EDGE OF DAY

CHAPTER FOUR

The machine clamped together, closing around the whole upper half of her body. Her face felt like a giant robotic spider was sucking out her blood, while its needle feet were getting ready to drill holes into her skull.

"I'm not sure about this," she said, her voice muffled. She tried to move her arms and found she could barely lift them.

"Just relax," a droid said.  She glimpsed two of them moving around her.

"Good. All fixed," the droid said. "Now I want you to remember something from when you were six years old."

Day thought of the separatist community she'd grown up in. The separatists were those trying to slow down the surging wave of technology that was shaping the northern earth government. Day's family didn't even have a cleaner droid when she was six. The community had grocery shops and Day went to a little town school. She remembered riding her bike down a street, falling off, scraping her knee. Bleeding. No droids to come out and fix her. No alarms. No wrist monitor telling her of the dangers.

"Got it," the other droid said.

She tried to relax, but something in the depths of her chest was telling her she shouldn't be doing this. Will Van de Berg always said, if it didn't feel good, it wasn't in line with the truth. And this was starting to feel very far from good. But what wasn't true about it? That it was safe? Maybe it was the documentary Ed had watched making her fearful.

"Here we go," said a droid.

There came a sharp prick at the base of her skull, then something cool oozing into her consciousness. It was unlike anything she'd ever felt. Liquid dripped into the back of her head, but it wasn't just a physical feeing, it was as if it was seeping into her mind, her memories, her whole sense of who she was. Her awareness was filling up with cold, tingling goo.

And then she was a tank and the tank was full and because the fluid had nowhere else to go it was entering the spaces between atoms and drowning her.

Oh God! Oh God! "Stop!" she screamed, but her mouth didn't open. She felt a total disconnect from her body, as though all the threads had been cut. And still the cool, tingling solution was pouring into the space inside the atoms inside her brain. She wasn't going to have a brain left after this.

In the distance, something shook, like a ground tremor. There was a screeching alarm. And then she was back in her body, convulsing. They tugged and yanked at the machine, trying to get it off her head. It felt like they were pulling out fishhooks.

"What the hell is going on here?" a high-pitched voice shouted. "Why haven't you detached the neural lace?"

"It won't come out!"

"Turn the power off!"

"But then we could lose her."

"Turn the power off, now!"

Suddenly, Day's mind was like a popped balloon. Her conscious was leaking away.

'"Day, Day. Stay with us Day. It's very important you concentrate. Concentrate on my voice. Everything's OK. The pain you might feel is just because we're extracting the nano-lace. We have to do it buy probe because the machines switched off."

Pain everywhere, like the most insane headache Day could ever imagine having. And then she was filling up with warm fuzziness. Her thoughts began to drift, floating on a world of cloud. It was the snuggest sensation she'd ever known.

Her thinking process slowly returned along with throbbing deep inside her head. She grew aware of the droids standing over her, whispering.