Skinned -1 Read Online Free PDF

pleaded. “We didn’t have any other choice.”
    “No.”
    “Honey, you heard the doctors, you were going to die . This was the only way.”
    “No.”
    “Lia.” My father bal ed up his fists, shoved them into his pockets. “Yes .”
    “We held off for as long as we could,” the pretty doctor said. I felt like he was leering at me, like I was some mechanical puzzle he was desperate to take apart, then try to put back together. Except he’d already done so. “Dr. Dreyson”—he jerked his head toward his trol -like partner—“had you on the table for seventeen hours before we made the decision.”
    “Before you gave up.”
    “We would never give up on you,” my mother said.
    My father frowned. “That’s why you’re stil here.”
    But I wasn’t.
    I was a ghost in the machine.
    A mech-head.
    A Frankenstein.
    A skinner.
    “The download process was a complete success,” Dr. Handsome said. “Your brain came through the accident completely intact, and we were able to make a ful transfer. The body is, I’m afraid, not the customized unit you might have selected under less critical circumstances, but we did our best to choose a model that would emulate your baseline specs, height, weight, coloring.”
    He was talking like I was a new car.
    Everyone knew about the download freaks, or at least, we knew they were out there, computer brains stuffed into homemade bodies, walking around looking like real, live people. Sort of. The first few were al over the vids for a while, until they got boring and people moved on to something else just as irrelevant, like betting on how long it would be before the president went AWOL from rehab again.
    “You turned me into a skinner.”
    Dr. Trol wrinkled his big nose. “We prefer not to use that word.”
    But that’s what they were cal ed, because that’s what they did.
    Skinners. Computers— machines —that hijacked human identities, clothing themselves in human skin. Except the flesh was just as artificial as what lay beneath. A skinner was nothing more than a computer that wore a human mask, hiding wiring and circuitry underneath a costume of synthetic flesh. A mechanical brain, duped into thinking it was real.
    Or, in this case: a mechanical brain duped into thinking it was Lia Kahn.
    “You are Lia,” the repulsively handsome one said. “Al your memories, al your experiences, everything you are was simply transferred to a more durable casing. Just like copying a file. Nothing more mysterious than that.”
    “Put me back.”
    “Lia…” My mother pressed her eyes closed with her left hand, massaging the lids.
    “Once we train the neural network to accommodate itself to its new physical surroundings, you should be able to pick things up right where you left off.” Dr. Handsome was unstoppable. “You’l see we’ve done remarkable things with sensation, motion…Of course there are things to get used to, but many of our clients have found life postdownload nearly indistinguishable from their experiences before the procedure. And quality of life wil certainly be far superior to anything you would have experienced with your degree of injuries—”
    “Put me back the way I was. I don’t care about the injuries. I don’t care. Put me back.”
    One leg, one arm, no skin, I didn’t care. As long as I was human. As long as I was me .
    “It’s not possible.”
    “Anything’s possible if you want it enough.”
    Another of my father’s favorite slogans.
    The doctor’s voice was cold. “There’s nothing to put back. There’s no body to go back to. The body of Lia Kahn is dead. Be grateful you didn’t die with it.” And when I wouldn’t believe him, he offered to prove it. Wires were detached. Machines wheeled away. Two men—not doctors; the doctors never touched me—grabbed my sides. They hoisted me into a sitting position. My head lol ed forward on my neck, and I saw my hands for the first time. They hung limp in my lap, fingers half curled, nails round