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<p>Page 61.</p>
<p>I planned to lose my left arm on
Friday. I didn&rsquo;t tell Lola this. It would be a surprise. I had
a robotic arm ready to snap in, plus two backups in case anything
went wrong with the primary, which it wouldn&rsquo;t, because the
primary was a piece of art. It was by far the smartest thing I&rsquo;d
ever built, and, not wanting to boast, but I have built some pretty
smart things. Once I created a microbe that ate garbage. The idea was
you open your trash can, throw in your table scraps, and they&rsquo;re
gone within the hour. They were really hungry. But that project never
got out of QA, because if the microbes ever got out of the trash can,
well, they would eat everything. There were some PR concerns about a
trash-can-eats-man scenario. Which was not really the fault of the
microbes, in my opinion. I felt someone from one of the military
departments should have come up with a safe receptacle. But anyway.
There would be no such problem with the arm, because there was only
one customer: me. And I loved it.</p>
<p>I was also excited about being able to
do this amputation properly: in a sterile environment, while
unconscious. I imagined myself slipping gently off to sleep in Better
Future&rsquo;s brand new operating theater under the gaze of a
green-masked anesthetist, waking to the new arm already attached. I
could see myself swinging my legs off the table, saying, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
get that,&rdquo; when the nurse went to fix my gown, and my new arm
swiveling behind me, knotting the cord with machine precision. I
imagined opening the door to Lola&rsquo;s suite with articulated
fingers, the desire on her face when she saw what I had become now.
But none of that worked out.</p>