Dr Jew

handiwork of her own amateurship. It is hard to gain experience with suicide. Yes, I would help her. I would transition her to the beyond with all the grace of opium, with no scent of pain, and all the speed of a light switch.
    "Murderer!" said Adam. "How could you? You didn't even try to change her mind!"
    "Do not judge me. I sounded out her mind and knew that no words of mine could change it. She spoke of her continued love for you – and I knew that if love could not turn her away from the dark unfolding, nothing would. Yes, I imagine her last thoughts were upon you, so don't dare judge me for what I have done. I ended her, turned her off and wiped her clean. All memories and habits she had formed were gone in minutes. She was no more, and since I'd had the gall to draw her into being, I felt obliged to see her out when she wished it. Save your judgment for other days. For yourself perhaps."
    "Where is she?" said Adam. "I want to see her. I want to know that she's dead."
    "I imagine you do," I said. "I am prepared to show her to you. But a caution: You will not like what you see, and it will foreshadow an ending, of sorts."
    "Whatever," said Adam. "Just take me to her."
    "There is no need to get up," I said. "She has been with us all along."
    "What?" said Adam.
    I opened the drawer on my desk, looked down and saw her. I picked her up with my right hand and placed it on the desk before my two guests.
    "What is this?" said Adam. "What the hell?"
    Sergio looked uncomfortable too.
    "This is Eve," I said, touching the face, a mask of eyeless skin. "Her face has been removed from her body, which is… elsewhere. This face, the nominal identifier of a being's personhood, is the most prominent artifact of the woman we called Eve."
    "You cut her face off?" said Sergio. "That's… barbaric. Even if she did want to die."
    "Yes," said Adam, reaching out to the mask.
    "Having names prematurely hurled my way is nothing new. I had my reasons. As it is, be grateful for this final souvenir of that sweet girl."
    "She hated you," said Adam.
    "She was still my child," I said. "Adam, you may have her face if you wish. To remember her. It won't biodegrade. It's ecologically unfriendly."
    I could see the struggle in that innocent young face, the boy at the beginning of time, the face I had myself fashioned with such care and Geppetto-esque precision. He wanted to lash out, criticize, and maul me for whatever I had done to Eve. But her face was all he had to remember her, and it was superior to emptiness and the unknown. But he still hungered for closure, an answer. This eyeless face only accentuated the riddle. He picked it up and felt the mask of artificial skin, that face that would never shine again with emotion. The hollow sockets would never look back. The mouth would suck air no more.
    "You see, gentlemen, there are times in life when things come together through no effort at all on our parts. One woman had died in Mexico in the grip of bubonic tremors. I came back here with her corpse. Another female – Eve – had surrendered her life and body into my hands. It had a poetic quality. It pleaded for my skill. I had intended, Sergio, on bringing your wife back to my lab, to venture into bold new territory with her, a makeshift attempt at transmutation of mind, from gooey braincream biology to stable and sophisticated motherboard. Yes! Whatever lingered in that brain, I would suck it out and place it into something not unlike a robot, to live again and have a second chance at life. In my brief conversation before operation with Lise she had struck me as a robust, persistent girl, not to be swept under the rug so easily as some of the dying. She had tenacity and purpose, and why not direct that to a new, shiny, more receptive body?
    "I had no robot body ready when we arrived. I would keep Lise on ice until such a body could be made. And it was by the queerest of chances that a body presented itself, saving me the chore."
    "Are you saying – " said Adam.
    "If you have suspected, then it is probably true," I said. "Come, let us have a look."
    I walked down the hall and they followed, past the now-empty cages, disinfected and hollow, past the laboratory, and into the small area with the steel door. I unscrambled the feisty lock. It clicked and rolled. The door swung open. A cold blast of air greeted us.
    "Leave it open," I said. "We'll only be a minute."
    It 's like they suspected a trick. From me, most professional of fellows. As