Machine Man - Max Barry [19]
“I modified it.”
“You what?” By now she had exposed the knee. What was left of it. It was a half-melted empty casing. “Where’s the knee?”
“I broke it.” I felt uncomfortable. People were watching. Lola got to her feet, her brown eyes flicking between mine. “I didn’t get to say good-bye at the hospital.”
“That wasn’t supposed to be good-bye. You were supposed to come in for sessions.”
“Oh.”
“Why did you break your knee?”
“I was trying to improve it. But then I got the idea to build a new one.”
“A new knee?”
“A new leg.”
“You … what?”
“I built a prosthesis. Well. I’m still tinkering. It can be better.”
“You built a leg?”
“I’ll show you.”
“Yes,” she said. “Please.”
LOLA WAS escorted into an interview room by a guard and I returned to the sofa. While she answered questions about everyone she had ever met, everywhere she had ever been, and her Facebook profile, I flipped through the company glossy, Looking Forward. We were immunizing children in Nigeria, apparently. Lola took so long I went looking for her, and was told she was in the multiscanner. This was like a metal detector, for an advanced definition of metal. I was surprised because that should have been the fastest part of the process. You just had to stand there.
Finally Lola emerged, doing up her top button. “They swabbed me,” she said. “They swabbed my mouth.”
The guard handed her a tag. “Please wear this at all times. If you lose it, you can’t get out.”
Lola looked at me, amused, and I shook my head to tell her no, seriously. She clipped the tag to her polo shirt.
“Was there a problem?”
“Oh. No. I just have trouble with metal detectors.” She adjusted her glasses. “Forget that. Show me your leg.”
“ONE OF the problems with biological legs,” I said in the elevator, “is they can’t survive on their own. They’re not modular. This creates isolated points of failure and dependency issues. All of which go away if you make the leg self-sufficient.”
Lola looked up from fiddling with her access badge. “Self-sufficient?”
“As in, it works by itself. It doesn’t need a warm body for fuel.”
“The Exegesis doesn’t need fuel.”
“Yes, it does. Look, I’m giving it kinetic energy right now.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Without me, it just sits there.” I glanced at her. “I mean, it’s better than nothing.”
“That’s a really good leg, Charlie.”
“For what it is—”
“Go to a public hospital. See what they’re making kids walk around in down there.” Her eyes glistened.
“Um,” I said.
“Sticks,” said Lola. “Buckets on sticks.”
“The Exegesis is also a bucket on a stick. That’s my point. It’s a terrible design. Why has nobody built a prosthesis that can walk by itself? That’s what I want to know.”
“A what?”
“It’s obvious.” I gestured with my free hand. “You put a motor in the leg.”
Lola stopped walking. “Have you put a motor in a leg?”
“Yes. No. Not a motor. Several motors. You need multiple motors to redundantly articulate the toes.” I was nervous. I hadn’t shown anybody the leg. Not complete. I had even hidden it from my lab assistants. “It’s experimental. There’s a lot I need to do. But I want your feedback. As a professional.”
Lola studied me. Then she looked around. “Where is it?”
I took her to Lab 4. It was unlikely we’d bump into my assistants; Katherine spent most of her time these days with the rats, and Jason was glued to his terminal in the Glass Room. Given the opportunity, Jason would probably stay there forever. We had much in common.
“How far down are we?” She was looking at the steel buttresses lining the walls.
“About sixty feet.” I swiped my ID tag on the door reader. The door clicked. “You need to swipe your thing here, too.”
“Why are we down sixty feet?”
“In case something goes wrong.” She followed me into Lab 4. The leg was beneath a white sheet on an insulated