Machine Man

by Max Barry

  Carl nodded, as if we had resolved something. He left. I heard a chair scrape in the hallway. Time became punctuated by the sound of him turning pages.

  WHEN A nurse came into my room, to give me food or medication or check I wasn’t leaking, Carl followed her in. He stood with his shovel hands folded in front of him, his eyes on each of the nurse’s moves. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I grew to like it, because he made the nurse nervous. One time I pressed the call button, and after two minutes had passed with no response, Carl’s chair scraped back. I heard his black shoes rapping down the hall. When he came back he had Nurse Mike in tow.

  “I want my phone,” I told Mike. “And I want to see Lola Shanks.” This hadn’t been why I pressed the call button. I had wanted a TV guide. But now he was here, I was testing.

  Nurse Mike glanced at Carl. “I’m sorry, Dr. Neumann. I can’t help you with that.” Carl said nothing. Mike’s shoulders eased. So it was not a victory. But still, my position had clearly improved.

  CARL STOPPED turning pages. He was there. I could hear his chair squeak. But he wasn’t reading. I decided to talk to him. I could be social, when I’d had time to think about it beforehand. “Carl?”

  His frame appeared in the doorway. “Yes, sir?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I go where they send me.”

  “Are you meant to stop me escaping?”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to be escaping, sir. With respect.”

  “So why?”

  He shrugged, like heaving mountains. “I guess the company wants you looked after.”

  I found this unsatisfying. But I couldn’t think how else to probe. “Did you finish your book?”

  His eyebrows raised. “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Nothing special. Just something to pass the time.” I waited. He cleared his throat. “It’s about a man who goes back in time. To rescue his fiancée.”

  “From what?”

  “A fire.”

  “Does he do it?”

  “He does. But he creates a time rift, and has to go back again and murder her.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” said Carl. “It’s kind of sad.”

  “Could I read it?”

  “I don’t know if you’ll like it. It’s not a smart book.”

  “I have nothing else to do.”

  He went out to the hall and returned with the novel. The title was Ripples in Everwhere. A man stood silhouetted against a burning building. Its pages were curled and yellow.

  “Looks like a favorite.”

  “Yeah. My fiancée died.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not in a fire, though. Car crash.”

  “Oh.” I struggled to think what to say. I hadn’t planned for this. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. It was eight years ago.”

  “I never had a fiancée.”

  “Oh,” said Carl.

  “I would like one.”

  “Yeah, I can, uh … recommend it.” There was silence. “They understand you. You don’t really get what it’s like to be understood until you’ve had it and … don’t.”

  I nodded. That was pretty much what I figured. I turned the book over in my hands.

  “That cover irritates me,” Carl said. “In the book, he’s never standing outside a house like that. It’s an apartment. And he can’t get the door open. That’s why his fiancée dies. She’s inside and he can’t bust down the door. He’s not strong enough. Why would they make the cover wrong like that?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know.

  “It’s important. It’s the most important part of the book. My Lily, I couldn’t pull her out of the truck. I wasn’t strong enough either.” He cracked his knuckles. “Back then I didn’t work out. Couldn’t get the truck door open.”

  “That’s really bad.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was really bad.” We nodded at each other. It was a comfortable silence. Then less so. “Anyway …” said Carl. “I’m keeping my eyes open for any time rifts.”

  “Travel to the past is almost certainly prevented by the chronology projection conjecture.” Carl said nothing. “I mean … it seems extraordinarily unlikely.”

  “I know.”

  I tried to think how to back up. But it was too late and the silence stretched.

  “Hope you like the book,” said Carl.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  TWO DAYS passed. Carl was relieved by a white guy who tapped his foot and hummed themes from TV shows. He came in and asked if I had watched the Knicks game and I didn’t know which sport that was so that was the end of that. I became engrossed in Carl’s book. The man in it was trying to fix his life but kept being denied by the laws of physics. Or not the actual laws of physics but how they applied in this book. What I liked was how he didn’t stop trying. He broke the world in several different ways but kept going back and doing it differently. I liked the doggedness. The idea that if you wanted something impossible you could get it if all you did was never give up.

  I DREAMED of tiny, shrinking spaces and woke wet and gasping for breath, my legs crawling with needles. My body was fighting back. It was telling me it did not want to lose any more pieces. I felt annoyed, because I thought I was past this. My body really needed to realize that I didn’t take orders from internal organs. I was a consciousness serviced and supported by a biological host, not the other way around. These self-interested lumps of meat and synapses, they had better get with the program, because if it came down to them or me, it was going to be me.

  I WOKE to Lola’s voice. It was daytime and my brain was foggy. I swam toward consciousness like a drowning man. “… one minute?” she said.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” This was the new guard.

  “Lola,” I croaked.

  “Charlie?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. You can’t go in there.”

  “One minute.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I want to see her,” I called. “Let her in.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the guard, like I didn’t exist. “I’m sorry.”

  ON THE fifth day they removed my tubes. This included my catheters. I didn’t realize what Nurse Katie was doing until it was already too late. I gazed at the plastic in dismay. “Can’t you leave those?”

  “No. There’s a risk of infection.”

  Carl stood behind her like a shadow. I didn’t want to discuss this in front of Carl but I really liked those catheters. “Isn’t there some kind of permanent option? What do you do for people who are paralyzed?”

  “You’re not paralyzed.” Katie dropped the tubes into a plastic bag marked HAZARDOUS BIOLOGICAL WASTE. “You can use a bathroom like a regular person.”

  I said nothing. This was true. I could. But why should I? We had the technology for a superior waste-disposal system but wouldn’t use it because we preferred to drop feces into an open bowl of water and rub the residue on our asses with tree pulp. But I knew it would be pointless to get into an argument about this with Katie. Before she took them away I had a good look at those catheters, so I would remember how they worked.

  I BEGAN to exercise. I raised my thighs into the air, one at a time, and rolled onto my stomach and did the same. I did three sets of ten reps. Reps were repetitions. This was terminology I had picked up. I also did push-ups. This was less impressive than it sounds because I was resting on my thighs. In high school we had called these girl push-ups. It felt good to get my body moving again, although only because my brain was releasing endorphins as encouragement. It was like being paid to wash a car. But I did it because I knew if Lola were here it’s what she’d be telling me to do.

  FOUR PSYCHIATRISTS visited, all together, like a conference. Two were men and two were women and one of the men was black. They looked like an ad for property investment or a lifestyle me
dication targeted at the upper middle class. The black guy leaned easily against the wall. He was smooth and comfortable and he smiled at me like we knew each other.

  There were introductions. They asked me how I liked the hospital. One of the women, who was blond and had sharp ears, raved about the view. You would think she had never been aboveground before. They turned the conversation toward work. This was easy for them because I wasn’t saying much beyond hello and yes and no.

  “I understand you’re a bit of an inventor,” said the white man. He lounged across his chair but was still not as smooth and comfortable as the black guy. “You build things.”

  “Legs,” said the sharp-eared woman. She smiled, like, Building legs, isn’t that clever.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’d like to hear about those.”

  For the first time, no one spoke. “Well,” I said. “They’re legs, I don’t know what to tell you.” I looked at the black guy, because maybe he could jump in and make this smooth and comfortable, but he didn’t. I sighed. “Look, seriously, I do not enjoy pain. I do not want to hurt myself. I’m not—”

  “Oh. Yes. We get that.” The man laughed. “You don’t need to convince us of your mental well-being, Dr. Neumann.”

  I looked from one face to another. “Then what do you want to know?”

  “These legs you’ve built,” said the woman. “We understand they’re superior to any other kind of prosthesis currently available.”

  “Yes. As far as I know.”

  “In fact, they’re so advanced, you … you actually chose to crush your other leg. So you could … qualify for them.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are they strong?” said the black guy leaning against the wall. “They must be.”

  “They’re okay.”

  “Only okay?”

  “I have some work to do.”

  “Oh yes.” He looked significantly at the others. “What kind of work?”

  “He’s got ideas.” This was the woman with sharp ears. “Of course he does.”

  “I wonder if you could share some of those ideas with us,” said the lounging man. “Could you do that?”

  I said, “Did you say you were psychiatrists?”

  “I don’t think so.” He looked at the others. “Did anyone say that?”

  “Well, I work in Human Resources,” said the sharp-eared woman. “You practically need to be a psychiatrist for that.”

  “What I think we said was that we wanted to talk about how you’re feeling.”

  I checked this against my memory. It may have been true.

  “These legs, you built them on company time, am I right?”

  “Um … yes.”

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said the lounging man. “That’s not a problem. That’s what we thought.”

  “Definitely in no way a problem,” said the leaning man.

  “We’re from Better Future, of course,” said the woman who hadn’t spoken until this point. She was small and brightly dressed, like a bird. “And Dr. Neumann, may I say, we are all extremely pleased and supportive and positive about the potential of your project here.” She squeezed her hands together.

  DR. ANGELICA Austin didn’t want to let me out of the hospital. It was a little funny because the nurses couldn’t be rid of me fast enough. They argued across my bed, as if I were inanimate. “I don’t care what his company says,” said Dr. Angelica. “I’m his doctor and I say he’s not ready to be discharged.”

  Nurse Katie did not stop packing my bag. Behind her, Carl mutely supervised. Two more nurses hung in the doorway, spectating: Veronica and Chelsea. Katie said, “Well, the administrator says different,” and Veronica said, “Mmm-hmm.”

  Dr. Angelica Austin flipped my chart like she was angry with it. “There’s no psych consult on here.” Her eyes rose to Katie. “How on earth can there be no psych consult?”

  “His company said—”

  “I ordered a psych consult,” said Dr. Angelica. “I sent them to this room. Where did they go?”

  Carl spoke. This gave everyone a start, including me, because we were used to him standing there like a rock. “I can’t permit them in here.”

  “You?” Dr. Angelica drew herself to her full height. Which was not much, but still impressive. She had a bearing. Maybe they taught that in medical school. Or maybe you just picked it up from the kids around you, who owned skis and formal wear and knew their cutlery. In engineering, we slouched. “You can’t?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because his mind is a commercial-in-confidence intellectual asset of Better Future.”

  Dr. Angelica’s eyebrows shifted up. Katie closed my bag zipper. It sounded authoritative. She folded her arms and settled on her heels and looked at Dr. Angelica.

  “I’m going to keep him one more day.”

  In the doorway, Veronica and Chelsea exhaled together. Katie said, “You can’t do that.”

  Dr. Angelica ignored her, scratching on my chart with her pen.

  “He’s physically fine. There’s no psych hold. He wants to be discharged. His company wants him to be discharged. The administrator is telling us to discharge.”

  Dr. Angelica shook her head slightly, as if she spent all day being thwarted by bureaucrats and it disappointed but did not surprise her. “His doctor disagrees.”

  “You know what will happen,” said Katie in a low voice. Dr. Angelica’s pen paused. This seemed so dramatic I almost laughed, because what? Would she be fired? Would Carl snap her neck? I thought Better Future would probably just get me a different doctor. But this was enough to defeat Dr. Angelica. Her bearing sagged. She was going to go home after this and sip red wine and stare at the wall, I could tell. She would wonder why she was doing this, struggling against commercial interests at a corporate hospital when all she wanted to do was help people, and in the morning, when she walked out of her beautiful home and unlocked her convertible, she would remember.

  “They’re waiting,” said Katie. “What do I tell them?”

  Dr. Angelica tossed the clipboard onto my tray, like it was useless now. “Tell them,” she said, “I strongly advise he be kept away from industrial-grade cutting and stamping equipment.”

  I COULDN’T keep still in the limousine. I patted my thighs with hands like skittish birds. I adjusted my seat belt and gazed out the smoked glass window and wished we could go faster. How far was it to Better Future anyway? I didn’t remember all these housing developments. I leaned forward to ask the driver if he was going the right way and forced myself to sit back, because of course he was. I just wanted to see my legs.

  “Not long,” said Carl. I jumped. I had practically forgotten he was there, filling the opposite seat. He was big but quiet.

  My hands clenched. I needed to put something in them. I thought of my phone. The bag the hospital had packed for me was on the seat beside me: I unzipped it and rummaged through my old clothes, which I had not seen in weeks. My phone was not there. I sat back and exhaled. Those assholes.

  “Problem?”

  “My phone.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s missing.” I didn’t mean to snipe. I was misdirecting my frustration.

  “Would you like to go back for it?”

  I opened my mouth to say yes.

  “It’s no problem,” said Carl.

  “Could you … have them send it?”

  “Sure.”

  “By courier or something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, we’ll do that.” I looked out the window and drummed on my thighs. Buildings slid by.

  THE LIMO stopped. Carl exited like a cork from champagne. I tugged my door handle but only got as far as shuffling toward the opening before he pulled the door all the way open. I squinted. Carl bent and lifted me into a waiting wheelchair. There was applause. This didn’t make any sense. Then Carl moved and I saw the concrete path to
the lobby lined with employees. When they saw me they cheered. I was still confused. Standing before me was Cassandra Cautery, her hands clasped, as if in prayer. She came toward me with her arms out. She bent and kissed me on the cheek. “Welcome home,” she whispered. I had gone seven years without a kiss and now I’d had two in a week. It was the kind of data event that implied a serious contamination of laboratory conditions. Cassandra Cautery put one hand on my shoulder and Carl wheeled me toward the lobby. People held out hands for high-fives. I passed a woman from Vertex Processing who in meetings always chose the seat with the greatest displacement from mine, always, and she whispered, “You’re an inspiration.” I didn’t understand what was happening.

  Inside the air was cool and regulated. “I’ve taken the liberty of expanding your staff,” said Cassandra Cautery. “What do you think of that Jason Huang? I left him, but his metrics are average.”

  “I like Jason.”

  Carl stopped pushing. Cassandra Cautery came around and looked into my eyes. She was very beautiful. She seemed constant, occupying a natural place in the world. It was difficult to imagine her any different, like upset or tired. That was a property of beauty, I guessed: permanence. “It would be no problem to get rid of him.”

  “Jason’s fine.”

  “I just want you to have the best.”

  “Why?”

  Cassandra Cautery nodded thoughtfully, like this was a weighty question and she wanted to get the answer right. “What you said in the hospital about artificial being better. Well, that sparked some interest here. Some very high-level interest. Discussions all the way up to the Manager.” She searched my eyes. I didn’t know who the Manager was. “What would you say to your own product line?”