Machine Man (10 page)

“He’s physically fine. There’s no psych hold. He wants to be discharged. His company wants him to be discharged. The administrator is telling us to discharge.”

Dr. Angelica shook her head slightly, as if she spent all day being thwarted by bureaucrats and it disappointed but did not surprise her. “His doctor disagrees.”

“You know what will happen,” said Katie in a low voice. Dr. Angelica’s pen paused. This seemed so dramatic I almost laughed, because what? Would she be fired? Would Carl snap her neck? I thought Better Future would probably just get me a different doctor. But this was enough to defeat Dr. Angelica. Her bearing sagged. She was going to go home after this and sip red wine and stare at the wall, I could tell. She would wonder why she was doing this, struggling against commercial interests at a corporate hospital when all she wanted to do was help people, and in the morning, when she walked out of her beautiful home and unlocked her convertible, she would remember.

“They’re waiting,” said Katie. “What do I tell them?”

Dr. Angelica tossed the clipboard onto my tray, like it was useless now. “Tell them,” she said, “I strongly advise he be kept away from industrial-grade cutting and stamping equipment.”

I COULDN’T
keep still in the limousine. I patted my thighs with hands like skittish birds. I adjusted my seat belt and gazed out the smoked glass window and wished we could go faster. How far was it to Better Future anyway? I didn’t remember all these housing developments. I leaned forward to ask the driver if he was going the right way and forced myself to sit back, because of course he was. I just wanted to see my legs.

“Not long,” said Carl. I jumped. I had practically forgotten he was there, filling the opposite seat. He was big but quiet.

My hands clenched. I needed to put something in them. I thought of my phone. The bag the hospital had packed for me was on the seat beside me: I unzipped it and rummaged through my old clothes, which I had not seen in
weeks. My phone was not there. I sat back and exhaled. Those assholes.

“Problem?”

“My phone.”

“Missing?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s missing.” I didn’t mean to snipe. I was misdirecting my frustration.

“Would you like to go back for it?”

I opened my mouth to say yes.

“It’s no problem,” said Carl.

“Could you … have them send it?”

“Sure.”

“By courier or something.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, we’ll do that.” I looked out the window and drummed on my thighs. Buildings slid by.

THE LIMO
stopped. Carl exited like a cork from champagne. I tugged my door handle but only got as far as shuffling toward the opening before he pulled the door all the way open. I squinted. Carl bent and lifted me into a waiting wheelchair. There was applause. This didn’t make any sense. Then Carl moved and I saw the concrete path to the lobby lined with employees. When they saw me they cheered. I was still confused. Standing before me was Cassandra Cautery, her hands clasped, as if in prayer. She came toward me with her arms out. She bent and kissed me on the cheek. “Welcome home,” she whispered. I had gone seven years without a kiss and now I’d had two in a week. It was the kind of data event that implied a serious contamination of laboratory conditions. Cassandra Cautery put one hand on my shoulder and Carl wheeled me toward the lobby. People held out hands for high-fives. I passed a woman
from Vertex Processing who in meetings always chose the seat with the greatest displacement from mine, always, and she whispered, “You’re an inspiration.” I didn’t understand what was happening.

Inside the air was cool and regulated. “I’ve taken the liberty of expanding your staff,” said Cassandra Cautery. “What do you think of that Jason Huang? I left him, but his metrics are average.”

“I like Jason.”

Carl stopped pushing. Cassandra Cautery came around and looked into my eyes. She was very beautiful. She seemed constant, occupying a natural place in the world. It was difficult to imagine her any different, like upset or tired. That was a property of beauty, I guessed: permanence. “It would be no problem to get rid of him.”

“Jason’s fine.”

“I just want you to have the best.”

“Why?”

Cassandra Cautery nodded thoughtfully, like this was a weighty question and she wanted to get the answer right. “What you said in the hospital about artificial being better. Well, that sparked some interest here. Some very high-level interest. Discussions all the way up to the Manager.” She searched my eyes. I didn’t know who the Manager was. “What would you say to your own product line?”

“My own product line of what?”

“Of prosthetic devices.” She caught herself. “Of artificial enhancements. Of quality bio-augmentations. We haven’t settled on a name. But we want you to build them. We’re fully funding you to explore any and all possibilities that occur to your brilliant, brilliant mind.”

“You want me to build prostheses?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want me to build prostheses?”

“Don’t you want to?”

“Yes. But … I’m not on the business side, but—”

Cassandra Cautery laughed. “Right. You’re not on the business side. Leave that to us.”

“But—”

“I’m a middle manager,” she said. “Some people think that’s a pejorative, but I don’t. There are people above me who make business decisions and people below me who execute them and those people live in different realities. Very different. And my job is to bring them together. Mesh their realities. Sometimes they’re not completely compatible, and sometimes I don’t even completely understand how someone can live in the reality they do, but the point is I mesh them. I’m like a translator. Only more hands-on. And that’s what makes the company work. Middle managers, like me, meshing. So let me take a stab at meshing your reality, Charlie. Do you know how much money there is in medical? A lot. And more every year, because you invent a better heart and it doesn’t matter how much it costs, people want it. Because you’re selling them life.” She blinked. “You’re selling them life.” She patted her jacket pockets. “I need a pen. But what’s the problem with medical? The market is limited to sick people. Imagine: You sink thirty million into developing the world’s greatest artery valve and someone goes and cures heart disease. It would be a disaster. Not for the … not for the people, obviously. I mean for the company. Financially. I mean this is the kind of business risk that makes people upstairs nervous about signing off on major capital investment. But what you’re talking about, what you said at the hospital … it’s medical for healthy people. That’s what excites them. They’re imagining a device. Let’s say a spleen. They don’t know. I don’t know. It’s up to you. But say you come up with a spleen that
works better than natural spleens. More reliable, safer, with, um, built-in monitoring of your blood pressure. I’m sure you can come up with better ideas. But that device we could sell to anybody. The market for that is every person in the world who wants their spleen to work better. And every customer is a customer for life. Literally. You mentioned upgrades at the hospital. Well, imagine you purchase a Better Spleen. And a few years later, wait a minute, here comes the Better Spleen Two. It’s the same, only it can check your e-mail.” She laughed. “I’m being silly. But you see the business model. There’s repeat business. I sat in on this meeting, Charlie, and a man there, he said people buy a new cell phone every thirteen months. Thirteen months. They throw out their old phone, which they loved, because there’s something newer. Sexier. That’s the other thing. They’ve seen your legs. They think there’s a certain … a certain aesthetic to them. You haven’t tried to imitate real legs. That’s the difference. You’ve made something else. Something that stands alone. Oh. I didn’t mean that. I mean it’s a little like art. It’s a paradigm shift. Because regular prosthetics, and I hope this isn’t offensive, but they look a little creepy. A little dead. So the thought is—and this is all long-term, but it’s the thinking—what if Better Parts can be fashion accessories? Is that impossible? Maybe someone would buy an artificial tooth just because it looked better. Or an artificial ear. If we sponsored some athletes, some of those … some Paralympians, they could become objects of desire. They’re fit, they’re functional, they’re here. They’re the future. Marketing pointed out that we already pierce our bodies in the name of fashion. We physically insert metal into our earlobes, and lips, now, and chins, and who knows what else. You’ve seen those kids. That’s the area they’re looking at. Wearable accessories. Higher-functioning, supersexy cyberbodies. What you’ve helped the company
realize, Charlie, is that there’s a marketplace under our noses. Literally. Literally under and inside our noses. Inside us. And we as a company are uniquely placed to be first to market. That’s why you’re getting resourced. Does that help you understand?”

I thought for a while. “A little.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome.”

CASSANDRA CAUTERY
walked beside me as Carl wheeled me to the labs. I thought they would take me to the Glass Room but they turned left, for Lab 4. Several young people who I gathered were my new assistants lined the corridor. As Carl pushed past them, I discovered the reason they were outside Lab 4 was that there was no room inside. It was wall-to-wall white coats. Except in the center, where my legs stood under lights. They had been polished. They were beautiful. Cassandra Cautery had been right about that. I was a little surprised anyone else saw it, because they were beautiful only in a functional sense: beautiful because they worked. Bundles of plastic-wrapped wires as thick as my wrist snaked between bare steel struts and around oiled coil pistons. Black electrical tape strapped the computer housing on to the hip. The calves bent backward, like a gazelle’s. The feet were globe-encased rotary engines with one long toe pointing forward and two angled back.

People were clapping. “You’re my idol,” said Jason. I hadn’t even noticed him.

“What?” I said. I thought I must have misheard
idol
.

“You and Isaac Newton. And Barry Marshall. And the Curies. You people who are prepared to put yourselves on the line for your science. To become your own test subjects. I salute you.”

Carl wheeled me toward the legs.

“Compared to you, Kevin Warwick is a pussy!” said Jason. “He should be embarrassed with himself!”

Carl lifted me into the air as if I were a child. He carried me to the legs like he was rescuing me from a burning building. “This okay?” he said, and I said, “Yes,” and he lowered me into the sockets. I grimaced as my wounded left leg scraped plastic. Then my butt touched the seat and it was okay. I didn’t have to stand in these legs; I sat. I relaxed. My hands moved down to the hips. There were controls there. My thumbs found the ignition buttons and pressed. My motors were extremely quiet, for their power output. But that was not that quiet. My legs rose up on their toes, flexed, settled.

My audience cheered and whooped. Cassandra Cautery’s eyes shone. I grinned. The applause went on and on. It was at once great and terrifying. I wanted them to leave so I could play with my legs in private but I also wanted them to stay forever.

I THUMBED
the left leg forward. It rose and extended and clomped down. The floor went
crack
. I hoped that was the floor. Either way could be an issue. I thumbed the right and took a matching step. The motion rocked my body back then forward and for a second I thought I was about to fall out. I took my hands off the controls and clutched at the seat. It was okay. I could adapt to it. It was like riding a horse. Or how I imagined riding a horse. I had never actually done that. I adjusted my balance and took another step. Another.
Crack. Crack
. People moved out of my way. Two held camcorders. I needed to clear this room. I couldn’t work with them here. Now I thought about it, I had no idea how I was supposed to manage twenty lab assistants. I had struggled with three. Maybe I could get Cassandra
Cautery to take them away again. I looked for her in the crowd and realized she was in the Glass Room, a watery green version of herself. She was watching from a safe distance. Down here it was just me and the ocean of lab assistants. I stopped walking. Nobody spoke. Shoes shuffled. There were a lot of pairs of glasses in this room.

“Well,” I said. “What do you think?”

An incredibly thin guy with nightmarish skin cleared his throat. “The interface is crude. Ideally you want to do something with nerve impulses, I think.”

“Krankman’s working with nerves,” said a girl. “I was on his project before this. Splicing.”

They drew closer. A few dropped down to inspect the legs up close. I could almost feel their fingers. “There’s a lot of weight in this metal.”

“You could drop that down by hollowing these columns out.”

“What about titanium?”

“What about impact absorbency? I worry what happens when he steps off something.”

“Hmm,” the skinny boy said. And I relaxed, because this was going to work out.

OF COURSE
the Curies died. They identified ionizing radiation while bathing in it. There were risks involved in being your own guinea pig. But there was a long tradition of scientists doing just that: of paying for the expansion of human knowledge with their lives. I didn’t deserve to be categorized with them, because honestly, I wasn’t interested in the greater good. I just wanted to make myself better legs. I didn’t mind other people benefiting in some longer-term indirect way but it wasn’t what motivated me. I felt guilty about this for a while. Every time a lab assistant looked at
me with starstruck eyes, I felt I should confess:
Look, I’m not being heroic. I’m just interested in seeing what I can do
. Then it occurred to me that maybe they all felt this way. All these great scientists who risked themselves to bring light to darkness, maybe they weren’t especially altruistic either. Maybe they were like me, seeing what they could do.