Girl of Flesh and Metal

by Alicia Ellis

  “She doesn’t hate you.” He gestured toward the weights a second time. When I still didn’t move, he added, “She doesn’t appreciate having to work on you when she could be focused on troubleshooting the Model Ones for the upcoming rollout.”

  “What’s she got to do with it? She’s a doctor, and the Model Ones are androids. It’s not like they need annual physicals.”

  “She’s a medical doctor and a PhD. Until you showed up, she spent her time tweaking the psychological programming of the Model Ones. She’s been working all her life for this. But your dad insisted on CyberCorp’s best scientists being transferred to your case.”

  “And you?” I asked. “You’re her assistant, which means you were pulled off the Model Ones too. Does it bother you?”

  “It did, but not anymore. You’re just as fascinating. Dr. Fisher can’t see your potential.” His eyes lit with excitement. “Tech companies have worked for decades to elevate humankind with technology. You’re the culmination of that. Man—or girl—plus machine. You’re exactly the project I want to work on right now.” He passed me one of the pink, two-pound weights. “But I need you to work harder.”

  I grabbed the weight with my right hand and set it in my left. The hand refused to grip it, but Ron closed my metal fingers around the weight. I clenched my jaw and willed my arm to move.

  4

  The CyberCorp staff had tried to help me pack up my sparse belongings—the textbooks and clothing our housekeeper Marcy had brought, and the things my friends had delivered. Harmony and Melody had both tried to visit, but I’d refused. I didn’t want them to see me like this—helpless. So I’d told them CyberCorp didn’t allow me to have visitors.

  Now, after three weeks in a drug-induced coma and another two of therapy, my new arm worked almost as well as the old one. So when the staff tried to pack me up, I told them—in the nicest way possible—to go to hell. They’d waited on me for the past two weeks, and Lena Hayes didn’t need anyone’s help.

  Ron stood in the doorway watching me, arms folded across his chest.

  “Can’t we do the skin transplant before I leave?” I glared down at my shining silver arm.

  “When you’re at full strength and we’re sure the programming is perfect, we’ll do the transplant. As long as you’re still having bad headaches, we have to wait. They should have lessened by now, but since they haven’t, it’s hard to predict when Fisher will feel comfortable taking that step.” I opened my mouth to say something, but he cut me off with a laugh. “And no, you can’t stay here until then. Your mother says today’s the day you go home, so today’s the day.”

  I scowled but said nothing more. Not that I wanted to spend another minute in this building, but if the alternative was to show the world my cybernetic arm, I couldn’t decide which fate was worse.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for her?” Ron asked. “She said to expect her around noon.”

  “You mean like how she waited for my approval before attaching a computer to my head?” I’d spent a lifetime obeying my parents, and this was how they repaid me. I took pleasure in this small rebellion.

  I knelt to peer under the bed for any stray belongings and grasped—in my right hand—a small, pink Teddy bear Melody had sent me. I placed the bear in the corner of my suitcase and zipped the thing closed.

  Although naturally left-handed, I’d resolved to use my right arm as much as possible. I could do nothing about having this metal limb, but I could minimize my use of it. In that small way, I could take back control of my life.

  Ron stepped onto one of the moving walkways in the hallway, and I got on behind him. With its glossy white walkways and floors, the halls had an institutional feel, reduced somewhat by the colorful vid-screens. Here, the screens covering the walls didn’t stick with a single scene. Their text and images changed constantly.

  Part of one wall displayed company announcements, while another section displayed the status of various projects—the Model Ones, several new micro-comms and hand-screens, and a new line of networked contact lenses. A section to my left held a moving image of a creek flowing over rocks in a forest. It was the same image on my room’s displays today.

  Despite the pain medication, my left shoulder and head still ached. Each glimpse of the constantly moving images across the walls left my head spinning. I kept my gaze locked straight ahead.

  Ron led me off the walkway and pointed to one of the white doors interspersed among the screens. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Jackson lay shirtless on a twin-sized hospital bed like the one in my room. Also like my room, the walls displayed the moving image of a creek, with a soft bubbling sound filling the background. They’d told me he’d had more extensive surgery than I had, and that he was still asleep, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

  While only my left arm had been injured, the entire left side of Jackson’s body, and some of his right, appeared to have undergone surgery. A sheet and blanket covered him up to the waist, but his arms lay atop the coverings. His left arm had been replaced, up to and including his collarbone. The flesh of his neck melded into metal, which stretched across the left edge of his chest and over his entire arm.

  Metal covered the left side of his ribcage and stomach as well, disappearing under the blankets. The right arm hadn’t been spared either, but its work was less extensive. The upper arm remained flesh, changing to metal at the elbow.

  I could barely stand to look at his face. His silver cheek and jaw reflected the overhead fluorescent lights. Except for its metallic glow, he looked just like the faces of those fake skeletons they had at the front of Biology class freshman year. The flesh on the left side was gone, leaving his jaw visible all the way to the back teeth.

  What remained of his original face was pale now, no longer full of humor and life. Still, on the right, he’d kept one perfect eyelid with long dark lashes and one model-worthy cheekbone.

  I swallowed hard to keep myself from getting sick all over the floor. Ron’s hand on my back was the only thing keeping me upright. Barely.

  I’d been so angry with Jackson the night of the accident, but I didn’t want this. I didn’t want his body ripped to pieces, turned into some kind of experiment. Regardless of where he and I stood romantically, I loved him. I’d known him most of my life, and I wanted to continue knowing him for the rest of it.

  But not like this.

  I stepped deeper into the room.

  Ron gripped my bicep before I reached Jackson’s side. “You can’t touch him.”

  But I wanted to. I wanted to feel his hands at my waist, his breath on my neck, his heart next to mine. “How long is he going to be . . . ?” My voice cracked.

  “It’s hard to say. They’re doing the same healing treatments on him that they did on you, but as you can imagine, those will be a lot more extensive with Jackson. Plus, he has more hardware, and the team working on him is trying to iron out the kinks with the parts being used.”

  If I could go back five weeks, I’d promise to reconsider working for CyberCorp someday. We could talk about the future he planned for us, but first, he had to wake up. Whatever he wanted—as long as he looked at me with blue eyes that had searched me a thousand times before, held me with arms that had squeezed me a thousand times before.

  But first, he had to wake up.

  My hand-screen vibrated in the pocket of my leather jacket, and I jumped, startled. I opened it and held it to my ear without checking the caller-identification display.

  “Hello.” If I hadn’t moved my lips to make the words, I wouldn’t have recognized my own voice, broken as it was.

  “Lena,” my mother said, “where are you? I’m in your room. We said noon.”

  “Sorry. I stopped by to see Jackson. Meet me out front.”

  “Fine. Five minutes. Lionel is outside waiting for us, and it’s a madhouse out there. The police have already threatened to arrest some people for attacking my employees. I don’t feel comfortab
le leaving him and the car there for long.”

  “Mm-hmm.” My attention had strayed to Jackson’s face again, and I was half listening. It took me a full five seconds before her words registered. “Wait, what? Who’s getting arrested?”

  “Some protesters outside the building.”

  “But they’re harmless.”

  “The usual bunch of two or three are harmless, yes. Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  “Yeah, of course,” I lied.

  The truth was I’d been otherwise occupied—mostly watching every other kind of television show, when not in physical-therapy sessions or trying to keep up with my schoolwork. Soap operas, prime-time dramas, and even some cartoons. Anything to keep me from self-pity. But I avoided the news.

  Every time I flipped it on, they went on and on about the upcoming Model Ones. CyberCorp was about to introduce the first publicly available android. Soon, the whole country would own them and blah, blah, blah.

  I’d seen enough of CyberCorp over the past two weeks, every time I opened my eyes. I didn’t need to hear about it on the news too.

  “Is Allie with you?” I hadn’t seen my sister in weeks. The thought of getting home to her had kept me motivated in my physical therapy. I’d talked to her on the phone almost every day, but that wasn’t enough. Thanks to their high-profile jobs, my parents were hardly ever home, and I didn’t want Allie thinking I’d abandoned her too.

  “No, but she can’t wait to see you. It’s all she’s talked about for the last few days.”

  “The feeling’s mutual. See you in a minute.”

  In the mirror attached to the inside of Jackson’s door, I double-checked the left sleeve of my leather jacket to make sure it fully covered my new limb. With my hand in my pocket, I could hide all but a sliver of metal at my wrist.

  “Ready to go?” Ron tapped his wrist at the spot where a watch would have been if he wore one.

  “No one asked you to walk me out.” I nudged past him into the hallway, dragging my roller bag behind me.

  “But you want me to.” His smile reached up to a pair of striking amber eyes hiding behind his glasses—an odd color I hadn’t noticed before. He grabbed the bag handle from me, threw an arm over my shoulder, and led me in the direction of the elevators.

  “Maybe a little,” I said.

  “Have you heard from your so-called friends?”

  “I spoke to them last night. And what do you mean by so-called?”

  “I don’t get how they haven’t visited you at all. If I were them, you wouldn’t have been able to keep me away.”

  “I didn’t know how to explain the whole arm thing to them—so I didn’t. They tried to visit, but I told them not to.”

  He shrugged but said nothing.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I would have insisted until you agreed to let me.”

  “They did insist. I insisted harder.”

  “I would have stopped by unannounced.”

  “They wouldn’t have gotten past security. I told them last night I was going home today, and they’re thrilled.”

  “But you’re not thrilled.” He made it sound like a statement, instead of a question.

  I watched the tiles of the floor pass by next to our moving walkway. A minute later, we stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed us inside.

  “Lobby,” Ron instructed it. The elevator zipped down to the building’s main level, and the doors opened to the grand lobby.

  I gasped as I stepped onto the matte silver floor. Apparently, in my time here, they’d redecorated. Multiple display stations were scattered throughout the space.

  One station showed a few new hand-screens and small vid-screens. Another displayed a set of networked contact lenses, which allowed the wearer to see virtual objects as if they existed in the real world. Most people already had lenses like those, but these were the newest model. The last station displayed what looked like a cross between an oven, a microwave, and a refrigerator.

  A robotic puppy leaped around the remaining space. It yipped and wagged its little metal tail. Giggling, a small boy of about five years old ran after it on stubby legs.

  Much like the walls on the hospital floor, the walls to my left and right contained vid-screens that covered their entire surfaces. These didn’t include calming nature scenes or important CyberCorp announcements. At the left wall, an older man and two small girls stood in front of the screen, waving their arms and touching the display here and there. In response, it flashed vibrant colors. One of the girls jumped up and down and clapped her hands together, thrilled at the reaction.

  Some things hadn’t changed—the matte silver floor, a wall of windows across from the elevators, and a long, curved black-and-chrome reception desk in front of the windows. Only now, next to the desk stood a Model One android, the first I’d seen in real life. Its dull red eyes stared back at me, sending pinpricks of ice down my back.

  The room was so bright with activity that I needed to blink a few times to adjust. The back of my head pulsed.

  “You okay?” Ron asked.

  “I just wasn’t prepared for all the stuff in here.”

  He laughed. “The head of public relations insists we keep the lobby user-friendly. It’s a lot though, I admit.”

  “I’ll say.” I turned my face toward his, mostly so I wouldn’t have look at the bright room anymore. “What does the rest of your day look like? Back to the Model Ones?”

  “Yeah. Dr. Fisher actually just left a message on my micro-comm that I’m to report to her office after I see you out. She’s psych-testing Model Ones this afternoon, and I’ll assist her with that.”

  “How thrilled is she to get rid of me?” I failed at keeping the bitterness from my voice.

  All the frustration I felt over the past weeks came bubbling to the surface. With rare exception, everyone I’d worked with here looked at me as if they blamed me for taking them away from something more important. They spent half the time grunting and scowling. When I passed them in the hallways, they hurried along, as if afraid they would get dragged into the Lena Project.

  I wanted to let it go, to step outside those doors and leave all the bitterness here in this building. But it wasn’t that simple, because the worst part of this nightmare was coming with me—attached to my shoulder.

  Ron gave me a reassuring pat on the back and handed my roller bag to me. “Call us if you have any trouble with the arm.” He strode back to the elevators.

  I heard the chaos as soon as I opened the nearly soundproofed double doors to the outside. Shouts and chants rose up from a picket line standing at the other end of the circular driveway. Now, I saw what my mother was talking about when she’d said this wasn’t the usual two or three protesters.

  Over the past month, the anti-tech community had grown metaphorical balls, and they were showing them right now. Lucky for me, CyberCorp had a sizable circular driveway, all of which counted as private property on which the protesters couldn’t set foot. I had a clear path to my parents’ black car, which idled only about twenty yards away.

  The protesters continued to shout as I stepped off the curb and onto the driveway. Most hefted signs that vilified the Model Ones and the people who made them: Intelligence Is Not Artificial. God Created Man Not Android. Humans Are God’s Model One. Remember Skynet.

  One sign in particular made me slow and squint, convinced I hadn’t read it right, but I had. Death to the Spawn of CyberCorp. The man who held that one stood taller than the rest, towering over everyone in his vicinity by at least a couple inches. Long, stringy blond hair hung to his shoulders, matching the beginnings of an unkempt beard.

  “To hell with all of you and your spawn,” he shouted. “You cannot create intelligence. Repent or be destroyed.”

  I picked up my pace. Our driver Lionel waited for me beside the open door. I was still twenty feet from the car when the large protester broke through the security line and bolted toward the front doors.

&nb
sp; The two guards who’d blocked his path a moment ago were too slow. Two more guards shot out from inside the building. The protester spotted them and hooked a sharp left. He headed straight toward me.

  My vision narrowed to a pinpoint. All I saw was the man barreling forward, arms and legs pumping. I froze. Lionel’s voice shouted my name. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Lionel moving toward me. I tore my gaze away from the sweaty, growling protester and toward the car, but too late.

  The man hit me hard in the chest, and air whooshed from my lungs. An instant later, I lay on the ground.

  White spots danced in my vision. Pain exploded in the back of my head, where it had slammed into the concrete beneath me. It had ached a moment ago, from the surgery, but now my eyes swam with tears, and the world seesawed beneath me.

  “We must stop this,” the man shouted. He crouched over me, his legs straddling mine. Beefy hands gripped my upper arms and held me firmly to the ground. As he shouted, saliva sprayed across my face. “The Model Ones mean death for humanity!”

  I thrashed from side to side to free myself. Together, Lionel and a guard yanked the massive man off me. As soon as he was on his feet, and I no longer feared for my life, my next thought was of my arm. While I was on the ground, my hand had slipped from my pocket, and now the silver metal shone in the sunlight. I stuffed it back into my pocket.

  The security guards dragged the man away. It took all four of them to control him, but none of them could stop his mouth. “Intelligence isn’t artificial. It evolves. It learns. You cannot control what you’ve created!” His shouts continued until they dragged him inside the building, and the doors finally muffled the sound.

  “Are you okay?” Lionel asked me. Concern filled his blue eyes.

  Before I could answer, my mother hurried across the driveway, high heels clacking against the pavement. Lionel stepped aside to make way for her.

  “Are you okay?” She straightened my clothing and smoothed my hair—because heaven forbid I not look camera-ready after being tackled to the ground.