Bypass Gemini

Chapter 8

The pair had made it to the mess hall, just a few doors down, before Lex managed to kick his brain into gear.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“Well, I was trying to hot-bleed a custom plasma manifold valve on a Class A power module and I forgot I went with the 3-6-3 sequence instead of the 2-4-3,” he said, matter-of-factly, while grabbing a tray and pushing it along the counter.

“And you blew your hand off.”

“Well, I blew my fingers off, anyway. It happens all the time. Hence all of the spares.”

“Spares. So it’s prosthetic.”

“I prefer cybernetic.”

Lex nodded. After the crash, the strange bus, and the adventure in lost body parts, this cafeteria was the first halfway normal thing he’d had to deal with. Admittedly, the place was utterly deserted, but there was a counter with covered warming trays, and there were tables and chairs. That made sense. He took a tray, threw a plate and some silverware on it, and started pushing it along after his host. Now that he wasn’t coping with a life threatening situation or an acid trip, his brain was willing to spend some time processing things. It started with the mechanic. He was one of those men who was hard to pin to a certain age. From the looks of him, he could have been anywhere from a worn out thirty to a baby-faced sixty. His voice had a generic urban quality, sloppy and a little hollow. Build-wise he was a little pudgy, but irregularly so. He had a slight paunch that didn’t so much seem to be the result of overeating or laziness, but the kind of belly that accumulates like sediment over the years. He was maybe two inches shorter than Lex. His hair was salt and pepper black... but that’s where things started getting unusual. A swath of his hair along the right side of his head looked wrong. It wasn’t as fine as the rest, and was much shinier, like a doll’s hair. Most of his skin was blotchy and pitted with neglect, but there were patches here and there that were baby smooth. Strangest, though, were his eyes. The left one was hazel, but the other was silver. That’s not to say a fancy shade of gray. The whites were white, but the iris was actual, mirror finish chrome.

“Are you a human being or... what?” Lex asked.

“Karteroketraskin.”

“Is that your...”

“Name. It’s my name. It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with the whole social interaction garbage, but I’m pretty sure you were supposed to ask me my name.”

“Oh, right. I’m-”

“Trevor Alexander. I know. You did the entry interview at the door. Good job pissing off the computer, by the way. I’m going to have to deal with that, now.”

“Okay. Well that’s introductions out of the way. So... Are you a human or what?”

His host began to answer. As he did, he pulled the tops from steam trays and shoveled food directly onto his tray. He hadn’t bothered to get a plate.

“Accurately answering that question is a non-trivial exercise in statistics, anatomy, physiology, and philosophy. As of my last medical scan, the standings are as follows: Thirty-nine percent original equipment, thirty-five percent aftermarket parts, and twenty-four percent synthetic organics.”

“… That’s only ninety-eight percent.”

“I’ve got some bits on back order. So, the majority of my body is not human, but the plurality of it is, and that’s good enough to win an election, so I’m going with human.”

The mechanic finished piling up his tray, which now had a few pounds of red beans and rice and three burritos on it. After grabbing an extra burrito and tossing it into the pocket of his coveralls for some reason, he reached into a tray of ice and pulled out a can of some sort of soft drink. After checking a series of the steam trays and discovering that burritos, beans, and rice were the only things available, Lex helped himself.