Lyle’s brown satchel is open and glistening with rows of delicate instruments. Beat-up implant maintenance tools. Familiar but filthy. I’ve only seen the sterilized, surgical steel versions in my father’s office.

Lyle turns his head and smiles at me sort of crooked. He leans over and takes a closer look at my port. Some glint of recognition is in his eyes. Did he see the Zenith? Recognize it?

With quick flicks of his wrist, he turns my implant back on. As he works, he speaks in a quick whisper: “Maybe I had you wrong, brother. It ain’t easy to trust the machine. Knowing it’s inside you. Been called the classic anxiety attack of the new century. Panic brewing way down in the reptile part of your brain, three hundred million years old. Older than language. The alien inside. Fear in you like claustrophobia. Leaves you clawing at the roof of your coffin. Except you don’t want out of it—you want it out of you.”

A shiver pulses from my temple and spreads through my body. Lyle’s hands are moving in efficient bursts in my peripheral vision. I think of Nick and his cube as Lyle keeps talking.

“Gotta understand the machine’s a part of you. Lose the amp, you lose your mind. Brain is the sum of its parts. Hindbrain’s got your instinct for survival. Limbic is where love and hate live. Neocortex has got your imagination in it. And your amp is another part. What it does is up to you.”

A final twist of his hand.

“Friggin’ ice pick,” he says, shaking his head. “Every amp should have his own tools. Doctors are illegal. Now, how’s that feel?”

His words come into focus before my eyes do.

“Better,” I whisper.

Lyle’s hands go under my armpits like steel clamps. He drags me over to the recliner, rests my back up against it. He disappears for a second, then comes back and hands me a glass of water in a mason jar and some ice cubes wrapped in a fast-food napkin. I sip the water and press the ice to my face.

I look up to thank Lyle and then stop flat. His face is serious, carved out of wood.

“You got a Zenith, like me,” he says. “I can tell just by looking at the port. How the fuck did that happen?”

Of course he would recognize it. It was wide open. I say nothing.

“Fine, me first,” he says. “I was too smart for the army. Went to Special Forces. Volunteered to join a new operational detachment. Echo Squad. Watched a hundred other soldiers wash out. They were teaching us meditation, breathing techniques, visualization. Weird shit for the service. Twelve of us made it into the Zenith ODA. And when they told us we were going under the knife we said sir, yes, sir.”

Lyle laughs and he sounds more genuine, less insane. I get the feeling he isn’t seeing me, just his memories. Old friends and comrades.

“Me and the other boys showed up soldiers and they made us into a new breed,” he says, face darkening. “Twelve of us. Brothers. Only four of us left that I know of. Rest have been hunted down and killed.” He pauses. “So, let me ask you again. Where’d you get that Zenith?”

Moving slowly, I set the mason jar on the floor. Biting my lip from the pain flaring in my ribs, I manage to shrug my shoulders. “Dad’s an implant doctor,” I say. “I got hurt bad when I was a teenager. He did what he had to do—to fix me.”

I take a couple breaths, then continue. “I tried to turn it on.”

Lyle tilts his head, thinking. “Turn it on?” he says. “Can’t use a friggin’ ice pick to turn it on. What’s the matter with you?”

The realization settles on his face. “Wait one goddamn second. Nobody ever taught you to use it? You got a cherry turbocharged hot rod in your head and you never even started the engine?”

I shake my head. Lyle stifles his excitement.

“Well, goddamn. You are just shit out of luck, buddy. Did you hear me? Somebody is killing Zeniths. Somebody in the government. Murdering us one by one. Did you know that?”

I nod.

“Jim told you, huh?” asks Lyle. “Well, he may have built the hardware, but he don’t know jack about it. Not like I do. I’ll show you some shit that will curl your toes, son. I am going to wake you up.”

I sip my water and jam the ice against my eye. Lyle is standing and pacing with excitement. Now, he stops and looks at me again, remembers what just happened.

“Listen. That Zenith makes you live your life harder than regular people. Walk around with your eyes open wider. You see more, hear more, understand more.”

Lyle grabs my shoulders, leans in.

“There’s one thing that regulars know deep down and it scares the shit out of ’em. Being an amp don’t make you any less human, brother. Being an amp makes you more human.”

He leans back on his haunches and I can see the gears spinning in his head as he scours my face for some evidence that I heard his message.

“More human,” he repeats. “Don’t forget it.”

“Thanks,” I manage to say.

Lyle nods. He stands up and stuffs his tool satchel back into the waistband of his jeans. Grabs his plastic bottle.

“No big deal. You just owe me your life is all.”

Lyle stands in the doorway while an awkward second ticks by, like he’s making up his mind.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” he says. “I’m going to show you what amps can do.”

OPINION

Protecting the Endangered Human

By JOSEPH VAUGHN

Regardless of your ethical system, it is clear that neural implantation of this sort is a crime against humanity. I mean this statement in both the most general and most specific interpretation.

Specifically, implantation beyond natural abilities (that is, the creation of those entities known as amps) constitutes a crime against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, in that it is “part of a government policy” that “constitutes a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings.”

These implantation techniques demolish the essence of what it means to be human. It is worse than assault, worse than rape, worse than torture—all odious acts that are committed against human beings and yet leave behind human beings. Implantation is an act against human beings that leaves behind an amp. It not only demolishes human dignity but precludes the victim from having the ability to experience human dignity.

And this creates a dilemma for the rest of society. Membership in the human species is a prerequisite for the application and enforcement of human rights. By definition, an amp is an entity not deserving of human rights. It is an entity who operates outside known ethical limits and thus threatens to topple the moral foundation that our civilization is built upon.

“Oh, look at this sonofabitch,” says Lyle, gesturing with a program rolled tight in his fist. “This guy is priceless. He’s why we’re not sitting in the front row.”

We’re just up the road from Eden in a crowded warehouse turned stadium. We sit on cramped folding chairs that surround a boxing ring wrapped in a chain-link fence. Below, the man thing Lyle is talking about strides toward the ring, bullish, strafed by glimmering spotlights. It moves with a kind of slow-motion massiveness, muscles rippling with each plodding step, meaty back gleaming wetly through the haze of cigarette smoke. Its head is lowered and eyes leveled on its adversary—the monster ignores the hundreds of mere mortals who are here to watch with wide eyes, to scream without hearing, and bet stolen money on a battle between, well, what?