Machine Man by Max Barry Read Free Book Online Page B

unpick its code. I figured I could modify this and flash new instructions. This took eight hours. In the meantime Jason and Katherine arrived and asked through the speaker if I needed help. I had them bring me snacks. Finally I loaded new code onto the chip and powered it on. The capacitor popped and died.
    I stared at it. I needed sleep. With a clear head I could figure this out. I pulled on the leg, smelling stale sweat, and hobbled out. Without a functional microprocessor, the leg swung like a garden gate. The ski foot flew out in front. I made my way to the elevators with one hand touching the wall. When I reached my bunk, I pulled off the straps and threw the whole thing on the floor.
    I WANTED Elaine to fetch me a cadmium battery but she was nowhere to be found. “Have you seen Elaine?” I asked Jason.
    He swiveled to face me. His glasses reflected my halogen workbench light. “I thought …” He looked at Elaine’s desk. It was very clean. “Didn’t you get an e-mail?”
    I rolled to my keyboard. I had lots of e-mails. I read few. I looked at the forty-character previews, and when they began, “Season’s Greetings from everyone here at …” or, “Seminars are now open for bookings on a …” it was obvious they were just noise. E-mails I needed to read began, “Didn’t you see this? You must …” or, “Your department has again failed to …” or something like that. I scrolled through my in-box. I had to sift through a lot of useless information about who wasn’t allowed to park where and why the air conditioners would be off from four to five but then I found it. It was from Human Resources. Elaine had transferred out. The e-mail didn’t say why. It just said it was
thought best
.
    “Oh,” I said.
    THAT NIGHT the cadmium battery fried the microprocessor. I had known this was a possibility but still it was disappointing. I sat at my workbench and stared at the thin wisp of smoke twisting out of the plastic knee. It was fixable. I could replace the chip. But then I would be limited by the transistors. Every time I upgraded something, something new became a bottleneck.
    I pushed myself away from the bench. It was late. My problem was I was tinkering around the edges. Trying to improve it beyond the capability of its fundamental design. I was thinking like everyone else: that the goal of a prosthesis was to mimic biology.
    I closed my eyes. I felt warm. I opened them, found a pad and pen, and began to write. I sketched. I filled four pages and took the leg off the table and put it on the floorto make room. I had been going about this all wrong. Biology was not ideal. When you thought about it, biological legs couldn’t do anything except convey a small mass from A to B, so long as A and B were not particularly far apart and you were in no hurry. That wasn’t great. The only reason it was even notable was that legs did it using raw materials they grew themselves. If you were designing something within that limitation, then okay, good job. But if you weren’t, it seemed to me you could build in a lot more features.
    THREE WEEKS later I called the hospital. I was very excited. I had been putting this off, waiting until I was calm, but that never happened so finally I just did it. I closed the door to my bunk room and faced the wall so nothing could distract me.
    “Lola Shanks, Prosthetics.”
    “Hi, it’s Charles Neumann, I was in there a few—”
    “Charlie! Where have you been?”
    I was supposed to visit the hospital for follow-up sessions. They were mandatory, but the kind with no penalties for noncompliance. “Busy. Can I see you?”
    “Yes! That would be good! I hope you’ve been keeping up your physical therapy. You’re in trouble if you haven’t. When can you come in?”
    “Can you come here?” I was tapping the floor with my ski toes:
tick tick tick
. I made myself stop that. “I have something to show you. I want your professional opinion.”
    “Um. Okay. Why not? Where