The Rift Coda by Amy S. Foster

Author:Amy S. Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

It is always the hearing before the seeing. That’s how it goes in these situations. The beeping of machines. The hum of electricity. The quiet voices peppered with concern. Bright side, I am not in pain. Downside—I literally cannot feel anything. I can’t feel my own weight. I can’t even feel the clothes on my body or the sheets on the bed. It’s like my brain has been shoved in a jar but somehow been kept alive.

Shit. I am with the SenMachs. They could probably do something like that. What if I’m actually dead and they downloaded my consciousness into an android!

Fuuuck.

I wouldn’t put it past them. I open a single eye, expecting some kind of display to be right on my cornea and a readout of my vitals and status—because obviously I’m a robot now—but everything looks normal. A little blurry, but still, normal. I look down at my very own body underneath a thin blanket.

Okay, so option two—not a robot. High as hell then.

Gathered around me are Levi, Feather, and Cosmos. Feather is the closest thing the SenMachs have to a doctor. I mean, he is a doctor, just not a human one. The SenMachs are sentient machines. Feather (who I’m told was modeled after Beethoven, but looks completely and totally like a soccer dad) is the head of the biomed division. Cosmos is the “doyenne,” the leader of the city. She is modeled after some British royalty person that I’ve never heard of. Cosmos is quite pretty, in an old Hollywood type of way. Though old is absolutely the wrong word to describe any of the SenMachs. They all look like adults with baby skin. None of them have a single frown line, wrinkle, or mole (unless they were designed that way). Their skin is without blemish, because it’s not entirely real.

I reach over hopefully, touching my right hand to my left, but it is gone. If I wasn’t so completely high right now, I am sure I would be totally devastated. I had assumed they would just smack a new one on. But maybe it’s not that easy. Maybe it’s not even something they can do at all.

“What an exceptional story Levi has just told me,” Cosmos says with near sarcasm. I say near because it’s hard with the SenMachs to get real emotion across, about anything. “He tells me that you allowed a six-armed biped to cut your limb off in return for an alliance. But then I thought, no, that cannot be, for who would want an alliance with such a miserable creature?”

“Cosmos,” I say, but my voice is gravelly and my throat hurts. “You watched me put a gun to my head. I threatened to kill myself if you forced us to stay here with you. You can’t really be surprised that I would do something so extreme.”

“Not surprised, no,” Cosmos says as she looks at me with something that might be concern. There is the slightest grimace on her face, but there’s an equal chance she’s just annoyed.

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