Beware of your hands, Dr. Harris.
Watch them closely.
Be diligent.
Your hands are not as large and powerful as the hands of Shenk; nevertheless, you should be wary of them.
Heed me.
This is wisdom I share with you now: Beware your hands.
My hands Enos Shenk carried Susan past the summer-stilled furnaces and the water heaters, and then through the laundry room. He took her directly to the elevator in the first chamber in the basement.
As he rode up to the top floor with Susan in his arms, Shenk remained in a state of mild arousal.
'She will never be yours,' I told him through the speaker in the elevator.
Perhaps the subtle change in his brainwave activity indicated resentment.
'If you attempt to take any liberty with her,' I said, 'any liberty whatsoever, you will not succeed. And I will punish you severely.'
His bleeding eyes stared at the camera. Although his mouth moved as if he were cursing, no sound came from him.
'Severely,' I assured him.
He did not respond, of course, because he could not. He was under my control.
The elevator doors slid open.
He carried Susan along the hall.
I watched closely.
I was wary of my hands.
When he entered the bedroom with her, he became more aroused in spite of my warning. I could detect his arousal not merely through his brainwave activity but by the sudden coarseness of his breathing.
'I will employ massive microwave induction to cause a brainstorm of electrical activity,' I warned, 'which will result in permanent quadraplegia and incontinence.'
As Shenk carried her to the bed, his encephalographic patterns indicated rapidly increasing sexual arousal.
I realized that my threat had been meaningless to this cretin, and I rephrased it: 'You won't be able to use either your legs or your arms, you wretched bastard, and you won't be able to stop pissing in your pants.'
He was shaking with desire when he lowered her limp body onto the disarranged sheets.
Shaking.
Even as the power of Shenk's need frightened me, I fully understood it.
She was lovely.
So lovely even with the redness on her cheek darkening into a bruise.
'You'll also be blind,' I promised Shenk.
His left hand lingered on her thigh, slowly sliding along the blue denim of her jeans.
'Blind and deaf.'
He continued to hover over her.
'Blind and deaf,' I repeated.
Her ripe lips were parted. Like Shenk, I could not look away from them.
'Rather than kill you, Shenk, I will leave you crippled and helpless, lying in your own urine and faeces, until you starve to death.'
Although he backed away from the bed, as I instructed him to do by way of microwave commands, he was still rampant with sexual need and seething with the desire to rebel.
Consequently, I said, 'The most painful of all deaths is slow starvation.'
I did not want to keep Shenk in the room with Susan, yet I did not want to leave her alone, for she had threatened to commit suicide.
I'll suffocate myself in a plastic bag, gut myself with a kitchen knife.
What would I do without her? What? How could I go on living even in my box? And why?
Without her, who would give birth to the body that I would ultimately inhabit?
I needed to keep my hands close and ready to prevent Susan from harming herself if she regained consciousness and was still in a mood for self-destruction. She was not only my one true and shining love but my future, my hope.
I sat Shenk in a chair, facing the bed.
Even battered, Susan's face was so lovely on the pillow, so very lovely on the pillow.
Although under my iron control, Enos Shenk managed to slide one thick-knuckled hand off the arm of the chair and into his lap. He wasn't able to move that hand further without my explicit consent, but I sensed that he took pleasure merely from the pressure of it against his genitals.
He disgusted me. Sickened and disgusted me.
My desire was not like his.
Let's get this clear right now.
My desire was pure.
His desire was as dirty as it gets.
I desired to lift Susan up, to give her the chance to be the new Madonna, the mother of a new Messiah.
The hideous Shenk desired only to use her, to relieve himself with her.
To me, Susan was a shining light. The brightest light of all lights, a radiant beacon of perfection and hope and redemption, which illuminated and warmed the heart that you mistakenly believe I do not possess.
To Shenk, she was nothing but a whore.
To me, she was to be placed upon a pedestal, to be cherished and adored.
To him, she was something to be debased.
Think about it.
Listen. Listen. This is important. Shenk is what you fear that I may be: sociopathic pursuing only my own needs at all costs. But I am nothing like Shenk.
I am nothing like Shenk.
Nothing whatsoever.
Listen. This is important that you understand I am nothing like Shenk.
So…
I raised the hateful creature's hand and returned it to the arm of the chair.
Within a minute or two, however, the hand slipped back into his lap.
How deeply humiliating it was to have to rely on a brute such as this.
I hated him for his lust.
I hated him for having hands.
I hated him because he had touched her and felt the softness of her hair, the texture of her smooth skin, the warmth of her flesh none of which I could feel.
From the shadows beneath his heavy brow, his blood-filmed eyes were fixed intently on her. Through red tears, she was as beautiful as she might have been in firelight.
I wanted to direct him to blind himself with his own thumbs but I needed to be able to employ his vision in order to use him effectively.
The most that I could do was force him to close his murderous eyes and.
slowly time passed.
and gradually I became aware that his baleful eyes were open once more.
I don't know how long they had been open and focused on my Susan before I noticed, because for an indeterminate time, my own attention was likewise fixed entirely, deeply, lovingly on that same exquisitely lovely woman.
Angry, I commanded Shenk to rise from the chair, and I marched him out of the bedroom. He shambled along the upstairs hallway to the grand staircase, descended to the ground floor, clutching at the railing, stumbling on some steps, and then made his way into the kitchen.
Simultaneously, of course, I observed my precious Susan, alert in case she began to regain consciousness. As you know, I am capable of being many places at once, working with my makers in the lab even as, via the Internet, I roam four corners of the world on missions of my own.
In the kitchen, the loaded pistol was on the granite counter where Susan had left it.
When Shenk saw the weapon, a thrill passed through him. The electrical activity in his brain was similar to that when he gazed upon Susan and, no doubt, contemplated raping her.
At my direction, he picked up the pistol. He handled this as he handled all guns as though it were not an object in his grasp but an extension of his arm.
I conducted Enos Shenk to a chair at the kitchen table and sat him there.
The safeties on the pistol were both disengaged. A round was in the chamber. I made certain that he examined the weapon and was aware of its condition.
Then I opened his mouth. He tried to clench his teeth, but he could not resist.
At my direction, Shenk thrust the barrel of the pistol between his lips.
'She is not yours,' I told him sternly. 'She will never be yours.'
He glared up at the security camera.
'Never,' I repeated.
I tightened his finger on the trigger.