I am not a man

Imagine for a moment what it must feel like to be me. Imagine waking up every morning with the taste of metal dripping from your tongue, knowing that it’s just another side effect the doctors forgot to mention. Imagine the essence of a lover reduced to pheromone levels and chemical components. Imagine not remembering how it feels to breathe through normal lungs.

I can still remember when you were little. We were both so innocent then. You know, they tell us that we’re supposed to cradle that innocence, keep it inside of us so that we never ever let it go. Look at me now. Do I look so innocent?

The thing I regret most in life is that I never had the chance to see you through my natural eyes. These eyes I have, they’re grainy; textured my Doc says. They make me feel like I’m watching my life through a video camera. I wish that for just one moment I could take it all back and look at you the way God meant. You are so perfect.

How could you ever want to be like me? Be like this? Look at me. Look at my hands, the way the metal and the flesh are joined together. See? It’s hard to look in the mirror and respect yourself when so much of you is not you anymore. Wires and chrome where flesh and bone once thrived. My legs are not my own. My arms—I don’t even know where the machine ends and the human begins. Maybe there isn’t any more human left inside of me. I’m almost a fucking robot. I am not even a man anymore.

Do you think I’m a hero? A gunslinger, a modern knight? A Shadowrider. I do a job for a paycheck, just like everyone else. Do you think that just because I save people’s lives that it makes what I am good? There is nothing good in what I am, no matter what life I lead.

You don’t believe me. You can’t allow yourself to believe me. I’m just busting your chops aren’t I? No, I’m trying to make sure you have a life, not just some, some crappy job and a body that craves oil more than it does blood.

I’m no purist. I still believe in doing what you need to do to get by. There are people out there who were born without a chance to see. Those are the people that cyber eyes were made for. I didn’t get wired for such noble reasons. I wanted to be stronger and faster than everyone else. To hold my place among the shadows I had to keep my edge. But I wasn’t willing to put in the hours of blood and sweat that were required to do it. I gave up so much of myself just because it was easy. A man knows that nothing was ever meant to be easy.

Understand that I regret everything I’ve done. But when you strike that match, you can’t unlight it. I can’t take back the parts of me that I lost, but I can stop you from making the same mistakes. I’m old and I miss the person I was. Imagine what it feels like to be me, and then love what it means to be you.