Cyborg, Submission 7 by Lee Martin

“Let’s play Catalyst!” said Jane.

“No, I am tired of that game. Besides, you always cheat,” replied Billy.

“I do not!”

“Let’s play Cyborg. You can even go first.”

“Ok,” said Jane agreeably.

“I’ll get the board.”

Billy ran to the closet, stepped up onto the first shelf, reached up and pulled down a brushed aluminum box. He walked it back to the living room smiling. The colored lights on the side had already started blinking. It had a pulse.

He pulled the lid off the box and laid the board and pieces out.

“Go get the tools,” ordered Billy.

Jane folded her arms. “You go get them, bossy. I’m older.”

“I’m setting up!” replied Billy, waving his arm across the electronic board.

Jane sighed and left the room, flipping her hair in annoyance while Billy continued with the plugs and cables.

“IT’S ON! HURRY UP,” said Billy.

“Here,” said Jane, shoving the box of tools into Billy’s arms.

Jane pressed her palm to the sensor pad, and after a series of beeps and flashing lights, her piece, which resembled a shopping cart with off-road tires, advanced three spaces.

“NEXT PLAY-ER,” replied the board.

“Ha!” said Billy, pressing his palm to the pad. His piece, shaped like a cartoon football player with guns, advanced four spaces, onto a silver square that began flashing blue.

“YESSSS!” said Billy. Jane rolled her eyes.

“AUDITORY AUGMENTATION,” replied the board.

Jane rolled up her sleeves and connected a black wire and clip under her left elbow and a red wire and clip under her right elbow. “Ok, try it.”

Billy pulled a scalpel from the tool box and slid it lightly across her extended index finger. He quickly looked up at her face. “Anything?”

“No, I can’t feel it. Go ahead.”

With the help of the board Billy slowly cut around Jane’s right ear. An articulated arm reached up from the board to collect the blood. The installation only took a few minutes. Jane unclipped the wires from her elbows. “It tingles!” said Jane smiling.

“How’s your hearing?” asked Billy.

“Wow! I can hear your heart beat! And I can hear Ms. Jones next door…she’s with someone else…I think they’re exercising or something. I can’t tell. It’s my turn, right?”

“Yep.”

Another three spaces.

“DEXTERITY DEVELOPMENT.”

“Coooool,” said Billy.

After a few minutes Billy examined his new hand. Having run out of supplies from the game board, they resorted to using pieces of nearby appliances.

“I wonder if mom will notice that your new hand slightly resembles pieces from the coffee maker,” said Jane.

“She never notices anything,” said Billy angrily as he folded his arms and scowls.

“Yeah. All she cares about is this house, with the stupid gadgets and sensors.”

Billy quickly typed some commands into the game board with the aid of his new hand.

“I have an idea,” said Billy.

“Me too,” said Jane, smiling in understood agreement. “I’ll get connected again; you find all the gadgets you can.”

The entire process only took an hour, and Jane only lost just over a pint of blood. New eyes, arms, a new leg, some brain enhancements, and of course, the new ear.

“This is cooool,” said Jane slyly. “Watch this!”

Billy wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked up as Jane lifted the remains of the couch up over her head.

“Wow,” said Billy.

Jane set the couch down and punched the air.

“I wonder what mom will think of her gadgets now!” said Jane.

“Yeah!”

“Hi-YA!” she said, then kicked with the new leg and made contact with the lamp, which blew apart into a million pieces.

“Oh no!” said Billy.

“Oops! I didn’t mean to do that!” said Jane.

“What’s wrong?” asked Billy. Jane stood with her head in her hand. Billy noticed some blue sparks emitting from a small tear in Jane’s leg.

“Ow. Billy, something’s wrong. I don’t feel ok.”

Jane ran into the kitchen and began crashing into appliances.

“What are you doing?” screamed Billy.

“I don’t know! I mean, I am not doing it! It’s the gadgets! The gadgets are doing it!!!” said Jane, who then crashed into the kitchen wall which, exploded outward and rained onto the hundreds of vehicles on the courseways. She fell backward through the hole. “BILLY!!!”

“Oh crap! Oh CRAP!”

Billy hastily scribbled a note to his parents. He considered writing “this is your fault, mom!” but thought better of it. He left the note on the kitchen table, then crawled to the hole in the wall and looked down, wondering where his sister was and how long he thought he should let her have all the fun.

Rebuilt, Submission 7 by Ryan Wrenn

There was a commotion outside the door, voices scaling the stairwell and apparently having some trouble with it. Dr. Scaldwell rose from his desk and faced the door expectantly. But no man entered, nor knocked. Just shuffling outside the door. He walked closer and leaned his ear toward the door. Two men, it sounded like, arguing in harsh whispers.

“Well he’s fallen out of the sheet now.”

“It’s no matter, we’re not on the street anymore, just help me get him on his feet.”

“Shall I knock?”

“Not yet! Let me get his top hat on.”

Before the men could finish, the doctor reached for the knob and cracked the door open just the faintest sliver. A military man in the blue dress of the Union was attempting to prop up the limp body of a man half covered in a grey bedsheet. Another man, this one dressed in finer civilian dress, helplessly moved about with his arms extended as if to support the weight of the limp man without actually touching his person. Finally, without the finely dressed man’s help, the military man was able to stabilize the limp man enough to place the top hat on him. At once the doctor recognized him and opened the door wider.

“Mary Mother of God!” screamed the finely dressed man much too loudly for the situation, staggering back almost to the edge of the stairs but catching himself just in time.

“Sir, you really must try to stop screaming so loudly. This is meant to be a discreet operation,” said the military man, exasperated. He did not pay any mind to the doctor though; he simply pushed the limp man forward quickly and into the doctor’s small office. Reaching the examination table at the center of the room, the military man dragged the man on top of it, ever careful to keep the top hat secure and in place.

“What is the meaning of this?” the doctor asked as he made room for the finely dressed man to enter before shutting the door behind them.

“You are Doctor Scaldwell, I presume?” asked the finely dressed man, wiping the sweat delicately away from his brow, cheeks, mouth, and neck with a handkerchief.

“Yes, yes that is me but I’m strictly by appointment only and I…I’m afraid I must know what’s going on this instant. Who is this man?” he asked though he most certainly knew.

“This,” began the military man, “is no simple man. This is the half dead body of your President, Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”

A pause that should have been longer was interrupted by the finely dressed man loudly sighing in such a way as to sound much more in peril of dying than this man who lay unconscious in front of them.

Refusing to believe or to give into the obvious cries for help emitted by this sad, impeccably dressed man, the doctor approached the examination table. The man certainly was dressed like the President. A fine black suit and his signature top hat. His face, though, was wrapped tightly in cloth bandages.

“Are you confident that that bandage is not obstructing his breathing?” he said be felt above where the mouth should be for the heat of the man’s breath.

“No we’re not. That’s part of the reason we’re here.”

The doctor looked up at the military man, who stared back in cold sincerity.

“Remove the bandage.”

“Fine,” he said and removed the top hat, set it aside, and began the process of undoing the bandage. As he did so the doctor could see how it was bloodied from the back of his head.

“What has happened to him?”

“A man, some actor type, shot him at the theatre.”

“I see. How long ago?”

“Thirteen hours.”

“Thirteen hours? Why have you waited so long to see a doctor?”

“He has been with doctors since he was shot. That is not the concern.”

“Have you removed the bullet? Has the bleeding stopped? What has been done?”

“Mary Mother of God!” screamed the finely dressed man, again, only louder and more finely punctuated with a stumble over a chair and a fall to the floor. The doctor and military man looked to see what had startled him so.

Lincoln had risen on the examination table, propping himself up by his elbows. He stared hollowly at the two men who stood above him.

“Fuuuuucckkk,” he utterly deep in his throat, and promptly collapsed back onto the table.

“He’s been getting up and saying that about once an hour.”

Baffled, the doctor retrieved the chair the finely dressed man had just feinted over (and not regained consciousness from, so deep was his shock) and sat.

“And what do you require of me?” he asked and looked up at the military man.

The military man seemed as confident as ever. He folded the President’s former bandage neatly into a square and set it next on the doctor’s desk.

“The man behind you, on the floor,” he began, turning toward the doctor as he leaned on the desk, “is from the President’s personal bodyguard. He has issued instructions to me, and only me, to bring the President here after he was falsely pronounced dead by another doctor, paid off by us. We are to ask you to enact the President’s dying request, as detailed in his Last Will and Testament.”

“Which is?” the doctor asked, almost too afraid to hear the answer.

“We need you to revive him, and rebuild him.”

“’Rebuild him’? My apologies, sir, but I am not quite sure of your meaning.”

The military man stood up straight, reached into his coat, and retrieved a small, yellowed parchment. He began to read.

“On the evening of July the third, in the year of our lord eighteen hundred and sixty three, a Doctor Scaldwell accepted a severely wounded soldier into his office in the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Realizing that there was no help for the young man, having been pierced through several times with musket balls, the fine doctor set to work on elaborate machines meant to sustain and augment the soldier for the duration of his natural life.”

“That boy died!” the doctor exclaimed, shocked into remembering that desperate night and those desperate machines.

“And you must not let that happen to Mr. Lincoln,” spoke the finely dressed man as he slowly rose to his feet. His hand found the doctor’s shoulder and gave it a quick, too-friendly pat before the hand and the man backed away, across the room to the military man’s side.

“To what end must I do this?”

“The President’s will was very clear about that,” the military man said, gently putting the parchment back into his coat.

“Yes? Well? What is it?”

“The President would like to be rebuilt in order to find and kill the ones that killed him, and then to fight crime ever thereafter,” the finely dressed man said, no trace of doubt in his voice.

The doctor sighed the same sigh the finely dressed man had sighed early, his head in his hands.

“Would he not want to continue being President? That is if I can even do this absurd thing you ask of me.”

“The President’s will was very clear, Doctor Scaldwell,” repeated the military man.

“Yes, you said as much. And what if I refuse? Or accept and fail? What will happen to me?”

“It will be assumed that you are co-conspirator in the plot and you will be tried accordingly. Mrs. Lincoln will also not be very pleased.”

“The First Lady knows about this?!”

“It was her idea,” the military man said calmly.

The doctor looked up to the same blank and coolly serious faces.

“I suppose I do not have much of a choice,” he lamented and sank back into the chair, limp as the President’s body on the examination table.

“I am very glad to hear it, Doctor. We must be returning to the President’s…ahem…death bed now to avoid suspicion. But please do what you can for the President now. And prepare a list of material you may need. I will return with the President’s ink drawing of how he imagined his re-born self would look like so that you may use it as a reference. Good day, sir.”

With that the two men made for the door quickly, shutting it loudly behind them. Doctor Scaldwell stood and looked about the room, trying to will away the President’s body not two feet to his right. It was no use.

In his head he made a list of what he would need. A waterwheel, a musket, a spyglass, and the makings of a small steam engine.