Cybernetic
When I say my heart is broken, I mean something a little different. Actually, I mean exactly what I said. Four pounds of metal beats steady in my chest where my heart should be. Before you ask, no I am not a robot. No, I was not born like this. My life was normal, almost perfect. Almost. Until an accident changed everything.
I remember falling really, really far. I don't know whether it was suicide or accidental. I must have hit my head because I don't remember much of anything. Just my name, Carissa Parker, and that I don't belong here. Yet somehow, here I am. In a lab, three hundred feet below the surface, in a chair hooked up to colorful wires next to a noisy computer that beeps randomly every couple of minutes, and a scientist who sits at his desk and grunts occasionally while searching through, what I assume to be, my anatomy diagnostic for God knows what.
"Hold still." Are the only words he speak through the hours, before he presses a button on the computer sending a shock of electricity through every wire on my body. I tense justly as the bolts stretch my taut muscles, and the burning sensation in all of my cells. I wonder if this is humane, legal is off the table. It's been this way for four months. Testing, training, adjusting, for what? I don't know. That seems to be my answer for everything these days.
Douglas, the scientist, tell my everything I need to know. That legally I am dead. My family, whoever they are, doesn't know that I'm alive and it's probably best it stays that way. There's no need to scare them or confuse them with answers I don't have. He doesn't know who they are anyway. Douglas said he found me outside of a warehouse, trashed beyond its suitability. Probably a big party, I might have been intoxicated and accidentally fell of a roof. Anyway, he found me, said that I uttered something unintelligible and he figured I could still be saved. He then carried me to his home and replaced my un-beating heart with a bionic one. Four months later, I'm sitting in a chair, my new heart pulsing like thunder in my ears. The shocks hurt, but once the pain subsides it actually feels...nice. Like warm honey seeping through my veins, instead of blood. It feels peaceful, calming. I wish I felt like this all the time.
I look at Douglas. He finishes writing down his last notes before he puts his hand on the computer.
"One more time." He says.
"What are you doing?" I blurt out. Douglas has become like a father to me in the past four months. Feeding me, helping me, making sure I don't forget to record Funeral Mishaps:LA. I don't fear him in any specific kind of way, but he doesn't like me asking questions in the middle of his work. I know this, I just have to know why I'm being barbecued.
He looks up at me, to my relief he doesn't look angry.
"I'm rejuvenating your heart. I used an SLI battery when connecting your heart to your brain. You see every time you think, your brain is generating an electrical brain wave we scientists-" he says 'scientists' with so much bravado it sounds like he's talking about his 'amazing hair'. "like to call Neural Oscillation..." He begins dissecting the topic like I asked him to but my mind drifts a way. I feel dizzy for a second.
SLI? I think, that's a car battery.
Why do I know that? I don't remember much from my old life, but I know I didn't study mechanics. And right before Douglas told me the technical term for brain waves I had the term pulling at my ears, echoing in my mind. But it wasn't my voice saying that.
{FF}
I stare down at the tools in front of me. I missed the teachers instructions on what do because I was on that 'deja vu' thing again. How is it that I can be so good at Chemistry, when I walked in here all I felt was loathing, and I don't even know what you do in this class. So it's us. Me, a Petri dish, two beakers filled with a red and green substance, three drop-thingies I have a feeling I never knew the name of and the ghost of my never-present lab partner who seems keen on scolding the tall boy across the room- Adam, I believe his name was?- who keeps trying to drink the liquid in the beaker.
He's going to blow up the place. I think innocuously before turning back to my own obliviousness. Then suddenly it hits me, something clicks inside my mind. The information comes flooding in my brain like water in a cup, and my hands are moving on their own. I take a drop-thingy and fill it halfway with red liquid. I carefully drop three teardrops on the Petri dish and I watch it bubble then change to purple, I drop one more teardrop and it crystallizes right before my eyes. I smile to myself, amazed at the spontaneous transformation. I turn to the green chemical.
I wonder if... I think before I realize my hand is drifting towards the beaker. Just one drop...
At that moment Chase returns from reprimanding his little-big brother and he sounds like I'm setting a bomb when he says, "Don't do that! You're going to-"
He grabs my hand reaching for the drop-thingy when immediately I feel something pull. It's like all the breath in my lungs rushes out of my body, my heart speeds up past the speed of a heart attack. Everything is moving fast except for me, I'm frozen. He's frozen too, he looks as shocked as I feel, his breathing is heavy and chopped. I don't know how to describe this feeling, it's like...I'm standing where he is in his body and he's standing in mine. We're one person in two places and now gravity is pulling us together. Literally, we're both leaning closer and I don't know how to stop.
"What-what's happening?" he says incredulously. He doesn't know how to stop it either.
"I don't know." I breath the words as I stop fighting the pull. I stop fighting because I can't fight, a big part of me doesn't want to. It's like I'm floating on clouds, in between sleeping and dreaming. It's...magical.
Our lips barely touch when Ms. Jensen calls us out.
"Miss Parker, Chase. Should we clear the room and give you two some space?" she says. I flush red. I had forgotten we were in chemistry class. I try to speak up but my body is still frozen. Now with humiliation. Chase speaks up instead. "No ma'am." He says tersely, he's staring at me. His eyes are a mixture of confusion, surprise, embarrassment, and something else. I can't put my finger on it, but I can tell he just felt everything that I felt. My heart, the bionic part heats up and vibrates like a cell phone. It hurts really bad- burns- but I manage to ignore it hoping that it goes away.
"Have you finished your project?" Ms. Jensen continues to inquire, my heart continues to burn, as long as he's looking at me it's like a fire has started because something is broken. Panic sets in.
What if that happened?
"Yes. We finished."
I finished. I think but my bitterness is seared through by fire.
Hot. Hot. I need to get out.
"Okay then you need to finish the worksheet I gave you-"
I can't take it anymore. I clutch my chest where my heart is and make my way around the back of the room.
"Miss Parker where are you going?"
I ignore her shake down. In time my speed walking becomes running and I bolt out the door, trying not to super speed to the bathroom but I am running hella fast. I almost break the door down, panting when I reach asylum. When the door finally closes I lean back against it. My brain is pulsing. All I hear is thump thump- thump thump. Over and over and over again. Am I having a heart attack? I honestly feel like I'm having a heart attack. On the sun. I hurriedly stick my hand- shaking- in my pocket and reach for the silver bullet syringe Douglas gave me when he sent me off to school. With my fingers trembling I stick the needle in my shoulder and breath. A little pinch, and then it feels like ice is moving through my veins cooling me off on the inside.
Thank you. I think, truly relieved. My tense muscles soften, I can breath normally again. When my heart is broken, that is never a good thing.
Chase
I scratch the skin above my chip, the thing is burning like a hot stove. And it's tingling like somehow its been replaced with cotton. That was weird. I don't think I have ever glitched that way before. It was like the walls were closing in on just us...it didn't make any sense. I'll have to talk to Davenport as soon as I get home. In the mean time, who is that girl? How come she could feel everything I was feeling? I know she could. It was like I was in her. In some weird spiritual kind of way. I could feel everything she was feeling, know everything she was thinking...
This doesn't make sense. And that's coming from me. Which means, there is something unambiguously wrong. I awkwardly walk back over to Adam and Caitlin's table.
"What. Was. That?" Caitlin says incredulously.
"Yea. Dude, you didn't tell me you have a girlfriend." Adam says slapping my shoulder.
"It's cause I don't." I say.
"Well that explains why she ran out the classroom. What'd you do? Mind control or something?" Adam's snarky remarks fly right over my head right now. I'm too lost in that last sentence to focus on anything else.
Mind control.
"Something like that." I answer.