Red Sky: Chapter 48
The brilliant red sky burned through my window. Puffs of red clouds disintegrating before my eyes, the freighter climbing at speeds my hover could only dream of. I felt light-headed, weightless. I floated above the prison and the mine and finally I was floating above the moon itself in the blackness of space. I pulled the lever above my head and the pod released. The freighter kept flying, gaining speed as it hurtled through the darkness preparing for the space-time jump. Then it was gone and I was alone.
I drifted away from the moon waiting for my head to explode. My eyes stayed open watching the deathless music of the circling stars all around me. I kept waiting for that view to shut off at any moment. For the golden orbs in the distance to disappear leaving a nothingness. The view never shut off; the stars didn’t disappear. I was still conscious. Either Goodwell was lying or whatever chip was implanted in my brain didn’t work. Maybe it would go off in a year, two years, twenty years, how would that be different than what any other living being contends with?
*
I grew restless. I didn’t know what to do with all of the roominess of my new home. It was no bigger than a normal kitchen or living room, but the pod felt like an entire house after living in a three by three cell for years. There was even a table in the center. I could sit at that table and watch a holobox. If I had a holobox. I guess they had more basic concerns when they filled the pod than to include entertainment options.
Storage cabinets lined the walls. I’ve inspected them all. The first one had basic medical supplies, the next one had uniforms and landing equipment. The rest of the cabinets were stocked with food. Excited, I began to count the different meals. It wasn’t real food, it was processed and coldpacked, but it was the food from my memories. I didn’t have strong recollections of a mother’s cooking like Ray, but I did have favorite foods. I scanned those cabinets for some of my favorites.
Chicken. Actually, chicken substitute in a curry sauce. Macaroni and cheese, synthetic cherries, mint ice cream. My mouth watered as my hand laid to rest on the last of the gray pockets. It was labeled mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Even the sound of those two mismatched words was beautiful to me.
I set the table like I was back home. I opened a package of utensils and was greeted by a disposable knife, fork and spoon. There were no plates, I was stuck eating out of a bowl once again. At least these bowls didn’t look like the prison bowls, they were clear instead of white.
I took a bowl and put it on the table between the knife and fork. I set a napkin above all three. I kept the spoon in my hand.
The packet blew up like a balloon when I pulled the strip across its top. Tearing the corner, I looked inside to see beautiful plump white mashed potatoes. I dug into the packet with a bright grin and filled the tiny surface of the disposable spoon, happy to have the food of home again.
I started gagging as soon as I swallowed the first bite. I wondered if the food had expired as I fought off the urge to throw up. But coldpackets don’t expire. The only thing wrong with the mashed potatoes was that they were made for a human. My body was rejecting this foreign substance. This food, the food of my childhood, the food of my memories, was no longer going to be my food. I violently retched. The mashed potatoes came back up into a wastebasket. I looked over to my bag full of green paste. My appetite was gone. The paste could wait.
*
I sat back down and went to work. I was 99% sure that Goodwell had told me the truth. The mashed potatoes were just another confirmation. But even 1% of doubt is still doubt. It was time to remove that 1%.
I still had the rusty knife. It was lying on the table next to the medical kit. The kit had a tiny scalpel and an even tinier scissors. I debated between using that long rusty knife and the smaller medical instruments. The knife stayed on the table as I began to play doctor. There was a numbing pack in the kit. I placed it over my left wrist to numb and sterilize the operating area. I may be a machine, but I still feel pain and what I was about to do was going to be very painful.
The first cut into my skin was the most difficult. I had chosen the part of my wrist that had been protected under the wrist shackle all those years. The scalpel felt dull as it carved into my skin. I pressed with greater force, splitting my flesh in two. My teeth clenched. I continued with the scalpel and then the scissors until I had sliced all the way up through my hand. If I was human, infection would certainly kill me now, but my curiosity was stronger than my one percent of doubt.
The skin hung loosely from my fingers like a coat hanging from a rack. The pain which had been nearly intolerable was beginning to subside. This is something I’d noticed when I took off my collar. I felt pain, there was no doubt about that, the physical pain could be excruciating, but there was a shut off valve, too. Not for the signals of pain, but for the blood I could lose, for the way my muscles and tendons could recover.
I can’t explain why Com died in the box, but I should have died when I took off the collar just like I should have died the last time on the whipping post. I’ve seen things in the mine that would kill humans. Every time we thought we were lucky. There was obviously something else. We were able to recover in a way a human couldn’t.
I took all of this as solace as I took ahold of that loose hanging skin with my still intact right hand. The skin was strong enough that I could use all of my force while pulling it down without fear of it ripping. I saw the bones of my fingers. Bone, not metal. My heart collapsed. Goodwell had tricked me.
Then I looked closer through the blood and the tendons and touched the white bone. It was metal. Metal made to look like bone. By the time the skin reached my elbow with a few extra incisions and much more pulling, I could see the entire metallic structure of my forearm underneath the false human facade. It reflected the ambient light. I studied the gleaming metal that served as my bone. Nearly everything was similar to what I remember to be a human anatomy. Only my parts weren't organic.
I used the medical scissors to cut off all of the skin from my elbow to my hand. I stared at my new left hand, my new left arm. I made a fist and admired the craftsmanship of this incredible creation. It was a marvel of ingenuity, the complexity involved in the simplest movement of my fingers was astounding. Just as Cyclops had his bionic eye, I had my bionic arm. The one percent had been removed. There was no longer any doubt at all.
My arm glistened like the machines at the refinery. The ones that processed the ore. The ones that loaded the ship. They were my cousins. But they weren’t burdened with dreams and memories. They could do their job without distractions. I was an entirely different creation. I had thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams. But all of my thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams are only an accidental by-product of my real purpose, to toil away in the mine for five years and then be terminated.
They’ll keep tinkering, Goodwell and his friends, creating new inmates who can last longer and think less while doing the same job. One day they’ll perfect the formula and there’ll be no need for any of us to think about anything at all but the mine, no need for false memories and false dreams. I am an accident of history, yet here I am. One hundred years ago my kind did not exist. One hundred years in the future my kind will cease to exist. I looked out the window at the stars again. They were so lovely. I watched them for hours as they danced to the deathless music. I didn’t think of anything as I did this. I let my mind rest. The stars kept shining. I kept watching.