Story #344 - Armered

Armered

"It needs to be cut off.”

Damien still heard the words every night when he tried to sleep, wishing they hadn’t been necessary, wishing there had been another way.

“Debilitative Necrotic Fibrillation” was the term technical term applied, but what it meant for Damien in layman’s terms was that his right arm slowly became a useless thing he didn’t recognize, a decaying filth that threatened to consume his entire body. Removal had been the only option, and the one that would likely save his life.

“Dude, how do you manage without the other arm?” The young barista behind the counter asked, eyes wide. Most people didn’t inquire for fear of offending, but the kid was young enough that social norms probably hadn’t been beaten into his head.

“I manage just fine – is that latte done yet?”

The barista pulled his eyes away, back to the overflowing metal canister pouring steaming milk over his hand.

“Ow!” He bellowed and then stepped back. “Not yet,” he said. “Just a second.”

A feeling of vibration took Damien’s attention and he pulled the cell from his pocket, calling up the most recent text message. His eyes widened as he read the words; his turn for the procedure had finally come.

“Sir!” The young man called as Damien moved quickly for the door. “Your coffee! Sir! I’m sorry I spilled it!”

Damien broke into a run on the street – he had to get home; he had to get ready.

…

The new arm felt strange.

He’d been told that it would, at least for a year, and perhaps longer if the grafting didn’t take properly but that hadn’t prepared him for the reality. It was as though another being had taken up residence next to him, separate and yet still a part. He could move the metal and Pseudoflesh arm freely, had no problem picking up objects or manipulating even small devices despite its somewhat odd appearance. Pseudoflesh was able to stretch and snap back to its original shape but matching skin tone wasn’t something that science had yet been able to achieve. Though the result was a strange mismatch of dark shoulder to pale arm, it was one that Damien would gladly take in exchange for the limb.

Still, there was something not quite right, something that he felt in flashes of intuition and on nights when he lay awake in his apartment, remembering a time when he had been just like everyone else.
Three months after the new arm had been installed, Damien woke up to it writing. His body was in bed, but the arm was straight up in the air, hand gripping a pen that had been in his nightstand. Nimble fingers were moving through an intricate series of movements from right to left and then resetting with each “line”, though there was no paper to capture what was being diagramed.

Rolling to his feet, Damien moved into the kitchen, careful to keep the arm away from walls and doors as he went. Though panic began to grip him as he came awake, he was more curious than terrified about what the limb was trying to say. A pad of paper near the phone provided a firm surface for the arm to commit what it wanted to physical form.

“Trapped,” it began, “and not sure how or why. My mind is still my own, but the only part of my body I have control over is my right arm, and even that comes and goes. It is as if another mind is imposing its will on my own, rendering me useless. I can see nothing, hear nothing, but know that I am still me, I still exist. I can hope only that these writings find eyes to see them and that someone hears my plight.”

Damien stepped back, moving away from the pad and the words his new limb produced.

“Hello?” He said into the darkness, feeling utterly foolish and more than a little confused. “Is there anyone…in there?”

The hand began moving more frantically and he put it back to the paper.

“You can hear me? Please, tell me what’s going on? Where am I? What’s happened?”

“I –“ Damien started and then paused. “My name is Damien, and you’re my new arm.”

“What?” The writing on the page was huge, and thin, shaky letters clearly reflected shock at the news. “How is that possible?”

Damien frowned. “I have no idea – so far as I knew, I was getting a Pseudoflesh and robotic implant. The doctors didn’t talk about…whatever you are inhabiting my new arm.”

“Pseudoflesh!!!” Three exclamation points made it clear whatever – whoever – was in the arm knew something about the substance. “They told me this practice had been stopped – that they had gone back to using only algorithms and programming. There was a meeting –“ the hand paused for a moment, then continued, the pen pressing deeply into the paper. “And I attended as required. Things are…fuzzy…and black. BETRAYED.” The last was written in four-inch high letters stretching across the page. Clearly, the arm’s inhabitant had been unfairly treated.

“This is ludicrous,” Damien said as he stepped back, preventing the hand from further writing. With an effort he exerted control over the limb again, forcing it back to his side and into stillness. It had been hard few months, a significant change in lifestyle and an adaptation to new circumstances – the stress was clearly taking its toll.

Five minutes later and he was back in bed, trying to force his mind to stillness and body to relax. A twitch in the hand brought his head up but he refused to think about the words on the page, the ravings of a madman likely created by his own mind.

In the morning, he would go and see the doctor, ask for a change in medication, and the oddities would go away. There was no chance it could be real, no possibility such black magic existed in the medical community; it just didn’t make sense.

And yet…


- D