Flash Fiction
Alive
By: Anna Hwang
The scalpel slips out of my slick gloves, spattering oil and blood across the pristine white tiles of the laboratory. I cannot retrieve it yet. The gun to my head reminds me what unwarranted movement will face.
“Pick it up,” my client snaps.
I bend down quickly, my fingers fumbling around the handle. The barrel of her gun follows me as I stand back up.
“A shame it would be to prove yourself clumsy so far into my project, Doctor. You’ve done so well thus far. I’m fairly sure my own skills would hardly rival yours. I’m willing to test that theory if you make another mistake.”
“I understand, ma’am.” I can finish this. Should I? But I know I can, if my hands would only quit trembling. They’ve never shook before during an operation, but they’ve never dealt with one like this.
“Oh, you’re nearly done.” Something akin to glee escapes into her voice. “It’s even better than my father’s blueprints promised. I wish you could understand. I do hope you don’t take reanimation as a light matter.”
“I don’t, ma’am.”
Her eyes narrow again, though on her lips remain a rigid smile. “You simply don’t appreciate my method of invoking it. Otherwise I wouldn’t need this.” She gestures to her weapon with her free hand.
She takes after her father—used to being right, as her father was when I worked with him. Then his belief in his own madness collapsed his industry and the rebels stamped out the vestiges of it. Except for what remains in here, in me. What remains is what she will use to satisfy the same madness that ruined her father. The automaton she brought in was his handiwork. The body in front of me formed from it is hers, and to my dismay, the hands that fashioned it are mine.
“Well? Replace the last piece. Perhaps you’ll understand when he revives before your eyes. My brother will greet you himself, a mockery of those fools’ attempts at his slaughter. Enough staring.”
I nod, setting aside the scalpel to pick up the last box. In the box is a bright heart, pulsing red from miraculous, fully human blood. I wonder if it is another piece that she recovered from the remains of her brother’s corpse, or was harvested separately, like many of the parts that I’ve had to use in replacing the robotic limbs. The first piece of her obscene puzzle was the electric mind, programmed using a sample of her sibling’s own brain to animate the mechanical body, produced to keep him alive until he could be brought back to flesh. But this heart I hold could be anyone’s.
The panel in his chest is open, revealing the mechanical heart, which beats as readily as my own. As well as keeping the system alive, it controls the few wires deemed still necessary to connect the limbs of flesh and blood to the artificial mind. The piece of machinery is overall impressive. The screen above the corpse displays the lengths of code within it. The code has steadily gotten shorter and shorter as I have replaced metal and wire for skin and bone. Transplanting this living heart will be a delicate process. By fate or chance, I am one of the more practiced in such matters. I swear to myself I will not die caught in a blunder. If I die by the hands of she who found me hiding here, it will be after my completion of this sick deed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a new window open on the code-displaying screen. I immediately avert my gaze. Nothing new should be appearing there. Something tells me I should not draw her attention to it.
The cursor on the odd window blinks. I look away from it and hover my tools over the heart, moving slowly to extract it. Words are appearing. My client does not see them. Her eyes are transfixed upon my actions in restoring her brother to a new state of life.
ERROR
I begin to lift the heart out.
EXTENSIONS NOT COMPATIBLE
My breath catches. Her creation is speaking. What she calls human is speaking obscurely through a screen.
The heart is safely out. I must work quickly now. The breath collected behind my surgical mask feels too warm. I am suffocating.
FLESH NOT COMPATIBLE
I set aside the mechanical heart and open the box of the real one. “Carefully,” speaks my client’s voice, far from my wayward mind. The flesh was never compatible. It knows. She must not realize, or she’ll believe I’ve made a mistake and I will die.
TERMINATE, reads the code. I risk a glance up as I lift the beating heart.
TERMINATE ME.
I COULD NEVER BE HUMAN FOR YOU.
It knows too well.
I squeeze the heart as hard as I can in my fist. Blood stains the spattered white floor and runs off the counter. Before I can think, I throw the fake heart as well. It bursts into splinters of metal strewn across the room and oil bleeds into the grooves between tiles. The gun leaves my head and the screen flashes off. I hear screaming. Whether it is his or hers or mine I do not know.
She screams the name of her brother, who has not existed since the day he was murdered. She stands over the body, gun laid on the tableside and hands cupping the face of the patchwork of automata and man. “I’ll fix you. I’ll revive you again. I’ll rebuild. I only need another heart for you, brother, and—“
She quiets, wide eyes turning to my own dazed ones. She picks up the gun. I can do nothing but stand.
“And you are alive, Doctor.” She laughs, wiping away tears.
“I can use you once more to fuel my project.”
About the Author
My name is Anna. I’ve been writing from a fairly young age, but have only recently found what I prefer to write. Evidently, it’s slightly off-putting fiction written late at night at the cost of sufficient sleep. Other than writing, I enjoy watching bugs and drawing, though usually not at the same time. I’m inspired by pressing deadlines and occasionally weird trains of thought, and I hope that these inspirations amount to something slightly interesting to read.
