Non-graphic, printable version

That Girl! I'll melt her! To think she wishes my bounty! And for what? For what purpose would she--

Slow. Everytyhing is slow. I think I know what happened. What happened? What... I can't feel my... I feel... lightning. My god. I can't move. Can't feel. Can't feel. Time is slow. The girl... what is... she's crying over that boy. What happened to that boy? Why is he... Oh. It was me, wasn't it? I killed him... I killed. I've killed. NO! No ghosts, no haunting memories. They were on the list. The factory killed them.

Arrogant
What?
Arrogant. Arrogant to think yourself above it all. To think yourself above those you killed. Arrogant to think yourself above human morals, above guilt.

When? I can't have been born what I am now... I...

I know when it started. It was the first kill. No! No. No, it was before that. Another death. Another kill, but not my own.

Pa. I loved Pa. I can barely see him now. Is it the lightning? I remember that there wasn't any secret he'd keep from me. I think Ma was the same, back when pa was around. But that changed.

The accident. Oh, god. I couldn't have been more than ten, but I remember it vividly. I have to. It was the last physical memory I had before my body was dulled with steel. Pa was killed. I was crushed, condemned to the rest of my childhood, the rest of my life inside a metal shell.

No matter how hard the shell, no matter how dulled the pain, I can still hear the pang of Ma's blows on my chrome.

Pa may have been dead, I may have been crippled, but of course Ma got the worst out of that accident, nevermind the fact that she was a mile away when the thing fell.

A full cyborg body, she wouldn't let me forget, wasn't cheap. And without Pa's income, there was no way... Ma found more work. I didn't find out until years later what it was that she'd sunk to. All I knew then was that it wasn't legal. Seedy people would come by the house, and would often be on the bounty list weeks later.

Ma would come home from whatever she was doing late at night, exhausted. She wanted her husband and her little boy to greet her, but instead she came home to a memory and a tin can that cost her her life.

That tin can took many dents. Most of the time she would use things around the house, but every so often whe would pummel my metal shell with her bare hands. I don't know which hurt more, the pain of metal on metal, or the sight of her hands bloodied and her face twisted with rage.

Unlike a human boy, my chrome body couldn't heal naturally. Every little repair cost Ma more chips, which she would beat out of me even harsher than before. Yet still she persisted. A couple of times I saved up on my own to bribe the cyber-doctor to lessen my pain sensors. "Just for a little while" I would plead. And the doctor would look into my mechanical eyes, and look over my tattered body, and realize that maybe I didn't keep falling down those stairs after all.

The girl. The girl is still weeping over that boy. How much time...? The boy. I killed the boy. I killed. Why?

The first kill. I couldn't have been more than fifteen. I was out with Ma. I remember... closeness. A facade. A show we always put on at the cyber-doctor's. We were on the way home. A man stepped from the shadows. He was all flesh except for an implant on the side of his head. He was jittery; out of the implant in his head flowed a tiny trickle of clear fluid from a used cartridge.

Before I knew what was happening, he lunged at Ma with a long blade, running her through. As Ma fell, the blade still jutting from her torso, the junkie leaped at me. He was frail with malnutrition, and powerless without his blade. So when I cried out and raised my mechanical arms, he was deflected to the ground.

I backed away, preparing to receive another blow, but the strike never came. The junkie had tripped over Ma, and sliced his throat with his own discarded blade. Now two bodies lay bleeding on the ground. I slumped to the floor and began to weep.

I must have wept for days there in the street. I just sat there, curled up, hoping someone would notice me, hoping someone would lift me from the pain. I could feel the burn of pedestrian stares, but none who saw would acknowledge. Finally a scraggly-looking Hunter Warrior approached me to inform me that he recognized the junkie from the bounty list. I tried to dry my eyes with metallic hands, and stared at him while he called over a nearby netman to verify the kill. The netman proceeded to cart away the body of the junkie and drop a small bag of money in my lap.

I ran home soon thereafter, leaving Ma's body in the street.

I lived for a few weeks off the chips from that bounty. I began to realize that I would never succeed by waiting, curled up and weeping, for someone to lift me above the pain. So I registered myself as a Hunter Warrior. I told myself it was for the money. I told myself it was for the thrill. I know now that it was an escape. I was trying to lift myself above the pain. Above any pain.

The girl is still there. She's still crying for that boy. I shouldn't have killed him.
But he was a criminal.
She loved him.
But he stole spines
I loved her.
But she broke the law and beat her child
I shouldn't have killed her.

© Michael Isenberg 1998