Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (13 page)

His trust had not been misplaced. In return for the many thousands of pounds now lining the surgeon’s pockets, Peter’s vision was far superior to anything that nature could create. Functions previously limited to mechanoids and soulless technology were his to command. With just a blink of his eyes, he could zoom in to faraway items or focus upon even the tiniest of objects, and the sheer clarity of vision was truly astounding.

However, the one side effect that had consumed his thoughts ever since had not been mentioned in the gleaming brochures that the clinic handed out like sweets to gluttonous children. Peter had scanned it over and over with his newly enhanced vision, desperate for some rational explanation for what he was experiencing, but no peace of mind could be found within its coaxing words. He hadn’t dared mention it to anyone, for who would possibly believe someone who said they could see the color of everyone’s souls?

Peter could hardly believe it himself. At first he had attributed it to nothing more than a temporary disturbance, a mere quirk of the technology as his neural pathways adapted to the bionic technology that had replaced his flesh. Taking it all in stride, as he always did, he neglected to mention it to the surgeon when the initial checks were performed—after all, work awaited, and he wanted no delay in returning to it. He convinced himself that any oddities would surely settle down within days.

They did not. To the contrary, he found the more people he encountered, the stronger his newfound ability became. Each soul was unique and ever-changing. So far as he could tell, the soul’s aura was fluid, a constant reflection of its owner’s moods and deepest, most private thoughts. Perhaps one more sensitive than Peter to such things would be better able to interpret the colors he saw, but he had always kept his emotions and intuition on a tight leash. The habits of a lifetime were difficult to shake, for they were now the one constant in a world that had irreversibly shifted around him.

“Mr. Smith?” A smiling, perfectly made-up receptionist tapped her heel against the polished floor of the clinic as she glanced down at her clipboard one more time. “Mr. Smith, the surgeon will see you now,” Emerald said.

Almost without realizing, he had begun to mentally refer to each person he met by the predominant color of his or her aura. The receptionist’s was a dazzling emerald green, interspersed by sparks of incandescent white and a dash of turquoise that danced merrily around her head. It really is remarkable, he mused, how much happens around us that we are blithely unaware of until something sparks off a new level of consciousness. If this truly was a side effect of the bionic eyes, then he simply could not understand why the clinic did not advertise it. People would surely pay millions to experience this!

Had
he
known what would happen, though, he was certain he would not have been one of them. This was too jarring, too unfamiliar; the polar opposite to all that he had made his life become. Peter did not like change. That was why he was here today.

Remarkable as they were, the eyes had to go.

With that conviction burning inside his mind to provide something to focus on, he rose to his feet and strode toward the door that Emerald indicated. His heart was thudding; an indicator of the nerves that he unaccustomed to feeling. He didn’t know how the surgeon would receive what he had to say. But, after another sleepless night tossing and turning, he realized he would have to confide the truth to his surgeon, to explain why he wanted the revolutionary eyes removed despite the dazzling optical improvements they possessed. Most likely, the enhancement was a side effect they had simply neglected to mention, and once he explained that he was uncomfortable with it, the clinic would make no difficulties about removing them. A brief mention of medical negligence would smooth over any reservations, no doubt.

The surgeon sat behind his desk. His aura steadily pulsed, dominated by tones of the same bright green his receptionist possessed. The cool, soft blues connoted an innate confidence that Peter could not help but admire. Soothed by the notice on the wall concerning doctor-patient confidentiality, something the medical profession held sacred, Peter pushed the door closed behind him and took the seat that the younger man indicated.

“What can I do for you today, Mr. Smith?”

Peter did not believe in small talk. “I want the eyes removed,” he said bluntly. “I don’t like what they’ve done to me. It isn’t right, and I want them out.”

The surgeon’s easy smile faded. “To have a part of your body replaced by bionics is a lot to get your head around, Mr. Smith. If you want to talk about it—”

“I don’t want to talk. I simply want to have the eyes removed.” Peter absently touched his nose before realizing that his spectacles were no longer there to be pushed back up. He missed them. He sighed under his breath before forcing a calm and implacable smile as he met the surgeon’s narrowed eyes. “I’ll pay. That isn’t a problem. I understand that you have operating costs, so if you could tell me how much it will be to have them removed, I’ll transfer the money to your account now and we can schedule the operation.”

“But why do you want them out, Mr. Smith? Surely you’ve seen by now how vastly superior they are to your original eyes.” Dark streaks of muddied pink shot through the surgeon’s aura and Peter tensed.

“That’s the problem. I ... I see too much. I don’t know why your clinic didn’t mention it before, but I can see
far
too much. I see people, I see what they truly are, and I don’t like it. Some might say that knowledge is power, but to me it’s a curse.”

“I don’t understand, sir. Knowledge of what?”

The surgeon seemed to be genuinely at a loss to comprehend what Peter was talking about. His worst fear was perilously near to being confirmed—perhaps this was
not
normal, this new insight the bionic eyes had given him. For the space of a pounding heartbeat, he hesitated, but he had come too far to stop now. “I see what they can’t hide. I see their souls,” he said, so quietly that the sharp-suited surgeon leaned forward to hear him. Saying the words out loud for the first time was the final, incontrovertible acceptance of what had happened to him. The words were like a leaden weight, descending upon his chest and threatening to steal away his breath.

Even more oppressive, though, was the younger man’s reaction. A tiny, disdainful smile played at the corners of his thin lips. He clearly struggled to suppress the faint note of rebuke in his voice when he finally replied. “Perhaps you would benefit from a complimentary session with our clinic’s psychologist, Mr. Smith.”

Peter recoiled in horror. He had never been affiliated with anyone who worked in mental health, and he didn’t intend to start now. It wasn’t that he had anything against those who needed their help, but the disorders they treated were the very definition of abnormality. His bionic eyes darted resentfully from side to side, seeing with a painful clarity the amusement upon the surgeon’s face as he pushed back in his high-backed chair.

“Mr. Smith?”

“
No
!” Peter said, surprising even himself with the new venom in his voice. “I don’t want to talk to your quacks, doctor. I just want the damned eyes out!”

“You don’t need the eyes removed, Mr. Smith,” the surgeon said firmly. “I assure you, I have fitted near a hundred pairs and they have all been flawless—as are yours, whatever you think you’re seeing. What you need is a nice quiet talk with our psychologist. She’s a lovely lady, and I’m sure you’ll get on well with her—”

But Peter had already leapt up from his seat and was backing toward the door. He would not get the help he sought here, that much was plain. He certainly did not need the censure and derision that he saw on the other’s man clinically enhanced features.

His chest was tight and it was a battle to catch his breath, but he let nothing hold him back from rushing through the clinic’s glass doors and out onto the bustling London street. His eyes, far superior to those of near everyone else around him, easily picked out a path for him and guided him to his destination, to the tube train that would take him back to the one place that was his own—home. Once there, he could gather his jumbled thoughts and try to see a way forward. He knew he could no longer live with this.

All around him was a dizzying blur of color that wove and spun around each soul streaming past him. Peter blinked furiously and clung to the rails of the escalator as it descended to the platform. The world around him no longer made sense. It was a mercy that he had travelled the route from central London so many times before, for he lacked entirely the clarity of thought to navigate unfamiliar streets where the auras of everyone he passed dazzled and tormented him. As it was, though, he stole every chance he could to close his eyes and defend himself against the world until, finally, he found his feet traveling down the familiar path of the street where he lived with Marie.

Sanctuary was so near, and with a loud, agonized cry, he opened his eyes long enough to thrust the key into the lock and turn it with fumbling fingers. Glorious, unbound relief exploded inside him as he burst through the front door and slumped against the wall. Marie froze in the doorway to the kitchen with two empty, red-stained wineglasses in her hands.

“You’re back already, Pete? I ... I thought you were going back to work after your appointment!”

She had changed. When Peter had given her a mechanical kiss good-bye that morning, her aura had been a bright, crimson red, far more vibrant than he had seen it before and centered around her core. Now, though, the red had faded to a murky pink overlaid by a gray storm cloud that seemed to battle to close the truth of all she was away from him.

Though he had only his woefully underused senses to rely on, some primal instinct told him with an unerring certainty that Marie was consumed by deceit—a deceit that, given the
two
used glasses in her hands, could have only one cause.

All his life, Peter had sought to control everything around him. Now it was all spiraling out of control. He could withstand it no longer. His stomach churned as he staggered past her into the kitchen, his eyes tightly shut to block out all that he could not bear to see. He didn’t need his vision to find what he sought. Nothing had changed position in their house since the day they had moved in and studiously unpacked every neatly labeled box.

The cutlery drawer was six paces in front of him. With unerring certainty, he reached out and seized the handle to wrench the drawer open.

“Pete! Pete, what are you doing? It’s not what you think!”

Yet neither her pleas nor the shattering crash of the twin wineglasses as they hit the tiled floor could penetrate the fugue of Peter’s mind. The emotions he had kept repressed for half a century erupted as violently and uncontrollably as if Pandora’s Box had opened inside him. With his path laid out clearly in front of him, he spun toward the sound of his wife’s scream and lunged.

He slashed the knife through the air in a clean, precise movement borne of a lifetime spent practicing and honing his self-control. Even with his uncontrollable rage surging through his body, he still retained the presence of mind to draw the blade across Marie’s throat. He issued the ultimate punishment for the infidelity that his eyes had witnessed.

In unseeing bliss, he dropped to his knees. She crumpled to the floor at his side. Her blood gushed from her throat to stain the once-pristine tiles. The blood ran around his feet, soaking his trousers, but Peter only smiled in grim and rueful acknowledgment of the truth he had spoken to the surgeon.

Knowledge truly was a curse.

As Marie’s gurgling, shallow breaths finally ceased, he opened his eyes again and held the bloodstained knife in front of him. Sunlight bounced off the gleaming contours of the serrated blade, its reflection far more brilliant when seen by the bionic eyes. It was unnatural, and he no longer wanted any part of it.

The terrified, racking sobs of his wife’s best friend, who had only dropped by for a glass of wine and some gossip, receded through the still open front door.

Peter lifted the knife to his face. He steadied his hand to begin the task that the surgeon had refused.

PROSTHETICS

BY DANIEL I. RUSSELL

Dr. Bowman met Jim’s eyes. He seemed nervous, but remained smiling.

“You ready?” she asked, taking his hand. She sat next to him on a plush sofa.

“I ... I guess so,” he said.

“Good. Don’t try too hard. This should come naturally. Now ... squeeze!”

Fingers clamped down on the doctor’s hand, and she cried out, pulling back. Jim held on, staring down.

“Jesus,” Bowman moaned and squirmed her fingers. She worked them free from the iron grip. Pain blazed in her hand, like she’d trapped it in a door.

She slid free and massaged the skin, smoothing out the agony.

“Any harder and it would be
me
that needs a new one!”

“I’m sorry,” blurted Jim.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Bowman. “It’s a new technology and needs a little fine-tuning. Let me take another look.”

She held the prosthetic, now a tight fist, and ripped a Velcro strap free. The gloved hand fell away, revealing the fleshy stump beneath. She swallowed and pulled the glove off.

Jim snorted. “You must see this kind of thing every day, yet this,” he held up the deformed hand, “this disgusts even
you
.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s the prosthetic I’m disgusted with.”

Jim’s injured hand turned her stomach. He’d been on the receiving end of a meat slicer accident. The machine had taken most of his right hand, cutting from the base of the thumb up to the knuckle of his little finger. The injury itself didn’t sicken her, but the puckered pink flesh at the trauma site did. She knew she had a bad attitude, especially for someone in her position, but the disgust remained. She preferred nice, tidy stumps, not blood and scars.

“You don’t have to worry much longer,” she said. “Once I get this fixed, it’ll be like having your old hand back.”