LITR 3731: Creative Writing
Student Fiction Submission 2003

 Travis Kelly

Nuts and Bolts

The tops of the ash trees swayed in the afternoon wind, and the movement produced a sound like waves crashing upon a distant shore.  The other sights and sounds of the park were blocked by the walls of the perceptual tunnel I had created.  The trees were safe.  So were the birds that darted between them.  Not like the squirrels I knew were racing around the trunks.  They caused me all kinds of trouble.

It dawned on me that I had been staring at the trees for ten minutes, and the arranged meeting time had come and gone.  He was late.  Ross was always late.  Carefully, I lowered my eyes from the trees and looked down the path that ran in front of my bench.  Most children were in school and the park was unusually desolate.  While this made things easier for me, it also made it possible for a cursory glance to reveal that Ross was nowhere in sight.  I resigned myself to the delay and once again turned my attention to the trees.  Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me.

“So, how is it today?” the familiar voice inquired.  A typical opener these days, it seemed.

“Fine.  Have a seat” I responded without taking my eyes off the treetops.

As he walked around and sat down on the empty left portion of the bench, I slid my eyes from the trees to him in the most quick and fluid motion possible.  I could not help but be amused by the contrast between the typical park-dweller and Ross.  He was, after all, the incarnation of physical inactivity.  His skin was pale, his body was practically skeletal, and he wore a pair of cheap sunglasses to protect his delicate eyes from the midday sun.  I supposed his health was the natural result of a lifetime of buying, using, disassembling, modifying, breaking, and returning electronic equipment.  Ironically, it was his neurotic fascination with all things technological that had drawn him out to the sunlit park - To me. 

“How has work been?”  I asked, trying to delay the inevitable.

“Boring, as usual” Ross said with more than a hint of impatience in his voice.  Still, he couldn’t resist an opportunity to expound on his favorite topic.  “Some guy from downstairs wants me to attach a 12” LCD to his PDA.”  He looked disgusted.  “The thing’s ancient.  I can do the work, but it’s still going to be slow when I’m done with it.”  Ross, the poster-boy for technological elitism.  He assumed everybody worried about their hardware as much as he did.

While he was talking, I noticed his eyes kept darting between the coarse, pebbled surface of the path and my right shoulder.  I braced myself for what came next.

“So you say it’s fine?” he tried to ask casually.  “I heard you were having trouble with it a couple of days ago.  Punched out a wall or something.”  I wondered where he heard that.

“Well, I wouldn’t say punched out” I sniffed indignantly.  “More like dented.”

“Can I have a look?” Ross blurted out, obviously unable to hold back any longer.

“I guess so.”  I couldn’t delay it, so I turned my body carefully to face Ross and watched my right arm extend straight in front of me, palm up.

“I don’t see any damage” He almost whispered in awe. 

“The alloy is a bit stronger than drywall.”  Ross already knew that, but it seemed to impress him anyway.  I felt like I was reciting from the same book as the doctors.  The doctors who two months ago explained exactly how the arm would drive me insane.

Of course, that’s not the way they had worded it.  They had swarmed into my hospital room barely five minutes after I had regained consciousness and immediately began analyzing the data on the computer next to my bed.  With fanatical fervor, the doctors were discussing gibberish being fed from the arm to the computer via a single thick cable.  I wondered if they realized there was a person attached to their mechanical creation.

Just as I was about to answer my own question, one of the white coats separated itself from the rest and moved to the foot of my bed.  A face came into focus above it of a bald, middle-aged man wearing rectangular spectacles which obscured his eyes with a white, reflected light.  The other doctors seemed to hush as he began to speak.

“How do you feel, Jared?” he asked absent-mindedly as he scribbled notes on his electronic notepad.

“A bit woozy” I replied, noticing my voice sounded strained and small.

“That’s to be expected.  You’ve been in surgery for twelve hours.  Making a few thousand neural connections can take some time.  Especially…” He grinned “if it’s never been done before.”  This seemed to set the other doctors off again, and the noise in my room increased. 

In my drugged haze, I wondered how being the first bionic man would affect my day-to-day existence.  Maybe it wouldn’t make any difference.  After all, I led a rather unexceptional life.  I had been placed on worker’s compensation following the accident, and there I had stayed for nearly six months.  If my life had been boring before the accident, the tedium had become life-threatening afterwards.  I had found some part-time work to make the days drag by, but the amputee job market was surprisingly small. 

After my mind had drifted for a while, I noticed the bald doctor had called one of the other white coats over to the foot of the bed.  This doctor was a bit younger than the other, and both his hair and beard were well-groomed.  He was holding a binder in front of him, and his eyes were wide with fascination as he turned to look at me.

“This is Doctor Jenneson” introduced the bald doctor.  “He will help you learn how to control and maintain the arm.  He was directly involved with its development, so if anybody has the answers to your questions, it’s him.”  The bald doctor glanced at his watch impatiently and said, “Excuse me.  I need to check on some other patients.  I’ll be by with some medication in a couple of hours.”  He inclined his head slightly and hurried out of the room.

Dr. Jenneson sat down next to me and began to explain the basics of the arm.  What it was made of, how it operated, what its tolerances were – It seemed to me he had practically built the thing himself.  After a while, he began discussing how to use the arm.

“As you probably know” he began, “The arm responds to signals from the brain.  In that respect, it is very much like a real arm.  However, unlike a real arm, it responds to extremely concise thought patterns.  In other words, rather than using vague wishes or desires, the arm picks up on definite imagery and concepts.”  He peered intently at me, as if he could sense that I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

“Unfortunately” he continued unabated, “the concepts that evoke certain brain patterns vary from person to person.  So…” he tapped his binder with his right index finger, “we’ll have to discover them ourselves.”

Dr. Jenneson opened the binder and, during the following hour, showed me hundreds of seemingly unrelated pictures.  Whenever my viewing a picture produced a response from the arm, his brow would furrow and he would jot something down.  Similar sessions were held several times a day over the next two weeks.  Soon, I was able to produce movements with the arm by viewing or thinking about certain objects.  For instance, thinking about octopuses caused the hand to clench.  The more intensely I thought about an octopus, the harder it would clench.

Unfortunately, some of the responses were more dangerous than useful.  For some reason, the faintest thought of a blue plastic yo-yo sent the arm bucking and shaking like a bull at a rodeo.  I also had to avoid swordfish, since a glimpse of one would result in the arm shooting off in random directions with enough force to incapacitate a person.  Neither Dr. Jenneson nor I could predict what would happen if I caught sight of a squirrel, but it was invariably something bad.  Eventually, Dr. Jenneson decided that I had a reasonable amount of control over the arm.  Before discharging me from the hospital, he constructed a schedule of monthly visits, probably to satisfy his fixation with the arm more than anything else.