{"id":3693,"date":"2022-04-26T11:23:05","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T11:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3693"},"modified":"2022-07-07T11:29:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T11:29:46","slug":"scar-tissue-by-tobias-s-buckell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3693","title":{"rendered":"Scar Tissue by Tobias S. Buckell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scar Tissue<\/em><\/strong> by Tobias S. Buckell (Slate<\/em>, 30th<\/sup> May 2020) opens with the protagonist telling his friend Charlie that he thinks that he has made a huge mistake:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need the money.\u201d [Charlie says.]
[. . .]
\u201cEveryone needs the money.\u201d You swig the cheap beer that\u2019s the best either of you can manage. You can\u2019t wait to afford something from one of those smaller local breweries nearby.
\u201cBut . . .\u201d
You\u2019ve been on disability since the forklift accident. The apartment\u2019s small, but Enthim Arms is nice. The shared garden out back, the walking trails. You can\u2019t use them as much as you\u2019d like right now, but that physical therapist keeps saying June is when you might be able to make it to the lake and back.
It\u2019ll hurt, but you\u2019ve never cared so much about seeing a mediocre quarry lake before.
\u201cAdvent Robotics will pay me more money to raise it than I made at the warehouse, and I can keep focusing on recovery while doing it.\u201d You raise your hand and flex it. A low battery alert blinks on your wrist. Plus, the bonus at the end will give you enough to afford something only the rich usually can: regrowing your forearm and your leg. Like a damn lizard. The biolabs that do that are so far out of your reach you normally wouldn\u2019t even consider it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It materialises that Advent Robotics is paying for the protagonist to raise a newly created robot, which, when it wakes in its pre-language, pre-memory state, acts like a baby\u2014it smashes a coffee table on awakening, constantly has to be taken back to its power charging platform, copies the protagonist when he punches the wall in sleep-deprived frustration, etc.
The rest of the story sees the robot (now called Rob) rapidly grow up (the entire growth process, from switch on to maturity, is essentially an analog for having a normal child, i.e. the robot quickly changes from an uncomprehending baby stage to an argumentative teenager). During this process (spoiler) the protagonist attempts to deal with his own Daddy and other therapy issues while attempting to continue with his physical rehabilitation, during which he has a heart attack. Rob helps him recover.
At the end of the story the protagonist bonds further with robot after Rob complains about his plan to get rid of the prosthetics and regrow his limbs (\u201cHave you ever thought about how I feel?\u201d). The plan is abandoned, and the protagonist matches Rob\u2019s subsequent scrimshaw on his prosthetics with tattoos on the skin above, and he later gets a prosthetic heart as well.
The idea of a robot growing up like a human is a neat idea, and it\u2019s well developed, but the story is essentially about the protagonist healing himself mentally and bodily. Those who like works about emo characters (and the second person narration plays to that aspect) will probably appreciate this one more than me.
*** (Good). 5,050 words. Story link<\/a>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scar Tissue by Tobias S. Buckell (Slate, 30th May 2020) opens with the protagonist telling his friend Charlie that he thinks that he has made a huge mistake: \u201cYou need the money.\u201d [Charlie says.][. . .]\u201cEveryone needs the money.\u201d You swig the cheap beer that\u2019s the best either of you can manage. You can\u2019t wait […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[884],"tags":[296,24,758,855,887,12,886,885],"class_list":["post-3693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tobias-s-buckell","tag-296","tag-3-2","tag-cyborg","tag-prosthetics","tag-robot-child","tag-short-story","tag-slate","tag-tobias-s-buckell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3693"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4744,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}