Glory



The man carefully connected the small junctions together,
nimbly handling the thread-like fibres. Seen through the high
power microscope the man had in front of him, the filaments
appeared to be thick, transparent cables. Some of them were
hollow, slightly bluish in colour, while the solid ones were
almost perfectly invisible. Rapidly, the man joined them by
pairs, inserting a small electro-optical synapse between
then, and then gluing it with an artificial myelin. This was
simply a temporary soldering, it would be up the nanobots to
later complete the neural connection.

The man's job was tediously mechanical, and in spite of his
obvious deftness, it progressed slowly. This was a very
inefficient way of doing it and, as with all such simple,
repetitive tasks, there was a machine which could manage it
better than its creators, and much faster. The man, however,
knew this only too well. He had, after all, helped design
the micro-neuronic cylinder.

It had been a true blow when all three cylinders were
destroyed during the last attack. The explosion which had
ripped through the Infirmary had also damaged most of the
units being wired at the time. 

"And eleven people died," the man thought. It was strange,
how he sometimes forgot there were people inside those
bodies. Beneath the ceramic, plastic and metal, a living
being dwelled. Empathy is invariably one of the first
victims of War.

He tried to put these thoughts aside, thinking instead about
the end of his shift, and the little celebration which he
had prepared for himself. He would dine alone, as always,
and the food rations would be the same ones he had each and
every day.

But tonight was a special night.

Once a year, he would take the small book his father had
given him a long time ago, when he had left for the last
time, and read it. It was quite long, and he only read a few
pages each time, but he was already halfway through. He didn't
know what he would do when he finished it, but that would
still be in years to come. He wasn't sure to live that long.

A thin leaflet marked the place where he had left off the
previous year. His mother had given it to him just before
she died. It had a few songs printed on it, which his mother
used to sing beautifully, like an angel. Even now, after the
erosion of time, he felt a knot form in his throat when he
remembered her voice. His own voice was but a hoarse rasp,
but he sang aloud nonetheless. No one except for his parents
had ever heard him, and that had been a long time ago, when
they all celebrated together during cold winter nights.

The strange thing was, he never really understood what they
celebrated. As a child he should have been more inquisitive,
but it had become such a natural occurrence he had never
asked his parents. It wasn't until the first year he spent
alone when he began wondering about it. He thought that the
book might give him a clue, and it was then when he began
his yearly ritual. After almost thirty years, he still
didn't know.

His thoughts shifted to the work he was nearly finishing.
In spite of his desire to end quickly, he had to be
particularly careful. The model he was working on was a new
design, somewhat different from the ones he had wired
before. Smaller and lighter, it also had almost twice as
many junctions as the older cyborgs. It was an experimental
model, and its shell was unlike anything he had seen before.
He looked at the unit's head, and wondered who in his right
mind would choose to give it a young girl's face. It was
unnerving, and it also scared him a bit. Who was behind
those delicate features?

He made the last connection, and stepped back, wiping the
sweat from his brow. A quick test to check his work and he
would finally be able to leave. He faced the computer behind
him and typed a few brief instructions. Columns of numbers
began flickering across the screen, checking the minuscule
currents flowing through the myriad of fibres. A few minutes
later the diagnostics ended, no problems detected.

As he was about to shut off the system, he sensed something
behind him. Slowly, he turned around, and found the girl
looking straight back at him. This sometimes happened during
testing, as the small stimulus would "wake up" the cyborg
for the first time. He was used to the blank stares caused
by nonexistant memories, and the absolute inability to
comprehend this artificial birth.

This girl's look was different somehow, but he couldn't say
why. It was as blank as all the others and yet a certain
warmth came through, and perhaps a little fear also. The man
found himself at loss for a moment, and suddenly felt the
impulse to say something, to comfort her.

    "Happy birthday, little girl," he simply said, stroking
her jet black hair.

She kept blankly staring back at him.

The man waited silently a few moments, and then shook his
head, sighing. He turned towards the console, and mailed the
pick-up order. The girl would be taken away in a few
minutes. He shut down the diagnostics equipment, and turned
to see her for the last time.

Her eyes had closed, and for some reason he noticed how
pretty she was. He wondered why had such a thing occurred to
him now, and leaned closer to her face. Something was
different, a subtle but definite change in her expression,
yet he couldn't tell what it was.

It was then when he suddenly realised that she was smiling
in her sleep.




                    Joyful, all ye nations rise,
                    join the triumph of the skies,
                    with th'angelic host proclaim,
                    "Christ is born in Bethlehem!"

                    Hark! The Herald Angels sing
                    Glory to the new-born King!



_________________________________
marco@chinook.physics.utoronto.ca
Gunnm: Broken Angel
http://128.100.80.13/marco/alita.html