The Hardyman | Page 8

front of him, Betty was sitting in a folding chair, laughing.
In the wide-opening inner-territory of himself, his heart was ablaze.
There was, it seemed, a superhighway of senses inside himself of which
he had not been heretofore aware. Because of this, he wanted to grab
her hand, to lift her in his arms and carry her away, 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,