“Good, you’re awake,” he said, dropping the plastic bags on a cluttered trestle table and bringing the paper bag over to her. “Thought you’d be hungry when you woke up. Rendang, rice and greens. Couple of aunties run a kitchen out of a van downstairs in the evenings. Got you some new clothes and stuff too – you can’t be seen in public dressed like that. At least not with me.”
She ignored the insult, sat cross-legged on the cot and ate beef curry and rice. It was easily the richest meal she’d consumed in a long time, and she had to constantly remind herself to slow down to avoid making herself sick. While she ate, Spencer busied himself, removing plastic sheets from the various machines, checking power cables and connections. She looked on nervously as he uncovered what appeared to be a vintage dentist chair, complete with worn leather straps and large buckles feathered with rust. He glanced at her, taking in her growing alarm.
“Relax. The straps are just to stop you from falling out of the chair. I only plan on using them across your torso, not your hands. Finished eating? Good. If you need to use the facilities, better go now. Unsealing the Cage from the inside is not easy to do in a hurry.”
Kira nodded. She put the empty polyfoam containers back in the paper bag and went to the bathroom. When she came back, Spencer was fiddling with an array of different car and truck batteries that sprouted a tangle of clamps and cables. The chair now stood apart from the various racks of equipment. Leads and wires ran from it to a few notebook computers that seemed to be the heart of the controlled chaos of the workspace. He gestured absently towards the chair without looking at her.
“Make yourself comfortable.”
She put her hands on the cracked black vinyl of the arms and hauled herself up. The metal screeched in protest as he adjusted the headrest so that it supported her head just above the juncture of skull and neck. “All good?” he asked. She nodded. He came into her field of view, wheeling a small trolley loaded with blister packs, a squeeze bottle and trailing numerous carefully separated fine wires. “This’ll be just like the original calibration and check-ups from when you were first fitted,” he explained as he removed electrode pads from the blister packs and applied conductive gel from the squeeze bottle. The gel felt cool against her skin as he methodically placed the pads around her temples, behind her ears and along the back of her neck either side of her spine. “I’m going to wire you up now,” he said. “You can move around a little in your seat, but don’t sit up or else you’ll rip out the leads.”
The preparation complete, he stood before her. She looked back at him. “Ready?”
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice,” she said coldly. “I got no other ‘options’ as you so kindly pointed out.”
“True.” He bent and fiddled with the nest of cable around the pile of batteries. There was a sizzling blue flash and the faint smell of ozone. He sealed up The Cage before beginning to move about busily, throwing switches here and there. From the chair, Kira was again looking up through the copper-coated bamboo skeleton but this time the lights playing across the ceiling were coming from the various monitors and devices surrounding her. He was at her side again. He glanced briefly over her shoulder to one of the screens then looked back at her. “I’m going to strap you in now. There should be enough juice in the battery array to do this once, but if we have to restart there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to finish before it runs out. I’m modifying some of your firmware, and this all has to happen in one go. If the procedure is interrupted, it could brick your kit. Do you understand?”
“As in—”
“As in, manufacturer’s warranty will be voided, and you will probably end up about as mobile as one of those blue-fins on ice downstairs.”
“Nice of you to mention this earlier.”
“I didn’t want to alarm you.”
“Yeah, like your whole fucking pitch wasn’t alarming enough. Let’s just get this over with.” She lay back, masking her terror with irritation, focusing her eyes on the ceiling. He buckled the leather restraints across her feet, knees, thighs, torso, chest and shoulders.
“See, hands are free,” he cracked drily. In her peripheral vision, she saw him look at her one more time, but she resolutely kept her gaze focused up. He disappeared from her view. She heard the rattle of computer keyboards and then a steadily building whine as something charged up.
“Almost ready,” she heard him say. The whine kept building, harmonic overtones singing a choral counterpoint. She closed her eyes, waiting. “Here we go,” he said.
A rainbow of neon colour shot across the darkness of her closed eyes. Strings of seemingly random numbers flashed rapidly, then were replaced by infinitely blooming geometric shapes. As each fractal iteration increased in depth and complexity, her mind began to swim, and she was soon completely disoriented. This was nothing like the original calibration she’d undergone before her release from hospital. That had involved a gentle series of tests and refinements as she’d regained faculties lost in the accident that had claimed her grandmother’s life. This was like plugging her brain directly into a twenty-thousand kilovolt transmission line; jarring, overwhelming. She felt her stomach churning and struggled to control her rising gorge. The fractals were spinning, changing faster now than her mind could track, dissolving into snow. Her fingers were twitching, the muscles of her arms contracting without her control. She could feel the leather restraints digging into her wrists and upper arms as her body began to convulse violently. Amongst the storm of sensory static, she found herself calmly wondering if this was what ‘bricking’ felt like.
Then nothing but the dark silence of unconsciousness.
✽✽✽
Murky grey rose from the black depths of sleep. For a moment, Kira had a brief sensation of weightlessness, but then as her brain became fully awake, the full weight of gravity slammed into her in a nauseous falling sensation that was almost immediately replaced with blinding pain; a headache of Bacchanalian proportions. She squeezed her eyes shut, which seemed to help dull it a little.
She breathed chill air, faintly scented with the suggestion of fish and sea and diesel exhaust – so she was probably still in the cage, but in what condition? She remembered Spencer’s warning about the less than desirable possibility that she might end up ‘bricked’ with the faculties of one of the large white radishes piled up in the market downstairs. She began to take inventory. She could smell, so that was okay. Although her augmentations weren’t olfactory so that didn’t really prove anything, she decided. The same about the sounds she could hear drifting up from outside. She could feel the cool air on her face, and she could feel some sensation when she tried to wiggle her toes. But she couldn’t move her arms or legs and upon reopening her eyes, she could not resolve anything beyond the same murky grey she’d woken up to. She became aware of new sensation in her right hand, a dull pinching pain. As she flexed the fingers, the pain waxed and waned.
“Good. You’re awake.” Spencer. His voice was strained, with none of the cockiness he’d shown before. She tried to respond but no sound came. Her throat and mouth felt as though they were filled with dry sand. “You’ve been out for about thirty-six hours. Try this.” There was something thin and hard probing at her dry cracked lips; a straw. She opened her mouth and cool liquid flooded in. She coughed, choking as the fluid pooled in back of her throat. The flow stopped and she swallowed, easier now, and opened her mouth for more. The bottle returned and now she could sip more easily. Spencer continued. “Everything went well on my end, but given your condition, it was probably a little too much at once. It might have been better to have spent the time making sure you were better prepared physically for the interfacing. Your electrolyte levels were way off.” He spoke detachedly as though he was discussing nothing more serious than the weather, which Kira decided pissed her off. She wriggled her neck, moving away from the straw.
“Nice of you to mention that before,” she croaked. “But if everything went well, why can’t I see properly? And wh
y can't I move my arms or legs?”
“I taped your eyes shut. And you’re still in the chair. We figured there would be less chance of you accidentally pulling out the cannula or catheter that way.”
“You did WHAT to me?”
“Not me. After programming finished and you didn't come around, I made a call. We ran a few scans and then figured it was probably just exhaustion, so he dropped an IV to balance your fluids.”
“The catheter?”
“What goes in must come out. And with all the electronics running around here I prefer to avoid any plumbing mishaps.” Kira processed this for a moment.
“You taped my eyes?”
“They kept rolling back in your head. Very disconcerting.”
“Well since I'm conscious again, and apparently with all my faculties intact, could you take the tape and these fucking straps off?”
He obliged and soon she was sitting up, flexing her stiff neck and shoulders, feeling and hearing the vertebrae cracking and popping. Spencer pulled an ophthalmologist torch from a pocket and began to peer at her pupils. She could faintly smell fennel on his breath.
“So what are these 'upgrades' then? I don't feel any different,” she blinked, spots clearing from her vision after the bright spotlight.
“Are you sitting in front of a pachinko dai?”
“Obviously not.”
“I told you I was going to give you pachinko skills, not x-ray vision.”
“Did it work?”
“We'll have to do some tests. Also,” he indicated the plastic tubes running from her body, “we have to get your lines out.”
“So hurry up already.”
“You can do the catheter,” he said, “but I’m not touching that cannula. You'd better hit the shower again but make it quick. We don't want to be late.”
“Late for what?”
“You have an appointment with the Doctor.”
3
The Doctor
It wasn’t easy, showering without disturbing the cannula. Kira had taken care of the catheter with instructions and a sterile pack left by the Doctor; she’d had plenty of them during her extensive hospital stays, but it was a first to remove one herself. As she ripped open a plastic packet of cheap underwear she’d been given along with a blouse and trousers, she decided on spiteful defiance as her default with Spencer. As much as Kira hated it, she was indentured to him, but she decided there was no benefit to hiding her displeasure at the fact.
After weaving their way through the market crowd downstairs, Spencer summoned a microvan with windows tinted opaque. He had hand-signed something to the driver who nodded, then stomped on the accelerator and shot off into the flow of morning traffic.
The driver was ancient, walnut-brown skin pocked with soft pink melanoma excision scars. He drove in a combative style, hunched over the steering wheel, with his face pressed almost flat against the grimy windshield, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic to pass slower vehicles. At any point Kira expected their tiny, frail conveyance to meet an abrupt terminal stop under the front wheels of an oncoming container truck, but their driver was obviously well-versed in the deranged ballet of local traffic, always just managing to find an opening at the last minute to avoid becoming sheet metal origami.
In the end, she found it better to look out the side windows, rather than ride the adrenalin roller-coaster of the unnerving view through the windshield. Meanwhile, Spencer was engrossed in a tablet. She guessed he was reading, because he only seemed to tap the screen occasionally. She surreptitiously tried to catch a glimpse of what commanded his attention so fully, but couldn't do so without obviously craning her neck. She went back to looking out the window.
Kira began to realise that they were circumnavigating the wide harbour, keeping the fish processing plants, dock cranes and warehouses always to the left, dark water always to the right.
“We're going to the south banks,” she deduced. Spencer only nodded. “But wouldn't it be quicker to take the Dragon Bridge across?”
“Melé isn't registered,” he replied absently, gesturing to the driver. “Neither is his van. So we might want to avoid crossing an automated toll-bridge equipped with facial and tag recognition, and security cameras every fifty metres. And given that we are currently engaged in an endeavour that goes against the laws of both the official and unofficial authorities in these parts, it seems not imprudent to exercise due caution so as to leaving a trail of evidence that could later be used by said authorities to enforce aforementioned laws, both official and unofficial,” he finished. “Any more questions?”
“Just one. Have you always been such a smug cunt?”
He smiled thinly and returned to his tablet.
✽✽✽
The Doctor was a tall thin man, gaunt in the face with deep set eyes, but the cords of muscle visible under his mottled skin betrayed a wiry physical strength. His thinning hair was brilliant white, cropped closely against a peculiarly spherical skull. When he spoke, it was in the cultivate boarding-school English of the sub-continent, suggesting an expensive education and a background that seemed at complete odds with his residence in a cramped garage on the edge of a tenement slum which reeked alternatively of heavy motor oil or rancid raw sewage, depending on which way the wind blew.
He met them at a side door, sizing them up through a heavy shutter before throwing a series of bolts open and gesturing them inside. As he closed the door behind them, he re-seated a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun into a convenient holster on the wall. The gun was squat, ugly and ancient looking, the wooden stock eaten away in places by insect borers and other agents of decay. The Doctor saw Kira eyeing the weapon nervously.
“One can never take too many precautions,” he said apologetically as he re-secured the door. “A necessary evil in these parts, unfortunately.” He led them past piles of electronic and mechanical debris, skeletons of cathode ray tubes, ruffs of multi-coloured wire ribbons, mountains of ancient beige plastic and buckets of blue-green circuit boards. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust that varied in accordance with the time of deposit in this crypt of techno-scrap. Spencer spoke.
“Has it arrived?” His tone was impatient.
“It shall, in due course,” replied The Doctor, sliding open an ornately carved teak door. He motioned them through.
In contrast to the grimy disarray on the other side of the door, this space was immaculate with polished concrete that shone like marble, and one lengthy wall lined with shelves containing what looked to be actual paper books, albeit with spines faded and cracked with age. At one end of the room was a large workspace, dominated by a table covered with various open books and electronic debris and against the wall, an array of surprisingly modern video displays.
“Please make yourself comfortable.” Their host gestured to a wicker lawn setting on an oriental rug, complete with a tea service patterned with pale pink roses sitting on the table.
“Um, could you...” Kira held up her hand with the cannula.
“Oh! Of course, my dear,” said The Doctor, horrified that his first action hadn't been to tend to his patient. “If you would be so kind as to remove that coat.” He led her to a corner of the room where a medical gurney sat flanked with white enamel cabinets. Kira shrugged off her coat, glancing over her shoulder at Spencer who had his back to her as he sat engrossed again in his tablet. He wheeled out a fabric privacy screen, the kind Kira remembered from health checks in elementary school, and set it between the wicker setting on the rug and the gurney.
“Up,” indicated The Doctor. She hoisted herself up onto the gurney, gratified to see him busy with soap and surgical gloves. She sat, looking up at the patchwork of corrugated steel and fibreboard that made up the ceiling of this peculiar space.
“What kind of doctor are you anyway?” asked Kira as he turned around and approached her. She felt his hands, warm on her arm. “If you don't mind me asking, that is.” She thought he actually might mind and thus (surprisingly
for her) felt somewhat obligated to give him the right of refusal to answer.
“I fix things.” As she watched, he deftly removed the needle from her hand with practiced ease and replaced it with a moist swab that burned with something antiseptic. There was only one puncture, no evidence of the amateur venal explorations she'd become familiar with during her extensive hospital experience. He applied gentle but firm pressure.
“Like what?” she asked. “What do you fix?”
“Things that need fixing. Once it was primarily hardware, but nowadays hardware is seldom just mineral. Usually there's an animal component somewhere as well. It behoves a craftsman to continually develop and extend one's skills, lest they become redundant too. But really,” he replaced the swab with a small dressing, “we are but machina, wrought by God from flesh, are we not? All done.” He turned away from her, removing his gloves and began washing his hands again.
“Well, we're more than just machines though,” she said. The Doctor turned to face her.
“The distinction grows more blurry by the day, my dear.” He handed her a blister pack of pills and a sealed plastic tube of water. “Antibiotics. To ward off any unpleasantness from the catheter. One in the AM and again in the PM.”
A mechanical electric bell rang. The Doctor's eyes slid to a display over her shoulder, then fell to meet hers.
“It seems your associate's much-anticipated delivery has arrived.”
✽✽✽
Under Spencer's orders, Kira remained silent and concealed from view behind the privacy screen.
“I don't want anybody getting a look at you ahead of the job,” he explained. “None of these guys should be able to finger you if it comes to that. When it comes to that,” he corrected himself.
Whatever the delivery was, it necessitated much grunting and huffing as it was slid into place, the sound of wood scraping painfully across the polished concrete floor.
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