Machine Man - Max Barry [79]
By the fourth step I noticed my body liked it. My thighs didn’t like it. My thighs hated me. But my brain was feeding me endorphins, pleased to be moving. This is what you’re supposed to do. My brain was not an intellectual. It took pleasure in simple things like long walks and hard work. Maybe it had a point. It was probably just the endorphins, but suddenly it seemed possible to live like this. Perhaps Lola and I could build anonymous lives in some tiny Canadian snow town. Lola could bake pies. I could grow vegetables. I would be the man with no legs and the half-hand who was a scientist once. The townspeople would find me aloof but grow to respect me. They would call me Doc.
Lola lowered me to the toilet seat. “That was awesome, Charlie. That was an insanely good first effort.” She reached for a buckle.
“Again.”
Her eyebrows jumped. “Are you sure?” She clapped her hands. “That’s the spirit, Charlie! That’s the spirit!”
NIGHT FELL. I won’t recount the whole sweating, groaning ordeal. I’ll just say it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. I speak as someone who crushed his legs in an industrial clamp. The problem was I went to bed with no parts. It was just me and Lola curled inside my arm and this seemed doable with the lights on, but as soon as silence fell, I knew it was a mistake. I lay there staring at the ceiling. I felt a crawling. Not painful. But there.
I tried to ride it out. I thought about other things, like whether Carl would find me, and what he might do if he did. The crawling escalated to pangs. I twitched and Lola’s head came up. Her eyes glittered in the darkness. “It’s okay,” I said, but I wanted her to know I was lying.
“Do you want to put your legs on?”
I shook my head. I chewed my teeth. At midnight we switched on the light and strapped me into the war veteran legs. The relief was immediate. I massaged their stark poles with shaking fingers and felt invisible muscles loosening. Lola snuggled into me. I closed my eyes.
I woke screaming. My legs were inflating, stretching. My thighs were on fire. It was unlike anything I had ever felt. Lola scrambled for the light. I grabbed at the poles, willing my brain to realize they were there. But that wasn’t the problem. I knew it immediately. It wasn’t that I didn’t have legs. It was that I didn’t have Contours. My baseline had changed. I needed my real artificial legs.
“I’ll get the nerve interface mat,” said Lola.
“No,” I whimpered. “Not yet.”
MORNING WAS better. Lola padded off to the shower, clad in a borrowed T-shirt that said DINO-ROAR! I tried walking in the war veteran legs by myself. I staggered into the corridor, taking huge, toddlerlike steps, bouncing off the walls. There were no dogs around. I should have noticed that.
“He has.” It was Lola. She had detoured to the living room for some reason. “You’ll see.”
“You bought him a frickin’ welder. You’re enabling him!” Dr. Angelica, of course. “I swear to God, Lola! This ends with you in pieces.”
“He’s trying. You’ll see.”
“Trying to get to the garage, I bet.”
“He’s using those, those stupid legs. He’s changed.”
“He hasn’t. They never do.”
I formed a smug little plan. I would totter out there on my pole legs. Dr. Angelica would be surprised. Lola would glance at her like See? And I would be all What?
I got one pole in front of the other. As I reached the end of the corridor, I attained balance and entered the living room walking, actually walking, albeit stiff-backed and goggle-eyed, like a zombie. Lola and Dr. Angelica turned. It was perfect.