Replacement Parts
I slouch deep in my seat. Patterns of red, gold and blue play over my left iris — my right eye remains closed. I sit up again, and watch the spectral body in front of me shimmer to a more muted blue-green web. Lean to one side, and an angry red bruise flares up in the body’s center.
“That’s the visual display, but you can config it as a subliminal, too. Even if you’re not consciously watching your skeletal stressor patterns, your cerebellum will sense and learn to interpret the input, reinforcing proprioceptive function. Never get a headache again — always have perfect posture.”
I flick off the display. “What, no leaping tall buildings in a single bound?”
My conversation partner is a small man. He wears circular reflective shades under a severe widow’s peak, and has a packet of tobacco tucked into his left cheek. He smiles often, in the manner of a frightened animal showing its teeth. The tobacco makes his smile unpleasant.
“Not in this rig,” he says. “I find the more down to Earth stuff sells product better anyway. ‘Would you rather be able to turn invisible, or be able to see passing cars in your blind spot?’”
“Both sound pretty sweet,” I say.
“Only one makes people break out their wallet, though.” He shifts a bit, as if conscious of his own posture, although likely it’s just discomfort from the dirty concrete steps he’s been sitting on. Swipe, tap, swipe swipe tap. “Now check this out,” he says, firing off another protocol from his admin tablet.
A surge of energy flows through my limbs, and I involuntarily jump to my feet. My heart is racing, my eyes wildly scanning the horizon. My ears strain for the noises of anyone coming up behind me. I feel like a compressed spring, ready to lash out at anything. I’m breathing heavy. I stare up and down the street for a while, peer into the windows of nearby buildings, check their roofs for watching shadows — slowly, the paranoia begins to leave me, and I realize I’ve broken out in a cold sweat. I whirl on the man, furious. “The fuck was that?”
He gives me a grin full of stained teeth. “Standard adrenal gland stimulation, nothing you haven’t felt before I’m sure.”
“Never that strong,” I say.
“Hell of an alarm clock, huh?” He turns off the protocol, and I feel the all-too-familiar post-adrenal collapse hit me in a wave of nausea. “Don’t worry, intensity is adjustable. Just wanted you to understand the full power of this rig here.”
I glare at him. “Why the fuck would you want something like that, anyway?” I want to sit down, my legs are almost shaking, but I force myself to stand and tower over him.”
“Ah, sit down,” he groans, “you’re giving me a crick in my neck.”
I sit.
“Listen,” he flashes me another ugly grin, “you ever watch or read World War Z?”
“Zombie movie?” I’m confused.
He shrugs. “What’s the deal with zombies? They’re stronger, faster, longer lasting, how do they do it? They can’t be magic, not these days, there has to be a scientific explanation.”
I feel very cold, but my heart rate is beginning to stabilize. “The point?”
He leans toward me, his breath rank. “It’s because they have no safety protocols. Your muscles are strong enough to snap your own bones if you flex hard enough, right, only you never do because your subconscious stops you. Well zombies don’t have that catch. They can break their own bones, push themselves to exhaustion, anything their bodies are physically capable of they can and will do, even if it might destroy them. No mental limits. Only physical ones.”
“You find telling people they’re going to be self-destructive zombies gets them to open their wallets too?”
“Everybody wants to be a zombie. At least, everyone around here.” He scratches the worn fabric of his jeans. “Think about it, right, because zombies make bad choices, they break themselves for bad reasons. But you? You’re a rational, intelligent, thinking person. Don’t you think you can be trusted to know when to risk overexerting your physical body? Don’t you already make that choice all the time, when pulling an all-nighter, or taking drugs, or running a half-marathon?”
I think about it. “You did some background research on me.”
“Only what’s publicly available,” he says. “Trust me, you want to be a zombie. Don’t tell me your subconscious knows better than you do.”
I think some more. “Could someone kill themselves, or seriously injure themselves, with that adrenal stimulation function?”
“That and half a dozen other functions on the rig. So what?” He swishes his tobacco around to his other cheek, and spits. “Think about it this way: I’m offering you root user access to your bodily functions. You’re a sysadmin, right? You know how to handle that kind of responsibility — with respect.”
I hesitate.
LogoSoft’s VP of Acquisition spits his entire wad of tobacco into the gutter next to me. “Do you trust yourself?”
“Good morning, how are you feeling today?”
“Like shit.” Our usual call and response.
“Mhm. Look at me. Now to the left. Now to the right. All done. Anything happen during the night?”
I blink away the lightspots. “Same as the night before. Nightmares, cold sweats, felt like I was going to die.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The nurse did not sound sorry at all. “Diagnostics are normal. There’s someone who wants to see you, do you feel strong enough for visitors?”
I rack my brains trying to guess who would come out to see me. No family, that’s for sure. Alex? Still in Delhi, unless…no, not Alex. So who? “Sure,” I say, “if it happens fast.”
The nurse gives me a scornful glance, as if she were a waiter I’d refused to tip. “I’ll let reception know.” She spends another minute hovering over me, adjusting machines, refilling liquids and changing a couple small bandages. Then she’s gone, and I lie in the hospital bed staring at the seamless white ceiling. Not even drop ceiling tiles in here, only infinite whiteness. It gives me a headache, and I close my eyes.
“Are you sleeping? I can come back.”
I open my eyes. “No, it’s fine, come on in.” I force my neck to twist, even though it feels like a Heraklean effort. My visitor is a youngish woman with an aquiline nose and modest, knee-length black dress. Her demeanor says country girl, but her eyes say predator. She approaches me gently, and sits by the cot.
“I don’t know if the nurse told you, but I’m the Director of Product Teams at LogoSoft.”
For some reason this doesn’t surprise me. “She didn’t,” I say, then, by way of explanation, “the nurse, I mean.”
“Ah, well, I am.”
I don’t have the energy to hand her my business card.
“This is a very bittersweet moment for me as a product lead,” she says.
I think back to the moment I put myself in the hospital bed. “I knew what I was doing,” I say.
“Oh, I know, even though we’re partially responsible, I’m not wracked with guilt.” She appraises me with a look. “Please tell me if I’m being insensitive, but you seem like the type to understand what I mean by that.”
I do understand. “I don’t regret it.” I think back to that moment, to the expression of awe on the face of the child I’d saved. Was it gratitude, or fear? In my memory, it seemed like both.
“In one sense, it’s a rousing success. You managed to prevent a deadly accident with judicious override of your body’s natural safeties. It’s the perfect use-case. On the other hand, I hate knowing that our product…did this to your body.” She blinks twice rapidly. I’m sure that if I could see clearly I would see tears welling up in her eyes. She’s either very talented, or genuinely believes what she was saying. In most places it would always be the former — in this town it’s a coin flip. “I know it’s irrational, but I feel personally responsible for you being here.”
I decide to press her a little bit. “You are responsible, actually. If you hadn’t given me the ability to make that choice in the moment I would have remained a bystander to the accident. I only stepped in because I knew I could go in and stay awake long enough to pull her out. So indirectly you saved her.” I raise a bandaged arm half an inch, consciously blocking out the spike of pain. “And ruined me.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. But I’m also proud. It’s- it’s hard. I totally understand if you want nothing more to do with us.”
I stare back up at the infinite ceiling. “I’m tired, and covered in third degree burns. What did you come here to say? It wasn’t sorry, you could have done that with an email and a gift card.”
She hisses between her teeth, and I consider too late that if she’s being genuine my words might hurt her. “It’s about your body, and what we might be able to do to help fix it.”
My heart skips a shaky beat. “What’s the pitch?”
“Short version? Brain transplant.”
I chew on this for several minutes. To her credit, the LogoSoft woman doesn’t interrupt or prompt me for follow-up. “How do you solve the traditional problems?” I ask.
“Wetware interface, similar to the rig you already have.”
I take a deep breath. “And where does the body come from?”
She waits too long before answering. “Foetal stem cells.”
I shake my head, a minute motion in the restrictive bandaging. “No it isn’t. You haven’t had the time, and you don’t have the tech, and you don’t have the licensing, I’ve done my homework. Where does it really come from?”
“Stem cells,” she repeats stubbornly. “Obviously we wouldn’t let this be open knowledge yet, the process doesn’t scale yet, for starters.”
“But the interface?” I ask.
“Our bread and butter,” she snaps. “Perfectly tuned, field tested, robust QA on the medical and technical sides. Plus, once we do the operation the first time, subsequent operations become easier.”
This throws me for a loop. “You put the brain in a permanent enclosure?”
“We install some housing, yes, although not completely covering the brain,” she says. “Of course, I mean ‘subsequent operations’ in the hypothetical sense — we’ve never actually done one yet.”
Part of me can’t believe I’m considering this, the other part just wants out of this hospital bed. “How much do you charge for this?”
She leans toward the bed. “We consider this a closed beta, and you would be fully compensated and covered by insurance in the event of something going wrong. No charge, but a lot of legal paperwork.”
“I have a lawyer,” I say.
“Is that a yes?”
“I see what you’re doing here, you know. It’s a clever business model, sure, but don’t try to frame this as you cleaning up your corporate mistakes. You’ve got a consumer loop. Using one product feeds another. A cycle. You can break your body, so your body becomes disposable, so you can break your body. I bet your subscription model is going to be vicious. Is this why Apocrypha Hegemon bought into the Series A so hard? Did you have this whole model sketched out four years ago?”
She doesn’t answer.
I sigh. “Yes. That’s a yes.”
“Thank you,” she says, voice tight, “I’ll pass that on to legal.” She stands to go, but doesn’t leave yet. “And by the way, we’re not forcing your hand in anything.” Her voice is quavering. “We’re working day and night, breaking the boundaries of human biology, all to give you options. We trust you to be responsible with those options. If you don’t want to buy our product, we won’t make you. Our products last for life, so don’t frame it like we’re pushing this on people. Everyone is entitled to choice.” She straightens her skirt, clears her throat. “That’s all.” She leaves.
I stare back at the ceiling, the endless white void.
