Robin Wasserman - Torn

That was how I felt, watching the words swim across the screen.

I am a machine, I thought, the emotions simmering below the surface, the kind of emotion—the tidal wave kind—that I was always chasing, because it would prove I was still alive. I can shut this down.

I couldn’t. Not the knowledge, not the understanding, and not what came next.

I couldn’t cry, or shake, or collapse.

But I could scream.

My parents were downstairs in seconds. My mother, bleary-eyed and wild-haired, rushed into the room, compelled by some vestigial maternal instinct to throw her arms around me. She stopped herself at the last second, repelled by the force field of reality, of what I was now and who she was and all the space that had swelled between us. Her hand rigid, she patted my shoulder awkwardly, once, twice, her hand barely touching the synthetic skin. “What’s wrong, Lee Lee?” She hadn’t used the nickname since I’d left rehab.

Even in a bathrobe my father looked imposing, ready for business. He stood ramrod straight, and I could tell he was gauging the moment, trying to decide exactly when and how to ascertain what we’d been doing in the forbidden zone.

“I’m going upstairs,” Zo said, her voice as colorless as her face.

“No.” I pointed to my parents, then to the small leather couch pushed up against the wall. “You two, sit .” Then to Zo. “You, stay. We’re doing this. All of us. One last perfect Kahn family meeting.”

I don’t know why they listened. But my mother did, dropping to the couch with a soft thwap . Dubious but obedient, my father joined her. He lowered himself gracefully, back straight, feet firmly planted on the floor, leaning slightly forward, as he’d always taught us to do when we wanted to give the impression of paying attention. “It’s late; we’re all tired,” he said. “Whatever this is, perhaps it’s better done in the morning.” Like he knew what was coming.

I shook my head. “Now.”

“Leave it,” Zo said quietly. Not an order, a request, which wasn’t like her. I was tempted. But I couldn’t go to bed in this house, under the same roof as him , not after what I’d read. It had to be now, or it would be never, because once this was out, I was never coming back.

“I know what you did,” I said, staring at my father. “We know what you did.”

Innocent men defend their honor; that’s what he’d always taught us. Only a guilty man stays calm in the face of accusation.

But my father stayed calm in the face of everything.

My father.

I saw it all, in his face, in my mind. I remembered the sound of his voice when he was disappointed and when he was pleased, the winks across the table at my mother’s expense, his smile on the sidelines of a race, his hands wrapped around mine, lifting a trophy together, placing it on his mantel. His pleading tone as he begged—always dignified, but begging nonetheless—his peers to change their stance on the mechs, to understand his pain, and his miracle. His anguish as he’d begged God for a second chance.

And now I understood why he’d had to invent a God to believe in: so he would have someone to apologize to, when he should have been apologizing to me. All that time, I’d thought he regretted the download—that even though he’d finally accepted his daughter, the machine, he’d never forgiven me for existing.

When it was himself he’d never forgiven, for making me this way.

For killing me.

“I’ve done many things,” he said. “You’re going to have to be more specific.” A man, innocent or guilty, shows no fear. He’d taught us that, too. Man or woman, he was always careful to add. You’ll be as much of a man as I ever was. Maybe more .

I would show no fear.

I would not stop.

“I saw the files,” I said, and because watching him was so useless—and so infuriating—I shifted my attention to my mother. As weak as he was strong, she would react. She would see exactly what it was she’d married, what she’d allowed near her children. And wonder why she hadn’t stopped him. “Someone tampered with the car’s guidance system. Someone programmed that accident. Because you ordered them to.”

My mother’s eyes widened, slightly. Slowly, she turned toward my father, waiting for him to deny it. He didn’t.

Zo stood exactly where she’d stopped, midway between us and the door, like she was the statue. Unwilling to stay, unable to leave.

“You did this to me.” In my head I imagined saying this with cold steel in my voice, showing him how little I cared for what he’d done. How little power he had over me, and how little I regretted losing all he’d taken away. But that’s not how it came out.

It came out hysterical, like a child having a temper tantrum, my voice climbing higher, my fists balled. Only my eyes didn’t betray me, and only because they had no tears.

“You killed me!”

I could see it in her face: My mother was still waiting for him to deny it.

He didn’t.

“It was blackmail,” he said. He couldn’t even look at me. Instead he turned to Zo, stupid enough to think she would offer a safe harbor. She won’t help you, I thought, feeling almost sorry for him. And then he kept talking, and the sympathy leaked away. “There was some… unsanctioned behavior on my part. Funds were shifted. Temporary… aberrations in the balance sheet.”

“You were embezzling,” I translated, disgusted. “ Stealing. You, the honorable M. Kahn, who used to punish us for sneaking extra cookies after dinner because it was dishonesty unbefitting a Kahn.”

His head bobbed up and down, almost imperceptibly.

“Look at me,” I snapped. “Not her; not the floor. Me. Look at what you did to me. ”

Again he obeyed.

I wondered if someday, looking back, I would at least take pleasure in that. I’d finally beaten him. But it didn’t feel that way. It didn’t even feel like he was in the room with me. This person, this craven, beaten-down thing , seemed like a defective copy, designed to bear judgment in his place.

“They found out about it,” he said. “They blackmailed me. I would have gone to prison, lost everything. You would have lost everything.” It was almost a whine. Believe me, it said. Understand me. Forgive me.

Never.

“What would you have done without my credit?” he asked, eyes hopping from me to Zo to my mother, searching for refuge. “Any of you? There wouldn’t have been anything left. You would have ended up in a corp-town, working off my debt. I couldn’t let that happen.”

My mother rested a hand on his knee. I wanted to slap her.

“So instead of giving up your money, you gave up your daughter?” I asked. I’d never felt anything like this before, not since the download: an emotion that was so pure, so real. This was different from sex, from fear or pain, different even from the dreamers, with their direct connection to the emotive centers of the brain. Like jumping from a plane, like stabbing myself, this blotted out any awareness of artificial nerves and conduits, stripped away the fake flesh and the mechanical organs, left me bare and exposed, nothing left but words and anger.

“They didn’t want money,” he said. “It wasn’t about that. They wanted support for the download from someone like me, someone people would listen to. The whole program was about to go down in flames; they were still waiting on approval for the download as a voluntary procedure and didn’t think it was going to come through; they needed someone who would never give up .” He choked out a noise that sounded almost like laughter. “I suppose they found some poetic justice in it, turning the download’s biggest enemy into its biggest supporter. I engineered the legislation that would outlaw the technology, and then…”