Copyright Zak Zyz, 2018

Cover and epigraph images by Jan Fekkes, 1918

Cover and interior design by Zak Zyz

Based on a true story

www.zakzyz.com

“O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.”

—Ludwig van Beethoven

“I think he stole the election and he’s been an absolute disaster for this country. I mean, look at me.”

Somehow I’d started talking politics, as if it was the old times and you could just do that, strike up a conversation and say what you think! I held up the two prosthetic arms I’d come to have adjusted. They were good arms when they worked, made of lightweight composites, sturdy and powerful, most importantly they felt real. But they weren’t working now. The pinky finger on the right arm kept extending when I closed the fist, and from time to time the whole arm would spasm, with a clacking jolt that startled people. Most were too polite to mention it, but I’d come to dread that uncomfortable moment where they didn’t know what to say.

The technician gave me an odd look.

With my pinky extended, I must have looked like I was putting on airs. I absolutely wasn’t. I was about half of a disability check away from holding a cardboard sign on Eighth Avenue that said “VETERAN - PLEASE HELP”. I almost said so, but the tech extended the arms on his examination table and had me lie on my back while he restrained both of my prosthetics. I stared up at the ceiling, comfortably crucified.

I bit my lip, telling myself to shut up. If I went too far and said too much, the technician might ask me to leave. Dr. Ludo’s office was my last chance, if this didn’t work out I was almost certainly going to be on the street in a month’s time.

I’d be in good company. I heard on the news that if they took all the homeless vets in Manhattan and armed them, you would have an entire division. It was always looming at the edge of my thoughts, with every day where no one called me back for an interview, where twenty more resumes went unanswered. I was going to run out of money and get evicted. I’d take my place among the lost, holding a sign, sleeping in the subway. It was inescapable.

I’d tried to help a few of them out while I still could, a cup of coffee or a bagel. Most wouldn’t take money from me. Once, a wild old man with a crazy beard and an eye patch told me to cut it out, saying I’d given enough. He wore a dinky little plastic sword at his belt and a handkerchief over his head, I guess he was supposed to be a pirate.

I could tell he’d been at least a staff sergeant, the way he stood, the way he spoke. But there he was on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 23rd street, with his sign that said HOMELESS VET, FOUR TOURS, PLEASE HELP GOD BLESS. All the pride drained out of him as he turned back to the street, giving people a big goofy smile, waving to little kids. The sudden stiffness of his posture, the command in his tone, it was something he saved just for himself. Just for us. The broken soldiers.

Sam the technician working on my arm grunted unhappily, knocking me out of the memory. He was an older guy, with deep lines on his face. He had long, straight black hair, parted down the middle with streaks of silver in it.

“It’s bad huh?” I said, and he didn’t answer, and I got twice as nervous. I hadn’t slept much before the appointment, I had been terrified of exactly this.

“The VA won’t fix it,” I complained. “Says they’re booked until next year. They put me in a lottery. A goddamn lottery to get working arms. Remember before the Election? Oh yeah, he was going to fix the VA. He was going to take care of us. The way he talked about how he loved the vets, just loved them so much he was practically in tears. Loved us so much he wanted more of us, hundreds of thousands more. Wanted a guy missing an arm or a leg on every street corner so he could see one of us wherever he went.”

Sam stopped working and looked at me, and I knew I ought to shut up, knew I’d gone too far already. I was going to get myself thrown right out of the office, but I couldn’t stop talking. I’d been bottling it all for months.

“He sure as fuck didn’t love paying for us. I had to get a private grant to get these in the first place and chip in my own money. My entire severance bonus. I would be trying to wipe my ass with a broomstick taped to a nub if I’d waited for the VA to help me. And they told us New York was the best place for us, that they had the infrastructure to deal. Well it’s a goddamn lie and it’s almost winter. Soldiers are gonna be freezing to death in the street. I don’t know if they’ll even pay to bury them. They might just dump us all in the landfill, I mean if they won’t keep their promises when we’re alive, why would they care after we’re gone? And now they want ANOTHER war we can’t afford? I mean really when are people going to come to their fucking senses?”

I had raised my voice, I was breathing heavily, the bad pinky was flipping out, flopping around like a caught fish. The technician had an inscrutable look on his face, he waited for me to calm down. I kept expecting him to ask me to leave, but he only stared.

“Sorry. I’m, just mad and I get carried away. I’m sure you hear it all the time.”

“I hear far too much of it. Would you stop it if you could?” Sam asked.

“Stop it? What do you mean?”

“I mean suppose there was a way to stop the next war. What would it be worth to do that?”

For a second, I wondered if he was just having a laugh at me for being so serious. It was weird to be put on the spot like that while you were clamped to a table. But I was nervous and keyed up, and just blurted out an answer.

“Any price. Absolutely anything. I’d die to stop it.”

Sam nodded, he was looking at me very carefully. I realized I’d gone too far again, and wondered if everyone in the office had heard my little tantrum. It was a small tasteful place in an expensive building on 59th street, very high end. Everything was clean and new. It had been daunting to enter, I’d felt like I couldn’t even afford to ride the elevator here.

Fortunately, there were no other patients. That was really surprising. There were ads all over the subway for Doctor Ludo promising free prosthetic adjustments and grant consultations for veterans. There was a big Purple Heart on the ad, and the picture of Dr. Ludo shaking hands with a marine wearing a prosthetic arm. The marine had the same model arm as me, the Carbon Composite Patriot Systems 10DE.

It seemed a too good to be true. Readjusting an NPA prosthesis took a lot of time and special equipment, I’d looked into getting it done privately and had been quoted over five thousand dollars. Just for an adjustment. Neural pathway actuated prosthetics are an amazing technology, but it’s new and they need to be tuned from time to time. More often than the five months the VA wanted me to wait.

It wasn’t just the pinky sticking out either, the right hand was dropping things, going slack at the worst possible times. Worst was that it would glitch out completely when I tried to play piano. The VA doctor had made some hopeful noises about me being able to play again. The left hand was amazing, it honestly worked better than my real hand ever had. The prosthesis had a direct connection to my brain, it responded faster than any other part of my body, felt more keenly, acted more precisely. And it was strong, though of course I didn’t go around crushing rocks or breaking planks. The prosthetics were far too important and expensive to risk damaging.

There were a lot of neat tricks my new arms could do, I could pick something up and know exactly what it weighed, down to the microgram, I could touch something and know it’s exact temperature, I could play a theremin and actually feel the field of radio waves as surely as a fretboard. I had such high hopes... But there was no way I could play on the right hand. I could barely even write with it, it had never really worked correctly. The VA had told me it would get better with time, and it got worse instead.

Sam kept working over the arm, running it through the paces and going through the logs. He ran a series of tests where I had to flex each finger a dozen times, run through the full range of the motion. Then he would check the diagnostic machine and make notes in a file. He was paying close attention to each malfunction, jotting it all down. They hadn’t paid attention like this when the they did the initial installation, and maybe that was part of the problem.

Sam had gone quiet as he worked, leaving me to wonder what the hell he’d meant. He had bushy eyebrows and long delicate fingers that I envied for a furious moment. He reminded me a lot of an old Navajo guy that used to tune my piano when I was stationed at Goodfellow AFB. They both had the same kind of exacting patience and excruciating focus, they even looked a little alike.

It made me feel comfortable. For the first time in several weeks, I felt really well looked after and a little hopeful. Happy even.

I wasn’t so happy to hear the news he had for me.

“OK. Are you ready for this? The right arm is going to have to come off and be overhauled. We’re going to need to redo the connection.”

I had to close my eyes and swallow hard. A NPA prosthesis wasn’t something you just took off and threw in the corner of your room at the end of the night. What he’d actually told me was, we need to cut your arm off piece by piece over two months and then do surgery to put it back on. I was going to have to deal with it all again, the weird phantom pain and prosthesis dissonance.

“It has to be removal?”

“If you ever want it to work correctly, yes. The left arm just needs tuning, the connection is good. I can have your left working 100% by the time you leave today. But the right prosthetic... the installation was botched. The majority of the connections need to be completely redone, and the arm needs to be taken offline, I’m going to have to replace some parts that have burned out. Until I have it off, there’s no way for me to tell if the prosthetic was damaged due to the faulty installation or if they fitted you with a defective unit, though my gut says the former. Never seen a bad 10DE. We’ll have to reprogram the whole thing. We can’t do it clean either, the way this has been wired. We’ll have to remove and preserve each cluster.”

My world sank. I’d suspected it all along of course. The fucking VA.

“I can’t afford to have it redone, I couldn’t even afford to get it tuned.”

“We can perform the amputation and reattachment right here. There’s no charge.”

“Wait, but... how?”

“This office is privately funded. You can talk with Dr. Ludo about it, I’ m going to give him my findings and then he’ll speak with you.”

“There’s gotta be some catch right? You’re talking about a payment plan, filing a grant, something, right?”

“None of that. The office will pay for everything. Dr. Ludo can explain more.”

I was about to cry right in front of him, I managed to hold it back until he left the room. Learning the arm would have to come off then hearing they would pay for it... it was too much. I started crying and was still snuffling a little when the Doctor came in.

Dr. Ludo was... intense almost seems too kind a word. He was one of those tall, thin men who never smiled. He didn’t blink much, and he didn’t make small talk, and he brushed away my questions about payment in about two sentences. The office was privately funded by an endowment. They weren’t a nonprofit either, so they weren’t tied up in a bunch of regulations. They could just fix people.

Once I was assured they weren’t going to come after me for my soul or my firstborn, Dr Ludo began to give me instructions for the pre-amputation preparations. There was a stringent diet and exercise regimen I needed to follow, and he’d printed it out and went over it with me step by step. Then he did it again. Finally he took the paper away from me and quizzed me on each step, to make sure I had it all. I must have given him a look after that, because he stopped cold and stared.

“It is imperative that you comply fully with the rehabilitation process if you want to achieve full functionality of this arm. The VA messed this one up pretty badly, and there’s absolutely no wiggle room on this reinstall. Everything needs to go right, and that means I need you to do everything you can on your end. Copy?”

“Copy,” I said. He said it like an officer, if he hadn’t served himself, Dr. Ludo had certainly seen his share of soldiers. He knew how to put a little righteous fear behind his orders.

“Where’d you go to school?” He asked.

“Auburn.”

“Good school. Why’d you enlist then?” He asked in the same tone he might have asked me why I shot myself in the foot. I couldn’t really argue the point with both my arms blown off.

“I got divorced, my wife and I co-owned a business... I just wanted to start over.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Every day.”

“A lot more men are going to wind up like you if our glorious leader gets re-elected. He seems dead-set on another war.” I raised an eyebrow at his tone and our eyes met. We’d both said some dangerous things today.

“Let him go and fight then,” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

Surprisingly, Dr. Ludo smiled at that. Or maybe he was grimacing, he seemed like he didn’t have a lot of practice smiling.

“I’m going to be working closely with you the next few weeks. Sam tells me you used to play Piano. Use that. I can’t promise you anything, there’s always the chance of unforeseen complications. But if you follow the plan to the letter, Sam and I will do everything in our power to get you playing again.”

“It would help a lot Doc, thanks. I need something—something to help me keep it together.”

“We’ll see.”

I went home happier than a man who was about to lose an arm had any right to be.

“THOSE IDIOTS!”

I was sitting in the waiting room when I heard Sam the technician shout. I’d guessed right that he was Navajo on my second visit, but he didn’t know my former piano tuner. He’d actually been a veterinarian before his business failed and he went back to school for prosthetic medicine. Very prescient of him, given the current administration.

There was a patient ahead of me today, even though my appointment was for half an hour ago. Sam was in the adjustment room with him now.

The receptionist had apologized profusely for me having to wait, saying it was an emergency visit, but I didn’t mind. I smiled at him and told him it was fine. Where did I have to go anyway? He was really cute, way out of my league.

After the shouting, I could hear Sam apologizing through the door. Dr. Ludo came flying out of his office and into the diagnosis room, and then Sam was explaining.

“Those FUCKING FOOLS!” Dr. Ludo roared after a few moments of Sam talking. Dr. Ludo was livid! It put me on edge, at the same time, I was it wasn’t at me.

Now I and the receptionist were looking at each other and then staring at the door. From his expression I could tell this was new and frightening to him too. Dr. Ludo threw the door open.

“Call an ambulance!” Dr. Ludo ordered. His face was blood red with fury.

“I can’t pay... I can walk there,” offered a voice that was distantly familiar.

“We’ll pay for everything. Your implant was installed incorrectly. A piece of it became detached, and you need immediate surgery to remove it. Your life is in danger due to the infection. Once you recover, we will replace it. How many days ago was this installed?”

“I hit the VA lottery. They put it in yesterday. I felt OK. I asked them if I could leave, I don’t want to lose my corner.”

“They shouldn’t have released you. Ocular implants require minimum three days of bed rest and observation. A patient of your age should have at least a week to recover.”

“It’s my fault, I asked them to let me go,” the old man said. Even through the wall, I could hear his voice weighted down by pain. “Went back today to have them look at it again, but they were too busy.”

“This is not your fault. You are the victim of malpractice. We’re going to get you the care you need. Is the ambulance on its way Laren?”

“It is.”

“Laren is going to accompany you to the hospital, he’ll help you with admission and set up billing directly to our office. It’s just going to be a few minutes while we get our report together so they know exactly what’s wrong and can begin treating you immediately. You’re going to be OK Mr. Blanchard.”

When they finished with his file and printed it out, they lead Mr. Blanchard out of the diagnosis room. Blanchard was having a bit of trouble walking, it looked like his balance was off. He had a brand new eye installed, but the skin all around it was puffed out and discolored.

I recognized him at once, the one-eyed pirate from Sixth Avenue who told me I’d given enough already. He looked a little small and sad without the wild beard, I guess the VA trimmed it off when they installed his eye. I don’t think he recognized me, he was in rough shape.

The receptionist led the one-eyed old man out the door gently. If not for the gravity of the situation I might have been a little envious. Laren was so soft spoken and kind, the kind of beautiful that makes you feel ugly. It was kind of cruel for them to have someone so perfect as the receptionist in an office meant to help people missing parts of themselves. I guess most patients wouldn’t mind.

“Unbelievable,” Dr. Ludo said, when they were gone. His hands were clenched into fists at his side. “Did you hear how he was afraid to go to the hospital? Why did they release him? What the fuck were they thinking?”

“He panhandles at a corner on 6th ave. I think he was afraid if he was away too long someone else would take his place,” I offered.

“Do you know him?”

“No,” I said, and then I recounted the story of how I’d met him. Sam and Dr. Ludo both looked so angry, I almost thought they were going to send me away.

“This is what they do. They use people up and throw them away when they break them. I wouldn’t trust the VA incompetents to hold a bedpan. There used to be doctors there, before the cuts. They were overworked, but they did what they could. Now, it’s the absolute bottom of the barrel, just the hacks who can’t get anything else,” Dr. Ludo said bitterly. “I am going to do something about it, believe me.”

“What?” I asked, and both Sam and Dr. Ludo looked at me for a long moment, until I felt uncomfortable.

“Let’s see how your arm is doing. How’s the pain?” Dr. Ludo said, changing the subject.

“Pretty bad,” I admitted.

* * *

It took two agonizing months to get my arm cut off. Every visit I lost a little more functionality as they isolated and preserved the nerve interfaces. It was all done with micro-surgical probes. Dr. Ludo was the controller. The NPA tech was amazing, but it was delicate, and it was hard to undo the botched installation without losing major functionality.

There were two shots I got every session. One knocked me out completely. I would feel the needle, and the piercing feeling would grow farther and farther away, and the cold would rush in. I felt for a brief time like I was a million miles away. Then all was blackness until the next shot came. That one knocked me right out of outer space, but it didn’t leave me feeling exhausted like other times I’d been tranquillized. It left me chatty and energetic as if I’d just had two big cups of coffee.

I found myself looking forward to the drugs, a lot more than I ought to, especially the sedative. The feeling of traveling so far into the darkness that you were light years away from all pain and all concern... I wanted it, in a way that frightened me. Sam told me this was a new sedative called Kryosom, it had been developed for space flight. Apparently if you didn’t apply the counter agent, you could keep someone under with it almost indefinitely. They were going to use it to send astronauts to Mars.

I thought about that a great deal as I was going through the after-pain. They weren’t real nerves they were disabling, but my brain didn’t understand that. It complained bitterly that parts of me were missing. The phantom pain was not like banging my toe or touching a hot pan, it didn’t arrest me. It just lay in the back of my mind and throbbed that something was wrong.

During the day when I was moving around and doing things, I could push it away, but as I tried to sleep, the pain seemed to stack on top of itself, like overlapping waves, magnifying each other. I had one bad episode where I panicked in the middle of the night, terrified that there was an inert hunk of metal and plastic where my arm should be. I just wanted to rip the prosthetic off, and I was so agitated I had to take a kolonopin to calm down.

That was one thing the VA was generous with, tranquilizers. Drugs were cheap. I’d been pretty good about not dipping into them when I didn’t have to, the bottle was still half full. I’d gotten it six months ago when I returned home as a casualty. When I took the pill, all I could think about was how weak it was compared to the Kryosom, how long it took to kick in. I actually found myself salivating when I thought about the needle. Fortunately the sedative finally kicked in and it knocked me out before I could do anything stupid. I told Dr. Ludo about the episode the next day, half hoping he would prescribe the Kryosom, but he just said we were going too fast, and needed to pace how many clusters we did a day. I tried not to show how disappointed I was but I think he knew.

Waiting for my appointments, I saw a few other vets at the office, but not as many as there should have been in such a first-rate office where they paid for everything. It should have been packed to the rafters. A friend of mine who’d gone through basic with me had chatted some complaints about the NPA foot he’d gotten from the VA, he could barely hobble with it. I told him about Dr. Ludo, and he came in from New Jersey for a consultation, sure enough he needed a removal and reinstall. Another VA special.

But Dr. Ludo didn’t take my friend as a patient. He did the consultation and referred him to another doctor say out on Long Island, still offering to pay for the whole thing. The friend sent me an effusive thank you, but I wondered why they hadn’t seen him at the same office as me. Their schedule was nowhere near full. I was coming in for appointments every day, and the place was a ghost town. The first week, there was no one there at all. Blanchard, the guy with the bad eye, returned after about two weeks once he’d recovered from his infection. If I got in early for my appointment I would see Blanchard as he was leaving his, and I was always early.

I figured ten minutes early wasn’t too weird, and it was ten extra minutes to be in the same room as Laren. I hoped I wasn’t too obvious, I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. I would bury my nose in some magazine and not read a word, just sneaking glances at him until it was time for my appointment.

Blanchard had been lucky, he’d fought off the infection, they’d done an emergency removal of the prosthetic eye, and they were preparing him for the replacement. He would never have full vision in that eye, but Dr. Ludo hoped they could at least get him some meaningful depth perception. I usually chatted with Blanchard for a few minutes while Sam was setting up the technical room for me. He was doing a lot better.

Laren had helped get him into temporary housing, and I think they sorted out whatever was keeping him from getting disability payouts. I never saw him standing on the corner of 23rd again. He’d filled out a little, he seemed to be eating well. His beard was coming back in patchy, but he seemed happy.

Once, I heard Blanchard laughing with Sam in the adjustment room, his laugh was big and booming. I couldn’t help but grin, and Laren saw me and shared the smile, I thought my heart would just about pop. I didn’t dare try anything of course. He was just so perfect, and I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize my treatment. My greatest fear was that I would somehow screw things up, say the wrong thing, and they’d put me out on my ass with half my arm cut off. It still all seemed too good to be true.

Other than Blanchard on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a few guys who came in and got consultations but were not treated, there was only one other regular patient I saw, a navy guy who was pretty far gone. He had extensive burn scars covering most of his face and neck. He had a full leg and arm prosthesis on his left side and they had him on some pretty heavy-duty meds, he couldn’t manage much more than a few pleasantries.

I remarked on the navy guy to Sam as he was doing the monthly adjustment on my right arm, and he told me the guy was Captain Blue Morley. I knew the name, he had been all over the news a few months back.

In the middle of a battle he’d jumped onto a burning boat full of refugees and pulled five people literally out of the fire. Two of them were kids. All five lived. Blue suffered burns over 75% of his body and it was a minor miracle he’d survived. There was some talk that he might be awarded the medal of Honor. And yet here he was, for all his heroism they’d fucked up his prosthetics the same as the rest of us. I tried to always make sure to say good afternoon to him, he started coming in after me in the second week on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the time it was just me.

As I lost functionality in the arm, I just felt more and more useless. I kept filling out job applications and dropping off resumes, but I hadn’t gotten a single reply so far. Maybe they could smell the desperation in my cover letters, maybe there just weren’t any jobs. You weren’t supposed to be able to discriminate against the handicapped or veterans. Still, I got nothing but radio silence on the job front. I filled out a profile on a dating site about five different ways and finally deleted it all. I told myself my luck would change when they fixed my arm.

I spent a the rest of my time either doing the exercises or just walking around the city and thinking. It was free, and my legs still worked. I read a lot. There was just so much time to kill, and it didn’t die easy. When I’d been deployed I had dreamed of this, lusted after a single a day just to do what I wanted without someone ordering me around. But now I had a lifetime of empty days front of me, but nothing to fill them. I didn’t want to do anything.

Nights were the worst, the pain kept me awake. Dr. Ludo was not big on prescribing pain meds. He seemed very cautious around them, I guess he’d probably lost a lot of guys that way. It was smart of him, because given the option to just end it that way, I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t have.

I thought of ending it pretty frequently while they were doing the removal.

I didn’t have much going on, no family nor friends. The weather was turning dark and so was I. I often wished I’d just died in the attack and saved everyone the trouble of having to deal with me. A couple nights I walked over the Williamsburg Bridge and stared down into the river. I was never the only one, each time I walked out there, I saw others like me, gazing into the abyss. I never saw anyone jump, and I didn’t bother the other people sizing up the jump. We all had to make our own choice.

I guess the main thing that kept me from doing it was not wanting to let the people at Dr. Ludo’s office down. They really were doing a ton of hard work, and I didn’t want it all to go to waste. I wished I could afford a dog or a cat, but there was just no way. I was losing money, I’d gotten the cheapest place in Harlem I could, but I was slowly sinking. I had a crazy idea that if they could get my hands up and running again I might play piano in the subway for a living. I could just lug my keyboard and my amplifier down to West Fourth every day and play for tips. It was stupid but it was all I had to look forward to.

Another thing that kept me alive, Dr. Ludo had noticed I was down. He began bringing me into his office in the loquacious recovery period where the anti-Kryosom had me all keyed up. He and I would talk, sometimes for up to an hour. It saved me. It was incredibly therapeutic just to have someone to talk to. My VA appointed therapist had called in sick to three appointments in a row and finally I’d just stopped going. He’d been kind of a twerp anyway, fresh out of college and trying far too hard.

At first, Dr. Ludo had asked me about my search for work, how my friends and family were doing. He realized quickly that I had nothing and it was bumming me out so we began to just talk politics. I could rattle on about that forever, and there was literally nowhere else to do it. You couldn’t strike up a conversation in a bar, you never knew who was listening. You couldn’t talk online either, because you knew they definitely were. Everyone kept their opinion to themselves, and it just cooked inside them, until it was hot as magma, ready to erupt at any time.

Dr. Ludo was keeping a pretty close watch on me. Of course, I was watching him back. He was a very interesting person, definitely not my type but it was hard not to be a little smitten at someone so focused on healing people.

I’d noticed that he seemed a lot more stressed as the treatment went on, though everything seemed to be progressing well. He had one of those old-style mechanical keyboards and I could hear him cranking away on it while Sam worked on me sometimes, even through the wall separating the two rooms. There would be a flurry of keystrokes, then a wait, then another roar of clacking keys. I wasn’t sure if he was writing some tortured manifesto or in a heated conversation with someone, but I could hear the agitation. It’s the kind of thing a piano player picks up on. He certainly wasn’t getting enough sleep.

We talked a lot about what was going on in the world. He would mention something in the news and ask me what I thought about it. Then he would listen to what I had to say and nod. He never agreed with me or disagreed, he just wanted to know what I thought. At first I was careful, but as I got more comfortable with him, I said a few things I really shouldn’t have. The recovery agent made me quite chatty, like I was somehow simultaneously drunk and clearheaded.

It was a dangerous time to be against the government. People who were too free with their opinions were prone to vanish. You never heard from them again. I had a little protection from that as a disabled vet. Nowadays we were the only people who could be openly critical of the party. If you were missing an arm or a leg, you had a little more leeway to complain. Not too much of course, just a little more than everyone else. We’d become jesters. You didn’t want to be quoted anywhere though. They wouldn’t disappear you for the small stuff, but your benefits would dry up pretty quick.

My treatment progressed and became a routine of gazing dreamily at Laren, getting adjusted by Sam, getting knocked out and brought back to life, and then blathering at Dr. Ludo until it was time to go home. The pain either lessened or I grew used to it, and I was sleeping through the night. The night before my last treatment, I took my keyboard out of its storage case and cleaned it until the keys were absolutely sparkling. Nothing fancy, but it had hammer weighted keys, and it felt reasonably close to a real piano. The perfect thing for someone playing with something reasonably close to hands, living a reasonable approximation of a life.

* * *

It rained the day of my last treatment, big cold freezing drops, but I was still at the office ten minutes early. It could have been raining molten lead and I would have come. I was so excited I could barely sit still while Sam went over the checks.

I’d done all of the exercises they’d asked me to, kept their strict diet, done everything right. Sam went through tech checks and everything was nominal, the outlook for a successful reattachment was good! In addition to the normal checks, Sam also weighed me and took my measurements with an old fashioned tape ruler. Chest, collar, waist, all of that. It seemed a little odd but I didn’t question it. I was confident they could do a far better job than the VA.

Once he was done with the tape ruler, Sam put me under and removed the arm. I wasn’t supposed to feel anything, but I could swear the stump burned like ice when I came to and the prosthesis was gone. I felt... lopsided. I was keenly aware of the missing weight, the empty space where there should be an arm.

“Just until tomorrow,” Sam reassured me. It felt stupid to feel upset over a prosthetic arm that didn’t even work anymore, but it was hard to see him take it off and put it on the table. Part of me wanted to shout for him to give it back.

Afterward Dr. Ludo called me into his office and congratulated me on following the regimen exactly. He looked haggard, his eyes were dark and one of the buttons of his shirt was undone. He followed my eyes to it and buttoned it without a word.

“OK. Tomorrow’s the big day.”

“You OK doc?” I asked. It was a bit of a selfish question, this was the guy who was going to do the incredibly precise surgery to reattach my arm in less than 24 hours. But I was worried about him too.

“It’s the new polls. I think he won’t even have to fudge the votes. I think they’ll re-elect him clean. Another term and another war. Hundreds of thousands of young men and women. How can people be so stupid?”

We stood there in silence, I was wondering how the hell that was even possible. So many lost, so little gained. We weren’t liberators, we weren’t even conquerers. We were just sending men and women to their deaths, throwing the into the mangler and a few of us managed to crawl out in pieces. The only winners were the guys selling the guns and bullets. Making the bombs that blew us up and then selling us new arms and legs on credit.

Everything was going to hell. No jobs. No hope. Secret police and internment camps. Emergency act after emergency act. Why didn’t they just drop the bullshit and admit it? Raise the swastika, grow Chaplin mustaches, and start goose stepping. Because the Fascists were in control now, and anyone who didn’t like it was going to disappear.

“Someone should do something,” I said seriously. I didn’t know what needed to happen or who would do it, I was just full of a sudden anger I could barely contain. My left hand was curled into a fist, my right was gone. Anticipation hung in the air, both of us wanting to say it, neither of us daring.

“But what?” Dr. Ludo asked. There was a quickening of interest in his eyes.

“Someone should kill him,” I said the words, as gravely as if I was announcing my own death, and maybe I was. If Dr. Ludo he reported me to the police, I would disappear tonight. For a moment, the way he looked at me, I had a paranoid flash that this had all been recorded. They would take what I’d said and use it in a show trial, then they’d have me publicly executed. But there was an iron look in his eyes that showed me I hadn’t misjudged him.

“Do you want to stop them?” Dr. Ludo asked, he was suddenly as animated as if he’d been shot up with the Kryosom antidote.

“Yes!” I nearly shouted. There was no point in recanting.

“Would you die to stop them?” Dr. Ludo asked, and his eyes were electric, I couldn’t look away. I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me.

It was in that moment that I suddenly realized that I had been led to this. The conversations every day, the constant probing of my opinions. The free treatment, the weird drugs, the other patients referred away.

They were terrorists. Dr. Ludo and Navajo Sam and probably even Laren. This office was a recruiting center. I’d talked a big talk, not realizing who was listening to me puff myself up.

“I...” I began. I was about to say no. But what happened then? Would they let me leave this place, now that I knew? They had my arm, what if they wouldn’t give it back? What if they blackmailed me?

Dr. Ludo said nothing, he just waited. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, my mind going a thousand directions at once.

“Yes,” I said, and it was almost like someone else was saying it. Afterward, all the justifications started flooding in. It was the right thing to do, it would be a noble sacrifice. But I think what it really came down to was there was nothing else for me. I was tired, and I didn’t want to go on like this.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” He promised. Tomorrow was the day I got my arm back.

I didn’t sleep, too much on my mind. As soon as I managed to push something out, another thing sprang up to take its place. Again and again, Dr. Ludo was asking me if I would die to stop them, and I wondered just what the hell they had in mind. It was absolutely the longest, most desperate night of my life.

Finally I gave up all pretense of sleeping and went for a walk. It was the first really cold night of the season, and the wind bit right through my overcoat, the empty arm fluttered uselessly at my side. I walked around Harlem and everywhere there were piles of blankets, with steamy breath rising from them. My brothers in arms, left on the street like garbage. That would be me, I realized, and no piano pipe dream was going to keep me from joining their ranks. What if I really could do something to stop this? To stop the next war? It wasn’t even a choice. I had to do it.

I managed a few hours of sleep on the strength of that resolution, and went early to Dr. Ludo’s office. As I walked up 59th street, I saw Blanchard walking towards me, curiously he was wearing a full dress uniform. He was cleanshaven, with his new eye, and a haircut, I couldn’t believe how different he looked. He’d actually been a master sergeant, now that I could see his rank. I gave him a quick raise of my head and he nodded back and walked past me, an inscrutable look on his face.

Inside the office, I was surprised to see everyone was ready for me. Laren had a big beaming smile for me, and I blushed.

“People always come early for the reattachment,” Sam smiled. I could see behind him that tech room was all set up for the operation. I’d thought I would be waiting outside the office for them to open, I was relieved I wouldn’t have to. The anticipation was killing me.

Dr. Ludo came in and held out a hand, which I shook.

“After this, I’m going to shake your other hand,” he announced confidently, and I smiled.

“Did you think about what we talked about?” He asked, and there was no pretense now, both he and Sam were both looking at me eagerly.

“I’ll do it,” I said, trying to sound surer than I felt. If I could save even one other person from going through what I was going through, it would be worth it. To be able to save thousands... I had to do it, no matter how afraid I was.

“Thank you. For all of us, thank you. You are a hero,” Dr. Ludo said, and his eyes were wet. Since I’d come back, it seemed like every other person I’d met had thrown the word hero at me, and I hated it. There was nothing heroic about getting blown up. But when Dr. Ludo looked at me like that and said it, it meant something. I had to fight not to cry.

“There’s something special about this arm,” Sam said, holding up my arm. It still seemed weird it wasn’t attached to me. He tapped a particular spot inside the crook of the arm, shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits. Suddenly there was a slight hum in the air, and Dr. Ludo and Sam were looking at the arm very intently.

“The batteries are overcharged. So be careful, because if you activate that and squeeze something with the hand as hard as you can, there’s a strong chance that the batteries will explode. It would probably instantly kill you and someone standing next to you. Shaking your hand for instance.”

He tapped the arm four times and the humming stopped suddenly. “That should keep it from happening. It’s quite safe otherwise.”

I was reeling, I’d begun to sweat.

“It’s completely undetectable. Now you do it,” Sam said, extending my arm. I repeated the action, arming and disarming my arm.

“We won’t make you do this if you don’t want to. I can deactivate that circuit, reattach the arm, and at the end of the day we can let you walk out of here. After today, you’ll never see any of us again. You can’t possibly inform on us.

“I want to do it. Well.. I don’t want to do it I mean, I’m not crazy. But it needs to be done. He must be stopped.”

“Thank you,” Laren said. “Thank you,” Dr. Ludo and Sam echoed.

They gave me the Kryosom and I was deep in space, feeling time running through me like a slow, endless river. When I came back up, Dr. Ludo was the first to shake my hand. It felt perfect.

It felt very strange to be wearing my dress uniform again. Blue and crisp as if it had been made yesterday, because it had. They had all my commendations pinned to it, all the bars over my left breast. Bars that said I was good, called me brave, said I could be relied upon to shoot who I was told to. A purple bar I’d exchanged two arms for. Just a lot of colorful thread to say I’d made some bad decisions in my life, when all was said and done.

Even though I hadn’t felt like a soldier in half a year, putting the uniform on did something to me. I was standing taller, people were turning to look at me as I walked by. Women turned their heads, and the men on the sidewalk with their cardboard signs and jingling cups looked away, I didn’t know if the didn’t want to see me or if they didn’t want to be seen.

They didn’t know what I was, didn’t have any idea. The leather gloves hid my plastic hands, the brim of my cap hid the deadly secret I carried. I looked like just another captain, to those who could read the insignia at my lapels.

I had only about an hour until I needed to be at the train. I’d left directly from Dr. Ludo’s office with my instructions, there wasn’t time to return home to test out the hand.

I knew I shouldn’t dawdle, but there was a detour I had to make. I walked down Avenue of the Americas and everything seemed so important all of the sudden. A pigeon tutting past me, pecking at a crust of pizza. A group of young women gasping and crying out with delight, recognizing a friend. An old man with a cane, scraping forward with his foot turned sideways. All of it burning into me, because it was the last time. All the beautiful people hustling by, with all the time in the world.

Tonight, my time would be up, I had to drink it all in as fast as I could, the honking horns, the hissing steam, the murmur of ten thousand voices. It was all so strange and wonderful, I couldn’t understand how I’d ever gotten used to it all.

I made it Steinway Hall, and had a silent moment of relief to see that they were open. I hoped this would work. A young woman, as polished and sleek as the pianos she sold greeted me with a brilliant white smile. I told her I was interested in purchasing a Model D, and wondered if I might have a few moments to try it out.

I was afraid, for a moment that they would refuse. She only had to see the captain’s bars on my lapels to know that I could never afford a piano like this. In truth, I probably didn’t even deserve to play on a concert piano, even for a few minutes. Obviously I hadn’t able to practice for some time. But she smiled and lead me back to an old salesman with a mane of gray hair tucked back into a pony tail in an elegant black suit that gave my dress blues a run for their money. His eyes flitted to my insignia, and for a moment I could see the flame of hope die in his eyes.

He knew.

“Just taking her for a run eh? Feel free Captain.”

He lead me back into one of the showrooms and there she was, a spotless mountain of piano black, the golden Steinway & Sons logo gleaming beneath her fall. I walked around her, just taking in the sight and smell of the piano before I even dared to sit at the bench. I removed my gloves, and the salesman’s eyebrows raised, for a moment it seemed like he was about to say something. Perhaps he worried that the prosthetic hands would damage the keys of the beauty, but he held his tongue.

He closed the soundproof door, and I struck C, listening to the note ring in the room, so pure and perfect. I shut my eyes and there was nothing but the note. I had hoped they would leave me alone, but the salesman was in the room watching me. I guess to make sure I wasn’t some nut who planned to smash the instrument. I was a little nervous since it had been so long, and I played a few very simple pieces to warm up, Minuet and the Soldier’s March, and the salesman was glancing back at the door to make sure no one with money had suddenly appeared, bored.

My new hand worked perfectly. With two hands that functioned, I could really take advantage of the prosthetics, they absolutely flew, as fast as I could think. I could feel the keys beneath my fingers, flawless as diamonds. I grinned a little thinking perhaps I could blow the old man’s mind. He probably thought I was just some shell-shocked cripple, come to peck away at his expensive piano.

He turned his head as I began to play Sonota #8 in C. Minor. He was jolted alert by the crash of the keys in the first notes of the movement, and then I forgot about him, for twenty minutes there was only me, the piano and Pathétique. When I was through, I had to wipe my eyes with my sleeve, though I’d made perhaps six serious mistakes. The piano was everything I’d dreamed and more, and the hands performed perfectly. What an incredible gift Sam and Dr. Ludo had given me!

Yet how brief the time to enjoy it. After six months of suffering through the undependable prosthetic, I felt truly whole again. I was filled with a sudden immense desire not to go through with the plan. There were so many more things I wanted to do.

“Well then, do I have a sale? She’ll be in good hands,” the salesman grinned, and I had a flash of suspicion that he was making fun of my prosthetics, but there was no malice in his expression. I felt a little foolish for trying to impress him when I was so out of practice, surely world class pianists must come in all the time. I was just a patzer who hadn’t played in half a year. I could never afford this piano.

“Next time,” I said, ruefully. “What a wonderful piano. Thank you very much.”

He nodded and showed me to the door, and I hastened towards my doom.

Had time really seemed so endless just yesterday?

The bullet train from New York to DC was just one long sigh, I stared out the window the whole time like a child, trying to capture everything, to live completely in the moment. Once I got to the station in DC it was all a rush, leaping into a taxi, zipping to the screening location, stepping out into the cold air, suddenly terribly afraid I’d be found out. There was no way this could work, was there? Surely they would find the suicide circuit, they’d capture me and execute me. I’d be remembered forever as a traitor.

I was standing at the door, I was on camera now but I could still turn around and leave. I didn’t have to take this risk, didn’t have to spend myself this way. I’d just turned to walk away when another taxi arrived. Master Sergeant Blanchard and Captain Morley had arrived, both in their dress uniforms. For a moment the three of us just looked at ourselves, I think none of us could believe we were all dressed up and playing soldier again.

I had a stupid thought that Blanchard ought to have saluted me, and I was glad he didn’t. I was through with all of that bullshit. The old master sergeant had a strange look in his eye, I noticed his prosthetic eye didn’t move, it just stared straight forward.

“Ready Sirs?” Captain Morley asked, nodding towards the door. On the plucked scars at the sides of his mouth, I thought I could see a faint smile. He was the one getting the medal, after all.

The chance to flee was gone, but I told myself I still didn’t have to go through with it. I didn’t have to activate the bomb. If they didn’t find me out, I could just sit through the ceremony and then escape afterward. Inside the screening room, all of us had to present our IDs at a security window, I noticed Blanchard’s was brand new, still shiny. There were two silent guards in the room by the booth, armed with Steyr AUG-4 light machine guns. I must have spent a little too long looking at the gun, because the guard holding it gave me a look. I quickly looked away. Either guard could kill all three of us in about two seconds.

Captain Morley identified us as his two guests for the ceremony, and the guard pointed us to a corridor for screening. He printed out a little plastic badge for each of us with our photos and the purpose and duration of our visit on them, we wore them on lanyards.

“Don’t forget to take those off and put them in your pocket before your ceremony Sirs,” the guard said. He was very alert and upright, it was unusual to see that in a security guard. But I guess Morley was a hero after all. Not something you saw every day.

I had been nervous before, but I could barely hold it together as we walked down that long corridor. The walls were a pale government green and there were arrows pointing the way painted on the wall, it was all bathed in sickly fluorescent light, and there were exposed pipes running overhead, I started to have visions that I was marching right into the gulag, and there would be an inquisitor waiting for me.

Instead, it was just basically like going to the airport. A man whose nameplate identified him as Agent Barnes took our IDs again, punched them into a computer and asked us a few questions.

Barnes raised an eyebrow when Blanchard stated his occupation as “Homeless” but both Morley and I had given our own occupations as unemployed. The screening agent had a sad look at that, he was a comfortable, pudgy man, and I suppose most of the people he screened were fairly well off. It seemed like we’d kind of ruined his day.

One by one, we went through one of new screening machines, standing in a Plexiglas cylinder with our arms raised as the detectors spun around us. They had Captain Morley in first, and I watched the screening agent like a hawk as he peered at the screen. He squinted at it, tilted his head, and picked up the phone.

My heart stopped. This was it.

“Hey Mr. Bradley could you come in here for a sec?”

I looked back up the corridor, wondering if I could make it past the two guards. Impossible. I just had to wait and concentrate on not pissing myself. After an impossibly long time, Mr. Bradley appeared, he was clearly the supervisor. I thought we might have had it.

“Take a look at this,” Barnes said, pointing at the screen.

Captain Morley had stepped out of the machine and the three of us were looking at each other. Blanchard and Morley seemed more annoyed than worried, but I was terrified. How could they be so calm?

“Do you not check your email?” Bradley asked, his eyes narrowed with annoyance.

“I’ve just... I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Barnes said, getting defensive.

“NPA prosthetics. All three of these gentlemen are purple heart veterans. Come on Barnes, you’re supposed to know this shit. He’s here to receive Medal of Honor for Christ’s sake. I’m very sorry Captain,” the supervisor held up a palm apologetically.

“No problem. Just doing his job, I don’t mind,” Captain Morley said, and Barnes gave him a relieved look. They screened Blanchard right after, but it was clear they were only doing it out of routine, and barely looked at the screen.

Then it was my turn, and I held my arms up, trying not to shake. I stepped out of the machine, and Agent Brad was looking at me. Did they know?

“That’s some heart rate, Sir,” he said, and my guts felt all twisted. I must look suspicious as hell.

“I was—got in a firefight near one of these things once. Sorry, it’s a hard memory to shake,” I lied.

“I understand Sir, enjoy the ceremony, and congratulations Captain Morley,” Agent Brad said. “Don’t forget your wallets.”

We reclaimed our wallets and our keys and were led by to another checkpoint, where two more guards waited with machine guns. A young woman in a smart business suit introduced herself and I forgot her name instantly afterward. She was meant to be our handler. She mainly chatted with Captain Morley about how the ceremony would go, where he would stand, what would be said. We were led along a series of corridors for some time, going through three separate checkpoints.

Finally we emerged, and it dawned on me that we were in the White House. Everything was expensive and lush, gold framed paintings, thick red carpets, hardwood furniture, people everywhere, bustling around. I was surprised, I expected the ceremony to take place in some nameless federal building.

We were hustled into the empty room where the ceremony would take place in less than an hour. She ran through the blocking with Captain Morley and my mind was whirling, I wondered if I would have a chance, I wondered if I could go through with it. They gave us seats towards the back, and Blanchard and I sat wordlessly as we watched Captain Morley run through the steps of the ceremony. She had him repeat it twice until she was sure he had it. The whole thing was done with a kind of brisk efficiency that said she’d done this all many times. I guess she’d had lots of practice since the war started.

When it was all through, there was nothing else to do but watch the clock wind down. The woman tried to make small talk with Captain Morley, but it was like talking to a brick wall. She looked at the two of us and silently decided not to try, then went to checking her phone. One last joke from the man upstairs, my final hour on earth would be spent hurrying up to wait.

At last people began to file in, big names, important people. Some admiral I didn’t recognize, some head of some department or another, a sort of loose collection of people that made me suspect they’d been press-ganged to be here. A few members of the party news service arrived and began to set up their equipment. Once there would have been a whole gaggle of networks there, now there was just the one. I wanted to believe it was a live feed, that my final moments would be broadcast to every computer in the country as a ball of righteous fire. Probably there was a time delay and some party censor ready to cut to commercial at a moment’s notice, but I wanted to believe.

Something was wrong with the heat and it was stifling in the small room. No one spoke to us. Every single military person there looked at us, saw our rank, and decided not to bother. Blanchard and I sat there silent as statues as the room filled with bustling, chatting people, many of them went up to greet Morley, shake his hand and clap him on the back, but they left uncomfortable.

He responded to them, in terse, short statements. There was no getting a smile out of him, no sense that their words had any impact. They might as well have been talking to a potted plant. It had gotten even warmer in the room with so many people crammed into the small space, and I began to sweat in the uncomfortable uniform. Finally it was time for the ceremony.

A hush fell over the crowd, and everyone settled into their chairs. Two members of the presidential guard came in and looked over the whole room, everyone sat in utter silence as they checked around for anything surprising, and scanned the crowd for anything out of place. I had to remember to breathe as they scrutinized me. I was a terrible secret agent.

When they were satisfied, The President entered the room, we all had to stand up for him. Seeing his cocksure stride, his wide, fake smile, I was suddenly sure that I could do this. I could vaporize that evil motherfucker. I could feel the certainty wash over me like cold water, despite the too-warm room. I could do this. As he took the podium, I looked at him curiously. Something was off.

For twenty minutes, he went on about what a hero Captain Blue Morley was, how he’d valiantly and intrepidly put the lives of refugees before his own. He talked about how it reflected on Captain Morley’s crew, on the whole navy. He talked about his administration’s dedication to take care of injured veterans and I had cover up my laugh by pretending to cough. Then I noticed something.

The President’s mole was coming off.

It was a small, noticeable move on the left side of his jaw. One of those things caricature artists loved to exaggerate in the newspaper, but in person hardly noticeable. Except for right now, where it was hanging loosely from his face, caught in a trickle of sweat. Unconsciously he raised a hand to it and wiped the side of his face, and there was no more mole.

My mouth fell open, and for a moment I thought I musts be hallucinating, that the heat had made me feverish. But the mole was gone. He wasn’t the president! It was a body double. A very close double, he’d nailed everything, the voice, the look, even his walk. But it wasn’t him!

The impostor was through with his speech. He was putting the Medal of Honor over Morley’s head and shaking his hand, and for a moment I held my breath. I wanted to cry out to Morley that it wasn’t the real president, that it was a setup, in case they’d rigged his arm too. But there was no explosion, nothing but the blank look on Blue’s ruined face. It was more than just a thousand yard stare, he was frozen in place, sweat trickling down his temples. He knew! I was certain he’d been rigged to explode just like me, but he’d spotted the fake in time.

With immense relief, I realized that I’d just been a backup, and that I wasn’t going to die. We could leave here and I could go back to my shitty life in New York and play piano on the subway to my heart’s content. I didn’t have to sacrifice myself. We’d failed, but it didn’t matter. My heart was thundering and I felt I’d been delivered. The fake president was moving down the aisle and people were parting to let him pass. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten out of this.

But I had forgotten Blanchard.

The old Master Sergeant rose from his chair, and before the two Presidential Guardsmen stationed at the door could stop him, he tackled the fake president to the plush carpet. Instantly both guards were on him, trying to rip him off. Blanchard threw back his head as we all stared in shock.

“LEX TALIONIS!” Blanchard howled, and I could see his prosthetic eye begin to glow, bright orange-red, and the skin around his eye was as luminous as a bulb, you’d could see the dark shadow of his skull.

Then all was white.

Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est

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