by Max Barry
I CONSIDERED heading back to Better Future. My chances of finding the café with Lola Shanks seemed slim. I should power down and wait for somebody to pull over and ask if I was okay and then I could ask them to please call my company. Now I thought about it, I should have built in a cell phone. That was a major oversight. Anyway, clearly the Contours had major functional issues and could not be trusted to bear me anywhere. Then I realized I was outside a café, and inside it, sipping coffee, was Lola.
I hesitated. The café had a green awning and iron furniture and people in nice clothes eating real food. I didn’t want to make a scene. But Lola was there. I thought, Maybe … and the legs took this as a green light. They strode across the road. I ducked beneath the doorway before it could hit me on the forehead. Heads turned. Pasta hung from forks. Lola’s eyes found mine. Her hair was in a ponytail. She wore a long yellow dress that billowed in the chest but gripped her like death around the arms. She smiled, like nothing mattered except that I was here, and I smiled, too, because I felt the same way.
The Contours picked a path between tables. They were behaving. “Hi,” I said. I couldn’t stop smiling. Lola was right: I had been at the lab too long. I had forgotten what it felt like to interact with people for the pleasure of it.
“Hi.” She looked down, then back. We were the only people talking. We looked around and eyes shifted away. People cleared their throats and forced conversation. They were being polite. I was a little insulted, because I was not disabled. “Um. Have a seat.”
The Contours settled; pistons retracted. I still towered above the table, but not as much. Lola’s mouth formed an O.
“These … look different.”
“We’ve made a lot of progress.”
“Where are the controls?”
I tapped my head. “Nerve interface.”
Lola blinked. “Charlie … this is amazing.” She stared at my hand. I had meant to keep that out of sight. It was my robot hand. At some point I intended to cover it with molded plastic but for the moment it was all metal skeleton and coiled electrical wire. I slid it under the table. “That isn’t finished.”
Lola looked at me through eyelashes. When she spoke, her voice was low and throaty. “Charlie … what have you done?”
“Well,” I said. “You know.”
“Show me.”
I glanced around. The other patrons had returned to their business, or pretended to. I placed my hand on the table.
Lola sat rigid. She didn’t seem to be breathing. “Can I touch it?”
“Yes.”
Her fingers crept closer. They explored my index finger, then ran down to the back of my hand. It was the first time I had really missed sensation feedback. “Oh, Charlie.” Sunlight bouncing off a building across the street played across her cheeks. A few stray hairs that had escaped her ponytail glowed orange. I felt myself lifting out of my body. That’s how it felt: like I was leaving physical form behind, becoming something weightless and untouchable.
Then a hard shard of light skipped across Lola’s face. I turned. I’d heard the motor. Outside the café window, a white van jumped the curb and disgorged Better Future security guards.
“Damn,” I said. That was all I managed before they burst into the café and began to knock down tables. Plates hit the floor. People yelled. In the midst of this, Carl spotted me. He raised his gun and yelled, “Lie down on the floor!” He looked nervous. I didn’t like Carl nervous. Not when he had a gun pointed at me. “LIE down!”
I couldn’t lie down. That was physically impossible. Didn’t Carl know that? Lola grasped my biological hand. I saw fear in her eyes and felt sad, because a second ago she had been happy and Carl had ruined it.
“Lie down!”
I had been foolish to imagine Better Future wouldn’t track me. I was wearing millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. The guards hovered at a radius of twenty feet, bristling guns. It occurred to me that as far as they knew, my legs were armed. Conceivably, I could have built in some firepower. I wished I had.
“Charlie, don’t let them take you back,” Lola whispered. “They came to the hospital. They destroyed your records.”
I heard a noise and turned my head. Two guards were trying to sneak up on me.
“Go, go!” said Carl. He came toward me.
“No!” Lola stepped forward and threw out her arms. It was as if she was going to fly toward Carl and wrench his gun away, or call down the wrath of the gods, or something. I don’t know. All I know is Carl pivoted and shot Lola twice in the heart.
IT SOUNDED like: Clang! Clang!
“WELL, THIS is really unfortunate,” said Cassandra Cautery. “I feel terrible about this.”
I couldn’t see her. My eyes wouldn’t open properly. I didn’t know where I was, or had come from.
“What we need now, I think,” said Cassandra Cautery, “is to take a few deep breaths.”
My right eyelid peeled open. My left was still gummed up, but I could see a blob where Cassandra Cautery’s face must be. A frame of watery blond hair. Beyond her was a ceiling. I recognized that ceiling. I was at work.
“Would you like some water? You must be thirsty.”
I struggled to bring her into focus. I said, “Ag.” I smelled something acrid and unforgiving.
Cassandra Cautery disappeared, then returned holding a small plastic cup. “Drink.”
I tried to sit up. Something swam in my head, sick and heavy.
“I think there’s been miscommunication on both sides,” said Cassandra Cautery. “There are some real lessons to be learned.”
Lola, I said.
“It’s understandable you’re upset. I’d be upset in your place. But please bear in mind: it was a high-pressure situation. Our people were forced into split-second decisions.”
“Lola.” This time it was a real word. My left eye fluttered open. In a minute, I would be able to sit up. Shortly after that I would be able to get my hand around Cassandra Cautery’s tiny neck and squeeze.
“It’s the unknown,” she said. “It scares people. Makes everyone worry about worst-case scenarios.”
I remembered Lola reaching for me. Me straining to catch her. But my legs hadn’t moved. They were inert. They were anchors. I had seen slowly spreading shock on Lola’s face. Her mouth opening and closing. Her fingers describing a slow arc through the air, terminating at the red flower blossoming beneath her yellow dress. The way she fell.
“That’s really your fault, Charlie. I don’t want to start pointing fingers. But the way you ran off … it made everyone wonder what you might do.”
Men in uniforms had pulled me from my legs. The nerve interface tore. A syringe had pierced my shoulder.
“I’m not sure you appreciate the pressure we’re under. Management. The daily stresses. The what-ifs.”
I coordinated my arms and levered myself up. I was in a small windowless room. The walls were a pale, nostalgic blue. On one wall was a first aid cabinet. It was a medical room.
“She’s in surgery,” said Cassandra Cautery. “You can watch, if you like.”
I opened my mouth. Dizziness swarmed. I wanted to say: Surgery? And: Thank you and save her and or else.
“I’d like your input on something, when you feel up to it,” she said. “I’d like to know why your girlfriend has a metal heart.”
SHE LEFT. It was just me, a bed, and a vinyl floor with some disturbing stains. Compared to the rest of the company, this room was third world. I guess it said something about our priorities. We were not healers.
The door was locked. At least, I assumed so. I couldn’t bring myself to drag myself off the bed and across the floor to check. I was missing my legs. I had operated without them before, but now I knew I would never leave them again. Sitting there, half a man, waiting to find out if Lola was alive or dead, I vowed I would never let anyone take pieces of me again.
EVENTUALLY THE door opened and there was Carl. At first neither of us spoke. The last times we had int
eracted, once I fled him on artificial legs and once he shot Lola in the heart. It was an unusual social situation.
“She, uh, going to be all right,” said Carl. “I think.” In the hallway outside, I saw a wheelchair. Carl came toward me, his arms out. I tried to push him away because I wasn’t ready for him to touch me. It would be a long time before that would be okay. But he had arms like propane tanks and I was groggy and missing a hand. He lifted me off the bed. Against Carl’s rock-hard pectorals, I began to blubber. It was a posttraumatic reaction. I had been through a lot.
“Everything will be all right,” said Carl.
I sobbed. Carl was probably a decent man. A decent man, in a tough job.
“It was nonlethal ammunition. I wouldn’t have fired otherwise.”
I stopped. I was familiar enough with our company’s munitions line to know our definition of nonlethal. When we wanted to refer to weaponry that left the target not merely alive but likely to regain full quality of life, we said noncrippling. I punched Carl in the shoulder. It didn’t seem to affect him. I tried again and he put me in the wheelchair. “That book sucked,” I said. “That stupid time travel book.” Carl didn’t say anything and after that neither did I.
CASSANDRA CAUTERY was waiting in a small, dark observation room above an operating theater, a tiny, suited silhouette. As Carl wheeled me in, she glanced at me, then returned her attention to green-cloaked figures revolving around an operating table below. Carl closed the door. Before he could get his hands on my wheelchair, I found the grips and pushed myself to the glass.
Lola was on the table. I could see one of her arms poking from beneath an ocean of green cloth. It was the only piece of her on display but it was enough. A surgeon stood with his back to me, his shoulders working. It felt very wrong, Lola lying there while a man she didn’t know dug into her.
“I think Miss Shanks must have got herself into a trial,” said Cassandra Cautery. “The heart is a SynCardia, but very unusual.”
I could see it. The top, at least. It sat in a steel bowl on a tray to a surgeon’s right, a red-stained chunk of plastic and metal. It looked strange. But then, it had been deformed by two close-range impacts from Carl’s not-quite-lethal ammunition.
“A great deal of steel. Please ask her about that, when she wakes up.”
I wasn’t talking to Cassandra Cautery. I had decided this in the wheelchair, while Carl pushed me through corridors that smelled of fresh paint. I wasn’t talking to anyone until Lola was okay.
“Fortunately, we have a replacement. A little custom model of our own. And the facilities to install it.” She looked at me. “This room didn’t exist until two weeks ago. We just finished construction. Do you believe in luck, Charlie?”
I kept my mouth shut.
“Me neither. Someone’s looking out for your girl, I think. Someone upstairs.”
At first I thought she meant God. Then I realized she meant management.
“We built this place for you. For your project.”
“I’m not continuing the project.” It broke my vow of silence. But I couldn’t let her keep talking.
Cassandra Cautery looked sympathetic. “All right, Charlie. Whatever you want.” She didn’t believe me.
We watched the surgery. After a while, the surgeon with his back to us moved aside. Lola’s chest was a red, wet pit.
“As long as we’ve got her open,” Cassandra Cautery said, “I wonder if we could do anything else in there.” I looked at her, furious, but also embarrassed, because I had been thinking the same thing.
I WAS by Lola’s side when she woke. It took me by surprise, even though I’d been waiting for it: her eyelids fluttered and two dozen tiny muscles contracted and suddenly her face looked different. It was a little disconcerting. I hadn’t seen this before, this sudden infusion of consciousness.
“Hi,” I said. Lola reached for the tubes in her nose and I guided her hand away. “You’ve had surgery. They had to replace your heart.”
Her eyes widened. Her fingers moved down to her chest. “Bah.”
“It’s okay. Try to relax.”
“Bah.”
I leaned closer. “What?”
“Bah.” Her fingers closed around my shirt. “Bah.”
“Don’t exert yourself. You’re not supposed to raise your blood pressure.”
She pulled. I went with it, because I feared that if I resisted she would pop a stitch. Her lips brushed my ear. “Back,” she said. “Put … it … back.”
“WHY AREN’T you getting her to talk about the heart?” said Cassandra Cautery. This was later, in the hallway. Lola had turned unresponsive. She stared at the wall and didn’t answer questions. I had started thinking, I don’t really know her that well. We had shared some intense experiences, but when I added up the time we’d spent in each other’s company, it was like four hours. When a person you’ve just met completely changes personality, you start to wonder which one they are. Why did Lola seem to like me? I had never analyzed that. I had put it in the same category as magic.
“She won’t talk about anything. She’s comatose.”
“You’re not trying. You’re just saying her name over and over.”
Now I understood why one wall in Lola’s recovery room was a big mirror. “You’re watching?”
“Charlie,” said Cassandra Cautery. “I do not want to put any pressure on you, but what we’ve done here, this little in-house surgery, that’s not entirely legal. Do you know how that feels to a manager?” She put a hand on her chest. “It feels like I’m kicking over the baptismal font.”
“What?”
“A sustainable business works within the confines of the law. This …” She gestured at Lola’s door. “Goes against everything I stand for.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Cassandra Cautery stared at me. “I thought you’d be glad we could provide such immediate, quality medical care.”
“But—”
“We’re cleaning up the mess. That’s what I’m doing, Charlie. Cleaning up the mess. Are you on board or not?”
I didn’t answer.
“Charlie,” she said. “I’m trying to help you. I really am. Now get back in there and ask about the heart.”
I wheeled into Lola’s room. No change: she was on her side, staring out the window. Or at least that’s what I thought. When I got closer I saw she was staring at the wall near the window. “Lola?” I reached out and touched her shoulder. “Lola, it’s okay. Everything’s okay.” I stroked her hair for a while. Sometimes I repeated: “Everything’s okay.” I began to relax. I was soothing myself.
Lola’s hand closed over mine. Our eyes met. Suddenly I didn’t know why I had wondered who she was. She was Lola, of course. “I was born with a congenital heart defect,” she said. Her voice was low and distant. “Hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Only one side developed properly. I had surgery three times before I turned two. It bankrupted my family. And I needed more. It was only a matter of time. I was a time bomb. We never had vacations, or a new car, or ate out. My parents never had another kid. They scraped everything together against the day I would faint and cost three hundred thousand dollars.
“So I decided to die. There was a photo album under the coffee table I used to read, and I’d look at the pages where my parents were young and happy and went places, and I wanted them to have that again. We lived way up north, in a snow town named Chabon, and one day I walked out and took off my coat and hat and sat down next to a frozen stream. I was being romantic, I guess. But I meant it. I wanted to save my parents’ lives. I sat there until I couldn’t move, and then I fell asleep.
“When I woke, I was in a hospital bed and my mom was crying. My chest hurt. I had damaged my heart. It couldn’t beat by itself anymore. The hospital had installed an artificial one. It was a stop-gap measure, the doctor said, because I was still growing. In a few years, it would need to be replaced.
“So there we were. Me with an expensive new heart and my par
ents wiped out. This time I took down my grandparents as well. I found that out later. The retirement plans that were shelved, the homes and heirlooms that were sold. All for my temporary heart. And maybe five years until I needed a new one.
“A few weeks later I was watching TV and my mom got a call. Her face went tight and she grabbed the wall. Like somebody was pushing her over. It was the auto assembly plant. Dad’s work. He’d been on the factory floor and one of the robots had caught his hand. You know. The robots that make the cars. His hand was welded to a door. The foreman, when he visited, he kept saying he couldn’t understand it. There were safeties. They were actually one of the things Dad was in charge of. So it was a little ironic. I mean, it seemed ironic. At the time.
“They amputated Dad’s hand at the wrist. When he came home, he had a check for fifty thousand dollars. The payment schedule—there was a set amount you got for injuries on the job. Because of the union. You lose your left hand, like Dad did, and you get fifty thousand. A thumb on the dominant hand, twenty grand. Big toes, ten each. The little ones, three grand a pop. Diminished hearing is worth ten. Each foot is forty thousand dollars.” Her eyes reflected the window behind me, mapping straight lines to curves. “Guess how I know that. All these amounts.”
“DAD WAS home for six weeks,” Lola said. “I made him breakfasts. He walked me to school and afterward I ran to the gate to meet him. All bundled up against the cold, you couldn’t tell he was missing a hand. He didn’t have a prosthesis. He didn’t see the point. He liked being home. It was the first time he hadn’t had to work in years. We were both so sad when it was over. I wanted him to stay. But of course we needed the money. So he went back.
