What is Human? Chapter 1

Rebekah couldn’t remember. She sat down on the curb outside of a clinic and thought. She remembered her name, but other than that… there was nothing. She rubbed her hands together and felt a scar on her left arm. The fingers on her right hand traced their way up under the sleeve of her shirt and she felt the sinewy rope of scar tissue encircle her shoulder.

“I lost my arm… What happened to me?”

Tears streamed from her right eye as she stood up, looking around for someone- anyone who could help her. The city streets were deserted. She saw the sign for a hostel across the road from her and crossed. A klaxon rang out as her foot touched the sidewalk and somewhere Rebekah heard a woman screaming. The left side of her body became paralyzed as electricity ran the course of her body and she heard the sound of feet pounding on the pavement.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

She tried to turn her head to the man who was screaming at her, his voice sounded nice, even if he was upset.

“That’s the human side of the city! Don’t you know any better than to stay away from the humans?”

“No.” She managed to croak out as the current finally cut off and she felt rough hands pulling her back out into the street.

“I thought I was human.” She tried to whisper. Exhaustion overcame her as she felt herself lifted up and heard the man grumbling.

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The smell of hallucinogenic smoke wrapped around Rebekah as she moved through the crush of people. Off to her right a trumpet wailed and a husky voice crooned over his lost love. Every night for the last week she had come to the Rabbit Hole, searching for something. What that was, she still wasn’t quite sure.

She approached the bar, nodding to the bartender.

“You want the usual tonight, Sweet Cheeks?” His voice was nasal, reminiscent of an era long passed that she had once admired. It almost sounded human.

“Sure, Jack. Only, put a little something special in it this time,” she cajoled with a wink. “So I can remember.” Her open left eye seemed to glow for a split second.

Jack’s eyes widened, his handlebar mustache quivering. He was programmed to recognize certain passwords, but he still worried about his patrons. “You sure you can handle that, Doll?”

She caught his eye with hers. It glowed once more. She nodded. Her thirst for answers was insatiable.

Her mechanical eye zoomed in, the aqua blue iris obscured by the pupil as it relayed information to her occipital lobe. HG1080 was stamped on the silicon chip he surreptitiously put in a slot near the bottom of her glass before mixing the drink. Vodka, kalua, and espresso: one, two, three shakes and he poured. The liquid sloshed into the glass. It came right up to the edge as he topped it with a mound of whipped cream and three perfectly roasted coffee beans. She picked it up, gesturing her thanks, and pushed through the throng to her usual table.

The jazz club was done up in an “Alice in Wonderland” theme. The chairs were mismatched around café tables and the smooth rhythms led the mind to wander down unanticipated roads, especially when fueled by the programs the holographic mixologist created. Each of the bistro tables had a timepiece on it. Waiters in three piece vested suits with white rabbit heads circulated through the crowd. It was nothing like life before the accident.

The table she always chose had an hourglass on it and the poofiest wingback armchair in the joint. She set her drink down, and looked around, starting to get nervous. When her psychotherapist had first suggested this, Rebekah had been leery. What good would it do to relive the night she lost her humanity?

She focused for a moment on the simulated band. A hologram of the great Satchmo put his trumpet down and started to sing, “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

The lyrics hit Rebekah, as though she had run into a brick wall. Adrenaline rushed through her veins. She picked up her glass and downed it in three quick gulps. The caffeine and alcohol rushed her blood-brain barrier. She pried the chip off the glass’ stem and put it in the port behind her left ear. It took effect immediately.

The right side of her body remained stationary. The mechanisms that made up the left side of her body, covered in human tissue, convulsed: a side effect of the program. She grasped the hour glass and turned it over, if the chip didn’t fry her processing unit by the time the hour was up, she would be alright. The CPU kept track of the spasms and what was around even while transporting her consciousness back in time.

She had lived in the HRC, the Human Rights Commune. She was walking back from Pastor Samuel’s petition drive, pushing a stroller down the edge of the settlement and singing along with her radio. Archie was sleeping peacefully, oblivious to his mother’s voice, knowing he was safe. The sun was setting. Twilight streamed through the trees, washing the world in beauty.

Her eye illuminated, fixating on the grains of sand falling too fast for a normal brain to process.

She stopped at the corner of the compound to stretch her hamstring- it was starting to cramp. One hand on the handle, she turned around, heedless to the sound of the pickup careening down the road.

She soared through the air away from her baby, who was pinned under the truck’s front end. Rebekah was out cold. The ambulance droids were there in ten minutes. They weighed the odds in seconds, taking in the damage to child, mother, and driver.

The driver was dead before he had hit them: Overdose.

Archie had died on impact.

She had landed outside the compound.

The convulsions increased and her cybernetic appendages forced Rebekah onto the floor.

She woke up halfway through the implantation.

“I don’t want them! Let me die a human!” she attempted to scream. It came out mumbled and the android pushed another vial of anesthesia into her IV port.

When she woke again, a diffuse light shone in the window of her room. Her husband stood beside her bed, unable to look at what she had become. She looked the same as always, but the skin of her left side covered mechanical components that felt alien to her.

“I’ve talked to Pastor Samuel. He told me that you died and I’m not married to you. I know you’ll understand, Beks. We agreed- human till death. This changes everything. Don’t come home.”

Her body lay on the floor, the automated leg still twitching, the hand reaching for the arm of the chair to pull her back up.

Four days later they released her. The implanted hard-drive meshed with her brain to help her control the apparatus that her left side had become. She moved spasmodically down the road to the New-Cyborg Shelter. She was cast out of her community. The last thing she wanted to do was to be alive- she had lost everything.

But the computer wouldn’t let her commit suicide. It wouldn’t even let her try.

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The program ended and Rebekah opened her right eye. She grasped the armchair with one hand and stood up, then sat back down in the chair with a flop, shaking.

A coffee martini sat untouched on the table, one of the waiters must have replaced it while she was elsewhere, though reviewing the footage- the processor didn’t catch it. She pushed on the port to release the chip and thought over what she had seen as she turned the martini. Five years she had been away from the HRC, she had forgotten about Archie. “How could I forget my son?” she whispered to herself, tears forming at the edge of the only tear duct she had left.

A man with a rabbit head appeared beside her, startling her. “I’ll take that for you, doll, if you’d like. Nasty side-effect those convulsions, eh?”

She nodded and handed him the chip, took a deep breath, and couldn’t keep the tears in. Covering her face with her hands, she bent in half and sobbed.

“Woah, woah, lady…” The voice of the rabbit man seemed clearer, less muffled and she felt his hand on her back. The sobs increased until she started hiccoughing and had to sit up. Next to the martini the waiter had placed a cup of water.

Her mechanical hand reached for the cup, but the man caught her wrist. “Lady, let me help you.” Rebekah looked at his face and saw that his right eye was glowing, and worry creased his brow. He was beautiful in a way she hadn’t noticed from anyone before or after transformation into this monster she had become. "I'm John, what's your name?"

"Rebekah," she croaked, her voice reverberating strangely. She cleared her throat. "I should have died. I'm a monster."

The man knelt in front of her. "You're not a monster."

Rebekah avoided his eyes, staring at the floor where he had put the head to his costume. Her hand itched to touch him, but she needed to process and resisted. "My son died and I forgot that he existed. My husband left me because when the accident happened I landed on the wrong side of the street and the androids took me to the hospital rather than the morgue. He said I died. If I died and am somehow alive still... I'm a zombie and zombies are soulless monsters. Therefore, I'm a monster."

"You weren't a monster the day I found you, and you're not a monster now. You're a human who went through something those activists could never dream of surviving."

Startled, her eyes darted back to his face. There was no way this could have been that man who saved her when she was lost that day.

"I'm the one who took you to the Haven. I had never seen someone so lost after recovery that wouldn't remember that they told you not to cross the boundary... someone who also believed herself to be human after the surgery."

He paused and drew a deep breath, "I worried so much about how you were doing. When Jack told me he had seen you in here I begged him to be on this shift."

Rebekah's mind whirled, he looked so sincere, his eyes were an intriguing shade of green with a ring of yellow around the inside of the iris. Her implanted eye zoomed in and out focusing and refocusing. Gently she whispered, "Please leave me alone, John, I need to think."

John sighed, disappointed. He had hoped she wouldn't mind his interfering or his help. "I hope I didn't overstep. Of course, if you need anything, please wave me or another waiter down."

"Thank you..." she hesitated. The last thing she needed was to start something with a stranger who seemed to have tracked her down, but it seemed she did owe him. "And thank you for getting me to Haven."

John nodded, picked his head up and walked back onto the floor.

Rebekah looked at the hour glass, picked up the water, and took a slow drink, staring after him.