Machine Man - Max Barry [27]
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