Building Baby Brother (continued)

Josh stared down at it. He seemed to be caught speechless and then his lips formed a open-mouthed smile.

“Hello, little brother.”

It stared back at him, its eyes blinking.

“Hello, Josh.”

I hadn’t thought his eyes could widen any further, but they did. He smile grew into a grin.

A footstep scraped against the floor behind me. I heard what sounded like a faint cough, or someone clearing their throat without trying to call too much attention to it. In the small space of the basement, it was enough.

I paused, fighting back a sigh before turning around.

Although she would have denied it, I could tell that she was intrigued by my creation. Her eyes fixed on mine. I felt my elation begin to fade, but found it salvaged by Josh’s next question.

“What can it do?” Josh asked me. His words came out in a breathless rush. “Can it walk?”

“Not yet.”

His expression told me that he did not understand.

“There’s some bugs there I still need to work out,” I explained, trying to make it sound like much less of an effort than it really was.

He nodded, but I could tell that he didn’t really understand.

“But,” I continued, “He can talk to you and help you do things. He knows all sorts of things and can learn more. And,” I added quickly, while I still had his attention, “his arms mostly work.”

Josh’s expression asked his question for him.

“They’re not very precise,” I explained.

I reached over to pick up one of the spare ones from a nearby shelf, but then stopped myself. Heaven knows how Josh would have reacted if he had seen the mechanical little boy laying there intact while my hand held one of its extra arms.

I settled for pointing at one of its exposed palms.

The hands were what I considered one of my more clever inspirations—the outer covering for them at least. I had originally planned to use thick latex gloves to cover the mechanism underneath them, with plans to create something more life-like at a later time. One day, however, while out shopping—for what, I don’t remember—I ran across a clearance sale of Halloween merchandise.

I casually checked over what was for sale, because you never know what you might find. I was in equal parts repulsed and amused by some of the items available—until I saw them. The proverbial light bulb went off like a beam from a lighthouse in my head and I picked one up to examine it more closely.

It was a rubber replica of a severed forearm. Flexible and hollow, it was like a very thick glove. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had my answer. The trick was locating a set of both left and right hands. Like the world at large, there appeared to be a preponderance of right-handed, well hands.

I began to despair at being able to procure a matched set. My opinion wavered between whether I could accept just one somewhat normal-looking hand for now or to abandon the entire idea until I could find a better solution. The matter was decided when I discovered not one, but two left hands near the bottom of the bin. (Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I imagine that I must have made quite a ghoulish spectacle, a relatively decent-looking fellow intensely digging through a crate of artificial dismembered limbs. They always say that it’s the quiet and respectable ones . . .)

They worked perfectly. I trimmed off the ragged and red-painted end as to make them look a bit less macabre. Close up, there were obviously not real skin, but you had to look twice to notice. From a distance, I didn’t think anyone would be able to tell.

“They can pick up almost everything but the smallest objects,” I went on to Josh. “Things smaller than something like . . . regular Lego pieces it might have trouble with.”

I was rather pleased by that. Getting each of the fingers to move independently hadn’t been too much of a challenge, but I had run out of time before configuring them to be able to move in combination. It could point out a direction, but not yet make a Vulcan peace sign.