how it’s supposed to be dangerous.” Dr. Angelica popped a pen and wrote on my chart. “Is Lola Shanks coming?”

  “Perhaps later.”

  “Why is everyone mad at me?”

  Dr. Angelica Austin lowered her clipboard. “No one is mad at you.” She looked mad. Then she left.

  That night I developed a terrible crawling sensation in both legs. I was supposed to be doped at midnight but it was 12:17 a.m. and still no drugs. I sweated and shook and eventually held down the call button for as long as it took. Nine minutes later, Nurse Veronica arrived. She glared at me like I was a stain. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was busy with the patients who want to get better.”

  DAYS PASSED and no one visited. In this respect it was much like before. The difference was now I wanted them to. Well. Not them. Her. I wanted Lola Shanks to barge through the door, her arms full of legs.

  I couldn’t risk asking for her. Since the nurses had turned hostile, letting them know I wanted something was a strategic mistake. My meals were proof of that. But I couldn’t wait, either. On the fifth day I formulated a plan to drag myself across the floor to the phone in the hall. Then, like a miracle, she appeared. She did not have any prosthetic limbs. It was just her, in a big hospital shirt and sweatpants. She hung in the doorway and stared at me through her glasses.

  I pulled myself upright. “Hi! Hi.”

  She stopped short of my bed. “You crushed your other leg.”

  “Yeah.”

  “On purpose.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” The word slid out of her mouth like it was heavy. It dropped to the floor and lay there.

  “Because …” I couldn’t think how to explain it. It seemed obvious. She had seen my prototype.

  “Do you want to die?”

  “No!”

  “Do you hate yourself?”

  “No. Well.” I considered. There were parts of which I didn’t have a very high opinion. But I didn’t hate them. I just thought they could be better. “No.”

  “Do you like pain?”

  “What? Of course not.”

  “Then it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “When someone gets their vision laser-corrected, nobody thinks they’re trying to hurt themselves. They’re just tolerating short-term pain to improve their bodies. You do physical therapy. You make people sweat and struggle and do painful exercises. You have—you have pierced ears. Did you puncture your earlobes because you hate yourself? Are you working your way up to suicide?” Lola sucked in a breath, but I had found a point and wanted to make it. “Pain isn’t my goal. My pain is a side effect of the human body being so flawed that the only way to implement significant improvements is to scrap what’s there and start over. I just want to upgrade. That’s not weird. People go to the gym to do that. The only difference is I have access to better technology.”

  I realized I had gone too far. Lola began to move. “Wait,” I said. “Let me rephrase that.” But she was leaning closer. Before I realized what was happening, she kissed me.

  ONE TIME at an MIT party, I talked to a girl on a ripped leather sofa about alternate universes. She leaned forward as if to make a point and fell onto me with her lips open. I’m not really sure how it happened. Her pupils were dilated. I guess that’s how. It was shocking and I didn’t know what to do. The whole time we were kissing I was terrified I would screw this up and she would stop. Her head became heavy and her kissing less urgent and then she fell asleep. I didn’t realize this right away. I had to figure it out. I put my arms around her and lay there with her in my arms and it was really great.

  I mention this because until Lola Shanks kissed me it was the most passionate experience of my life, and it was twelve years earlier, and that is a really long time.

  “LOLA,” SAID someone from the doorway. Lola’s lips jerked from mine. It was a terrible loss. I saw my surgeon, Dr. Angelica Austin, radiating fury.

  “I just …” Lola’s shoulders dropped. Dr. Angelica Austin beckoned. Lola threw me a glance full of guilt and promise. She turned away. Her hand trailed from my shoulder. Dr. Angelica stood aside and Lola slumped by. I wanted to say Wait or Come back or even Thank you but Dr. Angelica’s eyes stopped me. You are never to see my daughter again. It was like that. She put a hand on the door as if to slam it then took it away, because I was on suicide watch.

  LOLA DID not come back. When Katie delivered my dinner I asked if I could see Lola, and Katie said she would find out in a way that meant she already knew, and no. I couldn’t call her because I had no phone. I couldn’t get out of bed because I had no legs. Even if I could get my hands on a wheelchair, I was enmeshed in a web of tubes and bags. I was trapped.

  IN THE morning I was visited by Cassandra Cautery, the crisis manager for Better Future. She wore a snug gray jacket over a pinstripe shirt with a big collar and a little skirt. It was kind of a schoolgirl–meets–Wall Street look. Her cheekbones were full of compassion. “Oh, Charlie.” She put one hand on her chest. “Oh, Charlie.” She pulled a chair to the edge of my bed and looked at me with wet eyes. “I can’t tell you how upset I am. With this. With myself. With this whole situation.”

  I recalled Cassandra Cautery and D. Peters discussing me as I lay bleeding on the floor of Lab 4. The memory was thin and I couldn’t remember what they had said. But I had the feeling I should be angry about it.

  “I honestly thought we were giving you the support you needed. But we weren’t. Clearly, we weren’t. I’m so sorry. I need to know. What more could we have done?”

  “About what?”

  “About …” She put her hand on my arm. Her fingers were surprisingly warm. For some reason I thought they would be cold. “About making you feel necessary.”

  This took me a moment to untangle. I am not good with indirectness. I take people literally and realize what they meant later. “Oh. I didn’t try to kill myself. I’ve been saying this over and over. I don’t want to kill myself. I just want to replace my legs.”

  Cassandra Cautery opened her mouth like she was about to say something, then closed it again. She tilted her
head and squinted.

  “Having one leg is awkward,” I said. “You either use an artificial replacement that tries to mimic the real one, which is essentially impossible and limits you to the capabilities of the prosthesis. Or you build a really good prosthetic leg, but then you’re stuck with a biological limb that can’t keep up. It’s like a car that uses the driver’s leg as one wheel. At some point biology just gets ridiculous.”

  Cassandra Cautery said, “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “I can show you. My legs are at work.”

  “Your …” She touched her mouth. “Charlie, your legs are gone. They were crushed.”

  “Not those legs. My new legs. Ones I made.”

  She sat back.

  “It’s not complicated. First I built a prosthetic leg. Then I realized it would work better as a pair. So I removed my biological leg.”

  “To … so you could … could …”

  “So I could wear the artificial set.”

  “The artificial set … of legs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because … because …”

  “Because the artificial ones are better.”

  Cassandra Cautery seemed frozen. Her hand lay on my arm like a dead thing. I shifted, uncomfortable. I didn’t know how I could explain this any more clearly. Seconds passed. I coughed. Cassandra Cautery jerked out of the chair. Her face still hadn’t changed. When she spoke, only her lips moved. “Well … you’ve given me … a lot to think about. Can I … I’ll get back to you … on this.” She turned and walked away like she was on strings.

  “Wait,” I said. “Can you send me the prosthetist? Lola Shanks?”

  Cassandra Cautery turned. Moments passed. Her eyes were on me but her brain was far away. Her head spasmed a nod. But I didn’t think she meant it, and from the absence of Lola Shanks that followed, she didn’t.

  A MAN filled my doorway. His neck burst out of his collar like a tree. His hands were black shovels. His gray shirt pulled against muscles I didn’t have. He was a security guard. “Hi.” He had a book. A novel, I thought. I wondered if it was for me. Maybe Cassandra Cautery had noticed I had nothing to do. “I’m Carl. From Better Future.” Seconds passed. I usually like to interact with people who don’t speak until it’s necessary but I was intimidated by Carl’s physique. I didn’t feel inferior so much as incompatible. Carl existed on a plane where success was measured by physical feats. He had a brain because his body needed it, rather than the opposite. I didn’t understand such people. I didn’t know what they wanted, or might do.