Unnaturals (6 page)

"Make me!" Meliora shouted, just like in the old feeds.

The woman stepped closer to Meliora. She slapped her so hard that Meliora spat something red, warm, and salty.

"Medstat..." Meliora realized she'd slumped into one of her doctor's cushy chairs, hand pressed hard against her cheek. Her eyes had become so full of tears that she could barely see anything. What was taking the machine so long? "Medstat..."

Nothing.

She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the other hand and looked.

Doctor Eryn had raised a hand in a sign that meant
stop
—and the medstat had stopped. Mel's cheek hurt. Her mouth hurt. She'd never been in such pain in her life.

"Medstat..."

The machine remained motionless, except for its small blinking lights.

"It won't treat you," Doctor Eryn said quietly.

"But why... How? They treat,
always.
"

Even if you didn't want them to. You could tell them
no
about pills and disorders, but you could not tell them
no
about hurts. They would treat you for your own good. But this one wouldn't. And it hurt.

The machines were to blame for everything, Great-Granddad Nicolas had said.

"Medstat, damn you, come treat me!"

"Cursing now, are we? Did you read these words somewhere, or did you hear them from that senile duffer?"

"He wasn't a senile duffer! He was wrinkled, but he wasn't senile! He was a nice old man! You're a senile duffer! He was ugly, and yet he was better than any of you..."

Slap again, on the other cheek. The room rotated. No medstat.

"You. Shall. Never. Contradict me."

"No. You're right, doctor. I shan't contradict you." Mel shook her head. She staggered towards the door. "I am going home to my and my mom's medstat. Feel free to never message me."

The door wouldn't open. Mel pulled again. A stuck door had happened to her once. A second pull had opened it, and a repairstat had come immediately after.

This door wouldn't open.

No machine came, either.

Meliora turned to face this new doctor. The doctor was blurry—because Mel's eyes were blurred, and her breathing was so heavy that she could not keep her head still. Her legs were shaking.

She'd felt sad for old Nicolas. It had been a strange, yet familiar feeling because she'd also had it for Dad and young Nicolas.

What she felt now wasn't sadness.

"I see that we understand each other." The doctor stepped towards her, and Meliora cringed. "Fear. That's how it is called, girl. You'll need it."

"Is this prison?" Mel whispered.

"Is it? Who knows."

"I want to go home!"

"Do you, really?" The woman smiled. It wasn't pretty. Then she shoved Mel aside and, before Mel could regain her balance, rushed outside. The door slammed closed.

It still wouldn't open for Mel.

***

The windows wouldn't open, either. None of the machines paid any attention to her. Her cheeks swelled and hurt, and as the hours passed her mouth became dry. Her stomach growled.

She found no water in the office, and she found no food. The servingstat and the cookingstat wouldn't respond to her. The machines didn't even blink. They looked dead, as dead as Great-Granddad Nicolas. They didn't even look like evil enemies.

"Or are you, machines, perhaps closed into your own minds? What did she do to you?"

Mel's own computer worked. After some thought, she sent messages to her mom and her friends. She told them she was imprisoned in the doctor's office with no water and no food, that she'd been beaten, and that the machines were dead.

Glad you're having a great time, Mel, my dear,
Mom wrote.
You know what, Mel? The pear computer is old already. I ate the pear logo and bought a watermelon! I'll go buy one for you, too.

She got similar replies from her friends.

No, you don't understand,
Mel hummed.
It is not fun. It is scary—it's too wonderful an experience. Help me, Mom. Mom, get me out of here!

Mel, you know that necklace with the cherries? BarbButterScotch123 says there'll be a computer that has many cherries at once! Can you believe it?

Mom...help... It hurts, Mom, the world is rotating and my feet don't listen to me much any more. Mom, is it brightlights already? The windows are shuttered. Mom, I am sick, like a hundred years ago. I think I will die.

Mel, love, when are you coming home? Take your time, of course, you're a big girl now. I'm going shopping with Meliardd1241. We'll also go to the wonderful experiences. Come join us when you can, all right?

You won't die yet. Several variables taken into consideration, you can survive several days without water, and even more without food.

This message had no sender. Mel watched it on the screen and could not believe her eyes. Messages always had senders. A message without a sender was like an arm or a leg without a person attached to it.

Or, like machines who wouldn't heal her or feed her.

So they are, after all, truly watching the feeds.

And not only that. They must be intercepting her messages and sending new ones in her stead. Otherwise, Mom would never, ever ignore her like this.

Or—would she? If the machines would do it, why not Mom, too? If the enemies could break machines like this, could they also not break people?

Of course they can. Currently, they are breaking me.

She was sitting with her back towards a wall, hugging her knees. She got up.

She'd been crying—for Mom, for Dad, for the two Nicolases, for the blood inside her mouth and for her swollen cheeks.

No more.

The world rotated around her again and she coughed. Her dry throat ached. She made a step forward and fell on her face. Her mouth was dry and sticky, her head pounded as if someone was shooting fireworks inside it. Somehow she sat up and gripped something so that she wouldn't fall again.

It was a medstat's arm, cold, immobile, and unblinking.

Meliora vomited, though not much came out, and then she felt even thirstier than before. The machine stayed silent. It wouldn't—couldn't—help.

Or, could it?

Did the doctor have toothpicks in the office? Mel started crawling towards the bathroom, then she remembered that the medstat had needles. There. One needle was in the medstat's hand even now, and she was lucky she hadn't stabbed herself with it. Mel circled the machine.

Each medstat carried a tiny box at its back, full of tiny metal pieces in various shapes. Meliora was unnatural, she noticed such things. She peeled the box's cover with a nail, and gripped the needle firmly in her fingers.

Years ago, when the humming interfaces had first become widespread, Mel hadn't liked them. Mom finally abandoned her typing interface and adopted the hummie, saying that it was easier than the speech interface and that she could finally look natural. Mel liked typing, though Mom said it was absolutely unnatural for children. Mom pleaded with Mel to start humming, even shouted at Mel, even threw her computer away and told her she wasn't getting a new one until she learned to hum.

Mel learned. But she didn't learn only humming. Her new computer had no typing board—and how did you type without one? So she learned to open her computer, though no one ever did that. She learned how to press tiny parts with a toothpick when no one was looking, and to make the computer produce exact words. Humming could not do this. Humming took the words from your mind and spat out something else. A toothpick—or a needle—was different. With a toothpick, the computer really understood you. Sometimes, with her fingers on the computer's warm metal, Mel thought she could even feel the computer understanding.

The medstat, the cookingstat, the servingstat, the door—they were all computers. They could all be talked to, just not necessarily in a human voice.

By the end of brightlights, Mel got treatment for her wounds, drank water, ate, and even slept.

Yet, the door didn't obey her. Neither did the windows.

Mom continued sending chatty, silly messages, and so did Mel's friends, even though Mel had stopped writing altogether.

Great-Granddad Nicolas had talked about praying to gods. Mel found an old article on the interweb and read about them.

"Gods, can I ask you to make my enemies let me out of here?" But it seemed too much to ask. She wasn't sure about this gods-thing, somehow. Gods seemed no more reliable than hummie interfaces.

Mel continued working on the computers.

She had no success with the door and the windows. They seemed to be made differently from her own computer and the medstat. They lacked the correct parts to press with a toothpick or a needle, and she simply could not talk to them, no matter how much she tried.

But Mel had one more computer. Earlier, when she had been sad, sick, hungry, thirsty, and confused, she had entirely forgotten the gift of the two Nicolases.

She took it out of her pocket. It had a typing interface, and it looked strange. Just a bit strange. She could not initially tell what was different about it.

She didn't dare type words into it. She didn't want Eryn and whoever else tracked her messages to know that she had this computer at all. Yet, she must read what was in there. Young Nicolas had deemed it important. The information might lead to him, and it might lead out of Meliora's prison.

Of course, no information could exist on an individual computer. It was all on the interweb, free to find, but you had to have the right tags and bookmarks. Otherwise, the interweb was way too big to find anything you sought.

She rotated the computer in her hands, then sighed and inserted the needle into it.

A piece of metal fell on the floor, ringing like a tiny bell, and Nicolas' computer blinked. Mel stared at the piece, then stared at the lit screen.

All computing devices had such a piece—her own computer, the medstat, the cookingstat, the servingstat, the windows, the door. The sizes were different on the different computers, and the shapes weren't entirely the same, but it was the same piece. It usually did nothing when you pressed it with a needle or a finger—and who would have thought to
detach
it, to break something only to see what breaking would mean?

No one natural would have. But one who would stop the interweb might.

Right now, Nicolas' blinking computer could not send messages or receive them. It showed an image on its screen, yet it could not access the image's interweb feed. The image was of two snakes, animals that only existed in the feeds and wonderful experiences, biting their own tails and linked together like two pieces of a chain.

The computer was disconnected from the interweb, yet it had information to show. It was unlike anything Meliora had ever seen.

Now, she understood. Any computer with the interweb piece still attached could be controlled from the outside. And, if the computer didn't have some physical interface attached as well, it
must
be controlled from the outside. That was how you locked someone in.

The door—that computer controlled from the outside—suddenly swung open. Meliora had a second to memorize the image, and another second to roughly insert the needle into Nicolas' computer with trembling fingers. This computer must die. They should not see it. They should never read anything stored in it. Nicolas wouldn't have wanted them to.
She
didn't want them to.

***

They
were Doctor Eryn and a man Mel didn't know.

He was big, though pumped muscles weren't currently in fashion. He had long, wavy brown hair and a soft-looking long brown beard. His eyes weren't narrowed like Doctor Eryn's. He looked kind, but Mel didn't believe in strangers' kindness any more. She drew back until there was a window behind her. She was breathing heavily again, clutching Nicolas' dead computer and her living one in her hands.

He was so big, so heavy. If he slapped her, it would be worse than Eryn. Mel clutched the computers more tightly. She'd shoved the woman at the Lucastan intercity train station. It was unnatural, it was bad—so bad that yesterday she hadn't even thought of shoving Doctor Eryn. Could she shove that man? Could she hurt again?

Eryn was smiling that nasty smile of hers. The man was smiling, too, a better smile. Right. Facial muscles. Happiness. If he reached to hit her, she could shove the dead computer into his mouth and twist his facial muscles. Perhaps that would bring him unhappiness and make him weaker.

The man stepped towards her. She pressed her back to the window. In the old feeds, windows could break. But not here, not now, not in the Lucasta she knew.

He reached out, and she cringed. If she removed a part of him, would he, like a computer, become disconnected from the world? She could kill a computer, but how did you kill a human?

"Don't be afraid, Meliora." His voice, too, was kind.

Her breathing was even faster, and her heart was beating so fast that the medstat wheeled towards her.

"No, I don't want a relaxation shot. No, medstat."

"It won't listen to you." This was Doctor Eryn, smiling. Mel ran to the opposite corner of the room. The machine followed. She ran again.

"Don't run. You can't run away. Stop the machine—if you can. If you can't—let's say that what it has in that shot might make you a natural. Forever."

"Stop the machine, Mel!" the big man shouted.

The medstat grabbed her with a metal hand, its other hand shooting towards her with a needle.

Mel shoved the hand and leaped aside. The medstat grabbed her again, and she fell on her back. It leaned over her. The needle seemed to grow bigger as it neared her face.

Mel rolled aside. She jumped with her last bit of strength and threw herself at the medstat. She straddled its back with both arms and legs and scraped its back lid open. Her fingers were clumsy. Perhaps she broke the machine because it gave out a high-pitched, wailing sound. There was sweat on Mel's forehead, sweat on her hands. The delicate metal of the medstat's insides was slippery beneath her fingers.