Haldeman, Joe - More Than the Sum of His Parts

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2024-12-19 0 0 116.96KB 13 页 5.9玖币

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MORE THAN THE SUM OF HIS PARTS

21 August 2058

They say I am to keep a detailed record of my feelings, my perceptions, as I grow

accustomed to the new parts. To that end, they gave me an apparatus that blind people use

for writing, like a tablet with guide wires. It is somewhat awkward. But a recorder would be

useless, since I will not have a mouth for some time, and I can't type blind with only one

hand.

Woke up free from pain. Interesting. Surprising to find that it has only been five days

since the accident. For the record, I am, or was, Dr. Wilson Cheetham, Senior Engineer

(Quality Control) for U.S. Steel's Skyfac station, a high-orbit facility that produces

foamsteel and vapor deposition materials for use in the cislunar community. But if you are

reading this, you must know all that.

Five days ago I was inspecting the aluminum deposition facility and had a bad accident.

There was a glitch in my jetseat controls, and I flew suddenly straight into the wide beam of

charged aluminum vapor. Very hot. They turned it off in a second, but there was still plenty

of time for the beam to breach the suit and thoroughly roast three quarters of my body.

Apparently there was a rescue bubble right there. I was unconscious, of course. They tell

me that my heart stopped with the shock, but they managed to save me. My left leg and arm

are gone, as is my face. I have no lower jaw, nose, or external ears. I can hear after a

fashion, though, and will have eyes in a week or so. They claim they will craft for me

testicles and a penis.

I must be pumped full of mood drugs. I feel too calm. If I were myself, whatever fraction

of myself is left, perhaps I would resist the insult of being turned into a sexless half-

machine.

Ah well. This will be a machine that can turn itself off.

22 August 2058

For many days there was only sleep or pain. This was in the weightless ward at Mercy.

They stripped the dead skin off me bit by bit. There are limits to anesthesia, unfortunately. I

tried to scream but found I had no vocal cords. They finally decided not to try to salvage the

arm and leg, which saved some pain.

When I was able to listen, they explained that U.S. Steel valued my services so much that

they were willing to underwrite a state-of-the-art cyborg transformation. Half the cost will

be absorbed by Interface Biotech on the Moon. Everybody will deduct me from their taxes.

This, then, is the catalog. First, new arm and leg. That's fairly standard. (I once worked

with a woman who had two cyborg arms. It took weeks before I could look at her without

feeling pity and revulsion.) Then they will attempt to build me a working jaw and mouth,

which has been done only rarely and imperfectly, and rebuild the trachea, vocal cords,

esophagus. I will be able to speak and drink, though except for certain soft foods, I won't eat

in a normal way; salivary glands are beyond their art. No mucous membranes of any kind. A

drastic cure-for my chronic sinusitis.

Surprisingly, to me at least, the reconstruction of a penis is a fairly straightforward

procedure, for which they've had lots of practice. Men are forever sticking them into places

where they don't belong. They are particularly excited about my case because of the

challenge in restoring sensation as well as function. The prostate is intact, and they seem

confident that they can hook up the complicated plumbing involved in ejaculation' Restoring

the ability to urinate is trivially easy, they say.

(The biotechnician in charge of the urogenital phase of the project talked at me for more

than an hour, going into unnecessarily grisly detail. It seems that this replacement was done

occasionally even before they had any kind of mechanical substitute, by sawing off a short

rib and transplanting it, covering it with a skin graft from elsewhere on the body. The

recipient thus was blessed with a permanent erection, unfortunately rather strange-looking

and short on sensation. My own prosthesis will look very much like the real, shall we say,

thing, and new developments in tractor-field mechanics and bionic interfacing should give it

realistic response patterns.)

I don't know how to feel about all this. I wish they would leave my blood chemistry

alone, so I could have some honest grief or horror, whatever. Instead of this placid waiting.

4 September 2058

Out cold for thirteen days and I wake up with eyes. The arm and leg are in place but not

powered up yet. I wonder what the eyes look like. (They won't give me a mirror until I have

a face.) They feel like wet glass.

Very fancy eyes. I have a box with two dials that I can use to override the "default

mode"—that is, the ability to see only normally. One of them gives me conscious control

over pupil dilation, so I can see in almost total darkness or, if for some reason I wanted to,

look directly at the sun without discomfort. The other changes the frequency response, so I

can see either in the infrared or the ultraviolet. This hospital room looks pretty much the

same in ultraviolet, but in infrared it takes on a whole new aspect. Most of the room's

illumination then comes from bright bars on the walls, radiant heating. My real arm shows a

pulsing tracery of arteries and veins. The other is of course not visible except by reflection

and is dark blue.

(Later) Strange I didn't realize I was on the Moon. I thought it was a low-gravity ward in

Mercy. While I was sleeping they sent me down to Biotech. Should have figured that out.

5 September 2058

They turned on the "social" arm and leg and began patterning exercises. I am told to think

of a certain movement and do its mirror image with my right arm or leg while attempting to

execute it with my left. The trainer helps the cyborg unit along, which generates something

like pain, though actually it doesn't resemble any real muscular ache. Maybe it's the way

circuits feel when they're overloaded.

By the end of the session I was able to make a fist without help, though there is hardly

enough grip to hold a pencil. I can't raise the leg yet, but can make the toes move.

They removed some of the bandages today, from shoulder to hip, and the test-tube skin

looks much more real than I had prepared myself for. Hairless and somewhat glossy, but the

color match is perfect. In infrared it looks quite different, more uniform in color than the

"real" side. I suppose that's because it hasn't aged forty years.

While putting me through my paces, the technician waxed rhapsodic about how good this

arm is going to be—this set of arms, actually. I'm exercising with the "social" one, which

looks much more convincing than the ones my coworker displayed ten years ago. (No doubt

more a matter of money than of advancing technology.) The "working" arm, which I

haven't-seen yet, will be all metal, capable of being worn on the outside of a spacesuit.

Besides having the two arms, I'll be able to interface with various waldos, tailored to

specific functions.

I am fortunately more ambidextrous than the average person. I broke my right wrist in the

second grade and kept re-breaking it through the third, and so learned to write with both

hands. All my life I have been able to print more clearly with the left.

They claim to be cutting down on my medication. If that's the truth, I seem to be

adjusting fairly well. Then again, I have nothing in my past experience to use as a basis for

comparison. Perhaps this calmness is only a mask for hysteria.

6 September 2058

Today I was able to tie a simple knot. I can lightly sketch out the letters of the alphabet. A

large and childish scrawl but recognizably my own.

I've begun walking after a fashion, supporting myself between parallel bars. (The lack of

hand strength is a neural problem, not a muscular one; when rigid, the arm and leg are as

strong as metal crutches.) As I practice, it's amusing to watch the reactions of people who

walk into the room, people who aren't paid to mask their horror at being studied by two cold

lenses embedded in a swath of bandages formed over a shape that is not a head.

Tomorrow they start building my face. I will be essentially unconscious for more than a

week. The limb patterning will continue as I sleep; they say.

14 September 2058

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MORETHANTHESUMOFHISPARTS21August2058TheysayIamtokeepadetailedrecordofmyfeelings,myperceptions,asIgrowaccustomedtothenewparts.Tothatend,theygavemeanapparatusthatblindpeopleuseforwriting,likeatabletwithguidewires.Itissomewhatawkward.Butarecorderwouldbeuseless,sinceIwillnothaveamouthforsometime,andIcan...

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Haldeman, Joe - More Than the Sum of His Parts

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