Tevun-Krus #50

Transistence - @Reverentia

"Transistence" originally appeared in Tevun-Krus #7: CyberPunk

Transistence

by Reverentia

He lies in front of me on the stainless steel table, naked, motionless, oblivious to the hum of the underground ventilation system in this abandoned salt mine. Part of me feels bad for him even though I know that if the positions were reversed, he wouldn't have even slightest inkling of remorse for his actions. My fate depends on whether I'm successful in the next three minutes and fifty-three seconds.

I get out the scalpel. It's a 150-year-old one from WWII, from which I've scraped the rust and sharpened until it's sharp as hell. A laser scalpel would be so much easier to manipulate and far less prone to error, but I chose the WWII scalpel precisely because it is not electronic and therefore is not integrated into Pulsenet—the ubiquitous data transmission network from which I plan to unplug this guy.

His identifier is R102-ADGC9, for now. My scalpel hovers over his skin and in that moment I name him Guud, so that his body still has an identifier when I'm done. Could have been a mistake, because when I make the first cut, on his right hip, it surprises me that he doesn't bleed. I slice him up his side to the armpit, across the clavicles and down the other side, then peel away the skin of his chest so that it covers him like a kilt.

His pectoral and abdominal muscles glisten milky white under the ceiling's sunny luminescence. Even though I know to expect this, it still shocks me. He looked so real before I cut him open, right down to the rosy cheeks and stubbly chin.

I slice down his sternum and peel away the muscle until his rib cage shines silver among petals of translucent white fiber like giant metal spider in a lotus flower. I can both see and hear the faint popping sound of his heart beating below that cage. By design his sternum has a latch that allows the two sides of his rib cage to come apart. I flip the latch and open the gates to his heart.

"Ready for the transceiver membrane, Chess?" Peter asks from where he sits on the other side of Guud.

"Ready," I tell him. I check the soldering iron and probes on the tray beside me. Peter lays the transceiver membrane in Guud's chest cavity and works the wrinkles out with feather-light strokes of his fingers. I exchange the scalpel for the soldering iron and probes. "Time?"

"Two minutes, twelve seconds."

And thirty-eight solder connections to make. I've used up seven spools of solder practicing these thirty-eight connections on a dummy, but still my hands begin to shake. What if I don't get this done before his reboot cycle is complete?

I block that morbid thought from my mind and solder. Twenty-four left. Twenty. Thirteen. Nine.

"Forty-seven seconds, Chess," says Peter, though his voice sounds distant now.

Seven solders left. Four.

"Twelve seconds."

Two. One. Done.

"Power up," I shout.

Peter is already on it; the two-tone ping of the bypass unit sounds behind me, and I put down the soldering iron down on the stainless tray with a clatter. The 3D projection display behind me lights up with transmissions to Pulsenet as R102-ADGC9, as though Guud were awake and about his business.

I smile at Peter. After seven years of extensive engineering and even more extensive front-line martyrdom, the Global Human Freedom movement has finally hacked its first memmer. Our first memmer. I look back at Guud, still jarred by the juxtaposition of his giant heat sink of a rib cage and the delicate strands of his dark brown hair fluttering humanly in the breeze of the fan.