Story 241: Symbiosis

It started as a spot on my arm, a whitehead that felt far too solid when I tried to pop it.  I've  had bug bites that felt like that, like there was some sort of lump under the surface, so I decided that was what had happened.  A bug, that's all.

The next day the skin had broken, and I could see a metallic object underneath.  Thin lines were extending out of it just under my skin like veins - or roots.  I poked at it, picked at it, but it was clear that trying to remove it would cause a lot of damage.  I knew that I needed an actual doctor but I don't have insurance and even in the best case scenario I knew it would cost me thousands of dollars to get the thing looked at.  I didn't even have a hundred bucks in my account, so I tried home remedies.

I put a hot compress on it, I treated it with vinegar, anything the internet terminal at the library told me to do.  Of course nothing online was for some sort of metal thing growing under your skin.  The closest I found to that were rumors, news stories on disreputable sites about some kind of inorganic spores released from the Kilnmast Air Force Base.  I know the one, it's maybe five miles away.

By the end of the week it was covering most of the skin on my arm, and I could feel those roots spreading all through me.  It didn't hurt and I hadn't lost any of my range of motion - that arm was a bit numb, but I can live with a strange metallic arm better than I can live with a mountain of medical debt.  I stopped leaving the apartment except to go to the construction site, where I wore long sleeves and gloves the whole day.  Coming home one afternoon I saw one of my neighbors being dragged into a black van.  Could have been debt collectors or something, but I couldn't help but remember that it was his library card I used to look up stuff about this condition online.

Maybe I'm being paranoid.

The next week it had covered my whole arm and my collarbone too, and I was starting to see changes.  Lines were appearing, and a little thing that looked like an indicator light although it didn't light up.  Soon the lines had deepened, and my new metallic skin had retracted from around my tendons to reveal delicate pneumatics.  Everything organic was being replaced.  I started to be able to feel things in that arm again, not like I used to but close enough.  That arm wasn't hot or cold, but it was aware of the temperature.  It couldn't feel, exactly, but it could sense pressure.  It was strange, to the extent that that word even meant anything anymore.

After that there was the accident at the job site.  A beam fell, and was about to land on Jamal.  He was wearing a helmet but that wouldn't have mattered; the thing was almost a thousand pounds and falling fast.  I shouldered him out of the way, and raised that arm above me almost like I was uppercutting the beam.  It rang like a gong, and I felt the pressure go through my arm, through the supports in my collarbone, through the spiderweb of other bits growing inside me that I hadn't even been aware of.  I felt my spine buckle and bend sideways, and then the beam was rolling off my fist.  It glanced off my skull before hitting the ground, and I felt a trickle of blood dripping down past my eyes.

Everyone was staring.  Of course they were.  I just stood there, wondering why I barely ached.  After a moment my spine popped itself back into shape and I realized that this thing, whatever it is, must have already taken over all my bones.  I ran, leaving everyone behind.  I couldn't have answered their questions.  Paranoid or not, I didn't want to go home either and so I went to one of the old buildings I helped raise.  The top floor of the Narmorra Tower has roof access if you know the code, and they never changed it once the job was finished.

Sitting above the city is relaxing.  I don't know what I'm going to do next, but the more I think about it the more I don't want to go back to what I was.  It feels right, somehow, feels like I'm better this way.  I reach up to dab more blood off of my head, and for a second my finger accidentally slides into the cut from the I beam.  I feel metal.  It must be almost everywhere.  I roll up my sleeve and look at the arm, the most complete part of whatever transformation has been happening.  It has all sorts of features now, panels and things that I can't get to open.  Metal-sleeved tubes of some sort.  That light, which has - maybe just now - finally started blinking.  It's green.  Green.  Ready.

It's ready.

Like I've done it a thousand times, I relax and allow the hatch on my upper shoulder to open.  slowly at first, but then expanding into a great cloud, spores begin to emerge and drift out over the city.