"Better"

BETTER
By Curtis C. Chen

On his eighteenth birthday, Jadrew Linbitter stayed home from work and, as tradition decreed, made a dagger out of his leg bone.

The replacement ceremony had been unremarkable. The medicos had numbed his lower body, and Jadrew hadn't felt any pain as they sawed into his left leg just above the knee. He had looked away, toward his father, and aped that proud paternal grin while screaming on the inside.

His fibula, stripped clean of flesh, was now resting in a diagenetic solution which would replace the hard tissue with a durable polymer for preservation. His similarly prepared tibia would be metallized after he had whittled it into a ritual blade and carved both sides with scripture.

The viewscreen on his bedroom wall blinked. He put down his cutter and engaged the telemet. His sister's face appeared.

"Enjoying your day off?" Konri asked.

"Billions," Jadrew said. He held up his sharpened tibia. "I'll be ready to kill someone soon."

Konri laughed. "Hey, remember those cableman figurines you sculpted for grandfather? He's just had them resin-cased for display in his office."

Great, thought Jadrew. Another piece of my crummy life preserved for centuries.

"Everyone here is so proud," Konri said.

Jadrew felt himself blushing. He could imagine how the family would gawk at his new bionic limb. "I'd better finish this. Father will want to see it tonight."

"You always were a good boy." Konri smiled. "And now you're a good man."

She switched off, and Jadrew threw his tibia against the wall, half hoping it would shatter. It didn't. He sighed and retrieved the bone, wondering if he would ever get used to the clacking of his bare metal foot against the floor.

He could see his whole life laid out before him, predetermined, choiceless. In two years, the medicos would replace his right leg, and he would enter conscripted service. If he survived that, he would earn his arms. And his father would be so happy.

Jadrew stared at his cutter. It would be easy to end this charade of obedience before it smothered his will. He just had to dial up the laser, place it against his temple, and push the button.

But where was the significance in that? If he was going to kill himself, he wanted his last act to have meaning.

He looked down at the flat of his bone-blade and smiled.

His uncle Sidrav had taught him the words, years ago, before being exposed as part of the underground. Sidrav's execution had shamed the family, but Jadrew had never forgotten his uncle's seditious tales, whispered in darkness before bedtime.

He turned his cutter back to the bone and worked with new purpose. He made an elegant, serrated blade and etched it with the ancient rebel slogan:

DEESTROY ALL MASHEENS

Jadrew's father found his body, pierced through the heart with the bone dagger. The first thing he did was to abrade the blasphemous message from the exposed blade. Then he sat on the bed next to his dead son and cried into his metal hands.