Mardock Scramble

crying. But no tears came. There was a gaping hole inside her chest, and everything inside it was all dried out.

As the black woman on the radio—with her husky voice and distinctive accent—came to the end of her song, Balot noticed a presence outside the room. Someone was coming. She could even tell that they had stopped outside, pausing. One man. The electronic waves in the air gave her a clear idea not just of his shape but even his looks.

The door opened.

“Looks like somebody’s awake.”

That instant Balot turned off all the lights and stopped the radio, as if by reflex.

The man stepped on a pedal at the entrance to the room. The wheels on Balot’s easy chair gradually started moving away from the door. Balot waited in the corner, achingly still, where the man couldn’t reach her.

“Uh…”

The man cleared his throat and said, “Well, let’s start with introductions. I’m Dr. Easter. I’m in charge of repairing you… uh…or rather I should say I’m the physician in charge. Call me… Doctor, Doc, Duck—as in quack—as you like, really. Basically, I’m, uh, remunerated by the city authorities for keeping you alive, making sure your life is improved… So, erm, that’s the way it is.”

Balot kept her breathing shallow, watching to make sure that the man didn’t enter any farther into the room.

The Doctor gave another dry cough and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. The thin film of numbers and displays that were up on his Tech Glasses had disappeared, and they now looked like normal spectacles.

“Hey, take it easy. This is our little hideaway, our shell, or one of them, anyway. Used to be a morgue, you know, but it was abandoned after the neighborhood objected. This very room was used for autopsies, so it’s a perfect setup for surgery. Go down the corridor and there’s a huge room set up to store eight hundred corpses. Amazing, huh? Eight hundred bodies, all free for me to tinker with as I please—it’s a dream come true. But then there was an earthquake in the area, the circuits went down, total blackout for about forty-eight hours. That’s when the good citizens started getting a bit edgy about the smell…and that’s when we came in, buying this place up as an office- slash-factory and made it into our apartment.”

The Doctor paused at this moment. He seemed a little out of breath.

“So, uh…it’d be great if we could have some light back, maybe?”

His tone of voice seemed to imply that he’d explained enough for now, that she really should be convinced that everything was going to be all right.

As it was, the only phrase that really registered with Balot was hideaway. Our shell.

That was what convinced Balot. It was as though the rest of the explanation were irrelevant. She had once been in danger but was now in a safe place. In the end, those were the two pertinent facts.

Balot turned the lights on bit by bit. She also turned the radio back on at a low volume.

The Doctor threw the radio an odd glance before pulling up a chair next to Balot’s easy chair and sitting down on it.

“We, uh, took the liberty of dressing you in a change of clothes. Hope you don’t mind. Your old outfit was a pile of ash, anyhow.”

Exactly, thought Balot. It burst into flame in an instant. Like the cellophane wrapper on a cigarette carton. It would have melted, lost its shape, and all that would have been left clinging would have been an ugly black lump. And the same goes for me.

“Now, uh, open up!”

The Doctor now had in his hand the penlight that had been clipped to his breast pocket. He gestured for Balot to open her mouth. She followed his orders. The Doctor’s Tech Glasses started flickering as he looked down her throat, and the layer of numbers and symbols came up again. Eventually the Doctor furrowed his brow and said:

“Nah…no good, just as I thought. The tissue’s all peeled away.”

That was the moment that Balot remembered something was amiss in her throat. Up until now she’d been too distracted by her new senses, and she had completely failed to notice what she’d lost…

“Can you speak at all?” asked the Doctor. Balot’s mouth stayed open, silent and gaping, while the Doctor turned the penlight off and returned it to its position on his chest.

“Your eardrums and your sense of smell were fairly easy to regenerate. But vocal cords are a bit more complicated, and as they were badly damaged it’s a bit harder to get them stable again. Well, uh, we’ll work something out eventually, no worries.”

It was as if he were talking about a broken appliance for which he couldn’t order any replacement parts.

Balot tried exhaling. Some breath wheezed out, but no voice.

Her throat was like a cavity in a desiccated old tree.

“And how’s the skin? Any aches or itches?”

She gazed absentmindedly at the Doctor and slowly shook her head. The things she had gained, the things she had lost. She tried to reconcile the two, but couldn’t.

“Impressive things, women. Quick at knowing your own bodies. It’s less than two weeks since the operation, too.”

The Doctor was full of admiration. He was referring to the incident with the lights, earlier. The music from the radio as well. The Doctor knew she hadn’t touched either of them.

“Snarc. A kind of electronic stimulation. That’s the name of your choice, the power you selected in order to survive,” the Doctor informed her.

“Presently about 98 percent of your body’s surface is, uh, wrapped in Lightite, synthetic skin. That’s what they call it when it’s not skin tissue donated by other people. It’s not originally human skin, something—”

The Doctor cut himself off. As Balot cocked her head to one side, the Doctor held a finger up as if to make it clear that now this is the important bit, and said, “Regenerative metal fibers—that’s what the outer layer of your body is now composed of. They were invented in order to try and understand what it would be like to experience the void of outer space…and that’s now been surgically transplanted onto you. These metal fibers have three important properties. Number one, they are accelerators—they sharpen all your body’s senses. The second, a sort of omnidirectional sensory perception using electronic waves. Allows you to feel everything in the area, sense all its dimensions. In your current state you could get through life quite comfortably without ever opening your eyes.”

Balot nodded her head—she’d just experienced what he described for herself, and now she was having it confirmed properly. Furthermore, the Doctor went on to explain thoroughly what else she could expect to experience, using words unknown to her.

“And number three is the ability to manipulate electricity. Your skin is formed of outputs, electronic interfaces. Right now you’re a living remote control for pretty much any piece of electronic equipment.”

At this point the Doctor pushed his glasses up a little with his fingers, clearing the lines that ran across the lenses.

“So, you wondering how you came by this newfangled body of yours?”

An extremely direct question. Again Balot nodded, docile.

“While you were in your coma, we took the liberty of having a little Q&A with your consciousness using a set of questions prescribed by the city authorities. In other words, an inquiry of your psyche. Do you want to live, that sort of thing. You have the right to do so, will you exercise that right, was one of the questions we asked.”

Balot suddenly remembered the dream she’d experienced. A dream about a choice. She had selected something then. But what exactly was it?

“Mardock Scramble Oh Nine,” said the Doctor.

As if that answered everything.