MAN
MADE
By
ALBERT R. TEICHNER
If I listed every trouble I'veaccumulated in a mere twohundred odd years you might beinclined to laugh. When a tale ofwoe piles up too many details itlooks ridiculous, unreal. So here,at the outset, I want to say mylife has not been a tragic one—whoselife is in this day of advancedtechniques and universalgood will?—but that, on the contrary,I have enjoyed this Earthand Solar System and all theabundant interests that it hasoffered me. If, lying here beneaththese great lights, I couldonly be as sure of joy in thefuture....
My name is Treb Hawley. Asfar back as I can remember inmy childhood, I was always interestedin astronautics. From theage of ten I specialized in thatsubject, never for a moment regrettingthe choice. When I wasstill a child of twenty-four I tookpart in the Ninth Jupiter Expeditionand after that there weremany more. I had a precociousmarriage at thirty and my boys,Robert and Neil, were born withina few years after Marla and Iwed. It was fortunate that Ifought for government permissionthat early; after the accident,despite my high rating, Iwould have been denied the rareprivilege of parenthood.
That accident, the first one,took place when I was fifty. OnPlanet 12 of the Centauri SystemI was attacked by a six-limbedprimate and was badly mangledon the left side before breakingloose to destroy it. SurgicalCorps operated within an hour.Although they did an excellentprosthetic job after removingmy left leg and arm, the substitutedlimbs had their limitations.While they permitted me to doall my jobs, phantom pain was aconstant problem. There werenew methods of prosthesis toeliminate this weird effect butthese were only available back onthe home planets.
I had to wait one year for thisrelease. Meanwhile I had plentyof time to contemplate my mysteriousaffliction; the mystery ofit was so great that I had littlechance to notice how painful itactually was. There is enoughstrangeness in feeling with absolutecertainty that a limb existswhere actually there is nothing,but the strangeness is compoundedwhen you look down and discoverthat not only is the leggone but that another, mechanicalone has taken its place. Dr.Erics, who had performed theoperation, said this difficultywould ultimately prove a blessingbut I often had my doubts.
He was right. Upon my returnto Earth, the serious operationstook place, those giving me plasticlimbs that would become livingparts of my organic structure.The same outward push ofthe brain and nervous systemthat had created phantom painnow made what was artificialseem real. Not only did my ownblood course through the protoplasticbut I could feel it doingso. The adjustment took less thana week and it was a complete one.
Fortunately the time was alreadypast when protoplast patientswere looked upon as somethingmildly freakish and to bepitied. Artificial noses, ears andlimbs were becoming quite common.Whether there was somejustification for the earlier reactionof pity, however, still remainsto be seen.
My career resumed and I wasaccepted for the next CentauriExpedition without any questionsbeing asked. As a matter offact, Planning Center preferredpeople in my condition; protoplastlimbs were more durablethan the real—no, let us say theoriginal—thing.
At home and at the beach noone bothered to notice my reconstructedarm and leg. They lookedtoo natural for the idea tooccur to people who