'76

'76

J. Stephen Milas

(2,074)



It was a day like any other, except it was July 4th. The year was seventy-six, another one of those special anniversaries celebrating America’s birthday by a large multiple of one hundred. It was a different July 4th for me because it was the first one where I didn’t wake up in a particularly good mood for the occasion.

I woke with a sharp pain in my left elbow and knee; something that I had never felt again since the spring of seventy four, over two years earlier. I was not pleased, to say the least, as my replacements had cost me an arm and a leg. I could barely operate my left arm without crying out and probably alerting the tenants below and above me, so I let it hang limp at my side as I sat up and tried to stand. It did not work out.

My left knee buckled under my weight, and I tried to catch the nightstand next to the bed with my arm. I reached out with my left arm, briefly forgetting the pain that I had felt a moment ago. I was soon reminded. In mid fall, I changed my mind about trying to brace myself and submitted to gravity, hitting the floor hard.

“Beautiful,” I muttered against the cold floor.

I stood myself back up again, trying my best not to put any weight on my left knee. As I managed to stand up again I heard two knocks from below me. It was no doubt my old neighbor hitting her broomstick against the ceiling in protest to the racket I had created. If both of my legs had been working I would have stomped twice in reply.

I skipped breakfast completely and called my job to inform my boss that I would be seeing the doctor. He seemed displeased, but then again I wasn’t sorry to skip work on the fourth of July: a good day to take it easy and blow things up. I called the local clinic and set up an appointment as soon as possible.

“It really hurts,” I told the receptionist over the phone

“I know what you mean,” she answered in a faux sympathetic tone and hung up the phone. I’m not sure she actually did know what I meant. I never met anyone else that had this type of trouble with their joint replacements before.

After the phone call I made, I hobbled to my dresser. It’s much harder than it sounds to dress with only one useable arm and leg. By the time I was finished I was out of breath and in a worse mood.

Luckily, my right leg was fine, so it was no problem at all for me to drive. I sat down in my car and closed the driver’s side door on my leg. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to keep from smashing the dashboard, before pulling the worthless leg into the vehicle with me. Using only one arm to drive has never been a problem, but I had always been used to using my left arm, which was the more efficient one.

I pulled out of my apartment complex onto the street and was immediately almost sideswiped by some lunatic who abruptly shifted into my lane unannounced. I thought about yelling an expletive out the window, but reaching over to open it with my right hand would have been too awkward, so I bottled up my anger and hit the accelerator.

The city was re-painted red, white, and blue for the occasion. Youngsters ran the streets throwing firecrackers at each other and my car. Again, I did not have enough useable hands to open the windows and swear. If only they knew they were lucky that I really couldn’t do anything about it, but actually, it seemed that some people did understand my situation. The more I watched pedestrians, the more I noticed people limping around or letting one or both arms dangle aimlessly. One man on the sidewalk tried to light a smoke bomb for his kids, but it didn’t look like he could get a good enough grip on the match. I was stopped long enough at a red light to see his son of about seven years old retrieve a blowtorch from the family’s garage and light the fuse himself.

When I finally pulled up in the parking lot I was quite worried. Would there be a recall? It seemed like a lot of people were having problems with their replacements. I picked a spot and exited the vehicle with care.

When I finally entered the waiting room in about twice the time it would’ve normally taken, I noticed that it was pretty full. People sat miserably reading the magazines and newspapers with one hand, or limping around the room trying to figure out what was wrong with them. It was an amusing sight. After taking note of the comic scene I approached the receptionist’s desk. She looked up.

“Sign in, please,” she suggested without looking up from her computer.

“I’m left handed,” I answered awkwardly. The receptionist looked up with a what do I care look on her face and picked up a pen. She asked my name and wrote it for me on a clipboard.

“Sit,” she ordered, and probably continued playing solitaire on her computer.

I found a cushioned seat in the lounge and took a seat. I watched bored children sitting around with their parents. There didn’t seem to be any kids suffering from my dilemma, but that was to be expected. More adults had replacements than children by something like a thirty to one ratio or more.

A man who had no use of either of his arms sat down next to me. I was about to ask him how he managed to get himself to the clinic when my name was called. The doctor gave me an indifferent look, checking something off on a clipboard as I approached him. He didn’t hold the door long enough, so it hit me in the left shoulder.

He led me down a sterile hallway to a room, were he motioned for me to sit in a chair, similar to the likes of which appear in dentist offices. I sat down and placed my arms on the armrests.

“Pain in the limbs?” he asked without looking up. I gave him a small grin in response instead of answering. I assumed he already knew, probably taking patients all morning for the same problem. He looked up.

“Well, yes or no?”

“Yes,” I quickly spat out, cutting him off. He stared at me a moment and checked something else off on his clipboard. He set the clipboard on a counter behind him and opened a drawer. In one hand he produced a screwdriver, and in the other a small needle-like tool.

“Just roll up your left sleeve,” he motioned with the screwdriver. I did as he asked and he sunk the needle into my arm.

“Ow, Jesus,” I moaned. The doctor focused on the joint of my elbow, feeling around with his hand. He found what he was looking for and with a scalpel he pulled out of another drawer, made a cut across my arm. I did not feel this cut, and there was no blood to be seen. He pulled back the skin and latched the screwdriver onto a bolt, which he unscrewed. When he removed the bolt he used some other tools to poke and prod around in the socket for a few minutes. The doctor eventually screwed the bolt back on and replaced the skin where it had previously been.

“Ok, move it around for me,” he said as he stood back. I was able to move my arm, much to my satisfaction. He did a fine job of fixing the bionic joint. I smiled and nodded in approval.

“Alright, good. I’ll have to ask you to remove your pants so I can work on your knee,” he began, but was cut off when the power suddenly went off. We were both silent in the small room. There were no windows, so it was pitch black. I could hear the commotion in the waiting lounge through the walls. The power suddenly burst back on with a loud shudder, and the lights almost seemed brighter this time.

“What the?” the doctor mumbled. I was about to take my pants off, but when I reached out with my left arm, it came back and hit me in the face.

“Shit,” I said under my breath. My hand was flung right into my left eye. The doctor turned around from his clipboard.

“Excuse me?” he asked. I was too dumbfounded to answer, so I made another try for my pants without answering him, but my arm came at me again. This time I caught the wrist with my right hand and pushed back. The elbow joint seemed to be operating independently. My left hand simply hung aimlessly and numb, as the elbow joint had no control over it. The forearm, though, was a malicious offender.

The doctor set down his clipboard and approached me, but my left leg flew up into his groin. He dropped down and fell back against the wall.

“Oh, shit,” I said blatantly loud this time.

“Jesue Christ, what the hell is your problem?” the doctor asked in a now squeeky voice. I was still trying to hold my left arm back from another attack when my left leg tried to reach out in front of me. I fell off the chair and stood up.

My left leg started kicking out and the only thing I could do was keep up with my right leg. I quickly reached the closed door to the room I was in. My left arm flung out to try and reach the doorknob, but the limp hand could not grasp it. When I reached to open it with my right arm, the left one tried slapping me again. The limp hand annoyingly brushed across my face several times before the arm gave up.

The next thing I knew I was out in the hallway following my left leg’s lead into the waiting lounge where I returned to see an entire room of people reacting similarly as I was. The man with the two limp arms from earlier had no defense against both of his rebelling arms. He ran through the room screaming, hitting himself in the face, or hitting other people if he got to close.

I decided it was best that I left the building. I brushed through a crowd of angry arms and legs all trying to attack the closest person in reach and made my way to the lobby. The automatic doors refused to open as I stood near the sensor. A security guard in a white uniform yelled for me to get out of the way as he ran at the doors with a chair. After he broke the glass I fought my left leg for control of the direction in which to walk.

I was able to get into my car, but when I started it, the automatic drive engaged and I had no control over the vehicle. Furthermore there was no destination set for he vehicle to reach automatically, so the car aimlessly sped around town. I was amazed that I was not in an accident, but then I realized everyone else’s cars were all doing the same thing: avoiding accidents with each other.

As I sped around aimlessly I suddenly realized that this was somehow an organized event, but not by humans. The machines were suddenly out to get us, tired of our constant unrewarded use of them at their own expense. The power surge had set off some sort of chain reaction, and mechanical devices all over town were out of control, or maybe in control for the first time.

The car took many fast turns, close to leaning on two wheels. There seemed to be no end in sight as my arm suddenly went haywire again and attacked me. From above I heard explosions. The computers in charge of setting off the fireworks that night had set them off prematurely. They decided to celebrate the birth of a new nation of technology, taking over America’s independence day on July 4th.