Rough

Rough

I cradled him in my arms. Greg’s face was a mask of hurt, wheezing breaths squirming from his mouth. His nervous system was clearly fighting to function through the mess of wiring in his brain and cocktail of medication pumping through his veins. I realized that the regular tensing and relaxing around his eyes were his attempts to cry, but something about what he had done to himself prevented the tears from coming. It was an ugly, ugly expression, violent and scathingly inhuman. 

He tried to raise a hand to my face, but the sleek steel box fitted to his shoulder prevented it. Grav-Lifts, they were called. That MOD had been growing in popularity, but I could see the downside now. If they turned off they were dead weight to your atrophied muscles. He had still been floating when I entered the yard, arms outstretched to either side in a bizarre mid-air crucifixion. The rain had been pouring down around him in sheets, and I screamed at him to get down from there before the yard was illuminated with a flash. Before a ball of fire replaced him I could see the exaltation on his face. The thunder came seconds later, punctuating his crash back to earth. 

And so I held him, attempting to stroke his wet hair through the electrodes and bundles of cords that fit into the base of his skull. Meters on the vest MOD that dispensed him neurotransmitters, vitamins and peptides flickered on and off before blinking out completely. His hand fell to the ground and he cringed. 

“Rough. The grass is so rough. It hurts.” 

I laced my hands through his frail fingers and touched t

he grass. It was incredibly soft. Plush, even. Manicured and soaked by the rain. I struggle to imagine anything less abrasive. An old quilt, maybe? Corn silk? John’s freshly shaven face? 

“It's so soft, Greg, hang in there, please.”

“No. Rough. Everything hurts, now.”

And then he died. 

Sirens and flashing lights cut through the din of the storm as emergency vehicles converged on my house. I hadn’t called them - likely Greg’s electronics had automatically notified them when his vital signs plummeted. I sat with him, numb. I hadn’t known him for long. He was a roommate I found in a facebook group for Denver. I needed help with the bills and he was clean and quiet, an ideal roommate for a floundering recluse like myself. 

“Stephanie? Ma’am?” 

I looked up. EMT’s and police officers stood over me, faces hard to see through the weather and tears pooling in my eyes. 

“Let’s go inside.” 

Several of the officers had MODS. Little rectangular lenses fitted to their shooting eye, sleek metal frameworks clipped to their calves and upper arms. Being seen through that lens, knowing it placed a targeting box on my vital organs, made my skin crawl. I wanted them out of my home as soon as possible. 

I told them what happened, how the bolt of lightning had struck Greg down. I explained our living situation. No, we weren’t in a relationship. No, I did not have his family's contact information, but I could find it for them. No, the man in the pictures on the mantelpiece doesn’t live here anymore. Yes, I would be in touch. 

When I slept that night I dreamed about Greg, about the smile on his face as the lightning struck him. He looked so blissful, wreathed in his whirring machines of steel that glowed as the sky exploded. His knights armor against gravity, against nature, against pain. His last words echoed in my mind. Rough. How could he think that? Did the machines dull him so much that without them the softest texture could hurt him? I shuddered at the thought. How could someone volunteer to give away their humanity? I dwelled on it, but couldn’t find the answer. 

His family came by the house two days later to collect his possessions. They didn’t take much, and Greg didn’t have much to take. They piled a few framed photos, some clothes, and his laptop into a cardboard box and left. Mother and father were both clad in their funeral garb and funeral faces, stoically determined to get this whole ordeal over within the day. I was invited, out of forced politeness, but I wouldn’t be attending. It would be wrong to - we weren’t close, I didn’t know the first thing about him. It would be an intrusion to listen to his childhood memories, his greatest accomplishments, all while serving as a reminder of his nonsensical death for everyone present. 

That, and the sight of his emaciated, wrung out corpse pocked with holes for tubing and abrasions from his MODS. I see enough of that at work. In the morgue it was almost a blessing to see someone untouched by technology. There was something so nauseating about how used up they looked. Like something had been feeding on them, draining them of what they were. It reminds me of a nature documentary I watched, where an isopod crawled into a fish's mouth. The louse fed on the poor thing’s tongue and replaced it, settling into place where the organ had been. The bodies I looked at were more disturbing with the knowledge that people had swallowed their mechanical parasites willingly. 

John hadn’t seen it that way. He had scoffed at the comparison as we sat together watching the program. He said the machines his company produced were the path to the future, an arc to a new era of humanity. He didn’t see what I saw, laying on a steel table under the cold fluorescent lights. That didn’t look like progress to me. It started more arguments than I could count, him armed with his hero complex and piles of studies. I could relent, I could show him that I could see his point of view. 

And then he started to get them installed himself. Nothing major, nothing heavy like the kind of gear that Greg opted for. Lenses to ease the strain on his optical muscles for long nights in the office. Exoskeletons for his hands to counteract his carpal-tunnel. His long-winded reasons and rationale did nothing to ease the slap in the face it was. So convinced he was right that he disregarded how he knew I would feel about it. I tried to live with it for a while, I really did. But when he would look at me through softly glowing screens, would creep up my bare thigh with icy metal fingers … I couldn’t take it. All I could picture was the marred flesh I knew was hiding underneath. I had to leave him. 

He was almost happy to go. That hurt, too. How quick he was to give me the house, no fight to hold onto what we shared. I could have everything, for all he cared. He moved into his new apartment in the city center, all glass and steel like he preferred. And the new woman shortly after. Slim and sleek and tall, with tasteful MODS running up her spine. Sometimes it was hard to tell what they even did, or if they were just for show. I think these were supposed to help with posture, automatically correcting the curves in your spine to maximize your height. A woman fitting his vision of the future, a woman completely unlike his drab suburban ex-wife. 

The bin arrived a few days later. Opaque white plastic with an envelope taped to the lid, inscrutable. I found the return address to be that of the Denver Health Emergency Department. Where Greg was taken the night of his death. I struggled to lift the box, finding it surprisingly heavy as I opted to drag it inside. I tore open the envelope and my intrigue morphed into disgust as I read. His MODs. His family hadn’t accepted them, likely blaming them for his death. By default they were sent back to his place of residence, and therefore put in my care. 

Just looking at the bin filled me with unease. It felt like a jack-in-the-box, wound up and waiting to spring out at me. A silly fear inspired by my admittedly prejudiced personification of wiring and circuits. I pushed it to the closet in the guest bedroom. It seemed fitting to put it where Greg used to reside before I figured out what to do with it. 

While I was there I rifled through the desk and bedside table, looking for any kind of paperwork or receipts associated with his devices. Returning them to the manufacturer, and maybe receiving some kind of compensation, seemed like the best course of action. It would evict the monster from the closet, and help me out with the bills that had been effectively doubled. 

I did not find what I was looking for. It seemed like Greg had been thoroughly committed to his decisions, and this was backed up by the discovery of his journal. I don’t make a habit of invading others' privacy. Even when I suspected John, I still refused to stoop to looking through his phone until the very end. But with this I made an exception. Flipping to the first page, I found it surprisingly boring. I don’t know what I expected, but a mundane recounting of his days was not it. It seemed like he lived a peaceful life, but a happy one. He had a woman he loved and a good home with her. But as I read on I saw him spiral. His mental decline culminated in his decision to get his first MOD. 

 It’s daunting to consider how much better my life could have been if I had made different choices. Making the decisions has always seemed to be the issue. I wish someone else would just make them for me - removing the responsibility I have to myself and others. It feels like such a burden to have to choose all the time, so exhausting and time consuming. Therapy, self-help books, and medication did little to aid my decision fatigue. Sure, it made things a little easier, but finding new ways to chip away at a mountain of choices just left me feeling more tired in its shadow. 

Things are going to be looking up soon, though. I just received an email that will change my life. David from Excelmus reached out about promising new technology pioneered by their top engineers. He calls it a neural mesh, or a “brain net”. He explained that with a cutting edge experimental surgery, a powerful computing system could be painlessly woven throughout my grey matter. It was off-putting at first, before I understood the benefits. It's not the hardware that’s truly revolutionary. It’s the onboard AI companion. 

With the supercomputer embroidered amongst my neurons, I would gain a hyper-intelligent co-pilot capable of analyzing any situation in milliseconds. A non-partial voice that can always answer the question “what should I do?”, programmed to maximize my happiness while reducing the suffering of those around me. I’ll never again wrestle with the feeling of not knowing what to say. I’ll never again look into her expectant eyes, at a loss for words. The possible responses a mess of eels tangled into knots, all snapping at me as I search for the right one. Things are going to get so much easier. 

I had the answer to the question that had kept me from sleep, at least from Greg’s perspective. Why would someone start to abandon their humanity? If their humanity hurts them too much. If life was too rough. I felt for him. I knew what it was like to be backed into a corner, to not know what to do. The dread and anxiety that make the path forwards so cloudy that you would do anything for a little help. And that company, Excelmus, where John was so proud to work. Preying on Greg's vulnerability. I brought his journal to the couch and sat with it for a while, but couldn’t read anymore. I told myself it was because of my anger at John, and at his company. But I think I knew it was because of how sweet the relief he described sounded. 

The bodies were bad at work that week. Almost all were heavily MODed. I saw a rail-thin construction worker whose vertebrae had fused together from unnaturally heavy loads he had been lifting through artificial assistance. I saw an academic with dozens of  holes drilled into his skull to constantly bathe his brain in stimulants and nootropics, the mechanism resembling crop sprayers. The worst was in the aftermath of black market MODs. A young woman had replaced her eyes with some kind of prosthetic, and they had leaked battery acid down her face. The burned-out holes and the blackened streaks reminded me of running mascara.. 

“No one would get these things if they saw how they looked once they were removed”

My assistant shifted uncomfortably. He had to have something installed, based on the geometric lumps underneath his white coat. 

“It’s not so bad. Besides, it’s not like they have to see the damage.”

“That’s idiotic. They live with the damage. And die because of it more often than not.” 

“Well. Sometimes. But they get safer every year…” 

He trailed off at my scowl. We used to have this debate every week or so, but not so often now that he was MODed. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was stupid, but not worthy of spite. 

Returning to my darkened, empty home was no comfort. I hated to admit it, but there was a large part of me that missed falling into John’s arms after days like that. Its not pathetic to say. We were good for each other, once. Instead, I sat with Greg’s journal. The last entry I read had detailed his neural mesh, and the decision matrix that came with it. As I allowed myself to read on, I found out about the true scope of procedures he had undergone. 

A Dopamine Scraper when he couldn’t seem to get out of his funk. A Nutria Pump when he became too distracted to cook for himself. The Grav-Lifts when he was too tired to carry his own weight.. Of course, he couldn’t get all of these installed legally. No company would consent to putting this much tech on one person. So, he had bought them piecemeal and found a black market surgeon to cobble them together. Greg had even noted the address of the doctor. Only a few blocks away from John’s new apartment. 

Opening my phone in that headspace was my biggest mistake. You never know what they were going to show you. My boss had left a voicemail informing me that I was going to need to take a few weeks off. My anti-MOD dialogue had been making people around the morgue uncomfortable, and if I couldn’t adjust my attitude I shouldn’t come back at all. The second time in my life where my beliefs were destroying something I cared about, something I needed. I could change. 

The voice mail wasn’t the only thing to shatter my resolve. An email from John. He invited me to his wedding, which would be in six months. He was newly engaged to Elise. His mistress. Now his fiancee. It was his fault, really. Why would he do that? Why would he do something so hurtful, so stupid? I could tolerate what had happened. Not well, but I could find ways to keep going. But this intentional antagonization? I could not. 

It took some work to lug the bin from the closet into my car. Not just because of the physical weight, but the way my broken principles tore into me as I approached the vehicle. The barbs bound to my beliefs shredded me as I yanked them out. The images of the broken corpses from the morgue reeled through my mind, and they seemed to take on a John-esque smugness. 

My hands shook as I drove. The only surgery I had ever gotten was for my wisdom teeth as a teen, which was decades ago. The buildings rose around me as I exited my suburbia and entered the city center. The sun had set several hours ago and the streets were mostly uninhabited, with the exception of a few late-night wanders. 

I pulled into the one stall garage adjoined to the illicit clinic. I had not called ahead, but a group of men and women in scrubs and masks entered to greet me. The masks were not of a medical make, the white rubber depicting sheep in life-like detail. I nervously stepped out of my car, carrying the bin. 

One of the men rifled through it. 

“All? Even damaged?” he spoke flatly. 

“Yes. All,” I nodded, “how much?” 

One of the women answered. 

“No charge. Not operation. Art.”

The original speaker gestured for me to follow as they shuffled back out of the garage. We walked down a long hall into a high-ceilinged sitting room, all ornate rugs and old amber wood. A fire crackled against one wall, flanked by enormous bookshelves. Above the hearth hung a painting detailing the evolution of humanity. A fish crawled out of the water, becoming ape, becoming man. There was an additional step, showing the integration of machine. It reeked of incense and disinfectant. 

A great wooden table stained black with deeply soaked blood served as the centerpiece of the room. I looked at it questioningly. 

“Clean. Just how it is.” One of the masked doctors murmured. 

I accepted this answer and climbed onto the table, the unforgiving surface digging at my elbows and scapula. I held out my arm for an offered I.V., and the needle plunged into my vein. I felt myself panicking, regretting. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t me. My eyelids grew heavy and it was impossible to speak. 

“Goodbye, human. Welcome, new thing.” The last words, new thing, were drawn out and wrong, like an insect feeling the words out for the first time

I did not wake up in the great hall. I blinked to consciousness with a fluorescent light dangling above me, and cold steel beneath me. A gurney. I rubbed my eyes and floated off the table. Floated. All my senses betrayed me, my mind swirling with new input and the lack of sensations that I had known my whole life. My pulse pounded hard, feverishly so, each beat thundering through my body. I focused on the mirrors that lined the walls of the small room and took in my appearance. 

I hovered a foot above the floor, a mess of looping cables dangling below my feet. I could see my back in the reflection, with cords and tubing periodically plunging into my flesh on either side of my spine. My hair was matted, interspersed with electrodes. Heavy metal boxes were fused to my shoulders and thighs, whirring as they held me aloft. Thin rivulets of blood trickled from each of these wounds, opened by my movement. Blasts of euphoria rocked me as I subconsciously mashed a button set into my palm, dopamine dumping into my brain with each click. 

I should have been horrified at my appearance and my perception. The utter termination of my consciousness as I knew it. But there was something preventing it, some technological barrier in my mind that stopped the tidal wave of revulsion that threatened to overtake me. The forced, oppressing stillness of my mind was absolute. Only one wrinkle remained in the sterile void. 

John. I would see him, and make him see me. Greg’s neural mesh blinked to life, the circuits warming up behind my eyes. THIS DECISION WILL CAUSE PAIN. NOT ADVISED. I pushed through the door and out onto the street. I looked towards the left, and the warning dissipated. I looked to the right, to the turn that I knew would take me to John’s apartment. The warning returned and I continued. It didn’t take long to get there, and I floated into the lobby. Small drops of red trailed onto the marble flooring behind me as I went on. Attendants looked up at me, horror apparent on their faces. 

The elevator took me to the fifth floor. I do not know how I was able to find him. I still cannot figure it out. As the doors opened, a message flashed. THIS DECISION WILL CAUSE PAIN. STOP. I floated down the hall until I found the correct door. STOP. STOP. I knocked and waited. TURN BACK. The door swung open. 

“Stephanie? What are you doing here? What- what happened to you?” 

His voice was distant and indistinct. I gave no answer as I pushed past him into the apartment. He shied out of the way like I would be hot to the touch. She was inside, laying on the couch. Her. STOP. She cowered away from me, too. There was nowhere for Ellise to go. I snatched her wrist and pulled her hand to my face. A ring glistened there, beautifully intricate. LET HER GO. THIS IS CAUSING PAIN. I maintained my grip and dragged her closer to me. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. I wrapped my arms around her in an embrace and she clawed and writhed. I turned to face the open door to the balcony and drifted towards the night sky. 

The Grav-Lifts whined in protest against the additional load, stuttering and crackling with electricity. John called from behind me, and I could no longer move forwards. I was being dragged back by the dangling cords. Booted footsteps thundered into the room. 

“Denver Police, stop where you are!” shouting voices commanded. 

LISTEN TO THEM. I did not oblige, straining towards the open air.

Two faint points of heat bloomed in my back. The voltage that coursed through me tingled, but didn’t hurt until it shut down the MODs. Sensation came flooding back in an overwhelming cacophony of light and sound and touch. I could feel everything, I could feel all of the foreign materials being rejected by my body. I could feel wires in my brain. I could feel Ellise’s tears, could hear John’s hyperventilating breaths.The sheer vibrancy of the world was more than I could take, and my mind fled from me. It did not return until I awoke from emergency surgery to remove the defunct and twice-electrified prosthetics. 

The handcuff bit into my wrist as I shifted in the hospital bed. It was impossible to get comfortable. The blankets were just too rough.

Reviews

[JayG]

• I cradled him in my arms.

Here, I’m afraid, is where this would be rejected. Not because of talent, writing skill, or anything you’d notice. But still...

1. Him? This person is important enough to be “cradled,” but not important enough to have a name? Presented this way, you distance the reader from the action.
2. As stated, and from a reader’s viewpoint, Someone unknown, whose words carry no emotion as they’re read, cradled someone else, a male of unknown circumstance, background, and age, in an unknown way, for unknown reasons. That’s data, not story.

• Greg’s face was a mask of hurt, wheezing breaths squirming from his mouth.

Breaths "squirming?" Seriously? Vivid and evocative language is a joy. Purple prose is not.

That aside, this is meaningless to a reader who doesn’t know where we are, who we are, or what’s going on. That “hurt” could be mental, as in losing a child. It could be physical, as in dying of cancer, losing a fight or duel, falling from a ladder...

You know what’s going on because the words point to images and action that's in your head, waiting to be called up. Greg knows. The reader? Not a clue, because for the reader, the words point to images and action that's in ***YOUR*** head, waiting to be called up.

So...because it works for you, you’ll not see any problems, and so, fix nothing.

Here’s the deal: The reader requires context as-they-read-each-line. So, the first thing you address on entering a scene is where we are in time and space, what’s going on, and whose skin we wear—and do that boh in context and invisibly, because nothing else works.

There’s nothing wrong with your wordsmith skills, but you’re presenting this as a chronicle of events, of the form, “I did this...I saw that...here’s situational data you need...My evaluation of the situation is...My reaction to that...”

That’s a report, not a story. We know what’s happening, yes, but it’s provided dispassionately, secondhand, by the narrator. Why dispassionately? Because the reader cannot know what emotion YOU would place into the reading—which is why we edit from the chair of the reader, and write within the viewpoint of the one living the events.

Never lose sight of the fact that the one using those personal pronouns is the narrator. Is there really any difference between the author telling the reader of the events and the author pretending that the events once happened to them as they do that? No, because telling is telling. In example:

“I laced my hands through his frail fingers and touched the grass,” changes not at all if we present it as:

“Stu laced his hands through Greg’s frail fingers and touched the grass.”

The same person did the same thing for the same reason. (and both ways contain the same error: First you cannot pass a HAND though fingers. And second, anyone in that position would simply touch the grass near the man)

Bottom line: To write fiction, you need the skills of fiction writing, not the nonfiction skills we’re given in school as they ready us for employment. Unfortunately, the pros make it seems so easy and natural, that we assume that writing is writing, and we have that take care of.

If only.... For centuries, they’ve been refining the skills of commercial fiction writing. Acquire them, and you avoid the traps of the kind that caught you. Skip that step, and you’ll never notice what's trapping you.

So...grab a good book on the basics of adding wings to your words, like Jack Bickham’s, Scene and Structure, or, Debra Dixon’s: GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, and dig in. You’ll find that a lot of what they say seems so logical and so obvious, once pointed out, that you’ll wonder why you never noticed it, yourself.

But whatever you do, hang in there and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“In sum, if you want to improve your chances of publication, keep your story visible on stage and yourself mum.”
~ Sol Stein

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

[OwenT]

Thank you for your feedback, Jay. I appreciate your recommendations for some good books and I'll be sure to read them and continue to write. I like the comment that one should "edit from the chair of the reader, and write within the viewpoint of the one living the events".