BY MARK R. HEALY
From this high up it was hard to feel any sort of connection with the world below. People were motes of dust in the streetlights, swirling through the darkened lanes and alleyways without any sense of order or purpose. The 19:10 shuttle zipped past and docked at the platform outside my building, the platform itself nothing more than a matchbox on which more dust was sprinkled. Like a vacuum it drew them in, sucking every last one of them inside. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone.
That was my shuttle. I never missed it. Well, today I did, but never before this.
They say these buildings sway twenty or thirty metres at their peak. I pressed my head against the fifteen centimetre plexiglass and watched. I couldn’t see it move at all. Maybe that was for the best.
“Hullo there.” Mr. Wilkins came in behind me and I quickly stepped away from the window. I must have looked like such an idiot standing there, my head pressed against the glass like some bug-eyed tourist. I couldn’t help it. I had never been up this high before.
“Hullo Mr. Wilkins.” The old man seemed to take no notice of my behaviour. He quickly reached me and stuck out a hand, which I took in mine. It was cold and leathery.
“What a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said. I had never seen Mr. Wilkins up close before. There were rumours - company myths, almost - that he was a hundred and ten years old. This close, he looked every year of it. His skin was wrinkled and mottled, his hair thin and wispy. He smiled, showing teeth worn and blackened, and a strange thought occurred to me. My mother once took me to a local fair when I was a kid, back before they went out of fashion. There was a game that involved dropping balls into the mouths of grinning wooden clown heads. I don’t remember anything about the game now, but I remember the clowns, and in particular their gaping mouths, frozen in place with those grotesque smiles. That was the kind of smile Mr. Wilkins gave me.
“You’ve been waiting to meet me?” I was a little confused by this.
His eyes narrowed, but the smile didn’t skip a beat. “Of course. Did you think we hadn’t noticed you down there?”
I knew insecurity was a trait ill-favoured by these people, the upper echelons of management, and I feigned a confident stance and tone of voice.
“Well, I hoped my work would be noticed. From what I hear, people don’t get called up here very often.”
“Oh, they don’t,” Mr. Wilkins assured me, turning away and setting off for a desk over by the corner. He bridged the distance quickly, his feet almost seeming to slide across the floor as if he were moving on ice skates. “But it is a place you might find yourself well acquainted with, should you continue to make the correct choices.”
The office was sparsely furnished. The shiny white desk was set amidst what seemed to be acres of immaculately clean beige carpet. Mr. Wilkins was only on the other side of the room, but there seemed to be a great gulf between us. I kept expecting to hear an echo whenever he spoke.
Mr. Wilkins shuffled through a stack of papers and pulled one out, thumping it down on the edge of the desk. His head swivelled towards me, his eyes shining. The smile was still there.
“If you care to sign this, I think the matter will be done with,” he said.
I moved over and took the gold pen offered to me. At the head of the form the words Promotional Document 109277 were written in bold font. I signed without reading the fine print. In some ways, I still couldn’t believe this was happening. I wanted to get straight home and tell Jane all about it.
“Thank you,” Mr. Wilkins said, yanking the form out from under my grasp, almost before I had made the last stroke of my signature. He produced a shiny blue card and held it out. “This is your new card. May I have your old one?” I removed the worn grey card from my pocket and made an exchange for the other. “You will start work tomorrow on Level 87.” He turned to go.
“Level 87?” I said. “I’m that high already?”
A door in the far wall opened as Mr. Wilkins neared it. “Don’t be late,” he said, and it closed behind him with a swish.
My new card already had a message for me. Report to Sub-Level 19 before leaving. I had never been below the ground floor before, had no clue what was even down there. I was happy enough with my promotion not to care.
It took me three or four seconds in the elevator to reach Sub-Level 19 from Level 207. The doors opened and I stepped out.
I decided I didn’t like Sub-Level 19 much at all. It was dank, dark, and filled with a humming, throbbing sound like a sickly heartbeat hiding behind the whirr of a great machine. There was only one place to go - a red doorway lit by a flickering fluoro, a beacon in the darkness. My new card sent the door clunking aside, a far cry from the smooth mechanics of the one on Level 207. I went inside.
It was humid in there. Steam leaked from a valve above, coating the criss-crossing steel pipes with a thick layer of moisture. A large metal cage loomed out of the darkness, backlit by an iridescent blue monitor, on which a cursor blinked idly. I looked about, perplexed. This was not like anything I had seen anywhere in Machine Co. Everything was always so polished and sterile, from the alabaster workbenches to the off-white rotating office chairs, the glinting marble boardroom tables and fine china coffee cups. The stainless steel spoons and pens, the immaculate bone writing pads. The spotless cream carpeting. Hell, you couldn’t turn around without bumping into one of their automatic mobile sanitary units, scuffing the fingerprints off the desk you just leaned on.
Well, those fellas hadn’t been down here in a while. Not in a long while.
A metal panel slid out of an aperture in the cage, near the monitor, and suddenly the cursor came to life. I moved forward.
Insert hand here.
I looked from the panel, back to the monitor, where the words stood in bright yellow, unmistakable. What was all this about? What did my hand have to do with anything?
Curious, I lay my hand on the panel, palm down, and immediately the panel began to retract. I moved with it, and my hand slid in behind the thick mesh of the cage. My fingers glowed a ghostly blue, and looking up, I saw the source of the light, way up in the ceiling.
A crackle of intense luminosity coursed down the blue haze like a flash of lightning, from ceiling to floor in an instant. It passed right through my hand and I felt nothing. I tried to wiggle my fingers, but they would not move. Alarmed, I tried to retract my hand, but my whole arm seemed to be trapped in there.
It was then the claw appeared, heralded by the clank and clatter of a machine concealed in the depths of the darkened cage. It shunted its way forward and clamped onto my hand, lifting it away into the darkness. I felt nothing. I saw the wound at the wrist, where it had been cut right through and cauterised, but felt no pain. Oddly detached, I watched my hand disappear into the darkness and, on the end of another claw, another hand was delivered. This hand, my new hand, was mechanical. I could see the workings of it the moment before it was attached to my wrist - metal rods for bones, tiny cogs and levers for tendon and muscle. The claw withdrew, and the luminosity crackled again. Then I fell backward.
I don’t know if I passed out. If I did, it wasn’t for long. That strange feeling of detachment was still with me, a fuzziness on the edge of my consciousness. I looked at my hand, twisted it back and forth, flexed my fingers. Everything was fine, it seemed. There wasn’t even a scar. Already the image of my dismembered hand floating away on the end of the mechanical claw seemed like a dream. I left.
I caught the 19:45 shuttle. I wasn’t too late at all. There was still plenty of time to go out and celebrate. The shuttle took little more than a blink of an eye to move from one stop to the next. It was the people getting in and out that made my trip home a laborious 7 minutes. Still, that wasn’t bad for 120 kilometres. I marvelled at the fact that everyone in the shuttle wasn’t plastered against the ends of the thing every time it took off and stopped. In time you just got used to it, though, and after a while everyone took it for granted. It was like the first time I ever bought a CD as a kid. I played it once, then took it out and looked at it, at the shiny golden surface, reflecting the myriad colours, and wondered, ‘How on earth do they put the music on there?’ For the average person, it was magic, an impossibility. But you just accepted it as something you would never understand and dealt with it. It was the same with the shuttle system. Anti-Inertial Compensation Mechanism, they called it. AICM. The impossible became the possible, then the just plain old ordinary.
Jane responded to the news evenly and agreed to let me buy her dinner. We went to her favourite restaurant, a Thai place in the hinterland. I told her about being up on Level 207 of Machine Co, about Mr. Wilkins and his strange smile. I omitted Sub-Level 19. To my chagrin, she had to put a negative slant on things.
“Does this mean I’m going to see less of you?” she said, fiddling idly with the string of pearls around her neck. She had eyes of the clearest blue and a mane of auburn hair, the kind that caught the eye from the opposite side of the room. She also wore her favourite low-cut black dress, which she seemed to reserve for special occasions.
I sighed, leaned back in my chair. “Why are you bringing this up?” I wanted to know. “Why now? You don’t know how much more or less of me you’ll see.”
Jane didn’t answer immediately. She toyed with her napkin and avoided eye contact.
“I finally got around to fixing up the side gate,” she said. “Dad came around with his nail gun, and we got it done in one afternoon.”
I could tell she was trying to make a point, in an indirect way, because it was me who used to do those odd jobs around the house for her. I found I had less and less time lately for that kind of thing. It all came down to priorities. There was so much more riding on the outcome of my tasks at Machine Co that Jane’s little concerns dwindled into insignificance.
“You know I’d do that for you, if I had the time,” I said.
An ironic smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re not making time. And it’s going to get worse.”
“Well, if you’ve found a way to cram 28 hours into a day, I’ll start fixing gates for you,” I offered.
She looked at me directly. “This sounds non-negotiable.”
“Look, this won’t always be the way, Jane. I need to put one hundred percent into my work at the moment-”
“So I get nothing?” she said, her skin flushed. “What does that make me, then? Your maid?”
“Tell me what you want,” I said flatly.
She gestured uselessly. “I barely see you as it is. You come in at night, eat, shower, and go to bed. I want you to talk to me. Comment on the watercolours I’ve put up in the study. Anything!”
I considered lying, and telling her I had noticed the watercolours, but I knew she would see through me. I thought she’d given up her painting years ago.
“I’m doing this for us,” I said instead. “You’re ungrateful.”
She backed off, startled, ran a slender hand down the back of her neck self-consciously. “I’m sorry. Forget it.” When those startling blue eyes fell on me like that, she was easy to forgive.
I took a deep breath. “That’s OK. I’m sorry, too.” We rarely argued, and I was already regretting some of the things I had said. I leaned forward again and slid my hand along the table, palm upward. She smiled at the gesture and placed her hand in mine. I saw her fingers run along my palm, but I couldn’t feel them. It was almost as if she were touching someone else’s hand. I frowned. It was the hand I had placed inside the cage on Sub-Level 19. She saw my look of concern and squeezed my hand.
“What’s wrong?”
At least, I saw her squeeze my hand. I couldn’t feel a thing. I snatched it back, touched my fingers with the other hand. The machine hand was cold, like the temperature of a metal bench top or the bonnet a car after it had been sitting in the cool of a garage.
“What’s wrong?” Jane said again.
“Nothing.” I hid the hand under the table, forced a pitiful smile. “I’m hungry.”
When the food arrived, I could use my fork fine, even though I couldn’t feel it. I tucked into my garlic pork and put the hand out of my mind. I thought of how good it would feel on Level 87 tomorrow.
And it did feel good. I had more space here than three of us back on my old level. Demands on my time increased. The 20:10 shuttle became my regular. I had meetings with people who used to boss me around. The marble board room tables were bigger here. My new hand, however, never regained feeling. It typed faster than my other one, though, and I eventually adjusted to using the one hand on the keyboard. It still typed faster than my old two hands combined. I also quite carelessly stained the tips of three fingers by leaving them dangling in a cup of hot coffee at my lap in a particularly boring meeting. I couldn’t feel the heat on them, didn’t even know they were in there until I went to take a sip. I think they were in there ten minutes or more.
From Level 87, the people on the street below still appeared somewhat human. You could make out arms and legs. You could discern fat people from skinny people. You could sometimes see if they were wearing a hat. But you couldn’t hear anything, of course. The plexiglass was soundproof.
I never touched Jane with my new hand. I always managed to conveniently end up with my left side to her. If she ever reached for that hand, I leaned away or intercepted it with the other. It just didn’t feel right, somehow, to touch her with it. The hand had been given to me for a number of reasons, and none of those reasons had anything to do with tenderness.
I bought a guitar, an expensive one, because I had always wanted to play. The rise in pay that came with a Level 87 job certainly came in handy, there. The hand, strangely enough, wasn’t much good for playing the guitar, either. It quickly became an expensive six-stringed ornament.
• • •
When I was elevated to a job on Level 119, I once again found myself in the office of Mr. Wilkins up on 207. I didn’t remember applying for the position. One day I was hard at work, and the next I was being told I was on the way up, that my application was successful. I didn’t mention I hadn’t put one in.
The sun plunged below the horizon and the streets below came into view as the streetlights flared into life like a succession of dominoes. There were other buildings nearby, tall and thin like fluorescent corn stalks, a shimmering green and yellow landscape. None of the other buildings were as tall as Machine Co, though. How those others must lift their gaze and dream of what it would be like to stand where I stand.
Mr. Wilkins swept into the room and offered a greeting. He was clad in shiny black leather shoes, an immaculate blue suit, and a clown-like smile. We shook hands, and I felt nothing through that insensitive limb.
“How is business on 87?” he said, turning away and heading for his desk before I could answer.
“Fine, Mr. Wilkins,” I said. “They’re good people, there.”
“Excellent, excellent,” he said, producing a form and placing it on the edge of the desk. “Sign here, please.” A gold pen flashed as he held it out. I felt like I was a product on an assembly line to be pushed through with a minimum of fuss.
“Ah, Mr. Wilkins,” I said haltingly, “I wonder if I could ask you something first?”
Mr. Wilkins beamed that horrible smile at me, unflappable. “What is it?”
“Well, I was thinking about Sub-Level 19. Can you tell me what happens down there?”
Mr. Wilkins placed the pen down with what seemed to be a degree of irritation, although his expression did not change.
“You were there. You saw for yourself.”
“I saw, yes. I don’t quite understand, though. What is it for? Why is it necessary?”
“Are you unhappy with your alteration?”
I considered my reply carefully. “There are benefits of the, er, alteration, yes, but—”
“Well then, what else is there to know?” he said, and the pen was back in his hand again.
“Well, there are certain things the hand does not do as well as might be hoped, Mr. Wilkins,” I ventured meekly.
“I see,” Mr. Wilkins said amiably. He scooped the form up and returned the pen to his pocket. He made as if to leave.
“Wait! That was not what I meant, Mr. Wilkins. I don’t want to sound ungrateful for what you have given me—”
And before I could finish the form and pen were waiting for me again. Mr. Wilkins grinned, beckoning. I made my way over.
Down on Sub-Level 19, I found it difficult to approach the red door. The place hummed and throbbed as before, and the air was stifling. I began to sweat, but it wasn’t entirely brought on by the heat.
I used my new red card to open the door, and as it clanked aside the blue terminal came into view, such an innocuous looking thing to make my heartbeat accelerate so. The cursor flashed into life, but the words were too small for me to read from the doorway. Almost without my consent, it seemed, the new hand reached behind me and pushed on the doorframe, propelling me across the floor toward the terminal.
Lie on panel, feet first.
As if on cue, the panel slid out, large, flat and shiny, like a pallet in a morgue. I dreaded lying on it, thinking of what it might do to me, and I think in some ways I realised there would be no turning back. I had to decide, then and there, whether I wanted to be higher up Machine Co, or if I wanted my former life back.
Ironically, I was too afraid not to lie on the panel. I was too afraid that all I had worked for would go to waste, that I would be stuck half way up, when I had always dreamed of being at the top. I was afraid that those below me would make the sacrifices I was not prepared to and quickly overtake me in the hierarchy. So I lay on the panel.
I thought for a terrifying moment I would slide all the way into the cage, but it stopped with a shudder at my waist. The luminosity flashed, but again there was no pain. I received an improvement to my legs.
• • •
I began to forget things. Nothing about work, of course. My knowledge and skill in doing my job only grew after the changes. But I forgot Jane’s birthday, and I forgot her cat’s name. I forgot the name of her favourite stage play. I couldn’t remember whether she liked chocolate, or walks in the park. I didn’t care, either. I was getting home later and later, and eventually I was only spending a few hours a day there to sleep. I required little rest after my improvements. It barely registered to me that she was there most of the time.
And that made it difficult for me to recognise that at some point, she had left. I think it reached me, on a subconscious level, that something was missing from my life that had once been an integral part of it. Jane certainly had nothing to contribute to my life now, and her disappearance caused me no more emotional impact than missing a coffee break.
Up on 119 I didn’t need to type any more. I had a secretary. She didn’t type either. She used an expensive voice activated system, the type of software reserved for executives and their assistants as a status symbol. When you no longer had to type, you knew you were on the way to ‘making it’. The meetings increased, became a blur in which solutions were reached and deals struck, and I contributed instinctively and effectively. My job hardly required thought any more, I just went about it in a strangely detached and yet highly effective manner.
From time to time I seemed to drift in and out of consciousness. I would find myself in a meeting with people I did not recognise, with no recollection of how I got there. I would be engaged in conversation with them, the words flowing from me with a strange surety, as if I was on automatic pilot while I was out to it.
“And what of the bus architecture of the new 660 series biochip?” a bespectacled woman with a thin face said, looking at me expectantly.
Before I could ask her what the hell she was talking about, the words came tumbling out of my mouth.
“One and a half million re-routing channels, coupled with a completely separate memory space for PAO processing.”
“Adequate,” the man across from me said. He was pale and nervous-looking, and he seemed to regret having spoken at all, looking away apprehensively.
“We are concerned with the price being touted for this hardware,” the woman went on. “Machine Co seems to think it can charge whatever it wants because it is the market leader.”
“Machine Co can charge whatever it wants because there is nothing out there that can remotely compete with the hardware we are offering.” I was not angry, simply relating a matter of fact. “If you think you can do any better, you’re welcome to deal with another organisation.”
I often wondered how my body worked now it was partly machine. How did the blood flow work? How were the electrical signals from my brain interpreted by the new limbs? I guess, like CDs, and like AICM, I just began to accept it without question. I knew Machine Co was spending a great deal of money on publicity about its research into bioengineering, that a number of small species of animals had been given mechanical limbs in laboratory situations. What the public didn’t know was that the research had obviously gone way beyond that, to human recipients. How many other Machine Co employees had been given these mechanical components? Or was it just me?
I wasn’t on Level 119 for long. I was quickly promoted again (receiving the appropriate physical upgrades) and swept up to 163. At this level I was drawn into decision making on the promotion of those further down the ladder at Machine Co, a department called ‘Machine Relations’. Often candidates for promotions would appear briefly on that level, nervously flitting about as we conducted our assessment of them. From this high up in the organisation it was hard to feel any sort of association with the people below. They were slow, ponderous creatures without any sense of order or purpose, nothing like the efficient colleagues I shared on 163. Sometimes I watched these newcomers and felt that the future of Machine Co would be an uncertain one should they ever rise above their present positions. I sent many of them back down with a smile, a vigorous handshake and a note on their records that they were never to be promoted under any circumstance.
I could feel nothing now below my neck, where everything had been replaced, but this did not concern me greatly. A sense of touch was not necessary for the tasks I was required to carry out at Machine Co, and I rarely dwelled on the point.
I found myself on the 05:15 shuttle one morning, my usual morning shuttle now, deliberating over the day’s meetings. A young woman sat down beside me, and as she did another commuter passed by and knocked the bag from her hand, spilling the contents in my lap. She apologised and began to gather the items back in. I picked up one, a shiny gold CD, and watched the fluoros play off its surface, saw the rainbow of colours glinting as I moved it back and forth. I vaguely recollected a story someone had told me once, or I had overheard in a meeting, about an emotion they had experienced when looking at a CD like this one, but the association remained just beyond my grasp. I felt it was important, for some indefinable reason, that I remember who had told me this and when. This simple object seemed to have awoken some long dormant part of me for the moment. But the recollection slipped away from me as my eyes skipped over the disc, and I let it go, handing it back to its owner. I had other, more important things to think about.
Later that day an alert came in that I was required in another meeting. I was directed into one of the smaller meeting rooms where a young woman was waiting for me. I nodded in greeting and took out my gold pen and notepad as I sat opposite her on the small white table, ready for business.
“How are you?” the woman said. I looked up at her, smiled perfunctorily.
“Fine,” I said. “What are we here for, today?”
She hesitated. “What?”
“What can I do for you?”
She sat watching me, evaluating. She was obviously not particularly organised. I felt the briefest flash of contempt. Life was too short to waste in meetings like this, where nothing was being done, nothing achieved. I had a million other things to do in the day, and the last thing I needed was to sit in here with someone who wasn’t organised.
The woman flicked her hair, annoyed. “Am I wasting your time, being here?”
“At the moment, yes. Why don’t we get down to business? That way, neither of us has to waste our time.”
She stood up suddenly, her chair screeching on the polished floor. “I think I’ve already wasted too much time.”
“Well, tell me what organisation you’re from,” I said as she stalked toward the door. “I’ll schedule another meeting, a holoconference, perhaps. That way you need not come all the way over here to Machine Co.”
She paused, looking back at me with a tinge of emotion in her eyes that I couldn’t identify. Perhaps it was sadness. I was getting worse at picking people’s emotions.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
I waited, pen poised.
“Jane. My name is Jane.”
I scribbled it down. “Talk to you again then, Jane,” I said as I wrote the name down. “What organisation was it?”
But when I looked up she was gone.
• • •
I should have been very happy the day I was promoted to Level 201 and became part of the elite, but it only registered minimally. I seemed incapable of emotions such as triumph, joy, and satisfaction of late. I didn’t miss them. There was a sense of this being right, as opposed to wrong, that I was doing what I was supposed to by winning this promotion. But that was all I could manage, feelings in black and white. There were no shades of grey any more.
Mr. Wilkins swept in, smiling, and I thought of clowns. How odd. We shook hands.
“How quickly the time passes, eh?” Mr. Wilkins said. “It seems not long ago that you were in the lower levels, only dreaming of this moment.”
I could feel a smile of my own spreading across my face. That was the only place I could feel any more.
“Yes. How long has it been?” Strangely, I had no recollection of how long had I been working for Machine Co.
“Our records tell us you have been with the company twenty-four years,” Mr. Wilkins smiled.
I came as close to a feeling of shock as I had in a long while. “It doesn’t seem that long,” I said lamely.
“Never mind,” Mr. Wilkins said, all business. He moved over to his desk. I knew the ritual well enough by now, and I went and took the gold pen from him, signing my name on the form.
“Excellent,” Mr. Wilkins said, whipping the paper out of my grasp. He handed me my new card, gold. I returned my old card to him. “Now if you will report to Sub-Level 19, the transaction will be complete.”
A tinge of emotion seeped through the wall I had so carefully constructed around my inner feelings. It was fear.
“Why do I have to go there? I would have thought my modifications were complete. I mean, there’s nothing else to be done to me, is there?”
Mr. Wilkins stared back at me, smiling. “There are more modifications that can be done.”
At that moment there was a ting heralding the arrival of the elevator, and its doors whooshed open, admitting a young, well-groomed man. He caught sight of the two of us and moved hastily toward us.
“Mr. Smythe, what are you doing here?” Mr. Wilkins said. His smile did not falter.
“Mr. Wilkins, I demand to see you immediately. You’ve been avoiding me.” He reached us then, flushed, wild-eyed, but not a hair on his head out of place. His suit, too, was immaculate, and he wore a blue and yellow speckled tie. He was not familiar to me at all. The drones on the lower levels of the building all seemed alike, just mannequins from an assembly line, all taught to act and look the same. This man was no different.
“Nonsense. I simply have had no cause to see you, Mr. Smythe. I am the one who will make an appointment with you when that time comes.”
“No!” Mr. Smythe yelled, clenching his fists at his side. “I have been passed over enough times, Mr. Wilkins. I demand to know why.”
“I suggest you return to Level 54, Mr. Smythe. Immediately.” For the first time in my memory, Mr. Wilkins was not smiling. His voice carried a note of warning.
Mr. Smythe unbuttoned his suit. “I will not.” He was petrified, this man, but his anger seemed to drive him on. “I have not been given the respect I deserve. I have had no holidays in the past three years, and have worked twice as hard as the idiot you promoted. I demand to know why.”
“You will leave now, Mr. Smythe.”
“You won’t turn me away so easily,” Mr. Smythe said. “This is not the way to treat your valued employees, Mr. Wilkins.” He seemed to notice me for the first time. “They ask you to give up everything, and offer not even so much as an explanation in return,” he said to me. “You’d think they’d give you a reason, wouldn’t you?”
“I believe you’re proving our decision not to promote you an astute one, Mr. Smythe,” Mr. Wilkins said. “You’re unstable. You crumble in a crisis.”
“Crisis?” Mr. Smythe screeched. “I could tell you a thing or two about a crisis. My deadlines prevented me from attending my father’s funeral last year. My own father. No one in my family wants anything to do with me any more. I’m all alone now, apart from those I know at Machine Co. That’s a crisis.” He turned to me again. “That’s how they rope you in, isn’t it? They take and take and take until Machine Co is all you have left. Then you’re theirs.” His eyes bored into me, entreating, as if my agreement might substantiate his arguments. I offered him no acknowledgement.
Mr. Wilkins’ stony countenance betrayed no emotion.
The young man’s demeanour altered, seeing that he was making no impression, and he pleaded. “Please, Mr. Wilkins, I need this. They’re going to take my house from me if I don’t get this promotion. Please.”
Mr. Wilkins might have been a statue for all of the compassion he showed. “You will leave now, Mr. Smythe.”
The young man’s face crumbled, and he reached inside his suit. “I will not!” he bawled, and a blade flashed in his hand, striking Mr. Wilkins across the face. The old man stumbled backward without a sound, and I watched the entire scene without moving an inch, a detached observer. The young man rounded on me like a cornered animal, as if I might leap to Mr. Wilkins’ protection. I did not. In the blink of an eye, two sentries materialised and bustled him from either side, removing the weapon from his grasp and hauling him unceremoniously toward the elevator. Mr. Smythe offered no resistance other than to look beyond them, his eyes searching over the silent form of Mr. Wilkins. It might have been concern for the old man, or perhaps hopefulness that he had done away with him. I couldn’t tell.
The elevator doors closed.
Mr. Wilkins got up, dusted himself off.
“Where were we?”
The smile was back in place, but not as it was before. The right side of Mr. Wilkins’ face bore a ragged tear across the cheek, disfiguring the smile. There was no blood. Beneath his rent skin I could see cogs turning over and the sheen of metal. Mr. Wilkins seemed oblivious to the injury.
It took a shock like that to wake me from my years of emotional deprivation. Fear, revulsion, loathing, all bubbled up inside me like old, half-forgotten friends.
“No,” I said, shaking my head in horror. Mr. Wilkins seemed to become aware of his appearance for the first time, and he lifted a hand to cover his cheek.
“My, what an emotional young man,” he said, unruffled. “We can’t have that at Machine Co.”
He could see I wasn’t buying it, and for the second time his smile faltered.
“Report to Sub-Level 19 before you leave.” He turned abruptly and stalked from the room, disappearing behind the automatic door.
I wasted no time considering the implications of what I had just seen. I made for the elevator, punched in ‘G’ for the ground floor. I needed to get out of there.
In two or three seconds I reached my destination, and the doors slid back, revealing the entrance to the building. It was a relief to see the outside world beyond the glass doors and the white fountain. I could see people walking past in the street, saw a traffic light change from green to amber. Then to red. I stepped forward.
But I didn’t.
My mother had a saying, once: the mind is willing, but the flesh is weak. I think in this situation, the first half of the saying was applicable. The second part of the saying had nothing to do with flesh, however. My machine body had taken over.
My hand reached out, pressed the button for Sub-Level 19. I didn’t want it to, but it performed the action regardless. The doors slid shut, and the outside world slipped away, like a stage show on which the curtains were being drawn.
Once I was trapped again, my body lost its rigidity. I reached forward and slid my fingers between the elevator doors—for the moment, I seemed to have control back. The elevator slowed markedly as I pried the doors open a few centimetres, obviously some kind of safety mechanism. Try as I might, I could not open them further. Several levels flipped by, but there was little light here to suggest what lurked in these lower levels. All I knew was, I had to get out of the elevator.
The doors opened again soon enough, and I walked out into Sub-Level 19. I produced my card, walked into the room with the cage. All the while, the only thing I could think about was getting out of there, getting back to the ground floor and getting on the shuttle. But once again I was powerless. My body had taken control.
The place throbbed like a heartbeat. I might have thought it was my own heartbeat hammering in my ears, but for the fact I didn’t have a heart any more.
The blue screen was waiting, the yellow cursor blinking. I didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to near it. I wanted to walk straight back out of there and get in the elevator. But I had no choice any more.
My legs moved forward, and suddenly I remembered why I thought of clowns when Mr. Wilkins smiled. I remembered the fair. There were other thoughts that I tried desperately to reach, seemingly random images of people I didn’t know. They were like feathers in the wind, dancing just out of my grasp. And then, they were gone.
The cursor sprang into life, and a panel slid out.
Lie on panel, head first.
I lay on the thin sheet of metal, let my head rest against the shiny surface. I felt the coldness of it on my cheek.
But I don’t remember anything after that.