The Artificial Touch

[jackofallgeeks]

The most difficult thing, Lisa thought as she reached for her soda, was having to think about it. Up, out, grasp, in; there was so much added thinking since the operation. Lisa had lost her left arm in a traffic accident when her VT-230 was sandwiched between an industrial transport and the inner wall of the downtown tunnel. The actual surgery was the easy part; sleeping for two and a half days didn't take much effort, especially when you were heavily drugged and low on blood anyways. It was the year and a half of therapy afterwards that was hard. Even now she wasn't quite used to her prosthetic. Down, out, release, she set her glass back on the table infront of her and folder her arm in her lap. They said it was fully bionic, which means that the arm's electronics met with her natural nerve endings somewhere behind her shoulder blade. This let her control her mechanical arm as well as her biological one, at least in theory. It seems she thought a lot more about her mechanical arm. It even looked mechanical, though less in the pistons-and-struts ways some old '90s films showed and more of a molded plastic, in shades of blue and purple. Developers had given up on making 'realistic' looking prosthetics after patients started being repulsed by the almost-human parts, a phenomenon that researchers called the 'uncanny valley.' She was running her left hand over her right, feeling the play of plastic against flesh. They said there would be no sensation of touch in her left hand; 'research into the proper receptors hadn't advanced,' they said. But they were wrong, she thought. She could feel her arm, he fingers, the smoothness of the glass and the subtle textures of the table. It was a different sort of sensation compared to her biological hand, but it was a sensation nonetheless. She sighed and stood. It was time to pick up the kids.