Machine Man - Max Barry [78]
I regretted what I’d said to Lola. I told the Contours that. “She tried to calm down.” This was late one night, after a frustrating few hours prying apart transistors. “She didn’t want you to die.” Then I wrapped my arms around my chest and cried, because I was really tired.
The next day, I decided to apologize. I would make things right. I didn’t want to wallow here, a filthy, stinking, grieving thing, dragging itself around. I didn’t want to make Lola sad. Then I sat up and parts of the Contours fell everywhere. I had slept with them to stave off phantom pain. Don’t ask me why that worked. It just did. I thought, I’ll just fix one thing. If I could do that, take one step toward restoring functionality, the Contours wouldn’t be dead. They would only be temporarily disabled.
So I crawled off the bed and began hunting for one fixable thing. But I couldn’t find it. Weeks passed.
I HAD an epiphany. I was on my stomach, straining to reach some titanium pieces that had somehow wound up under the bed, and thought, These are just metal. I guess that doesn’t sound very revelatory. But it was. I stared at these pieces, which had once been the core of my fingers, and they didn’t look like part of me.
I sat up. I would never put the Contours back together: I knew that now. Previously, this had been a paralyzing fear, but I mostly felt relief. Part of me still wanted to fix them, to try one more time, but it was a small, receding part. I looked down and thought, I’m a mess.
I had damaged Lola. Maybe she had left. Someone was bringing me food and listening outside the door, but that could have been Dr. Angelica. I pulled open the door. Fresh air hit me like a slap. A piece of paper lay in the corridor: a clipping from a trade supplies catalog. It was an advertisement for an arc welder. On it was Lola’s handwriting: For you, in the garage.
I was still there when she appeared at the top of the corridor. “Oh,” she said. “You … well, I heard you needed one. It took me a while to get.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “I hope it’s the right kind.”
I croaked: a low, pathetic sound. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Lola said. “It’s okay, Charlie.”
AS I entered the bath, a film of grease peeled away from my skin, forming a swirling Mandelbrot slick. I was the center of a galaxy of sweat and dissolving dirt. I hadn’t realized how badly I stank. You could get used to anything. Your brain complained only about change.
Lola began to wash me. I could not really believe the lack of vindictiveness. I hadn’t known this about love: that you did not need to deserve it. I thought there was a set of criteria, like a good sense of humor and looks and wealth. You could compensate deficiencies in one area with excellence in another, hence rich, ugly men with beautiful wives. But there was an algorithm involved. That was why I thought I was unloved: I didn’t score highly enough. I had made some attempts to improve my score and also told myself I didn’t care because if that was what women wanted, something fake and temporary, I would rather be alone. And sometimes I was just lazy and would rather code things. But here I was soaking in a bath of my own filth with Lola scrubbing my shoulders, and what algorithm could explain that? That problem was nonhalting.
Lola left and came back with a set of prosthetic legs, like the day we’d first met. She rested them against the wall. “Now, these are nothing special …” They had crutchlike poles and plastic buckets. They were prosthetics for war veterans abandoned by their government. “They were all Angelica could get without arousing suspicion.”
“Oh,” I said.
“They’re basic, I know. They’re not like … they’re really basic. But they’re something.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled. “Want to try them on?”
The straps were frayed and worn, dark in patches. A lot of amputated thighs had sweated into these. The sockets were loose in some places and strangling tight in others. When I slid the plastic