Souls Are Like Livers
by Aurelia Flaming
I was seven years old when I sold half my soul to my computer. It still seems kind of
messed up to say it like that, even after everything that happened, and even though it was nearly
half my life ago. Six thirteenths of my life ago, to be precise, at three forty-one on a Tuesday
afternoon.
Or maybe it was Wednesday. But I was definitely out in the alley between First and
Main, where I wasn't supposed to go, except the Maciejewskis had a loquat tree in their backyard
that hung out over the fence and I really liked loquats, which they never have at the store. Shane
was with me, like always, ever since I was one and a half and my parents took me to the doctor
and I drank a bottle with the nanobots in it that built the wires and the chip in my head and my
parents hired Shane to look after me. His name wasn't Shane then, it was Heisenberg, but
obviously I couldn't say that, so I called him Shane, which was the closest I could get at the time
to "Machine," which was the closest I could get to understanding what he was. And honestly,
who wants a name like Heisenberg anyway? Once he told me that he'd named himself after a
giant exploding blimp, but when I checked it turned out not to be true.
Anyway, I call him Shane and he lets me even though the enbees are really picky about
that kind of thing. Like back before, when I called him my computer, he made the scoffing noise
in my head. He always says that hardware is his body and software is his mind and me calling
him a computer is like him calling me meat. Except when I was little he always called me
Lambchop and sometimes he still does, so I don't think he has much room to complain. Now
he's telling me that it was an endearment because lamb chops are the most tender and delicious
kind of meat, except what would he know about it? And anyway this is my story. Or at least I'm
the one telling it.
So I was in the alley and I'd eaten like ten loquats and my face was all sticky and Shane
was telling me that if I wasn't home in nineteen minutes my dad would come looking for me and
I'd get in trouble. And then I heard the kitten.
