The Hardyman | Page 8

to lean in to her and kiss her. Would such a thing ever be possible for him?
Jack knew the Hardyman would drive itself between them, that it had the capacity to crush her completely, that it could break her in two if it so desired. And a part of him had grown used to its superhuman strength. Indeed, it was a dangerous system, created to control hazardous environments, and, once installed in it, one grew to rely on the way it fulfilled a certain human desire for personal amplification. That the relationship between the outer skeleton and the inner skeleton took the man out of the loop was what made it an impractical tool. There was no articulation of the self. The machine had the power, the man had the control, but a microprocessor did not have a soul. Jack could claim thirty degrees of freedom, but how many degrees of freedom could he feel?
Trapped in his reverie, Jack did not realize that Betty was standing before him now. Over her shoulder, he could see her garbage truck in the driveway, the arm hanging down, long forgotten. She reached out to him and put her hands on his face. Already, he could feel the error signals beginning. It was this type of intimate relationship that he had spent his whole life avoiding. It was this kind of close connection from which he had fled for so many years. In the face of it, Jack closed his eyes. The collection of programmed instructions he had amassed failed to tell him what to do. His assembly language could not translate this situation. On the mixed-up map of his mind, numbered dates and arranged letters, random bytes and disparate bits, lost ROM and amnesiac RAM took him nowhere. All around him, the Hardyman shuddered tectonically.
Jack turned from Betty and staggered towards the garage, his stride sputtering, his body heaving, the Hardyman's knees buckling under the sway of transformation. Moments later, he stood over the prone suit lying at his feet. He held a socket wrench in his hand. Outside, Betty was waiting for him. With that, he fell upon the Hardyman. He threw himself at its massive hip and shoulder joints, roughly dismantling the suit from its foundations. He moved around it with a box wrench, violently tearing its sprawling hydraulic lines from their incestuous moorings. He brutally ripped its wiring harness from its connectors with his bare hands. Drops--of sweat? of tears? of something else?--fell from his face, wearing down the machine's resolve to cling to itself. The Hardyman was collapsing below him.
It was not until late that night that Jack, for the very first time, felt his own heart beating. Right then and there, he realized that he had no idea whatsoever how his heart worked, and that in no way did that matter, that his heart would beat for as long as it could, for as long as he was alive. He could see Betty's heart beating in her chest as she lay underneath him. That was enough for him, because this was more powerful than he was, and this was stronger than either of them, and he knew it would never tire, and he was sure it would not fail, this thing for which there were no odds, this thing for which there was no calculation, and that there could be no understanding beyond that this was real.
12
Years later, Jack stood on a hill overlooking a valley. A lifetime had transpired. They had married, and they had quit their jobs, and they had relocated entirely off the grid. Jack had devoted himself to a life of the mind--reading, thinking, and drawing no conclusions. Betty had spent her time in the garden--her hands in the dirt, her head in the flowers, refusing to experiment with anything but happiness. They had a son, Pitman, and a daughter, Maria. They were a family. Over the years, the things they had done and the people they had tried to become had faded from their memories. At night, lying in bed together, they listened to the sounds of their bodies living and dying at the same time. When they had grown old, and the children had gone to start their own lives, he had found her, and, once more, he was alone. He didn't call the paramedics or summon the police. Instead, he made his way slowly, for he was fragile now, yet determined, to his shed. There, he uncovered the boxes that contained the Hardyman, the machine that, so many years ago, he had worked so hard to build and then dismantle. By the end of the day, the suit was resurrected. Inside it for what would surely be the last time, Jack picked up the great, sad weight of his dearly beloved