Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh
By Jay Lake
2.5/5
()
About this ebook
Jay Lake
Jay Lake was a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an award-winning editor, a popular raconteur and toastmaster, and an excellent teacher at the many writers' workshops he attended. His novels included Tor's publications Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion, and the trilogy of novels in his Green cycle - Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura. Lake was nominated multiple times for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 2004, the year after his first professional stories were published. In 2008 Jay Lake was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in the years after he became known outside the sf genre as a powerful and brutally honest blogger about the progression of his disease. Jay Lake died on June 1, 2014.
Read more from Jay Lake
Almost All the Way Home From the Stars: Science Fiction Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Steampunk MEGAPACK®: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Scent of Rotting Roses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRocket Science Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Baby Killers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Soul Bottles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Werewolf Megapack: 22 Classic and Modern Tales of Shape-Shifters! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe World Always Begins in Light: Lost Colonies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath of a Starship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Guests: Science Fiction from the End of Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDaddy's Caliban Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Lady of American Sorrows Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJack's House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecond Contact: Lost Colonies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh
Related ebooks
Book of Souls: A Prof Croft Prequel: Prof Croft Novellas, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassing the Torch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMonsterheart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCold Kiss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Apollo & Me Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Am Diving Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5West By God Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAcross a Broken Shore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhoenix Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAllegiance and Betrayal: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Spirit is Willing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoing for Kona (A Michele Lopez Hanson Mystery): What Doesn't Kill You Super Series of Mysteries, #8 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Matter of Honour: Harry Nichols: Investigative Journalist, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTurned Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl in the Gucci Dress Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlease Don't Call Me Sam! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Locked Tomb Mystery: and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lucky Supreme: A Darby Holland Crime Novel (#1) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blindsight: Complete Series: Blindsight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manikin (Channeling Morpheus 3) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Soul To Keep Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTropical Punch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFateful Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPerfectly Famous Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Obscured Connections Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZombie Eve: A YA Christmas Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pain Eater Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEight Ball Boogie Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Science Fiction For You
Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Firestarter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cryptonomicon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time and Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh
5 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The book was very gruesome, graphic, and not for the faint of heart. It actually made me cringe multiple times, which I never do when I read. I finished it in one sitting, not because I necessarily was loving the book, but because I had to read to get through it. It created a lot of visuals that I don't think I will ever forget. Despite how demented it was, it was really well written and pulled off the horror aspect perfectly. His command of the English language is impressive, and much of the book felt like poetry. It is mainly the topic of the book that was troublesome, but the author did a great job displaying what he wanted to display. Even though I gave it 4 stars, I would not recommend this book to anybody unless they are horror fanatics.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5No. No no no. I tried to read this, but it's too much for me. To horrible. No way I'm finishing it.
Book preview
Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh - Jay Lake
LOVE IN THE TIME OF METAL AND FLESH
JAY LAKE
Copyright © 2013 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
Cover photography by Becky van Ommen.
Cover art and design by Sherin Nicole.
Ebook design by Neil Clarke.
ISBN: 978-1-60701-415-7 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-60701-340-2 (hardcover)
PRIME BOOKS
www.prime-books.com
No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.
For more information, contact Prime Books at prime@prime-books.com.
Id: Precursor
I am become machine. Tiny springs click broken-backed and slack-spiraled deep within my lungs as my bellows-breath rattles in the iron cage of my ribs. My blood is the sour oil of regret. My bile is the musty taste of lost wisdom and found sorrow. When I try to move my fingers, they clack with the rust of years and the straining of gears, my touch reaching for something which I cannot quite see.
There is nothing to see. Oily dark marks the black I can reach with what remains to me. This transformation, it has become my life, my art, myself. This transformation has become me.
α: Love in the Time of Metal
Distant doctors chatter and chaffer, their words a susurrus caressing his ears as the ocean caresses the shore. Machines whisper as well, their quiet clicking and gentle beeping a womb for the dying, ushering the man who was toward the soul who will be. Or won’t.
There is honest confusion and dishonest amusement on that subject. To be possessed of a soul implies an obligation towards ethics, morality, behavior to which one can live up in the face of ultimate judgment. He wonders—his mind floating free on an ocean of pharmaceuticals, dancing freely within the chemical pathways of his neurophysiology—wonders on the link between cause and action, between thought and deed, between the weak and palsied vibrato of the human heart and whatever might pass for the vessel of the human body.
Love is a fountain,
he says. No words pass the space where his lips once were.
The machine-beeps change tone, acquiring a plaintive tone in pursuit of his eventual health and healing. Doctor voices change.
Love,
he says again, "is a fountain. Can you hear me?"
Noise degrades to fractured fractal silence, punctuated by the rubber screech of nurses’ shoes and the whispers of the dying.
Has time passed, he wonders?
Can you hear me?
The silence bounces, echoing down metal shafts and through long hallways of cartilage to impinge on the slow syrup of his thoughts.
Can you hear me? I’m talking about love.
Love,
says a woman with her final breath.
Is,
cries an infant in a distant ward.
The most human,
coughs a tubercular with the last bloody bit of his lungs.
Mistake of all,
the machines echoes.
i: Love in the Time of Flesh
Markus spent years planning the first cut. Danni had been helpful, bringing him books, taking him to torture room parties. Sometimes even more special field trips.
One day she came by his apartment. Markus was carving Celtic knots into the skin side of a slab of pork. Practicing. It was his day off from the bookstore job, when he could think even less than usual.
Hey, hon,
Danni said, slipping through the door and walking across the room to plant a kiss on his forehead. She clanked when she walked, as she always did—six metal bars set into the inside of each thigh. Not that she had a lot of extra flesh for such work, but somehow Danni managed. Got a surprise for you.
Mmm . . .
Markus was trying to work out how to cut a loop and keep the center skin in place. How’s things?
Oh, you know. Metal. Surprise, Markus. You listening?
He looked up. Her hair was orange this month, about the color of shrimp on a low-end sushi bar, and she’d been inking her face with laundry marker camouflage patterns in sympathy with the current war. Listening now,
he said, though he kept the scalpel steady in his hand.
Daddy Nekko set you up with something special.
Markus didn’t like Daddy Nekko. Daddy Nekko had far too much of a hold on Danni’s time and imagination for his comfort—he’d thought that before they’d started sleeping together, and he’d keep thinking that long after she was done with him. Daddy Nekko had put the bars into Danni’s thighs. The damned things hurt Markus’ temples every time he went down on her.
What kind of special?
he asked, his voice slow and low.
Your kind of special, hon.
She kissed him again, took the scalpel away, and curled up on his lap, sitting half on his pork skin.
Danni drove, her little gold Honda Civic plastered with Goth girl stickers—Born to Cry, It’s All About the Pain: The Metal’s Just a Souvenir, My Other Girlfriend Lives in a Box. Markus hated folding himself in and out of the car. He was several inches too tall not to bang something on the body every God damned time.
Danni only laughed, same as she ever did. You’re a big lunk who deserves to go thunk.
Fuck you,
he said amiably.
Later.
Then they were off through the intestinal avenues of San Francisco, Danni throwing the gear shift around with a mad abandon which promised to make some mechanic’s house payment soon. Markus sank into his seat, covered with some weird Hawaiian shirt fabric, and closed his eyes, letting the swaying and banging of the little car take him wherever Danni wanted to go.
When she slammed to a halt, he opened his eyes and looked around. They hadn’t crossed a bridge or headed along a highway, so they had to be somewhere in San Francisco proper. Down by Army Street maybe?