Spare and Found Parts (18 page)

“Nell, go to your project, affix the battery to a safe place, and hook it up to the wires that link the limbs together. I'm presuming you did link the limbs together already, Nell. I'm giving you credit here. I'm giving you
a lot.
When the battery is fully charged, you can switch it on. It'll be galvanized.”

Nell felt very small as she began to get up again. “Do you have a battery? In your arm?”

“No. Not anymore. My arms and all the other bioprosthetics run on the organic electricity we produce as humans. It's kinetic; it feels the pulse of us and responds in kind. Life galvanizes us; it moves us, keeps us moving. We don't need anything else. Life is electric. Think about it like that. Conceal it inside the project's head or somewhere where it won't be obvious,
for now. What were you using for . . . intelligence . . . before?”

“The small box from my room, the one you gave me.”

“Good try. Is it wired to anything?”

“Yes, it's like . . . the center . . . for the wires. They all lead to it, each moving limb. I—I hadn't even tried to turn it on yet.”

“All right, all right. Just take it out and keep it; it won't work here.” Julian's voice dropped, and it sounded as though he were speaking through the keyhole. “Conceal the strip there instead. They're completely different pieces of technology; just because something is a computer doesn't mean it's a computer that can think or talk. The strip is smaller, but it's got a much bigger purpose. There's a small flat button, a switch like, on the inside. As long as it's contacting the steel of whatever it's charging with intelligence, well, it should work. Press the button after you've secured it; then go to the generator and flip the switch. Go, go.”

“But—” Nell lingered, her ear to the door, her face wet with tears. “What if it doesn't work?”

“Then we'll try something else. Another time. This isn't the end, Nell. Go.”

Nell ran across the room toward her creation, heavy battery in one hand, slim white box of terror in the
other. How had her father gotten hold of this? How long had he had it?

And who
was
he? Who had he been all this time? This was too much, too quick. Nell folded up the enormity of that question—
Who has my father been all this time?
—and tried to pack it away in one of the rooms in her head and focus on the task at hand. She clumsily set the battery at the center of her creation's chest.

This wire, that wire. She wound some loose silk around the cylinder to keep it in place. It would hang if the creation were to stand up. He looked awful.
It
looked awful.

Defiant, Nell opened the back of the creation's head, the kettle's old lid. She slipped out the old gray music box, slid it into her pocket. She snapped the steel band into place. She examined the band closely, and yes, there was a tiny panel. She pressed down on it with her thumb. Nothing changed but for a tiny pinprick of green light appearing like a gemstone on its surface. It stirred something in Nell.

Green like a frog. Green like
Go.

Nell closed the head back up and stood over her almost unchanged mechanical boy. She slowly walked to the tall generator with the pulsing line of lights and placed her hand on the switch.

When she flipped it, she didn't think of anything at
all. Nothing would be the same now, and maybe that was important. The noise the generator made was a dark purr with frequencies so high running over the top of the growl that they hurt Nell's ears. She expected an explosion. Sparks at least. Maybe fire. But life sometimes happens in the softest ways. The air changed; the atmosphere shifted with electricity.

When the charge died down, nothing in the room was different but for the soft flex of mechanical knuckles. She reached out and entwined her fingers in the creature's, with the hand from the sea. The static shock was tiny but great.

So great.

A soft glow radiated from its eyes. His eyes.

“Hello,” whispered Nell.

“Hello.”

01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110010 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 00110111 00110101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 01110011 00100000 01100110 01100001 01110010 01100101 01101110 01101000 01100101 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110110 01111001 00100000 01110010 01100001 01101001 01101110 01100110 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 00111001 00111010 00110100 00110010 01110000 01101101 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 00110010 00111001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01110101 01100101 01110011 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000
01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110010 01101011 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110010 01101101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110010 01101111 01101111 01101101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01110010 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101111 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 alive

T
he air is warm. This is the first thing I know for sure. Awareness pools at the base of my . . . neck? The rest of my anatomy assembles behind what are most definitely my eyes. I have been given a body or something like one. My clock says a second has passed. My first second.

In the second second, I take stock of this body.

I have two hands. Two palms, two thumbs, eight digits. In them I feel everything they have ever touched before me. Their electricity holds an imprint so deep there are reams of history in them. I feel
heartache
,
struggle
. I feel
smoke cloying at my fingertips
. I feel
the dying fire beneath me
.

When the third second dawns, my eyes open, both at once, and I know almost everything they have seen, from the tongs of the glassblower to the clavicle of the
last man they loved. Love: there it is in every fiber of me. Light fills the cavity of my head. I see the room where I have been born. Love. There is the ceiling above me. My first blink. Love.

I suddenly know so much and so little all at once. Before the fifth second splinters open, there you are. There. Standing above me. You look frightened and tired, and I know you already; but I do not know you at all.

You must be the one who switched me on. You must be the one who placed these parts together, gathered them, and sculpted them. You must have drawn me from your own mind. You, all fear now, all exhilaration. Your eyes lock with mine. I see all of you, more horror and hurt and raw fight than anything these glass and wire eyes have met in either of their lives before.

You are a marvel, your mouth hanging open. Outside this room is the roar of a storm and someone else's panic, but you are so still. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Then you speak. Your voice is a whisper, but with a bright streak of pride. You say hello.

Language emerges from my numbers. I am all alphabet now, all punctuation, all permutations of twenty-six letters and the sounds that match them. I want to sing all the letters at once and hear what my voice
sounds like, if I have one. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

You say hello. Five letters. English. Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar. Eta Epsilon Lambda Lambda Omicron. 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111.

I say hello.

Shocked by my voice, you raise your hand to your mouth. Your hand, one of two: flesh. You used them to make me. You have small knuckles and wear bright rings. Your breathing is papery, and now there are tears all down your cheeks. I want to say, “Please do not cry,” but I am not here to tell you what to do.

You have not told me yet why I am here. You have only said hello. Hello!

I do not know what you are called, by birth or by others. Are there others? What became of them? I know what these eyes last saw, what these hands last touched. The things I do not know herald the end of my first minute, an icy wave. The weight of “I do not know.” My first question blooms fat in me like a ripe flower, and it is out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Are you my mother?”

You gasp, then wait for your breath to settle. You are frightened, and you have won.

“No,” you say. “No.”

How vast these two letters are. How suddenly they
arrive into the world, the end of every story. But you speak again. This time the terror flashes to fire in your human throat. “I am your maker,” you say. I open my eyes again and . . . love. Yes, this is love. Your hand is wrapped around mine. This is what it is to be alive.

T
he door opened, and Julian scrambled to stand, pushing his glasses from their perch on his head down over his eyes. Nell had always perceived her father as a lean giant, a great tree in winter, but this thing she made towered above him. She took in her father whole, his miraculous arm lifting, his robotic hand going over his mouth.

Nell was trembling, tiny and human beside her creation. Julian didn't even look at her. They just stood there, all three, quiet. Nell shifted from one foot to the other, ticking softly. She wasn't quite able to feel her feet or fingertips. Trust her body to let her down at a moment like this; trust her humanness to need attending. Her father couldn't even see her from the thrall of the giant being above him.

“I'm a little cold,” Nell managed. “I think I need to
sit down, or . . . tea. I think I need tea.”

The creation immediately turned to her. “What can I do to help you?”

Julian leaped backward so quickly that he almost tripped himself. It would have been comical if Nell could feel anything other than the rising cold, the ticking fear. She sneezed and turned toward the stairway.

“Thank you, but I'm all right. Please go to the kitchen. Da, will you put on tea? I'm going to get a shawl or a blanket. Something.”

What else was there to do? How else could she carry this moment but like any other introduction: boil some water, steep some tea, stand around, talk.

Each stair was a thousand miles high. Her calves ached. Kodak waited for her at the top of the stairs. Nell coughed out a laugh at him, his big eager eyes, his utter cluelessness. She leaned forward to pick him up—he was so warm—and carried him into her room.

She looked around for a cardigan or something woolen to wrap herself in. Her brown skin was gray somehow, with exhaustion, with cold. Her scar was purpled with chill.

She riffled through the wardrobe quickly—so many things of her mother's, sickening now rather than fond—and quickly assembled a black wool vest and a too loose jumper the color of smoke. Two great woolen
socks the color of jam, an old gift from Ruby. A thick red scarf.

The clothes did not make her body less cold or less alien. She felt far outside herself, like a worried sick specter in the corner of the room. Her brain whirred with images of her mother's body in the lake, the sound of the creation's new voice, her father's cold plea: “You understand why I did this, don't you?” Her ears were ringing over her ticking.

Nell inhaled and exhaled and combed out her curls. This is what it is to gather the sticks of yourself, to build a nest where there was only broken wood. She straightened her back. The comb fell through her hair with a whisper. Warmth slowly returned to her hands. Time pulled into focus.

Kodak scampered up her leg and into her arms when she was done with her hair. The rise and fall of the tiny old stoat's breath soothed her. The warmth of his small body was a heart all her own. She walked out of the room with him in her arms a little braver, a little more ready, her stomach calling for a cup of hot strong tea.

At the bottom of the staircase her father and the creation still stood where they had when she left. Julian was inspecting him now, a tiny notebook in his hand, scribbling down details, model numbers. As Nell
walked down, she felt a flash of something like pride; she'd taken things he made and found them a different purpose. As she got closer, she couldn't tell if he was impressed or worried or afraid; he was fascinated, though, that was for sure.

“Tea?” she asked brightly.

Julian turned to her. “You'll have to make it in a saucepan. The kettle seems to be busy.”

The creation cocked his head to the side, and Nell cringed; he really did still look like a kettle.

“None for me, though. I'm going to need to recover the lab after all this. Years of work, gone . . .” Julian murmured, closing his notebook and walking past the new creature back into the laboratory. Before he closed the door, he stopped and looked at the creation one more time, then at his daughter.

“This is incredible. Really incredible stuff. Knew you'd manage something great eventually. Now, go and get to know him.”

And just like that, the door closed again, heavy locks sliding into place, and it was Nell and the creation and the stoat, alone together. Nell was baffled; the conversation through the door had been so hopeful. He'd guided her through the whole thing.

Or distracted her from what she'd found.

Nell focused on the texture of the stoat's fur. She
looked up at her creation, his uncanny slight movements, his patience.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked. Oh, what a stupid question. He hadn't even been awake twenty minutes. Did he even know how to answer?

His eyes moved a little in his head.

“I am thinking that you must be uneasy, and I am glad that you are not so cold anymore. That it is still raining but there will not be any more lightning tonight. That your socks are red. That a cup of tea would probably make you feel better because your eyes are tired and tea is caffeinated and it may help stop you getting cold again.”

Nell laughed, surprising even her. “Well. Aren't you perceptive?”

The creation nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“All right. Tea it is.”

She walked the creation into the kitchen and set about filling a pot of water and placing it on the stove. What should she say to him? How should she say it? How do you talk to something, someone who's just been born? Should she tell him about her mother? Herself? She should probably ask him his name.

“Do you have a name?” she asked. He was looking around, picking things up and putting them back down. He stopped with a cup in his hand.

“My system number is iO2971848326171.”

Nell blinked. “Can I call you Io? My name is Penelope Crane, but I'm called Nell. Your name can be short, like mine.”

“Io. Io,” the creation said. “Yes.”

Nell said his name again and again. Found the music of the vowels, looked over his patchwork form. “Io.” That fit.

“Oh, this is Kodak.” She took the stoat from her shoulder and handed him to Io. The creation held the small creature gently. Kodak did not become unnerved or try to bite, just stared with his black little eyes. Io gently thumbed Kodak's head and rubbed his belly.

“I like him,” Io noted. “Can I hold him a little longer?”

Nell felt something warm and lovely and surprising rise beneath her rib cage, for a moment. “Yes.” She glowed. “Of course.”

“The man was your father?” asked Io, placing Kodak up on his shoulder, a mirror image of where the stoat had sat on Nell only moments before.

“Yes. His name is Julian Crane; he's a doctor. He fixes people who are missing limbs with”—Nell gestured—“bits. Like what you're made of.”

Io nodded. “Bits.”

The pot started to bubble, and Nell poured two fat
mugs from it before she realized that Io absolutely was not going to be having any tea. She decided to put a cup in front of him at the table anyway, to be polite. She wanted him to feel welcome.

They sat at the table together in the quiet for a moment or two, listening to the rain outside. Nell focused on the warmth of the tea, a kind heat, a pleasant bitterness. Her mother's body was in the lake. She'd just brought a creature to life. Her mother's body was in the lake.

How would she tell Ruby about her mother? Would she tell her at all? Ruby, somewhere warm against the rain, at home, in the Bayou, somewhere, not knowing any of this. And Oliver, Oliver Kelly, who called her a monster. How would he feel now, looking up at this great metal man? When would she show them? Her head started to spin a little, and she inhaled the steam from the mug and let it keep her in her body.

What was she going to do with Io until then? He was staring into the mug, moderately puzzled. She imagined him on a podium, the astonished faces of her peers filling the theater, gazing up at him. Incredible.
Marvelous
. Alive.

All these things, certainly, and yet here Nell was, awkward and quiet in his presence. She looked around the kitchen to find something to do. Her eyelids were
heavy. Her brain pleaded with her for sleep as she scanned the room: something to do, something easy to keep this from becoming stranger than it already was.

Cards. There was a deck of cards on one of the shelves, wedged between a salt pig and a sugar bowl. Nell hopped up and swiped it, trying to remember the last time these cards had seen any action and if it was a full deck. This would keep them busy. She stifled a yawn and cracked the deck open.

“Do you know what these are?” She shuffled them and reached out to pass them over to Io.

He nodded, took them from her, and ran his fingertip along their edge. “Missing three. A two of diamonds, jack of spades, and the ace of hearts. We could play Snap? Or build a house?”

Nell gaped. Playing cards with a computer was probably not going to be a fair game anyway. “A house,” she managed. “Sure. Let's.”

In twos, they laid the flimsy pieces out, tip to tip, little triangles. Red and black, red and black. They fell mostly, but some stayed. Io was more delicate with it than Nell: a couple of times even her breath was enough to knock down a whole row. He was patient, she got frustrated, but slowly the triangular structure rose for them, every tier more precarious than the last.

Nell gave up helping toward the top; she didn't want to be the one to tip down the whole structure. She rested her chin in her hands and watched the grace and silence with which Io put the pyramid together. The hand that she had built moved just as neatly as his other, their mismatch strange, their fluency startling. Her eyelids were so heavy. Her mother in the lake.

She fell asleep before he crowned the tower of the house. She slept through the night at the table, and Io sat as the army of frogs marched in through a crack in the door. By morning the kitchen was alive with them, and Nell awoke in a sea of green.

One by one she and Io set them free, she, with a dinner plate and an empty cup and he with his cold new hands.