Machine Man - Max Barry [34]
FINALLY ALPHA’S legs stopped catching fire. I sat in them and took a wary step. They moved smoothly, the whine of the servomagnetics almost inaudible. The floor did not break. Nothing popped or smoked. I walked to the wall. It was not a smooth ride but I was unfamiliar with the equipment. I rotated and walked back to the center. I raised a leg. I did not overbalance. I did not fall out. I flexed the foot. It was cloven. It actually looked more like a hoof. I lowered it and raised the other leg. Still upright. I looked around and saw a lot of happy faces. I smiled, too, because this was progress.
NEXT CAME the nerve interface. I spent more time on this than anything else. When I had an idea for something mechanical, I could usually tell someone else to go make it happen. But reading nerves was personal. It was like trying to sift raindrops from a thunderstorm only I could see. I passed days in Lab 1 with thirty-eight wires dangling from my thighs, trying to read my thoughts. It was a funny way to get to know myself. For example, when I thought about wiggling my big toe, my waves spiked at 42.912 gigahertz, but so too if I imagined country music. I wouldn’t have thought those were similar. But then I thought about toe-tapping and maybe they were. Either way, it was important to figure this kind of thing out before I wore the legs outside and someone put on Kenny Rogers.
Once we had a basic neurological landscape, I practiced moving in software. We loaded leg wireframes into the computer and I tried to control them with my mind. At first they wouldn’t respond. Then they jerked and twitched and tried to walk in three directions at once. Mistake by mistake, I crawled toward something practical. By the end of each six-hour session, I felt dazed and unsure where I was. I wheeled along the corridor and saw the whole world as lines and vertices. I dreamed I was a wireframe, made of green light.
MY ASSISTANTS began wearing chunky glasses. They looked ridiculous. The lenses were milky, like the opposite of sunglasses. By the end of the week, half of Gamma had them. I didn’t pay much attention because I assumed this was some kind of young-person fashion trend, but when I arrived in Lab 1 for a date with Mirka and her needles, she pulled on a pair, and I had to ask.
“They are Z-specs,” said Mirka. She seemed surprised I didn’t know, although behind the glasses it was hard to tell. “You have not tried them?”
I shook my head. Mirka pulled off her set. There was a component I hadn’t noticed before: two wires terminating in flat metal contacts. Mirka unpeeled these from her temples. I wasn’t sure about this but I followed her directions to adhere the contacts to my own skull and fit the glasses. Everything looked flat. Then Mirka’s face sprung to life. I had never known my eyes were so low-res.
“The enhancement is nice,” said Mirka. “But the real benefit is the zoom. You pinch your eyebrows. Like this.”
I mimicked her movement. Her face rushed toward me. I flailed my arms. Mirka laughed. “And the other way to zoom out.” She helped me upright. “You see?”
I picked a corner of the lab and made it leap closer. There was a paper clip there, as big as if I were kneeling in front of it. I zoomed out and in, picking tiny objects in the room and blowing them up. I turned my head without zooming out and nausea bloomed. So that was not a good idea. Zoom out, turn, zoom in.
“They will make you a pair, of course,” said Mirka. “If you ask them. Gamma.”
“Gamma’s making these?” I pulled off the glasses. The world went dull.
She nodded. “Gamma is doing many peripherals.”
I lay back. Mirka filled the syringe with morphine. I didn’t mind Gamma experimenting. That was what I had told them to do. But I wasn’t sure I wanted them making glasses. I didn’t know why. As Mirka filled my veins, I wondered if it was because I had not designed them. My department was not just about