The Greatest Creation

It was getting late, almost eleven. A light rain was drizzling, and the air was uncomfortably humid. The workshop had been closed for about an hour already, though if it weren't for the hologram displayed on the heavy metal doors signaling its closure, there wouldn’t be much of a difference, as the blind in the window was always drawn, keeping the outside world at bay.

Yajone slowly extended his hand forward, then equally slowly flexed his fingers. He waited a moment, observing the effects. He turned his hand, rotating his arm to the other side; he opened his fingers. He moved each of them individually and lowered his limb, searching for any flaws in the movements. Then he repeated the same process with the other hand. Subconsciously, he felt that there was no point in stalling. He had done everything he could, and even if it could be improved somehow, he probably wouldn't have the parts anyway. The fact he managed to gather materials so far was already crazy as it was.

He turned his head, looking at the laptop on the desk, which was connected to significantly more cables than safe for such a weak processor. Black windows displayed charts that drew various, colorful zigzags of different sizes in real-time. He observed them for a moment motionlessly, forcibly looking for errors in the readings.

"So... You sure you wanna do this?" Asked Brass, who had until then (what unusually for her) stood silently. She knew she wouldn't get an answer, so she shifted her eyes from the heap of chrome to the guy, or rather… ‘Shifted her eye’, because in place of her left eyeball, there was something resembling a visor with red glass. She couldn't afford surgery after hitting herself in the eye socket with a laser a few years earlier.

Yajone detached two rubber suction cups, which clung tightly to his temples, threw them on the table, and nodded in response, although he seemed quite absent, fully focusing his gaze on the invention.

"Alright! I'll call a guy. You still have time to back out until I reach the phone, but he's really a good surgeon, you'll see! I've known him for ages. Actually, we met through his brother when..." Here, her words fizzled out since she left the room, although the monologue probably continued.

Finally, he was left alone with his greatest creation. He clumsily got up from his chair and approached the pair of robotic hands placed on a frame resembling human shoulders. A maze of cables was attached to their end, which disappeared somewhere under the desk. He sighed heavily and leaned on the counter, lolling his head. He knew well that what he was about to do would be absolutely illegal. Any doctor would say without hesitation that his arms were perfectly healthy, so he couldn't just replace them. Perhaps it was true, but that didn't mean he didn't have a problem with them. Touching things was disgusting to him. He couldn't even prepare food for himself because anything too soft, wet, greasy, or sticky caused a short circuit in his brain and the contents of his stomach to push up his throat. And if he had chrome-plated hands, he would still feel everything, but... normally. Maybe eventually, when, or rather "if,"  he found a girlfriend, he could hold her hand without constantly thinking about how disgustingly moist her skin was.

"You're scheduled for tomorrow morning! Need a ride, huh?"

The sudden voice brought the boy out of his thoughts. He twitched slightly and then nervously looked around the room, searching for the source of the sound. Brass stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. Yajone looked at her for a moment and nodded.