The thing, once known as Mac Sfortunato, 3d-printed some yellow daisies, his wife’s favorite, and escaped the lab.
The sound as he walks is like two hollow metal drums being beat with a stick.
Donk, donk, donk, donk.
People gape, but he ignores them.
With each footstep, he wonders why metal. It could have been nanocarbon-filament woven into a skeletal lattice with the fiberoptic and pneumatic cables laced through like veins and arteries. A 3d printed vinyl covering and some soft pillowy muscles and he’d be passable.
It matters to him because he’s a deadman whose memories, feelings, and desires were downloaded from a dying brain and uploaded into a cybertronic-Neuromodulator.
And no, deadmen don’t have thoughts of their wife that get them all tangled up inside, so he is something else.
The sensation reminds him of love, or the jittery never-satisfying-thing he always felt around Diania.
At her door, he depresses the announcer and waits.
When the door slides open, it reveals a man.
A man in his robe.
“Who is it darling,” Diania’s voice calls from deeper inside.
“A delivery drone, I guess.”
The interloper takes the daisies and the door closes while Mac feels his modulator knot the other way.
Art by: Luca Oleastri
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