Cyberpunk

eye cameras.
    “Hey there, toaster oven,” said the officer quietly. “Think you’re human?”
    These words confused the boy, who said nothing.
    “Watch out!” came a strangled cry from the veteran. He stood with his knees bent and his left palm extended defensively. His other elbow jutted out awkwardly as he fumbled for his gun. “That is unspecked hardware!” he shouted hoarsely. “Could be anything. Could be military grade. Back away from it!”
    The younger officer looked at the veteran uncertainly.
    The boy took a hesitant step forward. “What did you say to me?” he asked. His voice was the low, tortured croak of a rusty gate. He reached for the officer with a trembling, three-fingered hand. “Hey,” he said.
    The officer turned and instinctively swung his impact baton. It thumped against the boy’s chest and discharged like a crack of lightning. The blow charred the boy’s tee shirt and tore a chunk out of his polyurethane chest-piece, revealing a metal ribcage frame riddled with slots for hardware and housing a large, warm, rectangular battery. The boy sat heavily on the ground, puzzled.
    Looking around in a daze, he saw that the old man was horrified. The boy mustered a servo-driven smile that pulled open a yawning hole in his cheek. The old man took a shuddering breath and buried his face in the crook of his elbow.
    And the boy suddenly understood.
    He looked down at his mangled body. A single vertiginous bit of information lurched through his consciousness and upended all knowledge and memory: Not a boy. He remembered the frightened looks of the slidewalk pedestrians. He remembered long hours spent playing cards with the old man. And finally he came to remember the photograph of the blond boy that hung on a plastic hook near the door of the gonfab. At this memory, the boy felt deeply ashamed.
    No, no, no, no. I cannot think of these things , he told himself. I must be calm and brave now.
    The boy rose unsteadily to his feet and adopted a frozen stance. Standing perfectly still removed uncertainty. It made mentals in physical space simpler, more accurate, and much, much faster. The old man had taught the boy how to do this, and they had practiced it together many times.
    Ignoring the commands of his veteran partner, the young officer swung his impact baton again. The sparking cudgel followed a simple, visible trajectory. The boy watched a blue rotational vector emerge from the man’s actuated hip, and neatly stepped around his stationary leg. The officer realized what had happened, but it was too late: the boy already stood behind him. The man’s hair smells like cigarettes , thought the boy; and then he shoved hard between the officer’s shoulder blades.
    The officer pitched forward lightly, but the LEEX resisted and jerked reflexively backward to maintain its balance. The force of this recoil snapped the officer’s spine somewhere in his lower back. Sickeningly, the actuated legs walked away, dragging the unconscious top half of the officer behind them, his limp hands scraping furrows in the dirt.
    The boy heard a whimpering noise and saw the veteran standing with his gun drawn. A line visible only to the boy extended from the veteran’s right eye, along the barrel of the pistol, and to a spot on the boy’s chest over his pneumatic heart.
    Carefully, the boy rotated sideways to minimize the surface area of his body available to the veteran’s weapon. Calm and brave.
    A pull trajectory on the veteran’s trigger finger announced an incoming bullet. Motors squealed and the boy’s body violently jerked a precise distance in space. The bullet passed by harmlessly, following its predicted trajectory. An echoing blast resounded from the blank-walled buildings. The veteran stood for a moment, clutched his sweating face with his free hand, turned, and fled.
    “Grandpa!” said the boy, and rushed over to help.
    But the old man would not look at him or take his hand; his face was filled with disgust and fear and desperation. Blindly, the old man shoved the boy away and began scrabbling in his pockets, trying frantically to put his new Eyes™ and Ears™ back on. The boy tried to speak, but stopped when he heard his own coarse noise. Uncertain, he reached out, as if to touch the old man on the shoulder, but did not. After a few long seconds, the boy turned and hobbled away, alone.
    The old man grasped the cool, black handrail of the slidewalk with his right hand. He curled his left hand