Machine Man - Max Barry [36]
WE PERFORMED a live trial of the nerve interface. It turned out Alpha’s legs didn’t bend low enough for me to attach without yanking out needles whenever I twitched, so at the last minute I switched to Beta. This triggered angst and gloating because Beta had been a long way behind since the wheel debacle. But it was all about the technology. Beta’s legs were half the weight and contoured silver steel: of all the models, they most resembled real legs. Except for the feet, which were hooves. Hooves were working for us. I finished fitting the needles and two assistants slid me into the Beta legs and tilted me upright. At this point nothing was powered on. The assistants cleared the lab and began to fill the Glass Room, crowding against the green glass. I felt a twinge of nerves. It wasn’t so much the fact that I was about to see what happened when you plugged your brain directly into a pair of self-powered mechanical legs but that so many people were watching. I found the power button with my thumb and put my other hand on the emergency shutdown. I looked up at the Glass Room again and saw Jason’s thumbs-up. If there was a problem with both the power button and the emergency shutdown, Jason would trip a remote kill switch. None of this should be necessary because we were feeding the legs a tenth of regular power. And we had exhaustively tested in software. Everything that happened today should be unsurprising.
I pressed for power. I heard a high-pitched whine, barely detectable. I tried to ignore this. As clearly as I could, I imagined myself lifting my right leg and taking a single step.
Nothing happened. I opened my eyes, disappointed. Then I looked down and my right leg was in front of the other. I mean the Beta leg. It had done exactly as I asked, so perfectly I hadn’t noticed. When I looked at the Glass Room, behind the three-inch translucent green plastic my lab assistants were jumping up and down, Z-specs bouncing, cheering in silence.
THE MORE I tinkered with Gamma’s hand, the more I liked it. It was funny how as soon as you knew there was something better, what you had seemed unbearable. Every time I had to dig around for my ID tag, I thought: I wouldn’t have to do this if it were embedded in my finger. When I was working on a lathe or a circuit board and I reached for a tool, whenever my fingers slipped or my hands shook, I felt exasperated, like why was I still dealing with this. It was the same with the glasses: the Z-specs were heavy and hurt my nose but when I took them off I missed them. The hand was not so advanced I could honestly say it was on balance superior to its biological equivalent. But still, there was something about it I couldn’t keep away from.
I INSTALLED a Voice Over IP client on my workstation and dialed the hospital. The packets went nowhere. I wasn’t surprised: the company firewall was strict. One of the ironies of working for the world’s most advanced research lab was that our internet connection was like dial-up. The filter had to sniff everything. I played with the port settings but it didn’t help. I would have to jury-rig something that made audio look like Wikipedia pages. I thought about this. It seemed possible.
Another solution would have been to leave Better Future and find a pay phone, but to be honest I thought about that only later.
THE LEGS came along in leaps and bounds. Not actual leaps and bounds. The lab ceilings weren’t high. We had to save that for outdoor testing. But I could tap a hoof. I could step over a knee-high obstacle without crushing it. In fact, I could step over a knee-high obstacle without noticing it, because the legs sensed terrain. I just willed