Machine Man by Max Barry

Author:Max Barry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction
ISBN: 9780307743220
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I WROTE an e-mail to Cassandra Cautery. By the third draft it said:

You said you wanted to be kept in the loop re: destructive testing, well we are at that stage so just letting you know. CN.

I put it all on one line so she might miss it. I clicked SEND and waited. Ten seconds later the e-mail notification window slid up and my heart sank because the subject was STOP DO NOT PROCEED WRT DESTRUCT TESTING. I clicked it open. All it said was: call me pls. My desk phone rang. I looked at it for a while. But there was no escape. “Hello?”

“Where are you? What’s happening?”

“Nothing. I’m in the Glass Room.”

“Stay there. Okay? Don’t do anything. I’m coming down. I have to make a call first. But I’ll be there. Don’t move.”

“I wasn’t saying today. I’m just keeping you informed.”

“Great. Yes. Thank you. But I do not want you hurting yourself. Is that clear?”

“I thought you were helping me. You said you would help.” My hand holding the phone, the metal one, tightened. I did not usually get angry at people. I was not a confrontational guy. But I was annoyed to discover Cassandra Cautery’s true allegiance, because it should have been obvious. “I’m making these parts for me.”

“That’s not practical, Charlie.”

“It is practical. Don’t tell me what’s practical. My job is all about practical. I know more about what’s practical than you ever will.”

“Calm down. We don’t need to argue.”

“They’re my arms.”

“I’m sending security.”

Assistants had gathered in the Glass Room. They watched with huge, neon eyes. I turned my back on them. “We’ve been working toward this for weeks and suddenly we can’t proceed with testing? You can’t bring in someone else. You can’t just go find some random amputee. This is a secure lab. It will take weeks to clear someone.”

“I have that covered. I don’t need … just stay calm. Sit there and don’t do anything, okay?”

“What do you mean, you have that covered?”

“That’s not important. Just …” I heard clicking fingers. She was signaling to someone. “Sit tight.”

“How do you have that covered?”

“Go,” Cassandra Cautery hissed, but not to me. I put down the phone. When I turned I was confronted with a dozen sets of cats’ eyes. Jason cleared his throat. “Is everything all right?”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking. Security was on its way. I wasn’t sure what they would do when they got here. Maybe nothing. But maybe I had a limited window in which to act unfettered. “Go back to work,” I told the cats. I thunk-thunked out of the Glass Room and down to Lab 5. This was where the arms were housed, the most recent incarnation of the servomagnetic sensory-feedback technology. They hung on plastic thread supports, spotlit. Of course they did. I didn’t know why I’d felt the urge to check them. I headed to Lab 1. We had started calling this the Repository because it was where we stored the parts that never worked right, never got finished, or were exciting until we invented something better.

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