SEATTLE, PRESENT
The bald man streaks through the air and lands nearly silently, his round body lost within a brown monk’s robe tied with a golden sash. He is reaching out and shaking my limp hand before I can react.
“Welcome,” he says.
I don’t let go right away, marveling at him.
“Batuo?” I ask. “I’m June.”
The monk looks me up and down, a sudden smile sending crow’s feet cascading across his temples. Besides wearing Nike high-tops, he has a pair of stylish and expensive-looking sunglasses hanging around his neck.
“My, my,” he says. “What has Peter gotten us into?”
Batuo brushes past, leading the way to the strange table where Peter lies on his back. As we near, the table begins to hum, snake-skin glimmers of electricity arcing from the two polished metal rings that loop around either end.
Peter’s eyes are closed as if he is sleeping.
Gently, Batuo brushes a lock of his friend’s hair away and presses a pudgy palm against his forehead. Peter doesn’t respond, although his chest rises and falls as it replicates the illusion of breathing.
“He fought another one of you. Another…avtomat,” I finish, saying the word reluctantly.
Batuo shoots me a concerned glance.
“That explains the knife wound,” Batuo says, tracing a finger along the faint line that crosses Peter’s mended cheek. “Did you do this repair?”
“We didn’t have much time,” I say.
“I’m surprised he allowed you to touch him.”
“It was an emergency.”
“Good work, for a human,” Batuo says. “Now, straighten his legs and let’s get started.”
I go around the table and pull Peter’s feet, wincing at the noises coming from inside his broken knee.
“Can you fix him?” I ask.
The monk smiles sadly, taking position at the waist-high pedestal that rises from the side of the operating table.
“Peter has gone into hibernation, so he must be hurt badly. We can repair his body. But I cannot speak for his soul.”
Batuo’s fingers press into the flat surface of the control panel.
The silver rings writhe with blue sparks and a breeze seems to rustle over Peter’s body. His thick hair lifts, shivering as though it were weightless. Chest thrusting out, his head tilts back as his entire body rises.
Peter’s long lean body hovers, the fabric of his clothes rippling.
The machine has grown quieter, the thrum dropped an octave into a nearly subsonic groan. Standing beside Batuo, I rest my fingertips along the edge of the table. It is cool, vibrating nearly imperceptibly. Silently, two pools of silver liquid surge into a shallow trough that wraps around the tabletop.
One by one, beads of the mirrorlike liquid separate, dribbling straight up. They separate into shuddering spherical droplets that keep drifting. In the air, the droplets solidify into larger globules. The liquid metal swirls, hardening and softening.
“This technology doesn’t exist,” I whisper.
“Don’t be silly,” replies Batuo. “You’re looking at it.”
Batuo slides his hands into what looks like a pair of brass knuckles resting on the control pedestal. As his arms move, the liquid shifts in tandem with his motions. Fingers wrapped in metal, Batuo is controlling the shimmering liquid.
The silver rings glow a brighter blue and an electrical haze spreads over the cylinder of space around Peter. As the liquid touches him it turns translucent, revealing a blurry image of his skeleton and internal organs. This machine isn’t slicing him into pieces, it’s filtering into his body and displaying what’s happening inside.
Batuo concentrates, waving his hands in subtle undulations. He looks oddly like an old man doing Tai Chi in the park. The liquid metal flows through Peter’s body, sliding across and into his face, neck, and shoulders. All around his torso, tiny pellets of buckshot are puckering his skin and wriggling out, ejected, dropping to the tabletop with tinking sounds.
As Batuo works, I recognize a familiar crescent outline glowing in the depths of Peter’s rib cage. The shape is fitted into a reinforced shell mounted at the center of Peter’s torso—cocooned in muscular layers of metal and plastic. And in the hazy flickering light, I see a symbol on it.
Peter has a relic—just like the one hanging around my neck.
The liquid metal slithers down Peter’s body, closing around his knee, injecting itself into the shattered joint. Ribbons of it solidify and stay in place to heal the fractured material. Shredded flesh and broken pieces of Peter’s knee are expelled, floating like fallen leaves toward the table. Meanwhile, the liquid is shrinking, losing mass as pieces solidify to form internal parts. Finally, the remaining metal drips back to the table, leaving the pink skin of Peter’s restored knee visible through his shredded pants.
Peter’s body lowers back to the table and the machine goes silent. He lies still, his newly repaired arms and legs laid out stiffly. His eyes are closed, and an occasional spark still dances over his face. Batuo sucks air between his teeth and drops the brass knuckle devices to the control pedestal.
“What?” I ask.
Head bowed, Batuo steps away from the machine.
“What is it?” I repeat.
“Inevitability,” he responds, dejection in his voice. “Peter’s anima, the source of his power and reason, has been knocked loose of its cradle. The last of his energy stores have leaked away. His hibernation will last another few days, and then he will fall into the long sleep.”
“What can we do?”
“We have repaired his body, but it is not so easy to replenish his soul.”
“You’re talking about that thing in his chest, with the symbol?”
“Each avtomat has a unique anima—our mind, memories, and will. The symbol written upon it is his true self, the Word he lives by.”
My fingers creep to my neck, pressed to my throat.
“Without the mind, the body is dust,” says Batuo. “A vessel without its anima is but a husk—it cannot perceive or act. But when placed in the cradle of its own unique vessel, anima will express itself as…avtomat.”
I reach into the neck of my shirt and pull out the relic that hangs there, letting it dangle by its chain. Batuo sees it and his eyes widen, words dying in his throat.
“I’ve been asking myself what this is for a long time,” I say. “And all along I should have been asking who.”