The Holy Machine

39

Some hours later she was wheeled back into the operating theatre. An eminent neurosurgeon called Professor Patel had been called in. She specialized in the neuro-cybernetic interface. Her bread and butter was artificial limbs and eyes. The Direct Link procedure was rather more of a challenge.

A small team of student doctors, nurses and technicians gathered round her and looked down solemnly at my mother’s little body.

Dreamy with opiates, Ruth smiled up at the grainy, flat faces above her. An injection was administered. The faces floated away like bubbles towards the surface. A blade shone with an almost unbearable sweetness, and she slid gratefully down it. Down the silvery slide, bright as the sun.

When Ruth came to she had arms and legs again, and she could see clearly in colour and three dimensions. She was in the bedroom of her little house. She was surrounded on all sides by vases of flowers.

‘Welcome back, Little Rose,’ said a kind, familiar voice.

‘Oh Sol!’ she exclaimed, with tears streaming from her eyes.

‘Take it easy now, Rose,’ said Mr Gladheim, ‘take it easy. I’m not going to go away!’

He reached out to her and she took his hand and squeezed it, then held on to it tightly.

She was still confused by the anaesthetic.

‘There!’ she said, ‘I knew the doctors were wrong when they said I’d got no hands!’

Mr Gladheim smiled, stroking the back of the hand that he was holding.

‘Whether or not people have hands,’ Ruth grumbled mildly, ‘you’d think doctors would know about such things!’

‘You certainly would.’

‘Oh I ache, I ache so much. What have they done to me?’

‘Well at least you’re back with us,’ said Mr Gladheim, ‘and this time we’re not going to let you go!’

‘I’ll go if I want! I can hire a Vehicle you know!’

Ruth started to sit up. Her motor nerves were now wired directly into the SenSpace system via a radio transmitter, and were no longer connected to muscles of flesh and blood. So sitting up was achieved without her real body moving at all, and was therefore no more painful than lying still.

She put her imaginary feet on the imaginary carpet on the imaginary bedroom floor. All the right sensations poured up her sensory nerves.

‘Come on. Let’s go into the garden!’ she said to Mr Gladheim.

She quite liked ordering him around.

‘Yes, let’s! I know everyone will be dying to see you.’

‘What about Charlie and George?’ said Little Rose guiltily.

But then she was out in the sunshine, and there were Gramps and Bessy and Delmont and all her other neighbours.

‘Three cheers!’ they all hollered, ‘Three cheers for Little Rose!’