A Cold and Heartless Lullaby -Chapter 30-

Jaylen sat before Graham in the sand, her delicate form outlined by the warm sun, and her flowing white dress blowing gently in the summer breeze. She glanced at him from over her shoulder, her vibrant eyes melting a hole in his soul. Strands of her glistening brown hair fluttered across her face. Graham sat next to her, soaking in her beauty with a smile. They were lounging on the beach near their shack, where they used to practice music, and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

“Where’s Kia?” Graham asked. Jaylen giggled, a smile gently parting her lips.

“It’s just us, silly.” She leaned over him, her necklace dangling over Graham’s face. “Let’s go for a swim,” she whispered, walking her fingers up his chest. She gently grasped the zipper of his coat and pulled it down, revealing Graham’s bare chest beneath it. 

A grunt of pain escaped his lips as his skin caught on the zipper, but Jaylen didn’t stop. He watched in paralyzing agony as the zipper peeled the skin off ‌his chest. The zipper popped off in Jaylen’s hand, and she screamed. His jacket started to melt, mixing in with the blood. Graham wanted to scream, but he couldn’t; His voice came out as a mangled distortion. He watched as his exposed muscle withered, revealing a glistening metal skeleton underneath. Jaylen backed away, her hands shaking. Graham tried to call out to her, but he couldn’t form any words. He couldn’t even move. She ran away, her white dress flapping in the wind behind her.

Graham jolted awake, suddenly aware of the room around him.

“Oh, thank Sol!” Andron said, “You’re okay, I thought I had lost you for a second.”

“Rot!” Graham cursed, his voice distorted by the radio piece it came through. “What was that?”

“I’m not entirely sure what happened. I was just fixing the pistons in your legs when you blacked out.” He stroked his chin. “It’s possible your Soul is still trying to adapt to its new vessel. It could happen again, but it should stop once you’ve had some time to adjust.”

Graham was still reeling from his nightmare and didn’t understand anything Andron was saying. It felt so real, like Jaylen was really there.

Graham sat up on the operating table. He had been in his new body for a few weeks already, but he was still trying to get used to it. It was like he was an infant learning how to walk, or at least that’s how it would have been if his legs had been working at all.

“Your legs should function fine now,” Andron said. “I think I have diagnosed the problem.”

“That’s good,” Graham said. 

“It may still take a while for you to be able to start moving them,” Andron continued. “Here take this.” One of his assistants, a young brunette, took the drill he was holding and returned it to his toolbox across the lab. 

As far as Graham understood, he would be unveiled eventually; However, his true identity would remain a secret. The world wasn’t ready for a human soul transfer to exist yet, so Andron would claim that he was programmed from a complex combination of animal souls.  

“Try bending your knee for me,” Andron said. Graham did his best, but all he could manage was a slight flinch. 

In a few hours, Graham had control of his legs, and Andron’s assistants had him walk between two rails for support. Every step was slower and shakier than the last. Andron was kneeling at his feet, watching closely. Graham felt foolish. It was frustrating being so bad at basic motor skills. It was like his body had betrayed him. He had such a clear memory of walking, and yet he couldn’t remember how he had done it. His muscle memory had been erased.

Though his arms were working well, clutching onto the railing was a strange sensation without the sense of touch. His fingers felt numb. He had to be looking at what he wanted to grab instead of feeling around for it, and as a result, he missed the railing several times. 

“I think I’ll make an adjustment to your right leg,” Andron said. “Can we get him on the table please?” 

Two assistants carried Graham over to the table and laid him down. Andron took a shin in one hand and unscrewed the joint at Graham’s knee. The leg popped off, and intense pain sparked like lightning across Graham’s body. He let out a muffled scream, grasping at the stump. Andron backed away hastily.

“Woah, what just happened? Did that hurt you?” Andron said.

Graham tried to nod his tiny head, but found he didn’t have the range of motion, so he opted to let out a positive grunt.

“But that’s impossible. You have no nervous system to speak of. Unless…” 

“What?” 

“It must be phantom pain,” Andron said, thinking out loud, “Like soldiers who still feel pain in their amputated limbs. It’s a sort of placebo effect. Your mind has gone so long experiencing pain that it recreates the sensation when it expects it. I’ve effectively broken your leg.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Graham said. “Can I have my leg back, please?”

“Right, of course.”

…

By the time Andron’s tests concluded, Graham was sore all over. The assistants took him back to his room in a wheelchair, putting a blanket over him to make sure no one would see. They left him inside the entrance of his room and shut the door behind him. The tiny living space reminded him of the place he had before he moved in with Jaylen. It was strange how everything could change while remaining familiar. 

He wheeled himself to the short balcony that overlooked the Council’s internal gardens. They grew in the center of the building, a verdant square placed at an angle to twelve storeys of balconies and open space above it. Graham could see windows from other rooms across the way, and gloomy light filtered in from the massive skylight above. If there was anything consistent between this building and the old one, it was opulence. 

With a sigh, Graham wheeled away from the balcony. His soul leaped inside ‌him when he saw a figure next to him, and it was a moment before he realized it was his reflection in the mirror. It was uncanny to see a stranger in his reflection. It had a hideous little head with slits for eyes and few other features, protruding from a rail-thin metal body. Just add it to the list of things to get used to. 

Graham couldn’t smell, touch, or breathe. Many of his muscles had either forgotten how to operate or didn’t have a mechanical equivalent. Andron had told him it was only temporary. There would be many upgrades before the body was considered complete. The end goal was a one-to-one transfer, where every ‘muscle’ moved as expected. It was unlikely to truly be achieved, but hopefully, they would come close.

The hardest thing to get used to was the lack of a beating heart. Left with only a soul, it became obvious how much of the work it did. Andron had said that the heart was the closest organ to the soul in the second plane. He said that they were connected. They both had some version of a pulse, and both gave a sense of vitality. With only the soul, it felt strange, but at the very least, Graham must have been the first heartless human in history.

Looking out from the reflection was a walking paradigm shift, a scientific marvel, and yet when Graham looked in the mirror, he felt small. He felt like he had been shrunk down and stuffed into a metal head. He could see the walls of his eye-slits at all times, and he felt like he was trapped inside a cold metal box, struggling to breathe. Graham blinked. The eye shutters didn’t need to blink, but it was the only thing he could do that made him feel human.

He was rubbing the back of his neck when he realized his tattoo was gone. He sat there for a moment before it dawned on him that his entire life had been erased, and the labels of his past no longer mattered. His childhood delinquency did not define him any longer. He was free to define for himself who he was. It was like Andron had said: he could start over, and he had all the time in the world to do it.