She was there, so I followed her. And it was crazy - I felt crazy - because Dad had always told me to stay away from strangers. Everywhere, but especially in San Diego.

__

(one month earlier)

The doctors told me it would hurt when it happened. “Jord,” they warned, my name sounding mechanical on their lips, “You can never come back here once this is done.”

“I know,” I said, and it was true.

But I needed an arm again. I worked on bikes in my dad’s old shop. Solar cycles, because the motor ones mucked up the sky and made the buildings rust and the advertisements on the billboards hang sideways. Well, not motorcycles specifically, but in a grand scheme of all of the things that killed our planet they were definitely on the list.

It was an accident with a motorcycle that caused me to lose my arm, ironically enough.

__

She had green hair. Not green like neon, or crayons, or dye in boxes. Green like leaves in the heat of the summer. Vibrantly reaching towards the sky in emerald tendrils, and alive. What could she have possibly wanted in that dilapidated building?

When she turned around to motion to me again, I saw it. That metallic glint quirking the side of her mouth in some sort of coded smirk. A string of ones and zeros forcing her lips to move.

__

When Mr. M introduced a line of tech that could do basic work for us, the population was overjoyed. Being overworked and underpaid will do that to a person. In the press release, something I had to watch countless times in history class, Mr. M promised that these creatures were there for the betterment of society. He showed long lines of code on the screen that I never quite understood, and he explained that it meant the bots would never have the capabilities of being truly sentient.

Whether or not he was right, no one knows, because The Fear happened.

The bots were shut down by traditionalists and a stigma was slapped on those who had received mechanical surgeries. ‘The mind must be more powerful than machine,’ they always said.

“There’s an island off the coast,” one of the surgeons mentioned to an intern while I was fighting the anesthesia. “Used to be called ‘Coronado.’ Take him there once we’re done and he can meet his new, um, people.”

__

I flexed the new mech fingers at my side and followed the green-haired girl into the building. My brain could tell the appendage to make a fist, wiggle my fingers, or flip the bird just as well as it did when flesh was there.

‘Mind over mech’ really was a bullshit phrase.

The building was in the heart of what used to be the historic Gaslamp District, but it was nothing more than glorified rubble and smogged air these days. Rays of hazy light streaked the floor from missing pieces of roof, and I realized in the sunlight that the girl was barefoot.

“Stop!” I yelled. “You’re going to get hurt.”

She giggled, a sound that echoed like hearing voices through the pipes in the walls, and then she disappeared up the stairs.

__

When I woke up after the surgery, everyone was gone. There were no flowers, no ‘get well soon’ cards, and no one to greet me. My body ached, the flesh on my shoulder an angry red color where it was fused with the mech arm.

“Get him out of here,” a voice said from behind the door. “Before the grog wears off.”

__

I followed her up floor after dizzying floor. My thighs were burning as my feet crunched through another piece of moldy wood as I tried to keep up with her. When I finally reached the roof I was already out of breath, but seeing her in the daylight was enough to suck the rest of the oxygen straight out of my lungs.

Her hair wasn’t just green, it was actually alive. Vines replaced hair with flowers interwoven in the strands, and curly-Qs of ivy stuck up around her face. She was holding her hand out to me, and I stumbled forward to grab it like a child learning how to walk for the first time.

She touched my new palm and my fingers instinctively opened.

“If you can’t save them,” she said, her eyes scanning the cityscape, “then try to save this place.”

When I looked down at my hand, I realized that the scraps of mech used to make the arm were much more than just scraps. A tiny sprout with two perfectly symmetrical leaves was in the center of my palm and I had grown it. Or maybe she had. But either way it was still there in a place where growing anything naturally was a near impossibility.

And although they thought my life was over after surgery, I had an inkling it had only just begun.