How the Cyber Man Lost his Heart.

Once upon a time there were two brothers.
Their names were: Tin and Cyber
Man and they lived in an electric field
just outside of the city of Atom.

Cyber and Tin were the same in every way.
Both of their circulatory systems were made of zinc.
Both of them had super alloy coated linings,
titanium skin and LED powered eye sockets.

But for as long as both could remember
There had always been
one important difference:
Tin had no heart-

and Cyber did.

The discrepancy had come about as a result of a
manufacturing defect, rare amongst machines:
so that Cyber’s heart was unheard of
in cybernetic history.

Cyber’s heart was:
an aortic anomaly of
brass ventricles and
super-vasic arteries-

a circular mass of
tubes and vents and springs and
oxygenated battery fluid.
It was a clockwork timepiece

of quantum engineering;
a systematic mechanism of
robotic dark materiel
and when Cyber placed his hand

against it’s flat exterior,
it beat a pulse
that felt like it
controlled the world.

Because of Cyber’s heart
Sometimes he would laugh at silly things.
He’d call Atomic City, “Electri-
City” and-

if trade with them was low that week,
he’d say the “current-cy” was weak.
He’d laugh enough to shake Electric Field
but Tin would never get it.

Because of Cyber’s heart
sometimes he would feel
strange things.
He could feel-

the weight
of stars,
the smell of grass,
the sound of someone waiting..

Tin, would sometimes wait
outside his brother’s room.
He’d wait-
mouth piece still,

LEDs on full;
air moving through his vents
slow, like glue
and watch.

When Cyber opened up his chest
to run a vasic check or ECG,
Tin would watch the cogs
pump the mercury-

and say nothing

Cyber’s heart made Cyber
worry about Tin.
He would feel his brother
watching him and feel

something like
small
bones
breaking.

Cyber knew that
Tin felt nothing;
because he had no heart
but what if somewhere in his

Meta-parts
Tin could sense
a ghost in his
machine?

When Cyber thought about this
he would feel
a hard surge
of cold grief

Grief that Tin
if Tin could wish
might wish that Cyber’s heart
were his.

Grief that Tin, with no tin heart
could never love his brother back
like his brother Cyber loved him.
Grief that his feelings

were his and his alone
as the only robot
with the only heart
in all the world-

and it was too much.

Cyber tried to stop
feeling things.
He would go for long walks,
to the city of Atom from Electric Field,

but it would never work.
He would feel the ground
hard against his feet.
The cool air against his

posi-tronic skin. His brother Tin,
without a heart, far behind
and he would feel the spark of
Solipsistic break down.

In the City of Atom
he would find no respite
just wave upon wave of
automated Atomite-

The silver skinned machines
would move in shoals
like pilot fish
but all feel nothing-

while Cyber felt everything

At times like this
he would flee-
away from Atomic City
and back to Electric Field.

His heart would thump
like a drum full of oil
his limps would shake
like plates suspended on poles-

and he would read
Hobbs and Sartre and Freud,
Robotic Engineering for Droids,
Ted Hughes and Jung,

Rosemary Connely’s
Low fat eating plan
until at long last
he came to understand:

Cyber came to see
that he was going mad.

One day,
when Tin was out
Cyber did the only thing
he thought he could

He opened up his chest
unscrewed its parts
and unplugged
his still beating heart.

When Tin came back
his joints still cramped
from working in Electric field
he found his brother

scrubbing oil stains from the floor.
The Cyberman
did not look up to say hello.
He did not hum, he made no jokes.

And it was then
the Tin Man saw
the heart shaped box
upon the floor.

And it was then
the Tin Man saw,
his brother Cyber-

was no more