Machine Man by Max Barry Page B

metal contacts. Mirka unpeeled these from her temples. I wasn’t sure about this but I followed her directions to adhere the contacts to my own skull and fit the glasses. Everything looked flat. Then Mirka’s face sprung to life. I had never known my eyes were so low-res.
    “The enhancement is nice,” said Mirka. “But the real benefit is the zoom. You pinch your eyebrows. Like this.”
    I mimicked her movement. Her face rushed toward me. I flailed my arms. Mirka laughed. “And the other way to zoom out.” She helped me upright. “You see?”
    I picked a corner of the lab and made it leap closer. There was a paper clip there, as big as if I were kneeling in front of it. I zoomed out and in, picking tiny objects in the room and blowing them up. I turned my head without zooming out and nausea bloomed. So that was not a good idea. Zoom out, turn, zoom in.
    “They will make you a pair, of course,” said Mirka. “If you ask them. Gamma.”
    “Gamma’s making these?” I pulled off the glasses. The world went dull.
    She nodded. “Gamma is doing many peripherals.”
    I lay back. Mirka filled the syringe with morphine. I didn’t mind Gamma experimenting. That was what I had told them to do. But I wasn’t sure I wanted them making glasses. I didn’t know why. As Mirka filled my veins, I wondered if it was because I had not designed them. My department was not just about me, of course. It was about developing products for a general market. Cassandra Cautery had explained this to me and it had seemed okay at the time. But I wasn’t sure I liked it.
    I CAUGHT the elevator to the fourth floor of Building C, where Cassandra Cautery worked. Cassandra Cautery had visited the labs several times but I was always drugged or busy with wireframes so we hadn’t spoken. I just knew she was escorting executives around.
    I wheeled myself along carpet so thick it made my arms ache. Building C was nice. The entire Better Future complex was visually attractive, but in a utilitarian, engineering kind of way, where beauty meant simplicity. We favored straight lines and parabolic curves, no bleeding of anything into anything else. Here was free-flowing color. I was not a big fan of art but I think some part of me relaxed.
    I found Cassandra Cautery’s office at an intersection of corridors. I had an appointment but was early. I wondered if I should do a lap. “Charlie!” Cassandra Cautery came around her desk and beckoned me inside. “Thank you so much for making time.” She closed the door behind me. The office was small and filled with thick books. It had a low sofa, a painting of a circle, and a computer that looked more interested in being pretty than working fast. There were no windows. “Can I get you a drink?”
    “No. Thanks.”
    She leaned her butt against her desk and folded her arms. Her blond hair glowed in the artificial light, picking up the UV. “I’m hearing nothing but great things about your work. Everyone is extremely, extremely excited. It’s a credit to you. As a manager.”
    “I don’t know about that.”
    “Don’t be so modest. I know you don’t consider yourself that way. But your people don’t need a social boss. They need someone who inspires them on an intellectual level. Who forges within them a burning desire to invent. That’s you.”
    I shifted in my wheelchair.
    “Listen to me. Advancing within a company requires self-assessment. I should know. My first performance review, my boss said, ‘Cassandra, you are diligent, intelligent, motivated, and hardworking, but you need to learn how to settle for less than perfection.’ I argued at the time, but she was right. I had to train myself to accept that not everybody works as hard as me. That what I consider unacceptably sloppy is actually an okay result, and it’s counterproductive to get into a whole thing where someone starts crying and threatening to quit. And you know what? Learning that not only helped me grow as a manager. It helped me