Grit and Grace: A Metal and Men Novella (Metal and Men Series Book 1) (6 page)

Lena shook her head.

"Turn her down a bit?"

"So much neural work... Upgrades on top of upgrades..." She closed her eyes and continued in her softest voice. "I can turn it down a bit."

The pink sky brightened, and the warm sun lit the eastern horizon.

"Do it," I said.

There was a jolt in my brain. The urge to resist washed over me, but I forced it back. I remembered it all. I had worked at Goodwin, invented neurotech that would change the world. I had made a fortune running experiments—terrible experiments. Music was the key. When the twang of a guitar inspired me to invent a neural nanomachine that could manipulate emotions, they started calling me Doc Twang. At an early age, I was a legend in the industry.

I remembered the horrors I did to rats and monkeys—and to the little girl. The girl, who Goodwin himself had ordered enhanced. Mr. Goodwin himself had trusted me with his most deadly creation. The girl with all the latest tech. The girl raised from a baby as the greatest assassin to ever live. The girl who could disappear without bending light and was stronger than anyone had any right to be.

The guilt fell heavy on my chest. Guilt and pain and injury mixed and crushed me. Fat tears rolled down my cheeks.

Far away, I heard Lena's voice. "I'll stop," she said. "It's hurting you."

It was all I could manage to shake my head.

Memories continued to flood in. A day had come when my worth to the company was no more. My love of the girl had grown so that I refused to work on her. They must have seen it coming, but I got her out. I loved her like a daughter. She was everything to me. The feelings flooded back. She got out. But I didn't.

I now remembered how they rewrote my mind. They took my memories, made new ones. They made a handler for me, Hetty, who was programmed to keep me on task.

They rewrote my love for the girl, redirecting it to Nellie and Suzy. Things. They thought those things could replace the girl.

A noise started in the back of my throat. It was a gurgling, choking noise at first, but then it bubbled over into loud sobs. Finally, I found I was wailing in my grief.

Then, it stopped.

Lena's sobs reached me through a haze of confusion. "You want me to take it away?" she asked. "I can make it go away, take away the memories and the pain. It'll leave you a little less than you were, but you'll be able to move on. We'll be able to move on."

Tears blurred my vision. It hurt. Everything hurt.

"No," I said. "I want to keep it all." Light touched my eyes again. The sun was high in the sky, beating down on us with its fiery grin. My tears stopped. "I need it all."

"Winston, look!" Lena’s grin looked too big for her face. Her eyes sparkled with joy. "There they are!"

We drifted in Suzy a hundred meters above the dry wilderness of West Texas. The landscape was dotted with stout, black windmills. At first I didn't see anything special, and I was trying to figure out why Lena cared about the humming windmills when we'd already passed about a million of them.

Then I saw them. Horses. Real, live horses running across the rolling hills. Dozens of them.

They were beautiful.

There was freedom out there, far from Austin and far from the corporations that ran the world. My spirit lifted at the sight of those wonderful beasts. The horses ran, flowing through the sea of mills. They were free.

I put a hand on Lena's shoulder, and she looked up at me.

Sometimes it's up to the strong to help the weak. Sometimes the weak help the strong. I don't know which of us was which, but together we found something I never thought we'd find in the wasted wilderness of Texas.

Out there, we were human. We were human and free.

A Note from the Author:

Grit and Grace is a companion piece to my novel Justice in an Age of Metal and Men. The books share a broken world where Texas is independent and civilization is in retreat.

J.D. rejects the idea that technology solves all problems. He’s the sheriff and he does everything he can to keep justice in and around Dead Oak. J.D. struggles to solve the murder of a rancher, but when he uncovers a conspiracy he needs to decide how deep he wants to go looking for justice. He’s a stubborn man, but it seems the more he digs the deeper he gets.

Justice in an Age of Metal and Men is available on
Amazon.

-Anthony W. Eichenlaub

http://eichenblog.org