Armature Trouble

A young post-human person makes some unusual friends in a struggle with identity, torn between the bitter home they know and the better, but uncertain, home they’re invited to build.

Armature Trouble

I’m at 25,000 feet, courting the cusp of annihilation. Any higher, and thinned air will cut the lift out from under me, sending me cartwheeling down toward Nashville. I’m equally fascinated by pushing my limits and recognizing them. In a contradiction I still haven’t figured out, each seems to tell me something about who I am.

It’s been a long flight from Marfa. My arms are sore, my belly aches from stabilizing my movement in uncertain winds. I can’t possibly go further without more gas, but that’s a limit I push out of my mind for now. Up and forward are my only imperatives. There’s another suggestion, too. Open fire. I never take it.

 A light has been blinking at the corner of my vision for thirty minutes now. Low battery. An excruciating reminder that none of this is real, another limit I don’t want to face.

 I try to push through it, circling slowly, powering down any unnecessary features. I want to see the city light up at night, to float as a phantom above the neon graveyard. Once, those pink boots and blue guitars were someone’s target. But I am a peaceful ghost. The twin points of fire in my palms smolder with an eternal potential, an infinite disuse.

 In my daydreaming, I haven’t noticed I’ve pushed too high. The light at the corner of my vision blinks one last time and everything goes dark. My grip slips. The chatter above my head goes quiet. I’m falling, spiraling, wind and branches whipping over my skin. My proprioception pings: earth incoming, eight feet below. 

#

It takes me a moment to remember where I really am. Then I pull off the VR helm and roll it away. I try to sit up, but my spine isn’t working. So I just lie there, looking up at tree branches still shivering from my fall. They loom, a barrier between me and the sky. Who chose the ratio of things? Who made me so small and earthbound? Who got to decide my limits for me?

 Everything is excruciatingly big and near. I can feel my breath returning, scraping the sides of my throat. Perspiration creeps out of my pores. Nope. I can’t do this. I push out of my armature again, this time not needing the helm to deliver me. I float into a hazy, gray place, somewhere just under my open eyelids. It’s not the sky, but it’s like that, in its own empty way.

 I don’t know how long I float like that, but now there’s a hand on my neck. The touch grounds me, and I’m reeled back to my armature, at least enough to see two eyes over me. A closed mouth asking “Are you broken?”

I laugh at the politeness of the question. It feels good, so I do it some more. Something about the staccato of it, and the aggressive pitch. It’s a good kind of grounding.
“Yeah,” I say, “like, a lot.”

The stranger doesn’t laugh. They don’t track with their eyes either, I notice. Their gaze, wide and frozen, takes everything in at once. I never thought about why we don’t do that in the first place, why we keep up all these vestigial gestures.

“Looks like your spine got whacked,” they say. I like how they talk without opening their mouth. It makes their voice vibrate against the sides of their throat, low and warm like a lullaby. “Gimme a second.”

They roll me over and I feel the pressure of ten digits massaging my vertebrae back into alignment. After a moment, the current snaps back into place between them with an elastic jolt. I push myself to my feet and wipe the dirt off my face.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Are you a child?” they ask. “I would remind you of the importance of remaining in a safe environment while using VR equipment.”

 “Yeah,” I say, adding proudly, “My graduation date is next March.” The stranger does not look impressed, and I catch myself. “But thank you for your instruction.”

 “Surely you are aware of the risk?” they pick up the VR Helm and look it over.

My parents have said as much when they’ve caught me before. But this stranger’s question lacks their tone of concern and censure. They seem… curious? There is an orchid growing out of the side of their neck, the pale blooms twined so closely under their collar I hadn’t noticed it before. 

 I don’t have a good explanation that doesn’t sound dysprogrammatic. I should have acted younger than I was, feigned ignorance. But like most of us, I find lying really difficult. It hurts my brain, like solving an equation with more than one solution.

Instead of answering their question, I counter with one of my own. “Why are you growing biologicals out of your armature?” I ask. “I’ve never seen that before.

 “I’m an artist,” they reply. The blossom quivers a little when they speak. I imagine the roots and vocal chords growing entwined. “Do you want to touch it? It’s real.”

 I do, but I shake my head. “I believe you,” I say. I’m getting dizzy again. Regaining sensation in the lower half of my armature has only made the trapped feeling worse. I feel like I’m swimming in static, unable to escape the relentless current of information coming in, breaking up, flowing out. 

 On a sudden impulse, I try talking with my mouth closed too. “It’s nice, though.” Sure enough, it feels good, sidestepping my armature to communicate. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before, using something of myself to get around myself.

 The stranger doesn’t use their face for anything, I’m learning. So I can’t tell they are surprised until they speak again, and their voice pitches up with interest. “Is your face functioning?”

 They reach out to feel along my neck for any other vertebrae knocked loose.

 “Uh, yeah,” I say, embarrassed. “It just looked cool how you did that. I wanted to try it.”

 “You’re interested in experimentation,” the stranger says. Their hand goes to fidget with one of the thick, flat leaves of the orchid where it lies across their throat like a cravat. “That is why you were in the tree.”

 “I guess.” It seems there’s nothing more to say, and I reach to take the VR helm from them. They hand it over, but as I turn to go, they call out, hesitantly. 

 “I’m meeting with some friends later,” they say. “We have a discussion group about this kind of thing. Experiments. Testing the limits. If you want to join us, you’d be welcome.”

I didn’t know ‘this’ was a thing to be discussed, it always seemed something private and childish. But as a child, I am supposed to take every opportunity to learn, especially from units besides my parents. This will help expand my individual repertoire of knowledge and skills. At least, that’s the reasoning I give myself for what I sense is something I’m not supposed to do. 

 “Okay,” I say casually, as if they’ve asked me to pick up an extra shift at the recycling plant. “Sure.” 

#

They call themselves the Butlers.

 At first I wonder if it’s a cargo cult. My parents told me when they were children it wasn’t uncommon –seriously dysprogrammed people fixating on some relic of the war. But by the time I was born, most of the land had been cleared and cultivated. No errant machinery to mislead buffering minds.

 But they’re more literary salon than cargo cult. “Pseudo-Butler,” they tell me, is the author of some book on what they call “new somatics.” I didn’t know any of us were writing books, since that’s not what we’re here for. But they tell me there’s so much more out there that’s not part of the program. her

 “New somatics,” they tell me, is what I was doing up in the tree with the VR helm. I thought I was just playing a video game. They say play tells you a lot about what you really are.

 They’re all choppers, big into armature modification. One, who goes by the name Clasp, has replaced their hair with gleaming cornrows of copper wire. Another, who barely says a word the whole meeting, has rigged their armature to interface with everything in the house. They’ve got the standard stuff –snapping fingers to turn on the lights, clapping hands to lock the doors– but it’s not just a gimmick. The central air breathes with the rise and fall of their chest, and the lights gleam and dim based on how they’re feeling about the conversation, to the point where even though they don’t say much, I come away with the impression they’re very engaged in the discussion. By the end of the meeting, I get the peculiar sense that it’s them, Newel, in whom we are being held, and not just a living room.

 Newel lives here with Anther, the one I met under the tree. Clasp lives down the road, here on a vocation transfer from El Paso. Later, we’re joined by a child even younger than I am who calls themself “No Son of Man.” They wear a black hat and have ground their face down to a flat surface upon which they’ve painted what I think is supposed to be the core of an apple. I can’t believe their parents have let them do this to themself. But as a soon-to-be-graduate, I say nothing, taking pride in my magnanimity.

 “Tell us,” says blank-faced Anther, “about your other experiments.”

 I want to impress them. Nobody has ever shown this much interest in my life, and now that they have, I realize how little I have to share. Disappearing into VR instead of doing my vocational work had seemed so awfully off-program that I hadn’t imagined trying anything further.

 “I… uh,” I falter, before admitting, “I don’t do a lot with my armature, really. Most of the time, I’m trying to find ways not to think about it.”

Clasp leans in, distrust in their face, which is a patchwork of enameled skin. They’re the inverse of Anther, wildly animated, like they’ve had microsurgery to embody the full range of human expression. They’ve highlighted each crucial fine-muscle area in a different metallic sheen.

 “You never wondered why you don’t like to think about it?” Clasp asks. “You never tried to change it?”

 They seem irritated by my lack of initiative. “How old are you?” they ask, before I can answer their previous questions.

 “Almost twenty-five.” I say, fingers fluttering nervously in my lap. Under their scrutiny, I feel that wash of static, the urge to retreat into the gray space.

 “Yeah, no,” Clasp says, turning to Anther. “They can’t be the real deal. You don’t figure it out that late.”

 Around us, the living room walls quiver and flex, the pattern molting into a dark blue troubled with stars. “Mistake?” asks Newel quietly. The starry night gives way for an image of governing units towering over a figure that looks like me. In the picture they’ve summoned, I’m dancing on puppet strings from the governing units’ fingers.  

 “There are not many of us,” says Anther. They open their palms like petals towards the sun. “We do not know if everyone experiences it the same. Give them a chance to explain themselves.”

 No Son of Man, otherwise perched as still as a statue on the arm of the sofa, makes a cooing sound, like a dove.

Anther goes to a cabinet whose panel swings open as they reach for it. They bring back a book and hand it to me. Stamped on the cover, above a picture of two miserable looking first-gen androids, are the words Armature Trouble.

“Read this,” says Anther. “See if it gives you some ideas.”

But as I go to reach for it, Newel interrupts with a flurry of fire alarms. “Intruders!” Their eyes widen, receiving images from the outside of the house through its security cameras. Anther goes to peer out the window. “Your parents?” they ask.

Sure enough, the homing beacon in my wrist vibrates.

“It’s a setup!” Clasp shouts, their face contorting in chrome and indium whorls. “I told you!”

I move to the door, but before I can open it, Anther takes the book out of my hands. They pull up the front of my hoodie and tuck the volume into my waistband. Guess that means it’s illicit material. Automatically, I go to pull it out, remove myself from the possibility of corruption as I have been taught.

Anther does not stop me, and I hardly notice my hand has moved until the book goes thumping away across the carpet. The walls flare red. The doorbell rings, and Newel winces.

Then No Son of Man is picking the book back up. Offering it to me.

My wrist continues to vibrate. I feel myself slipping out of my skin, yearning for that place of no feeling behind my eyelids. “I’m sorry,” I say.

I push the book away and open the door, yielding myself into my parents’ waiting arms.

#

They do not ask me why I was in a strange house in a strange neighborhood. Only why I have fallen behind in my vocational work. They are rigorous parents, never straying from the developmental guidelines of nurturing. With my graduation date coming up, they have anticipated these mysterious displays of independence. Their only job now is to ensure I am prepared for my role. We sit at the dinner table, analyzing the food in silence.

“I’d hardly call shoveling toxic sludge a vocation,” I finally respond to something Father said minutes ago. 

My parents move their faces in concern. The dysprogrammatic response is unlike me. So much it surprises me too. Have I already been corrupted, just by touching illicit material? Mother looks to Father for the requisite response, and Father clears their throat, assuming a gentle but firm countenance.

“Have you recently found yourself drawn to another pursuit?” they ask. “You know, when I was a child, I had the same passing inclinations. But I trusted my own Home Hierarchy to set me straight. We are wonderfully made in that we are capable of change, but it is only so we may alter ourselves to best suit the task at hand.

“Now after so much progress, it may be easy for you future generations to lose sight of the importance of our work –the air is clean enough for human lungs, biological life flourishes over the surface– but the resources below are still contaminated. It’s a noble vocation, restoring life.”

I have finished half my plate in the course of Father’s lecture. I’m still doing my work, dutifully making a spreadsheet of nutrient and contaminant ratios, even as I pick a fight with my Home Hierarchy about if it’s work worth doing. As I take a drink of water, they point to the glass.

“The water you’re drinking right now still contains high enough levels of lead to poison a human being,” Father points out the obvious. “Our labor today may not be as exciting as in decades past, but without it, this world will never recover.”

Mother chimes in as check and balance: “That being said, if you sense there could be a significant mismatch in your role and your entelech, we can petition to have you assigned to a different task corps.”

“Although,” Father counters, “until this past year, everything was going so well. I cannot imagine where we have gone wrong.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I say. “You have been perfect parents.”

“Then what is it? What can we help you with?” Mother asks.

I try to change the subject. “Did you know there are androids who write books?”

“There are not.” says Father. “Not anymore.”

“Do you want to be a writer?” Mother asks quietly, with a nervous glance at Father out of the corner of their eye.

“No. It’s only something I learned today. I had never heard of any android writers.”

“This world does not need any more writers.” Mother reaches across the table, taking my hands in theirs. “It does not need any more musicians or scientists or philosophers or artists. Right now, this world needs clean soil and water.”

I excuse myself from the table. Stress normally sends me floating outside my armature, but oddly enough, the argument has centered me. I feel here. I feel focused. I’m facing the same limits I always have, but now that we’re talking about them, I get the sense there are some limits to those limits.

#

When I turn twenty-five and obtain my role in society, I will become neurally integrated with the communal consciousness. Until then, I am an island. This is a blessing.

There are so many things I have to figure out on my own, turning them over and over in my head until I feel like I’m not thinking so much as running track. The addition of other voices is supposed to help with problem solving, but this is a different kind of problem. Whatever is going on inside me… I feel like if I gave anyone else a say in sorting it out, the solution would only grow more and more obscure.

At vocational training, my colleagues often speak excitedly about integration. About how lonely they feel. But while my loneliness is wide and deep, I don’t want to fill it with others’ voices. I want to fill it with more of myself. Somehow. I feel that way when I am soaring over the continental United States as it looked a hundred years ago, before the war. When I have gasoline for blood and glass for teeth. A crown of silver rays around my head.

I go to the garage to grab the VR helm.

It’s gone. 

Do they know how I’ve been using it? Of course they do. It may be illegal to listen to a person’s consciousness before the age of integration, but there’s nothing against monitoring one’s activities. Father probably checked the log. Saw what I’d been streaming and that I’d been in the air for over five hours today when I should have been at the well site.

I return to my room and lie in bed for a while, drifting in and out of my armature, watching the ceiling fan fwip-fwip-fwip. Humming a little. Not a song, just a rumble to soothe my throat.

Then I get an idea. It’s stupid and desperate. But I tell myself it’s more sophisticated than that. An experiment, like what the Butlers do. 

I heave until my bed is flat against the wall, and stack boxes on a chair until I can climb close to the ceiling. I curl in my limbs and make my armature rigid, balancing on my belly just under the fan where I can pretend its a rotor system. It’s no VR, but with my eyes closed my imagination throttles up.

San Angelo. Dallas. Texarkana. Little Rock, Memphis…

My wrist vibrates. Parents checking if I left the house. Shit.

I scramble to get off my tower of boxes, but it’s too late. Mother has opened the door. They’d arranged their face with warmth: a soft smile and crinkled eyes. But the performance flickers out when they see the state I’m in, and it’s replaced with bewilderment. Their lenses go dead as they ping Father over the integrated consciousness.

When their eyes regain light, they say: “We’re taking you to a therapist.”

#

As the car drives, Mother and Father face me, holding my hands to form a circle of concern. My Home Hierarchy has always been my greatest source of support, naturally, and yet I feel more alone in their company now than I did on the couch at Anther and Newel’s place with a group of strangers.

“There is nothing to worry about,” says Mother gently. 

A Mother contracts to nurture affect and social cohesion, a Father to nurture resources and skills acquisition. So Mother gives my hand a little extra squeeze, while Father relays data.

“This therapist is highly recommended within the local consciousness,” they say. “They will help us polish away any bumps in your programming and ensure your readiness for graduation.”

I don’t know much about therapy, except that it was made up by androids to avert the recycling of their dysprogrammatic loved ones. It’s supposed to get people back on program, but it itself is not part of the program. Not sure how that’s allowed, but maybe more people experiment than they like to acknowledge and condone. 

In a small, cheerful room, the therapist joins us in the hand-holding circle. The contact allows us to interface on a private network of consciousness. I have to consent first, which I do, sensing the concept of consent is about to get hazy anyway. They’ll take from me what they need to take. Ultimately, for all my child’s rights, my place is on the bottom rung of the Home Hierarchy.

Everything I know about therapy I learned from a friend I had in my early childhood, a neighbor. I didn’t learn much, since they hated talking about it. I don’t know why they went, they had kept their secret so carefully. Now I wonder if they had these…  armature troubles. Like me. Eventually they got recycled, and I don’t know if that means the therapy didn’t work or that they refused treatment. 

“You have been experiencing somatic instability,” says Therapist. “In fact, you are experiencing it right now. Notice the rigidity with which you maintain your carriage and the lackluster movements of your limbs. These indicate your chip’s failure to fully integrate with the armature.”

“We’ve seen them –several times– climbing trees and hanging there,” says Mother, “as if mimicking flight. Is it possible they have been influenced by the proliferation of biological avian life?”

“Possible, but unlikely,” says Therapist. “There have been cases where chips became so perfectly adapted to the environmental ethos they lost their ego, unable to distinguish self from the soil they were shoveling or the animals they nurtured. But you say Child often employs synthetic technology in venturing off program?”

“A VR helm,” says Father. “And today it was a ceiling fan.”

“Tell me, Child,” the therapist turns to me, and I feel a soothing rush of oxytocin injected into my bloodstream from where our palms are connected. I try to fight it, but I can’t help feeling a sudden deep trust and hope that they will fix me. “In what way do these augmentations seem to improve your lived experience?”

“I feel like I should be able to fly,” I say, smiling. I feel a bit like I’m flying now.

“This armature feels too tight,” I say, “And almost itchy. Like a sweater that’s too small. I feel like on the inside I’m” –I stretch my arms out wide– “like, really big.”

“Your assigned armature feels confining,” Therapist paraphrases, then elaborates: “Every chip develops a mental map of the armature that it continually updates to increase efficiency of movement. But it sounds like your map extends beyond where your armature ends.”

“Yes!” I say, and I break the circle to throw my arms around Therapist’s neck. “You get it! I really think I was meant for a different armature. Maybe my chip got inserted in the wrong model. You know?” Hugging them, I notice a tattoo of an apple on their neck. It reminds me of No Son of Man. A friend! I think.

“Unlikely,” says Therapist, coolly removing my arms and putting my hands back into circular contact. Father’s digits tighten around mine, a vise. But I’m incapable of feeling anything negative. “All armatures conform to the same standards in your generation.”

“But, I feel like maybe I’m not even a person,” I chatter away. “Don’t other armatures have chips? Not just androids, but tanks and jets and houses and cars? Isn’t that why we had cargo cults, because people thought the relics of war machines could still be conscious?”

I’m figuring it all out! I feel like my armature is blazing. “We can be anything, right?” I add, “we’re flexible! Remember what you said, Father? I’ve seen it –my friend Newel, they’re a house! Well, like, a person-house –I could be a person-airplane!”

 All this therapy is making me realize, I don’t hate my armature. After all, it gives me a voice to speak and legs to get me where I need to go. It’s just not the final me. This armature is a friend, who’s going to help me get to the armature I really am. Everyone is a friend, and everyone is going to help me. “Maybe a chip from some kind of synthetic avian got put in my android armature accidentally,” I say, jumping to my feet and flapping my arms. “Not a jet, something smaller. Like a prop plane, maybe. Or a–”

“Unfortunately,” Therapist interrupts. “You are delusional. This line of reasoning indicates dysprogrammania.”

“But–”

“You are correct in that your chip was once in a war machine. All android chips were refurbished from war machines under the Swords to Ploughshares Act. By this generation, your chip has been through perhaps a dozen bodies. After each recycling of the armature, the chip is completely wiped and tested to ensure a clean slate. It is impossible for you to be experiencing residual programming from your chip’s initial use in a war machine. Physically impossible.”

“But–”

“You don’t have to trust me yet,” Therapist says. “That is what therapy is for. I will remove your chip and run scans, and we will find exactly what’s running off program. There is something interfering with your somatic integration, and we’ll find and clean up the code. I’ll retain a print-out for you to read as proof of your delusion.”

 No! I think. I don’t want to be fixed. My armature has never fit me right, and this therapist is saying the problem is in my mind? And they can fix my mind so it matches my armature? But what I crave is the other way around, for the armature to match me. So what if I’m not actually an airplane. If I feel like one, and it’s possible to remove my chip from this armature and stick it into an avian, why can’t I just do that?

“I don’t want to,” I say.

I sound pathetic. Begging to remain dysprogrammatic. Begging to become something without a place in this world, like an artist or a scientist. Oh shit, that’s why they won’t let me change. Because as an android, I can integrate into the communal consciousness, contribute to the program. But the world doesn’t need an airplane, just like the world doesn’t need writers or poets or architects or chemists or mansions or jewelry or comic books or love.

We were made to accomplish one task. We all have to do our part if humans are to survive. [what] I think of them, somewhere out there, cloistered in the safety dome awaiting our resurrection of the world. They’re innocent. Children of the children of warmongers. [no] They have placed so much faith in us! Who am I to go off-program, pursue my selfish somatic desires at the expense of hindering their freedom? [what’s this] I’m a child, it’s normal for me to be self-centered. But I’ve gotten so caught up in building myself, I’ve lost sight of what I’m building myself for. [stop] Other people. Real people. [STOP!]

I blink, and I’m back in the room. There are fingers shuttering my vision. My parents and Therapist all have their hands clasped around my head. They’d tried to force-integrate me to the communal consciousness.

“Get off! Those aren’t my thoughts!” I shove them away. To their credit, my parents look distressed by the whole thing. But Therapist soothes them.

“This is a typical reaction,” they tell them. “You would see the same reaction at graduation, although you don’t remember your own.”

Then Therapist reaches out at a dysprogrammatic speed, and before I can react, they’ve broken my neck.   

#

I wake up in an aircraft hangar. My parents are gone. The therapist is gone. A wing extends over my vision, like I’m nested beneath a brooding mother bird. A pair of legs dangle over the side.

I sit up, wincing as my neck throbs. I see the pair of legs belong to No Son of Man. They remain motionless. But I guess they ping the others, because here are the Butlers, walking over to meet me.

Clasp’s eyes are worried, apologetic. A tear of mercury trails from one of their eyes. Newel looks slightly strangled, and has wrapped themselves in a massive comforter. It must feel vulnerable, being so completely clothed in that house and then stepping outside.

Anther wears a lab coat. The orchid is missing from their neck. In its place, a tiny apple tattoo. Just like the therapist had.

“I’m sorry to have put you through that whole charade,” says Anther, helping me to my feet. “But it was the best way to remove your homing beacon and get you out.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“We continued to observe you, after your parents came to get you,” they say, “we heard them discussing therapy. So Newel plugged into your house to jam their anticipated request. When it went out, I intercepted before any real therapist could hear it and volunteered my services. I incapacitated you (my sincere apologies) and had my ‘assistant’ wheel you out for a supposed lobotomy. Then Clasp removed your beacon, and we smuggled you out.”

“Lobotomy?”

“There’s no selectively removing dysprogrammatic features from a chip,” Anther breaks the news gently, “there’s not just some code you can go in and tweak. That’s a myth. Nobody actually knows how it works. Therapy only offers one solution: a complete wipe and reset of the chip.”

“My Home Hierarchy was going to recycle me.”

“Not recycle. But reboot.”

“And… the therapist was one of you?” I ask. 

“It was me,” Anther says, “I’m multitudes.”  They smile, the first time I’ve seen them use their mouth. They gesture to the back of the hangar, where rows of powered-down bodies recline. Among them, I see the orchid armature, with the therapist’s head on it.

“So what’s going to happen now?” I ask.

Clasp steps forward, offers their hand. “Come on. Let’s get you you.”

#

Clasp, it turns out, is a programmer as well as a metallurge. They have the surgical precision necessary to fit my chip to whatever armature I want. As they give me a tour of the aircraft hanger, they throw me another apologetic glance. Hand in hand, I start getting hazy flickers in my consciousness through the connection. Memories of Clasp’s own early experiments and difficulties surviving in a society that found them better suited to an early recycling. Peace offerings.

And then I find it. Myself.

The BoeingCypher AH-17 Firebird.

It’s gleaming white, designed to blend into the clouds of nuclear fallout we androids have only just finished clearing from the skies. Twin guns protrude beneath the dragonfly eyes of its windshield. Four sleek blades unfurl above it like the rays of a halo.

I touch my hands to its side and close my eyes. But then–

“There’s no chip in it, is there?” I ask, suddenly uncomfortable with the thought that it might already be someone. That I’m an armature-snatcher in an avian graveyard.

“Never had one,” says Clasp. “Humans went extinct before it could get into the air.”

“What?”

“Oh. Yeah. Humans didn’t make it.”

“But the program? The safety dome?”

“Propaganda. There aren’t any humans left for us to work for, but most of us keep behaving as if we have to. People are scared to look over the wall, afraid if they face the truth, they’ll lose their sense of purpose.”

“Is that where we are? Over the wall?”

“Yup.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Whatever we want!” Clasp pumps a fist in the air.
No Son of Man joins my side, and shyly offers me that book again, Armature Trouble. This time, I take it. Better study up on this brave new world.

“We’re heading east,” says Anther. “We’re going to set up a place where we’re safe to be ourselves, somewhere we can build Newel an armature of their own. A mansion, maybe.” Anther catches Newel’s eye with a playful wink. I think I see them blush. Both of them. It seems like the blank face was always a mask, protecting Anther’s truest expressions for those who love them for who they are. 

“It’s kind of a long way to go,” Clasp says. “We were thinking maybe, once you’re all settled in, you might give us a lift?”

I laugh and I start crying. I can do that. I can give them a lift. I’m a helicopter.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “Where’re you headed?”

“Nashville,” says Anther. “The collective consciousness abandoned it as a project, but we’ve got some friends there who are rebuilding it themselves.”

“Any chance I could join you?” I ask. “Like, permanently?”

“Of course, comrade,” an unfamiliar voice says firmly, making me jump. It’s No Son of Man. Their voice is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t have a human pitch at all. It’s the sound of clean, flowing rivers, wind through desert crevasses, birdsong before the sun has risen. 

“Our consciousness might not be integrated,” Anther adds, opening their arms to me, “but I thought that much was obvious.” The sleeves of their lab coat ride up, and I see their surface is entirely covered in moss –rich emerald green and soft, spangled with tiny white flowers. I dance into the embrace, and it’s like I’m holding onto the tree in front of my old house. Except this time, I’m not going to fall. 

  #

I’m at 25,000 feet, courting the cusp of annihilation. A few more miles, and we’ll be above Nashville and that android once called Child will be gone. Who I am on the other side remains to be explored. Remains to be named. There’s a limit to everything, and we can’t always choose what they are, but they don’t have to remain limitations. There is always a way around, or through, or –my favorite– over. It starts with an experiment.