Appliance by J. O. Morgan

Author:J. O. Morgan [Morgan, J. O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

7. Last Suppers

HE WAS a boy who took everything apart. He would unstitch bears to get at the growler, curious over the source of each unhappy moan. He would ease the limbs off action men to see how the ball-and-socket joints were fixed. Given a puzzle pre-muddled he’d dig a kitchen knife between the blocks and, breaking the object apart, lay all the individual segments out, to reassemble again in just the right order.

His parents thought this behaviour was not unusual, they’d tell themselves he was just a typical boy, always inquisitive, never resting, never taking anything for granted; even though other parents did not report the same of their children.

His first computer he built himself out of various electronic goods others discarded as junk, upgrading it over the years as further unwanted items were discovered. To most the machine looked ugly, a hotchpotch of parts, with exposed circuit boards and bare-ended wires and soldering points on which a loose sleeve might catch. With this in mind his parents hesitated whenever it came to buying new devices for their home, for fear such items would end up being pulled apart and plundered. But this was a misplaced worry. Nothing they bought ever failed. Or if it did it wasn’t because of their son. If any issue did arise: he’d find the fault, he’d fix it.

And so it was, eventually, as with nearly every other household, they bought a family transporter unit and had it installed.

¶

‘And it’s them you blame? Ultimately? Your mother and father?’

The man was very large, dressed all in black. His suit and shirt were so deep a black you couldn’t see where one fold of cloth overlapped another. The black tie and black collar and black neck above all blended together into a singular shadow. As he talked his broad head swayed slightly, as though its great weight was precariously balanced. He stood in the corner of the room where the light was at its dimmest. His eyes were not visible, a pair of dark glasses obscured them, though the small round lenses stayed fixed upon the boy all the while the man spoke.

‘My parents? Ultimately? Hmm. I don’t think so. If I tugged on that thread where would it all end? At my birth? Theirs? At the beginnings of the whole human race? At existence itself? No. I can’t allow myself to think like that. I don’t even blame the manufacturers. I don’t suppose I blame anyone. Not even me. Why would I? Blame seems, hmm, it seems the wrong word somehow.’

The boy was tall and pale, with spindly limbs and long dark hair that ran in soft wavy locks to the tops of his shoulders. He sat on his wooden stool with his slippered feet perched on the chair’s upper rung so that he could lean his forearms easily upon the points of his knees. He wore a pale blue boiler suit. It fitted him badly, even after being turned up at all four cuffs and cinched around the waist with a canvas belt.

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