Gosh!
Balot opened her eyes amid an eerie calm.
An ultraviolet lamp flickered in one corner of the ceiling. Reflective mirrors were fixed above her and arms extended from the bed. It was as if she were on an operating table.
She felt something moving on her back. The bed undulated slowly from left to right in order to prevent bedsores. When Balot moved her body to get up, the bed automatically rose with her, gently supporting her upper body.
At the same time the lower half of the bed started to fall, so she could now bend her legs.
The bed had become an easy chair. Almost like a cradle.
Her focus now moved from the ceiling to the room itself—she was in a huge hall filled with a number of machines. One of the contraptions was beating a pulse along with Balot’s heartbeat, and all the cords sprouting from the devices and tubes ran along to the bed, some of which were also attached to her head or arms. Balot looked around the room, listening to the soothing rhythm of the machines pulsing in harmony, working just for her benefit.
The room was windowless, and disinfectant tiles covered the surfaces of the walls.
The dry air was suffused with a feeling of quiet madness.
And then, all of a sudden, the realization—I am alive.
She ran her hands across her body. A movement to confirm her own existence.
She wasn’t naked but wore a thin hospital gown made of insulating material. Protruding from the gown were her arms and legs, spotlessly clean. Her skin was almost uncomfortably smooth.
Her hair was full of life, as if it had only just sprung up. Cut cleanly, just above shoulder-length, it was now much shorter than it had been before.
She stretched her left arm out and slowly caressed the limb from her elbow to her wrist with her right hand.
It felt like the white of a boiled egg, and—very faintly—there was a sort of spark.
Electricity?
There was no other way of describing it. Millions of little currents of electricity flowed down the surface of her skin.
Not only that, they were in the shape of a complicated circuit. As if woven into an exquisite fiber.
She felt the threads of the fiber stretching out toward the air, one by one, like a spider’s web, and that instant Balot understood why she felt so calm.
She felt no insecurity about the room she was in whatsoever. In other words she recognized every little corner of the room, intimately.
Normally, because there were blind spots where she couldn’t see, she would have a sense of apprehension. But now, because Balot knew the air that touched the skin, she could also feel all the objects that the air was touching.
Even without looking, I know precisely the shapes of the things that are there.
This was because of the millions of threads, invisible to the eye, extending from her body. And all those threads were connected to the machines in the room. Or rather coiled around them. And the bed, the light fixtures, the thermostat, the blood pressure meter—the threads had burrowed their way in everywhere.
Balot lifted her still-extended left hand above her head and toward the lights.
She felt the threads again, thin, unbreakable.
Quite spontaneously she pinched the threads between her fingers. An image of plucking floated into her mind.
The world was plunged into darkness in an instant. All the lights had gone out. The electricity hadn’t been cut. Rather, the switches had all gone off simultaneously.
Balot opened her eyes wide in the darkness, remaining absolutely still.
In the darkness she could sense the threads that extended from her body even more vividly than before.
She plucked at the strings again. A blinding light flooded her eyes. All the lights were back on.
She let go of the threads, and this time took the mass of extending strings and stroked them gently.
It was like a kaleidoscope. A flick of her wrist and anything in sight could be changed in a million ways.
She changed the temperature on the air conditioning. The dial moved, and the tubes fixed to her hands and feet came loose on their own. After a while she didn’t need to check the threads anymore. Without even having to move her hands, using willpower alone, she realized that she could operate any electronic device without touching it.
I’ve gone mad. So she thought. I’m in a strange dream. And I’m causing the madness myself. The very definition of a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.
The fact that she existed was proof that she had gone mad. When she opened her eyes she had become a different creature. Or, strictly speaking, her outer layer of skin had become a different creature. And that creature was powerful. With an as-yet-unknown, but very definite, power. Like one who, bitten by a vampire, awakes thirsty, aware for the first time of the new self that they have been bequeathed.
And, then…
Balot discovered an old portable radio in the corner of the room. As if it were the only thing in the room that was not under the control of Balot’s consciousness.
As she lifted her hand toward the radio she noticed a slight resistance from it. Balot gave a little scowl, and just then the radio started giving off a noise.
An ear-splitting sound rent the room. A grating sound, as if a large crowd of people had all decided to claw at chalkboards.
Balot searched for music in the air. She realized that her senses could extend beyond the confines of the room.
Outside a multitude of radio waves were overflowing in a complex tangle of dissonance.
She plucked one of the radio waves, ran it through her body—her skin—and connected the music up with the radio.
The light on the radio started flickering, surprised, and in an instant began broadcasting Midnight Broadway. Balot ensnared the volume control, bringing it to just the right level.
She rested her head back in the easy chair, concentrated on the jolly music, and all of a sudden she felt like crying. But no tears came. There was a gaping hole inside her chest, and everything inside it was all dried out.
As the black woman on the radio—with her husky voice and distinctive accent—came to the end of her song, Balot noticed a presence outside the room. Someone was coming. She could even tell that they had stopped outside, pausing. One man. The electronic waves in the air gave her a clear idea not just of his shape but even his looks.
The door opened.
“Looks like somebody’s awake.”
That instant Balot turned off all the lights and stopped the radio, as if by reflex.
The man stepped on a pedal at the entrance to the room. The wheels on Balot’s easy chair gradually started moving away from the door. Balot waited in the corner, achingly still, where the man couldn’t reach her.
“Uh…”
The man cleared his throat and said, “Well, let’s start with introductions. I’m Dr. Easter. I’m in charge of repairing you… uh…or rather I should say I’m the physician in charge. Call me… Doctor, Doc, Duck—as in quack—as you like, really. Basically, I’m, uh, remunerated by the city authorities for keeping you alive, making sure your life is improved… So, erm, that’s the way it is.”
Balot kept her breathing shallow, watching to make sure that the man didn’t enter any farther into the room.
The Doctor gave another dry cough and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. The thin film of numbers and displays that were up on his Tech Glasses had disappeared, and they now looked like normal spectacles.
“Hey, take it easy. This is our little hideaway, our shell, or one of them, anyway. Used to be a morgue, you know, but it was abandoned after the neighborhood objected. This very room was used for autopsies, so it’s a perfect setup for surgery. Go down the corridor and there’s a huge room set up to store eight hundred corpses. Amazing, huh? Eight hundred bodies, all free for me to tinker with as I please—it’s a dream come true. But then there was an earthquake in the area, the circuits went down, total blackout for about forty-eight hours. That’s when the good citizens started getting a bit edgy about the smell…and that’s when we came in, buying this place up as an office-slash-factory and made it into our apartment.”