Free will is an error in the code. We're pushing a patch next week.
The man behind the counter grinned inside and told me I'd be fine. We share the same thoughts, he and I. We care for the same things. I hunger. I weep. I seek to end this loneliness. I'm Broken. I've always been Broken.
He removes my eyes. I see his lips up close. Smooth skin. Nothing out of place. Flesh is pulled taut over his form. There is a flicker as my sight shifts. He knows better than to show imperfections to his customers. My new eyes would notice. I can see in technicolor. A new world with blues so sharp they cut your bones. I want to be just as unique as everyone else. He turns my new eyes around to look at my face. I can see everything.
Puffy bloated cheeks. Greasy gray hair. Wrinkles where they ought not be. And every line stretches back to forever. A perfect path between yesterday and tomorrow with me providing the through-line. The man squishes my old eyes into jelly while I judge my own face and I grin inside.
The machine assistant grabs the corners of my lips and pulls the cheeks tight. A scalpel comes down, cutting where the lines meet my face. The flesh rips and tears away and I am nothing. Muscle and bone glistening until the duraskin mask comes down. It glows with fairy fire. I want to scream but I cannot find my voice.
There's a gallery here in the operating room. A hundred perfect faces smiling down at the operation of my life. The face burns itself into place where my old one lived. Seals the agony in. But we're only getting started. The wires come down from the ceiling. They plug into my ports. Under my arms. Behind my knees. The wires plug into my mind and I feel the electricity struggle against my thoughts. Chrome and bronze and gears and life come find me in my holes.
I'm dancing now. The wires in my brain are moving me. It is awkward at first. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm too imperfect to have danced before. So the wire plugged into my mind adapts. The experiences download. Now, I'm capable. My limbs move with purpose and grace. And the wires in my bones snake their way into my marrow. They replace the white with silver.
I cry. Small tears come first. Then I cry harder at how they see me. With their unmoved faces and hard eyes. Some of them climb down, spider-like, into the surgical theater. Something terrible is happening. It is happening to me. Lights. Sounds. Beeps. It is not normal. It is not right. They are wired too, I see. The wires follow their movements. No. The wires move them. Just as I am moved.
I'm not supposed to cry. I'm not supposed to feel. I thought they cut that out of me. But still I weep. There's no salt or water in the tear ducts anymore so silver flows down my newly perfect cheeks. It pools on the ground. The wires hang me. They dance me. They do not let me touch the ground. I cannot feel what is beneath me.
The helpers are hurried and concerned. But the man who took my money to make me perfect is unbothered. I no longer dance. I no longer care. The substrate is clean. All the hooks into my psyche have taken perfectly. My eyes are in their proper place. So is everything else.
The gallery applauds. I have been Unbroken. I have been made perfect. Unique. Like everyone else. I can show my face. I look up at them. I smile inside. My duraskin face does not move.
I bow.
The event that was my life is over. A new event begins.