Plasticity Page 6

  “Daddy, stop it. You know that's not what this is about, and you know it's not Thom's idea. He's just here for support. Emotional and factual support.” And she flashed a smile at Thom, who was busy retreating into his shell, trying to shrink himself down as much as possible. “Thom is a counselor, and he does this kind of counseling for a living at the facility where I want to get the work done. He's very smart.” Thom perked up a little at the compliment, almost forgetting he was sitting a hair's-width from a dangerous grizzly bear in a human cop disguise. Almost.

  “Yes, Sir, that is true. I am a counselor. I discuss the options with clients, or, in this case, potential clients, and their families, to make sure everyone understands the procedure, and what they should expect, should they choose to undergo the transition.” There, that sounded nice and professional.

  Miguel's face was, somehow, stoic and disapproving at the same time. Marianne was smiling, unflinching, and had yet to say anything. Thom feared she may stay silent the whole time. These kinds of meetings could be extremely difficult when one party is a bully. It greatly unbalances the discussion, and stifles valid arguments the others may have.

  Thom continued, facing ahead, but mostly addressing Miguel, “Hayley has passed the initial psych evaluation, and she is well-informed. She's obviously given this a lot of thought, if you were worried she might be—”

  “We were not.” Miguel cut in, curtly. “We do not believe she needs to abandon a perfectly good body for a robot body, whether she can afford it or not. Which she can't. She was born with the right parts. No need to change them.”

  Hayley was getting visibly upset, so Thom tried to smooth this out a bit. “We do not see it as the 'abandon' of a good body, as much as we see it as protection. Human bodies are frail, and the world can be a dangerous place. Many people feel a prosthetic body frees them to be and do more, without fear. And that includes giving people the body they feel they should have been born with.” He pulled a pamphlet out of his jacket's inner pocket and started to hand it to Miguel. Miguel glanced at Marianne, who reached across to the pamphlet and took it for herself. She leafed through the few pages it contained, turning it over and back again, as if to imply that it was lacking in information. Which, Thom could admit, it was. Then, she promptly dispelled Thom's fears of her silence.

  “This is an ad. It contains no actual information. She is not going on vacation to a resort, she is actively seeking the death of her natural body, and you have a pamphlet with less information in it than a Carnival Cruise commercial.” Marianne's smile had gone, but she was not scowling. Her face did not display violent anger, despite the tone of voice and content of her words. Worst of all, for Thom, she was not wrong. It is harder to debate someone when they are in the right. Of course, this was not the first time Thom had been met with similar argument, so he was not wholly unprepared.

  “I do apologize for the pamphlet's lack of information. It is kept intentionally vague, so as not to offend or frighten. People come to us for many different reasons, injury, sickness, disease, abuse, so we try to be as soft with the concepts as possible. We don't want to re-traumatize people. It's not just bad for business, but it's also bad for the well-being of potential clients.” Thom needed to stand up. His legs were in danger of falling asleep. He had been searching for an opportunity, preferably one that would allow his standing to go unnoticed, but as yet had not found any. So, when the knock at the door came, and Miguel rose in response, Thom took the chance to rise as well. Weak-kneed, he walked around the side of the couch and steadied himself on the back and arm of the couch.

  Miguel returned with two women in tow. Thom immediately recognized the younger one, as she set her hand on the arm of the older one and “whispered” loud enough that everyone could hear, “That's the idiot.” The older one shushed her, and turned to Hayley's mother with a smile.

  Hayley's mother let a warm smile return to her face and rose to greet the newcomers. “Hi, Margot. Thanks for coming over today.” With a gesture, “This is my daughter, Hayley, and this is her friend, Thom.”

  Thom almost felt like he should know Margot. He had known a Margot, once. Notable, because she was the only Margot he had ever met, in real life. She was Charlene's mother. He was busy putting pieces of a puzzle together in his head, and almost missed when Margot said, “Oh, I know Thom. We go way back.” She smiled at Thom, expectantly.

  Thom was not working this out fast enough for Charlie, who was glaring at him. “See, he's just as bad as she is.”

  Thom realized what he had been too blind or dumb to see before. “Charlene!” Too loud. He had not expected to shout his epiphany, and tried to back-pedal. “And, Missus Becker. It's been a while. How have you been?” He did not listen to her response. He was, now, deconstructing the night at the restaurant, and making himself thoroughly ill in the process. Charlie wasn't some bigoted Normie. She was avoiding Portland because she had every right to do so, and any sane person would have done the same. Charlie and Portland's whole relationship was a cold war, an escalating arms race, and Charlie had managed to escape it without a nuclear incident. Barely.

  Thom rounded the couch and approached Charlie, “I'm so sorry for the other night, Charlie. We didn't recognize you with the weig—” and he stopped himself. “I mean, so much time has passed, and everyone's changed so, um, much.” He was growing increasingly aware of the fact that he was still in the room with several near-perfect-strangers, and he was kind of a hen in a wolf-house or something. Fox-house? No, that's not it.

  Miguel had returned to his seated position on the couch, while Hayley ran to join Thom and Charlie. Charlie noted that Hayley was performing the same act she had seen several small dogs do when new humans showed up at their homes. It usually ended in wet shoes, and a bit of puddling on the floor.

  “So, you're not a Normie?” Hayley, as exuberant as ever, began moving around Charlie, who could swear she heard the girl sniffing at her. “Which parts? All?”

  “Hey! Down, Girl.” Charlie backed away, or at least tried to back away. It was pretty tight quarters, and Hayley was too quickly taking up the spaces she tried to move into.

  Thom, the self-appointed moderator, tried to do his part to reel Hayley in. “Please, Hayley, I'm sure we'll get to that in a moment. Let's all calm down and join the others for the discussion.” Thom turned to see the bustle that the room had developed into, seats being found, friends talking, and Miguel, the imposing entity, stood out from it all. Not just in physical size, dwarfing the others in the room, but also in stern stoicism. Fox in a hen house, Thom realized. I was completely backwards on that one.

  “Please,” Miguel motioned with an open hand, “Come in. Let's see if we can talk some sense into our little girl.”

  Hayley pouted, audibly, and shuffled to the couch, sitting next to her father. Thom was greatly relieved to not have to sit next to the giant, but then saw that there were no other seats available. He and Charlie would have to stand, or sit on the floor. Neither prospect was enticing to Thom, but Charlie knelt at the coffee table without so much as a sigh.

  “So,” Charlie addressed Hayley, “You're interested in having some prosthetic work done?” She looked from Hayley, to Hayley's parents, and back. It was hard getting a read on them, with Hayley's mother's unflinching smile, and her father's poker face. “Cosmetic, or repair work?” She continued.

  “Sort of both.” Hayley tried to get it out there before her parents could respond.

  “What repair do you need?” Her father was only slightly slower to get his words out, overlapping Hayley's words. “You're perfectly healthy.” He seemed almost hurt, as far as Charlie could tell, but he remained a stern imposing force from Thom's perspective.

  Hayley seemed to slump a bit, maybe even shrink a little, on the couch next to her father. “I've been weak and tired ever since I got sick back in July, you know that. I try to cover it as much as I can, but it wears on me, and I am exhausted by the end of the day. It's getting harder.” Hayley
had lost her exuberance, and now looked close to tears. Thom believed Hayley's proto-tears, and tried to show sympathy, but Charlie was less than sympathetic. She'd had a father once, too, and she knew how to talk to fathers when you wanted something they were reluctant to give. It was exactly how Hayley was talking to her father right now. She glanced at Hayley's mother, and was happy to see in her expression the same amount of disbelief that she felt. No doubt, Mrs. Acero had put on this show before. Like a professional magician watching a trick that's been done by every aspiring magician, and not being remotely impressed by it.

  “Amateurs.” Charlie accidentally said out loud.

  Margot turned to Charlie with a slight crumple of her brows, but Marianne chuckled. “She's right, Hayley.”

  Hayley and Miguel had not seemed to notice Charlie's unintentional remark, so were both unsure what Marianne meant.

  “You think you invented those crocodile tears? Miguel, remember when I had that rough patch? When something was off, and I just couldn't seem to shake myself out of it? I asked for that puppy, just knowing in my heart that it would make everything okay again?” Miguel began to fidget, quite uncharacteristic for such a large person. He looked almost child-like in the moment. “This is her puppy.”

  Miguel glared at her, not enjoying having been manipulated into buying a dog, but he did understand the point she was making. “No more puppies. No robot body. Where would you even get the money for this thing?”

  Marianne flashed a look at Miguel. Charlie had caught it, but it didn't look like anyone else had. He stumbled for a second, then said, “It doesn't matter where you would get money. You can't do this thing.”

  Thom was starting to feel like he needed to step in more, make sure he represented Hayley's interests as best he could. She didn't seem to be getting much support from anyone else. “The cost is actually not a problem, in Hayley's case.” The women turned their heads to face Thom. Miguel did not. “Hayley has applied for the Betterment Assistance Fund, and we are projecting that the procedure, as well as a custom unit, will be completely covered by the amount the fund will extend to her.”

  Hayley was nearly bouncing on the couch, in excitement, having given up on the tears route, since she had been exposed. “A custom one, Daddy. It'll look just like me. You'll never know the difference.”

  Miguel sighed and seemed to shrink, ever-so-slightly. Thom couldn't be sure, but this looked like a minor resignation. Maybe they would be able to convince her parents, after all.

  “What the hell kind of company provides money for this? Sounds fishy to me.” Marianne was not the only one in the room who had this thought. Margot chimed in, as well.

  “I was just thinking the same thing. Who sets up and funds these things? Are they like grants, or are they like student loans?”

  Charlie leaned forward and rested her arms on the coffee table. Her shoulder was starting to bother her, again. Well, it had never really stopped bothering her since she had gotten out of bed this morning, but it had, at least, died down a bit. Now, it was coming back, and she was getting antsy.

  Thom, finally getting into his groove, had answers to these types of questions. He felt a lot less lost than he had been only a few minutes ago. “It works more like a grant, mostly. The money does not need to be repaid, but it does come with requirements, like financing a car. You have to have full coverage on it, right? It's the same with the new body, the fund requires that you have full coverage on the body.”

  “So, what is 'full coverage,' exactly? It sounds like that means her current health coverage won't be enough, is that right?” Marianne was a shrewd person, and Thom found himself not only impressed, but also greatly enamored of her. Something about her reminded him of Portland, minus the snarky, egotistical parts. So, maybe like a better version, or something.

  “It would replace her current health coverage, which, with a full prosthesis, wouldn't actually cover anything, really. The new coverage tends to be pretty close in price to existing insurance rates, but it is specifically designed to cover things that are more important to prosthetic bodies. A mix of health insurance, and car insurance, if you will.” Maybe they were softening up a bit. Thom was elated at the thought. “Hayley is a prime candidate, so her rates would be very reasonable.”

  Marianne seemed to harden up a little bit. “A 'prime candidate,' huh? How did they figure that out?”

  “Well, age and income are certainly factors in determining a prime candidate, but more importantly, she pays her healthcare premiums on time, and rarely files claims.” Marianne raised an eyebrow, but Thom pushed ahead, not waiting for a retort of any kind. “The BAF is funded by many donors, but the major-party donors are insurance companies.”

  “Companies, plural? Why would insurance companies back a fund that could potentially lose them clients? What about competition between companies?” No one else had said anything in a while, and Charlie was getting more restless by the moment.

  “Hayley, how about we go outside and talk for a bit.” Everyone looked at Charlie, who was rising to her feet and rubbing her shoulder. “The boring details aren't part of why I'm here, so I wouldn't mind skipping out on them, if you guys don't mind.” No one offered a counter-argument, so Hayley and Charlie left the room. Thom heard a wooden screen door clatter in the direction of the kitchen, so he assumed they went out into the back yard.

  “So, Missus Acero, about the insurance companies. Yes, they are competing companies, but they are all a part of the insurance coalition, which, as you may know, receives government funds for advancements in humanity, and this is their contribution to that. Also, full prosthetic people are their best customers. They never get sick, they rarely get injured, and when they do need to use their insurance, the work is always cheaper.” He led them into a scenario, where the numbers were all made up, but they sounded good enough, and nobody had the kind of time it would take to actually track down the numbers and do a comprehensive report. “Imagine an insurance company in this position: A regular human pays their healthcare premiums on time, every month for a year, then they have a single-car accident. Bad weather caused them to lose control and they hit a tree, or something along those lines. The insurance company is bound by contract to pay out, up to eighty percent. One day in the ICU, one day in regular surgery, two weeks in a hospital bed. Eighty percent means the insurance company pays out...” he did some quick math, “twenty-eight-thousand dollars. Leaving seven thousand for the client to pay. The client who just missed more than two weeks worth of work, and probably didn't have the extra money to begin with. Now, this client would have paid, over a year's span, around four-thousand and eight-hundred dollars in premiums, up until that point. That's a huge loss for the insurance company.” Thom met the eyes around him in the room. No one was debating him, yet. “Now, figure the same scenario, except the client is full-prosth. No trip to the ICU, not a single second in a hospital bed. A trip to surgery is hardly different from a trip to the mechanic. You're looking at,” he added as quick as he could in his head, “around six-thousand dollars, if the damage is really bad. Maybe less, if it didn't hurt any of the vital systems, and they just replace cheaper plug-and-play parts.” And now, the icing on the cake that Thom couldn't wait to get to. “With the less expensive costs, and significantly longer periods between use, prosthetics insurance coverage pays out one-hundred percent of cost. Clients pay nothing for most operations, pretty much anything that's not an elective surgery. All for about the same cost that most people already pay for health insurance.” Thom beamed. So many people brought ethical arguments, or religious arguments, or just plain bull-headedness into these kinds of discussions, and they overlooked all the benefits of a world of plastic people. Full Prosthesis was doing for humanity what driverless cars did for roadways: Making the world safer and better for everyone, including those who opted out of the new technologies.

  “Yes, well,” Marianne was not quite on board, yet, but Thom could tell she was getting there. “I still don't th
ink it's right for Hayley. She's too young to understand the full consequences. Too young to understand what it means to not be a flesh and blood human anymore.” She stopped herself, looked for a fair few seconds at Miguel, then she looked back to Thom. “She's a legal adult. She doesn't need our permission for any of this, obviously, since she has completed so many steps without so much as a phone call to us before she started. Why is she so concerned with getting our permission?”

  Thom felt like he knew the answer to this question, as well, but he didn't feel it was his place to answer it. He said nothing, got up and walked into the kitchen. The screen door clattered, and there was silence for several minutes. The people in the living room could hear some muffled discussion, then the screen door clattered again and Thom returned to the living room with Hayley in tow. Hayley had, quite obviously, been crying. Her eyes were red, and her cheeks looked sticky.

  “Because, you're my parents. I love you, and I want you to love me, and I wasn't going to do this, no matter how much I wanted it, if it meant that you wouldn't accept me afterwards.” She sobbed, and choked up, tears welling up in her eyes, again. Real tears, this time.

  Marianne got up from her seat and took Hayley into her arms, tucking Hayley's head against her breast and stroking her hair. Miguel sniffled, and Thom nearly tore a tendon whipping his head around, mouth agape. There were no tears, but his face had softened a bit. Thom thought that might be as close to crying as Miguel ever got, and decided that it did not, for even a portion of a second, make the man a single ounce less scary. If anything, it was worse. Like finding out a semi-truck had emotions. Sure, it might be a sympathetic character when it was in distress, but then it would be terrifying to realize that feeling emotions meant that it could feel anger. An angry semi-truck. Thom shuddered, and turned to the sound of the door clattering, again. Charlie had returned, and it kind of looked like her eyes might have been a little red, as well. Margot got up and went to hug Charlie, but she had a weird look on her face, like a smile, but also kind of like a taunt. Charlie pointed, sharply, at Margot, and furrowed her brow. Margot let out a soft chuckle and sat back down.