His Metal Boy

[Persiflage]

Of course, the man she bought the car from looked sad to see it go. He had the look of an aging hippy; he wanted to send his old car off with a story. she listened as he talked about driving the 1973 Saab over the Mother Road, Route 66, from New Mexico to Chicago, in the early eighties.

Nennya laid her hand gently on the fender. "That was the year I was born," she said, smiling, lying, but wanting to give comfort as she took away this relic of his past. "I will take good care of her. I promise."

"Take her for a spin, then, and we'll sign her over."

Nennya opened the door, which made a squeaky miowing sound. She grinned, smelling the cooked dust puffed up from the seats. The engine was sound; that was the most important thing, but the car needed work. It needed attention. It needed love. The ignition turned over with a chuckling grumble; the starter needed work, maybe a new battery, possibly a new alternator. She'd know for sure when she got it to the garage and began taking the grease-caked innards apart. The engine hitched into life.

"You can drive stick, can't ya?" asked the man. Nennya grinned out the window and shifted into reverse. The exhaust system blatted; the vents blew out hot air; couldn't be turned off. It was like a wounded thing, limping. But a solid transmission. The gears were in such good shape she could almost feel their chunky solidity and she shifted into drive and drove the car around the block.

You are a gorgeous piece of work, she thought, her hands caressing the leatherbound steering wheel. You want to go, and go fast. You are a racing car. And he loved to drive you. Don't worry, baby. I will help you go fast again. I will love you too.

She parked the car and got out, nodded at the man. They exchanged money for the pink slip, the keys.

"You take care of her, hear?" the man said, his voice wavery and uncertain. Nennya hugged him suddenly. "Yes. I will, I promise," she said. She wrote down the address of the garage where she had rented mechanic's space. "Come see her in a month. You'll be pleased."

She got back in, unrolling the windows, making careful adjustments to the mirrors. The didn't want to move; they'd been in the same position for decades. It was enough to see the man's reflection as she drove her car away, saw him waving goodbye.

She took the tunnel out to Faultline, swerving around human obstacles carefully. It was no wonder the speed limits in the city were set at a hard fifteen miles an hour; less wonder that so few people chose to drive. She went very carefully; the plates had been in date five years ago and she didn't have a States license.

She found what she was looking for, the giant fiberglass donut like a beacon. She parked the car carefully and climbed the fire escape, saw Bryan and Kai and Stoned and Vesper there on the roof.

"Hey, Nya!" said Bryan. "So, where's that surprise you were talking about?"

"It's there," she said, pointing proudly down at the parking lot. "I bought a car."

[Persiflage]

She looked over the invoice for the month's rent she'd taken out for McGuffin's garage. She'd only spent three weeks there, fixing the car up, and the owner, Ted, pushed an envelope into her hand.

"Eh? What's this?" she asked, opening the envelope. Inside was ten dollars, and a receipt.

"I thought I'd refund you the last week," said Ted, sitting on a folding chair by the battered metal desk in the battered glassed-in office. He lit up a cigarette and propped his feet on a gunmetal-gray filing cabinet. "You can take it, or maybe give it back to me, and we make an arrangement."

She closed the envelope, laid it down on the desk. "What?"

Ted gave her a smile that might have been deadeye come-on if he had been twenty years younger, or she ten years older. "I like you. You do good work. I saw you pull that piece of shit in here and wondered when you'd need to get me or Daddy to get you outta the mess you'd gotten yourself into, buying that junker. But you just set to. Y'ordered your parts ahead of time, y'paid me in advance, and you're about the only young jackass I've ever seen actually read the manuals before pulling on cables or wires. Y'never broke or lost a tool, and you never lost patience with what y'were doing."

"Thank you," she said calmly. Ted took another deep puff on his smoke, the vapor easing out of his nose in little snake-trails. He waved away the smoke, waved away her words.

"I wantcha to work here. We get lots of those Euro cars coming in here for tuneups and engine work, and I could use a hand. I could use a 'prentice. I'd pay you--not much, y'see, until I can make sure you won't screw up or pull some screeching fit over the girlie calendars or what-have-you. But if you mind, and behave, and learn quick, the pay'll get better."

He pulled the envelope over to him with two grease-stained fingers, and scribbled down a figure with a stub of pencil, then pushed it back over to her.

She looked at the offer. Five bucks an hour, ten hours a week. It wasn't much, but ... it was something, sure thing. And it would ... mean more time away from school. Something she really, really wanted right now.

"Okay," she said. And then, her voice uncertain, "I'm only fifteen, you know. I'll have to get permission from the school." Her mind quickly turned over the possibilities. She could enroll for a shop class, maybe, get permission to use this job as school credit. Get paid twice. She grinned. "Yes, I'll do it. Thank you, Ted."

He nodded. "Good 'nuff. You take care now, and I'll see you next Monday, four PM sharp. Bring a padlock and I'll get you a locker."

She smiled, left the envelope on the desk. She nodded at it. "Put that towards my 401-K," she said.

"Kids," he said, smirking, butting out his smoke. "Your kids." He let out a sigh. "I got a son about your age, and he's just the same way...." His voice trailed off. She didn't make an inquiry. She waited for the silence to be over.

Ted nodded at her, his expression serious. "Yep. You're a sharp one. Not too nosy, and we'll get along just fine."

Ted mused to himself, watching the girl go. Body like Bettie Paige, silent as the grave. He allowed himself a little pleasure in watching her walk. Even if she was covered in that god-awful fur, still good to look at.

He sighed, thinking about his son. Better than being covered with metal. Better by a long shot.

[Persiflage]

The work was steady, it was difficult, and it was good. She liked working with Ted. He never needed her to apologize for being slow; she was slow but she got the work done. And more than that. As the days went by, she got a sense that Ted appreciated her, respected her the way he might respect another man. This made her feel very good.

McGuffin's garage was a popular place in Paragon City for gearheads. Most of the income came from the four repair bays Ted rented to do-it-yourselfers--they got to use the tools, and Ted had a reciprocal arrangement with the U-Pull-It junkyard for parts that Ted forwarded to patrons with a discrete markup. The two lifts were for the customers who couldn't or wouldn't pay bay rent or fix their own vehicles. Most days she did oil changes and fluid maintenance on the drop-in customers while Ted worked on the more complicated jobs. Between her tasks he would call her over to demonstrate what he was doing--changing a taillight, rebuilding a carburetor, and once, doing a major overhaul on an exhaust system for a '78 Volkswagon.

She got a better idea of what to do as she went along. Times when there was nothing to do were interesting too. Sometimes Ted would send her over to one of the rental bays to lend assistance to a customer.

"I'm curious," she said once, "Why you let me help them for free. Wouldn't you make more money if it took them longer to fix their cars?"

"Nah," said Ted, smoking. "I want them out of here quick. Don't want 'em to get settled in, y'see. And if we're helpful and save 'em money, more than likely when their vehicle needs an oil change or lube or tire rotation, they'll come back here. Havin' you lend a hand makes me money in the long run, see. Anyway, I'm not short of cash. And you need the experience."

She nodded, staring at a patch of grease on her arm. There was some bossy guy she'd been sent to help the other day. His manly pride seemed insulted when she'd come over offering help. She held a light for him, handed him tools, and was quiet. He didn't seem too displeased; after half-an-hour he'd asked her to help in more constructive ways. She learned a lot about Audi braking systems that day..

"Who's Billy?" she said nonchalantly, looking at Ted.

He scowled and straightened up from the radiator system he'd been working on, and looked at her. He lit one of his eternal cigarettes, coughing with the first few puffs.

"Where'dja hear that name?"

She nodded at the patch on his overalls. "Billy" was stitched there in curly red script.

Ted looked down and put one hand over the patch, over his heart, and then down. "Heh. Fergot that. Yeah. Billy's my boy."

She nodded, not saying anything.

"Too canny by half," said Ted, staring her down for a moment.

"You're the one who keeps bringing him up," she said quietly. "You want someone to ask about him. Maybe you want to tell me." She shrugged.

Ted bent down, working loose a rusted bolt. The hexwrench slipped and he bashed his hand. He let out a curse, making vivid assumptions about the car's parentage. He put the wrench back in his kit carefully, and closed the hood.

"I guess I do. Not going to get anything else useful done today, dammit. C'mon to the office."

In the gunmetal gray office, with the dirty yellowed windows and the faded nudie posters on the wall, Ted sat down at his desk and pulled two beers from the battered minifridge. "Want one?"

She nodded. American beer was like water thinly flavored with yeast. She cracked it, not drinking; Ted wanted drinking company even if she didn't want the drink.

He took a deep sip.

"I guess it all began around here about four years ago. Freakshow started camping out in the Talos Island neighborhood, puttin the hurt on local businesses, starting up trouble. Course the Capes couldn't do too much--tried at first but pretty soon the Rikti War cut their numbers too small to do more than peck at the problem.

"So I paid them their money, to show I respected them. They came around about once a week to collect. Police couldn't do nothing. That's how it goes. My son, Billy, was mighty taken with them. He was a headstrong kid, my Billy. They were always giving him presents. Little things, like music players, tapes, stuff like that. I didn't like it much, the interest they took in Billy.

"Things came to a head about a year after the Freakshow started coming around. I came the garage one mornin' and some of my tools were out of place. Red flag. I asked Billy about it--he'd gotten a copy of m'keys and had been lettin' that bunch in here to use the angle grinder, the other tools, that sorta thing... the garage had become a little field hospital for the Freakshow to get sharp and dangerous. We had a fight, I put my foot down. But fifteen's a hard and difficult age for a boy. I don't think he listened to a word I said.

"When the 'Show came by the next day, I gave them their money and a little extra to boot, by way of severing our relations. They were polite, which was probably a bad omen, but I was just relieved." Ted took another deep sip of his beer.

"The next day Billy was clean gone. Took his toolkit and some clothes, and disappeared. Not even a note. But the money I'd given those Freakshow boys was on his bed, still in the envelope, untouched. They bought my boy. And they paid for him. I ain't never seen him since."

He finished his beer in one more big sip, crushed the can against the desk, tossed it in a bin.

"Go home, Nannie. I don't have anything else for you to do today."

[Persiflage]

She went to the public library,the main branch near Atlas Square. The building hummed with quiet activity. She looked around at the floorplan map, and found an elevator going down to the special collections.

She signed in, she promised to use no ink pens or hard pencils of any sort, she was asked to check her bag at the desk. When they asked for ID, she gave them her Paragon City hero's clearance, and their tone became immediately more helpful.

Some patrons were reading delicate-looking antique books which rested on niched foam lecterns. She wasn't looking for anything nearly so delicate.

"What are you looking for?" asked the librarian.

"Yearbooks," she said. "Public high school yearbooks for Paragon City District #245. Two thousand through two thousand seven." The librarian noted down her request on a piece of scratch paper and Nennya had a seat at one of the long tables.

In the black-and-white class photos from 2005, she found what she was looking for. William Theodore McGuffin, freshman. His face smiled out of the black-and-white print. He looked happy enough. She breathed a sigh of relief. There was always the chance that Ted's boy had skipped the yearbook photo, or, worse yet, not made it to high school before joining up with the Freakshow. There were always the elementary school yearbooks, but their paper quality was lower.

She flipped the pages carefully, looking at the activities and sports photos. She found him eventually--Billy McGuffin, starting forward on the boy's junior varsity basketball team. She almost cheered--there were photos from basketball games here in glorious color, the boys' purple-and-gold uniforms lurid, showing bodies in motion. Apparently the JV team had gone to the regional championships that year. There were four pictures of Billy, now. She picked up the book carefully and brought it to a librarian.

"I'd like color copies of pages four, twenty-six, and twenty-seven please," she said, forking over five dollars. She sandwiched the thick glossy photocopies between the leaves of her folio book of fairy-tales and caught the next available train to Brickstown.

"What are you looking for, exactly?" asked Neal Kendrick.

"I need to see pictures of the Freakshow," she said.

"We've got those in spades, Persiflage. Narrow it down for me?"

"I need to see mug shots of Freakshow in the Zig. I need to know the names of the ones who haven't been identified. I have a missing person here who might have been kidnapped into the gang. I thought I might as well narrow down the possibilities instead of plowing through every metal man in Paragon City."

Kendrick sighed, rubbed his temples. "Okay. I might as well tell you, there's quite a few. They get those implants, wave bye-bye to their hands. Nothing much left to ID by except dental records."

"You don't identify by DNA?" she asked.

"Nah," he said. "Excelsior use over time really tears up the cells. Code gets mushy. And DNA analysis is more about deduction than induction, if you follow me."

"I have time," Nennya said calmly. "Show me the pictures."

It made her eyes sore and her body tired. She flipped through page after page in the books, her eyes flickering from the faces to the pictures of Billy McGuffin. The things the Freakshow did to themselves... it made her sigh. Bald heads. Facial tattoos. Implants coming out of their bodies any-which-way. Just when she was thinking this was all a lost cause, she saw a photo of a boy who could be Billy. She copied out the file number. And then she closed her eyes for a few minutes, and kept looking through the book. She found another face that might be Billy. And she forced herself to go through the book a second time, culling any more possibilities. In the end she had five likely candidates.

"Give me the arrest and incarceration records for these, please," she said, giving Kendrick the numbers. He printed out several forms.

Two she was able to push out of the running. They'd been in the Zig for more than two years. Murder, arson, kidnapping. A legacy of assault and brutality. She shook her head in disapppointment.

The other two she eliminated. Prison medical records indicated they were in their late twenties or early thirties.

The last one had been collared eight months ago. Late teens or early twenties. Accessory to robbery and two counts of breaking and entering. He was in the six month of a twelve-month stretch at the Zig.

She looked at the young man's face. Could this be Billy? He had a livid scar across his face, and his hair was done in blue lacquered spikes. He looked sullen, and angry. He looked nothing like the boy at the basketball game.

Two arms missing, one at the shoulder, one at the elbow. No wonder Ted hadn't been able to find his son. Kendrick was right. Fingerprints were difficult to get from the Freakshow.

"Billy Doe," said the arrest record, under 'name.' "Billy," not "John." He knew his own name, it seemed. Her heart was troubled. Ted believed his son had run away. For this? To trade that good strong body, that smiling face, for this punkish leer?

Or had it been something else?

They'd tried him as an adult, she'd seen. But Billy could have been no more than sixteen when he was arrested and tried.

"Gah," she said, putting her head in her hands, leaning down on the desk. She'd gotten further, faster than she had anticipated. What was the better thing to do? Leave Billy Doe to rot in the Zig, stay with the Freakshow? Or ... to talk to Kendrick and Chung about reopening his case? Maybe it wasn't too late for this metal boy to make good on a second chance.

She sighed. What to do?

Why had she done this in the first place?

It wasn't for Billy McGuffin. It had been for Ted. She liked and respected Ted McGuffin.

"Print this out too," she said, and made a bundle of all the papers. "I'll need to forward this to Billy Doe's father. Be expecting a call from Theodore McGuffin in the next few days. Billy's his son."

[Dr1v35haft]

"Inmate posessions," says the man on duty roster, from behind a wire screen. He cuts open a heavy sealed plastic bag and checks the items off on a checklist as he dumps them into the tray in front of me.

"Two spiked paudrons. Two lengths chain. One shirt. Pair of pants. Pair of workboots. Pair of socks. One belt. One glove. Pair of underwear." I put everything in the state-provided paper bag, grocery brown. Like everything else prison-issue, it's ugly but can carry its weight.

"Wallet contents. Twenty dollars. Four fake IDs, confiscated. One pair ... buttons." They're earrings, you dipshit, I think, but it doesn't matter, because in the time I've been here my lobes have shrunk back to normal size and they probably won't fit any more. My fake fingers twitch spasmodically just before I grab these things and put them in the bag.

"One 'slicer' model arm, with attached blades. One slicer model forearm, with attached blades and testosterone pump. Confiscated."

"I want those back."

"Take it up with the governor, you. Sign here."

Grudgingly, I sign. The handwriting is scrawling and uneven. All I can manage is "Billy," before I give up. The man behind the screen doesn't notice, or care. He shoves another set of papers at me, hands me a check for fifty bucks. I look at the attached stub and see that I've made a respectable bundle working at the prison laundry, but been charged pretty much the entire bundle for my two prosthetic arms. Which don't work well anyway. Ain't it a bitch, as the saying goes. I sign for my pittance, too. Just "Billy," but the handwriting's better this time.

I'm wearing a pair of tatty jeans and a shirt pillaged from the church charity box to walk out of here. Already I'm glad to see the end of orange jumpsuits. I'm determined never to wear one again. I'm smuggling a handful of letters and data-chips in my shorts, from the guys on the inside who can't or won't use prison mail. Not that I blame them. From what I hear, everything coming from the Zig gets censored, or disappeared. Lucky thing the pants don't fit too good. They're holding on to my hips by main grace of a belt cinched tight to keep my drawers from dropping around my knees. Lucky me.

I pick up my grocery bag in both arms and walk out, past gates and guards and meters of razorwire and electrified barriers, following the green line painted on the floor. Out. I resist the urge to run.

And he's waiting for me, out in the free air. I breathe it in, tasting the sweetness of it, and take in the sight of my dad with the same breath. He looks just the same to me. I get a feeling of deja-vu, like I've done this before, many many times. He walks up to me carefully, taking in the sight of me.

"Hello, Billy," he says to me. "It's good to see you again."

I crush down the feeling of gladness, the urge to hug him. It's Zig behavior, coming out in me. It can be fatal to feel anything. He comes up to me. He's never been very demonstrative, but I can tell he wants to hug me. I'm not a kid any more, I think at him, and the gesture changes, becomes an offer to shake hands.

I shake. My stupid hands do that spasmodic twitch again, and I know my handshake is weak and girly, but it's better than accidentally crushing his fingers.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you home."

Our house is about the same as I remember, a little two-bedroom place with green grass enclosed by a cinderblock wall topped with broken glass. Maybe it's a little dustier and grayer inside than it used to be, but my memories are a little dusty too. He doesn't talk much to me, and that's usual. There's the picture of Mom on the mantel above the fake fireplace with the card noting her death and the commemorative rosary beads. It's the one place of color in the drab living room; Dad's put a sprig of blooming flower in the vase by her photo; he always has. Right now it's a daffodil, fleshy and golden. It smells sweet to me.

"Y'll wanna unpack," Dad says, gesturing to my paper bag. "Y'room's about the same. I'll get dinner on."

I walk up the narrow stairs to my room. It's a small space, maybe smaller than I remember, but maybe I've grown. There are still posters of bands I liked about a million years ago up on the wall. Battered green chest of drawers, narrow bed, shelf of toys and junk. The brown carpet has been recently vacuumed, the room recently dusted and aired. Dad has his ways of showing he cares. They're subtle, but there.

I stop smiling when I turn and see my reflection in the long mirror on the door. There aren't many reflective surfaces in prison. Everything's dull and blurry. But I can see myself. The blue hair in three lacquered spikes. There's a scar across my face. My face is ... different. I don't look like a kid any more.

I stare at myself, not breaking eye contact with this stranger who's looking back at me, and remove my clothes. There are more broad scars across my chest, my thighs. Everything's cut, in more ways than one. A strong, muscular body, crosscut with puce scar tissue. Thank god my dick's still attached. Couple of cuts look like they came within a gnat's ass of demanning me. I touch my chest with my metal hands. I can get sensation from them, a little, but my flesh flinches against my own metal hands.

I really don't know what to think. I have no idea who I am.

I look through the chest of drawers. Everything there is too small. I give up. I toss the paper bag in the closet and put on the crappy clothing I arrived in, and walk back downstairs.

Dad's got the George Foreman grill out and is cooking pork chops, by the smell of it. I salivate at the good smell of the meat. This is real food, good food. The oven is warm; coupla potatoes baking in there. I set the table out of habit, and almost drop a plate, but catch it before it falls. Silverware, two glasses.

Dad pulls out a jar of applesauce and a fancy store-bought cake from the fridge and lays out the spread on the table. He makes the sign of the cross, and I follow suit.

"Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty,through Christ our Lord. Amen."

"Amen," I echo, and tuck in. Prison food is tasteless gruelly muck, usually fingerfood to avoid the peril that utensils could create. I manage my fork awkwardly, eventually fisting it. It doesn't usually pass for polite in Dad's house, but I don't get any grief for it. Everything tastes so damn good. We share the cake between us. It's lemon with lemon icing. It used to be my favorite. I'm surprised to find out it still is.

After dinner dad lights up a cigarette and I manage the dishes. This is familiar. It's a good familiarity. Some things are the same. The smoke curls around the kitchen, is sucked out slowly through a crack in the window above the sink. This is also familiar, the smell of cigarette smoke and Palmolive soap in my nose. I lose concentration, I crack the dish I'm watching into three pieces by squeezing it too hard. I curse, briefly, under my breath, and fish the pieces out of the sink.

"Sorry," I say over my shoulder.

"S'allright," says my Dad. "Not like it's the fancy china or nothin."

We share a brief laugh over that. The fancy china, Mom and Dad's wedding china, is sitting in the highboy in the living room. It hasn't been used since ... when was the last time? Probably when the basketball team went to state. Yeah. It's been a long time.

"Thought about bringing it out," said Dad. "But then, I'd prob'bly manage to break it m'self, touching it. Your mother, God rest her soul, would have a fit if she ..." He trails off. I rinse the dishes and scald out the washrag.

I sit down opposite him and cage a cigarette from his pack. He flicks me a look but doesn't say anything.

"I know it's different. Everything is different, Dad. But ... I think it can be okay. I'm gonna try real hard ... not to let you down again."

He smiles at me. It's a faded smile; and it's familiar.

"That's my boy," he says. "I'm just glad you're here."

I turn my face aside and watch the smoke swirl out the crack in the window. I don't think I can bear it, how much he still loves me. His forgiveness is light and heavy both, like the headrush the nicotine is giving me.

I never got religion in the Zig, the way a lot of old crusters did. I never found God. But maybe God found me. Someone did. My body relaxes, slowly, little tingles all over. For the first time in as long as I remember, I feel safe.

[Dr1v35haft]

I'm looking at the heavy pink scars from the two IV ports that were taken out of my left arm. They're tunnels running to nowhere anymore. It would be easier for me, maybe, if those paths to my veins were still there; I wouldn't have to take the pills here, at the outpatient clinic, in the presence of two witnesses. Every day I get to make this little trip. If I behave for the next two weeks, show up promptly, swallow it down like a good boy, they'll give me the pills to handle on my own. Yay.

I look at the IV ports again. Easy, way too easy, for some nut to get access. Like Bigwig, the 'Showboi I bunked with. In the yard, he went to take a piss and someone grabbed him, managed to stick drain cleaner down his arm with a makeshift syringe. He died there in the yard, foaming green at the mouth. They rounded the rest of us 'Show up the next day, a triage center, removing all our IV ports. I remembered how it used to itch, when it was healing. Mostly I was glad not to end like Bigwig.

So I take my pills. I don't think I like them much, the way they make me feel. They make me feel like nothing. Sometimes, when I'm in it, doing my community service time, fighting close up, I feel like I can almost make contact with something. Maybe anger. But there's this wall between me and what I can feel.

I feel a little frustration, sometimes. Everything else I feel is purely physical. I'd like to get mad, maybe. It's the only way to enjoy a fight.

I'm hungry, pretty much. I walk out to the parking lot and see Dad there. It's time for weeknight Mass. Dad was never big into religion in the old days, but he seems to like it now. But with all the little rules I'm supposed to follow right now, a few more "Thou Shalt Nots" doesn't matter to me either way. I go to church with him.

It'd be nice to get excited about anything. Sometimes I think I'd like to have a woman, but when it comes down to making the acquaintance of Miz Rozy Palmer I get frustrated. Anyway, she's changed her name at some point to Miz Metal Lectrotwitch. I'm chaste even to myself. I remind God about this while I'm kneeling. I'm practically a saint, by all the standards that matter to the Church.

A standard Wednesday, we go to garage to do a little work. Dad's new apprentice drives me wild, just wild. She never smiles. Not ever. Not at me. At first I thought she was afraid of me. But it's not that. It's contempt. I've snuck a look at her when she was changing by the locker. Fur all over her back, the brown length of her broken only by her brastraps. She's all curves. She goes to my school. I've seen her smile and laugh with her happy little crowd of well-adjusted popular kids, but she never smiles at me. She doesn't talk to me. If she sees me coming down the halls, she turns and walks the other way. When she's at the garage, she stays away from me.

I shrug on my coverall and pick up my toolbox, ready to do some engine work. She's wary like a cat, already at the furthest corner of the place from me. I think about what it might take to get some sort of reaction out of her. I think about breaking her arm, feeling the bones snap under my hand, and her screaming. I smile, briefly.

She stares at me, hard. "All right, Billy?" she asks. Her voice is cold.

I lose the smile. But the funny thing about not feeling anything? It's hard to feel guilt, too. Or shame. Or anything much at all.

[Dr1v35haft]

"I don't wanna take those drugs no more," the boy said, sullenly.

Dr. Conrads steepled his fingers and looked over at Billy, who was sitting there in the chair, his hands occasionally twitching at his sides. There was a trace of softness there in the pout of Billy's mouth, the last vestiges of childhood.

"Why not?" Conrads asked.

Billy looked down at his hands, then back at Dr. Conrad's chin, then out the window at the sunshine.

"I can't ... feel. Anything good. I don't want to take them."

Dr. Conrads reached over to his desk and pulled out Billy's file.

"Have you stopped taking your medications?"

Billy shook his head, then looked Conrads right in the eyes. "Not yet."

Conrads nodded. "I see. Well, you've had two weeks on this regimen. We can set you on a lower dose of the anti-aggressives, and your anti-Excelsior prescription is over in another week. Can you hold on until then? Discipline yourself to another week? We'll have a better idea of what the problem is when you're done with that round."

Billy's scowl deepened.

"Talk to me, Billy."

"I can't feel nothing! My body don't work right. You gotta listen to me."

"I'm listening, Billy. What's wrong? You need to talk to me."

There was a long silence. Billy took deep breath, and talked more than he ever had before at one go.

"Ever see that movie "Clockwork Orange?" That's me. I'm a clockwork orange. I can't feel nothin. I don't want to do nothin' bad. That ain't good... I mean, if you can't make a choice to be bad, what does it matter if you're good? It's just nothing. I got no choice. I don't feel nothin good. I don't feel like doing anything at all. So what does it matter if I behave if I don't have a choice about behaving?"

Conrads nodded solemnly.

"And there's girls."

Conrads nodded.

"I can't feel nothin' good about girls."

From the notes of Dr. Conrads, forwarded to Dr. Marshall:

WTM expresses frustration over his inability to "feel good." In similar cases, the anti-aggressive drugs have also been used as a type of temporary chemical castration. Parallel effects for WTM; admits to having fantasies of intimacy with his female classmates that culminate in violence instead of coitus. This is incredibly bad; his suppressed sex drive is finding an outlet in violent urges, if not actions. WTM is following his drug regimen, but I feel that the current prescriptions and dosages are doing more long-term harm than short-term good.

I recommend changes in his medications; immediate cessation of his anti-aggressive prescriptions especially.

At this point, he gets along with his classmates; his schoolwork is turned in on time with average marks; he works part-time in his father's garage. He is an model student. But he makes an eloquent point, comparing his situation to that of Alex in A Clockwork Orange; how can one be said to be good, or obedient, or even human, if the potential to make bad choices, to be disobedient, even to be antisocial, does not exist?

[Dr1v35haft]

When he came home that afternoon, it smelled like something burnt. The smoke detector in the kitchen and in the living room were going full blast.

"Dad?" he called, and moved over to the range, took the saucepan of smoking rot off the heat and, when that didn't clear up the smoke immediately, opened the window and tossed the whole mess out.

"Dad?" he called again. Faint noise from his dad's bedroom down the hall. He went in and saw the form of his father there, half-leaning against the bed, clutching his left arm tightly. The phone was off the hook, wailing a dial tone.

"Dad!" Billy got down on his knees in front of his father. Theodore McGuffin nodded at him and tried to smile through gritted teeth.

"'lo, Billy," he said. "Chest's on fire. Knife through the ribs, like."

Billy grabbed the phone, the plastic slipping through his metal fingers like wet soap. He punched down the receiver and dialed 911.

"Pills," said his father. "Little ones. Bathroom."

He ran to the bathroom, phone still in his hand, jerking out to clatter on the floor as it reached the end of the phone tether. Billy rummaged through the medicine cabinet, knocking Q-tips and cough syrup to fall pell-mell into the sink. He found the pills, the little ones in the brown bottle. He had them clutched in a deathgrip, picking up the phone again, dialing 911 again.

His metal fingers slipped and slipped against the pill-bottle. He couldn't get it open. His dad's grip on his shoulder was so weak.

"I can't, Dad, it won't--"

"Billy," said his father, looking up at him.

This is 9-1-1, please state the nature of your emergency...

"Billy, I'm going to die."

"Forty-two-seventy Foster Lane House nine, Talos Island. Please hurry, my dad's having a heart attack."

Your father is at that address? How old is he?

"Yes, he is. He's forty... Forty-three."

"Billy." His father's voice was very quiet, but it seemed to fill the room. "Remember to be kind to animals and children. Respect women. Worship God every day of your life. I love you. Be a good man now. I'll always be proud of you."

We're sending paramedics to you now.

"Dad..."

"Say the rosary with me now." His father's eyes flickered to the bedside table, where the beads were clumped like jewels.

Billy made the sign of the cross. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen." His father's voice joined him in the Apostle's Creed, went quiet at the Our Father. At the close of the Hail Mary, he was gone.