I lose my finger during the private flight back from Japan. It isn’t the whole finger, of course, just the bone. When I drugged myself into oblivion at the start of the flight, it was totally fine. When the designer-uniformed flight attendant woke me, it was a jelly sack.
In the hospital bed next to mine is a beautiful girl. She’s got the profile of a model or some sort of influencer. One of those chicks selling seven surgeries to have before twenty-seven and the perfect, barely exhausting hair care regime for only a few grand a year. The kind of gorgeous a PR team pays to show up next to you at some event for, whatever, kids, wearing haute couture, smiling on an unrolled red carpet. Not here. Here, her bed is way too close to mine, close enough that I can see the bright colours of the game on her phone. I’m bored, so I gaze unfocused as she blasts little shiny things every few seconds. Pew-pew, points. Pew-pew, dopamine.
I can’t see anything wrong with the girl from here. But I’m not looking too closely. Basic etiquette, right? Don’t stare at people in hospital. Besides, we all know why we’re here, in this jelly sack ward.
My finger throbs. It’s been doing that since the flight, a persistent thrum-thrum that feels like a heartbeat, but not my heartbeat. Not tumpa-tumpa, not even the ta-ta-ta-ta that I get in my chest when I run on the treadmill in my corner-window office. I shift, uncomfortable. This place is supposed to be swank. But it’s a hospital, so obviously they have to make sure the beds suck.
I’m bored of the perfect-looking girl’s pew-pew game, and these people are taking for-fucking-ever. I pull out my own phone. The jelly sack pinky dangles, useless, and my stomach clenches. The wave of disgust pulses along with the throbbing.
The phone slips as I text Carlo. Where the shit is he, is what I want to know. I need my second in command to step up. But the phone keeps shifting in my hand, with no pinky support. I switch hands, but it feels wrong.
“Motherfucking shitballs,” I mutter. The girl in the too-close bed next to me snorts, but doesn’t turn.
I drop the phone into my lap, and glare down at the useless digit. Fucking traitor.
I’ve read the news, I know what’s coming next. There’s no good solution here. Boneless limbs get the chop. They cave in under their own weight, the blood doesn’t flow right, the veins can’t handle the pressure. Plus, they get in the way, dangling there. I already know what the doctor or nurse will say, if they ever bother to show up. Like maybe some time this century.
Someone farts. The perfect girl in the next-door bed sighs and gets up, and walks away down the ward. I sneak a glance. She still looks perfect from behind. Hair care regime is on point.
A nurse appears while I’m watching the girl wander away, dragging two standing screens with her. They really have packed us in here, and the beds are not aligned under the hanging curtains. It’s too tight, the nurse and me in this pretend room that everyone can hear right through.
“Hi there, I’m Neelam. Can you just confirm your name?” She sounds bored, and I wish I could handle my phone better. I want to send a note to my PA to file a complaint about this nurse’s attitude.
“Your colleague already went through all this.” I hate this shit. Waste of my time.
Neelam nods, and waits.
“Taylor Porter Cavendish.” I pause, then add, “The.”
It’s a dick move, but, whatever. It’s not the most common name, but it’s surprising just how often people want confirmation that I am the TPC.
Neelam plays it cool, just types something on an iPad that we’re all supposed to believe is a medical device.
“Right. Can I see the problem?”
I hold out my hand, boneless finger dangling. She moves the sludgy finger about, presses in different places. I wince.
“Ok, we’ll need an X-ray, but it looks like it’s contained to just this finger. You’re lucky. You said–” She glances down at my notes, raises an eyebrow. “You flew to Japan? Private jet?”
“I had a work trip.” I shrug. “Whatever. People go to Japan. I didn’t realise that would be such a big deal.”
She purses her lips, nursing-style. “There’s been loads of media coverage about spontaneous osteotruncation. No? Vanishing bone syndrome? You must have heard. There was a whole campaign. Information on the NHS website, the Mayo Clinic, all over. I’ll find you a leaflet. Maybe read the pamphlet, and it won’t happen again.”
I don’t need this shit.
She taps some stuff on the iPad, then takes my hand again, turning it slowly in her own. She makes a few more notes.
“Ok. Unfortunately, there’s a backlog for surgery, and for post-op recovery.” Her voice codes smug. “Maybe a lot of people took private flights this week. You’ll need physio after, to help your hand adapt.” She taps on the iPad again, as if that will protect her from my lawyers, or the complaint I’ll be putting in. No reminder needed, she’s going down. Besides, it wasn’t a private flight. It was just select. There were, like, eight of us on board.
“The doctor should be round soon to confirm everything, but you can expect to be in surgery this week or next. After that’s been confirmed, you can go home.” Neelam starts to turn away.
“Hold up! What do I do about this in the meantime?” I hold up my hand, finger dangling. “You can’t just leave me like this.”
She glances back, shrugs. “Tape it to one of the other ones, so it doesn’t get in the way. And count yourself lucky it’s not something worse.”
It’s the last straw. It’s God knows what time, and I’m exhausted, and I know for a fact that my company, my company, pays out the nose for private medical care.
“You could at least pretend to give a shit, you know,” I snap at her.
“I could,” Neelam glances back at me, stands with one hand wrapped around the edge of a curtain stand. “But I don’t. And don’t bother writing up a complaint. I’m just filling in here because of the overflow. You think you’re special, but I’ll tell you this: you brought this on yourself, Taylor Porter Cavendish, The. You know there’s no VBS ward in the pleb hospitals? Just the private ones. You mined the earth, you people. You sink straws deep into Mother Earth and draw out all you can reach. You chew away at her insides and call it mineral extraction. Well, she’s just extracting some minerals of her own.”
She turns away just as I open my mouth to snap back that I never took any oil out of the ground, that’s boomers she’s talking about and before then, all those industry people. And that calcium isn’t iron, or lithium, or carbon, and that’s not the way oil works anyway, so what the actual fuck.
But she doesn’t look back at me, just starts dragging the screen away to create new fake privacy.
The beautiful girl is walking back down the ward, long hair bouncing and reflecting the overhead striplights. She approaches her bed, and I get a good look at her. Half of her face has caved in, sagging, skin dripping down onto her neck. There is a strip of tape over the eye, holding the eyeball in place.
###
I’m booked in for surgery for two weeks later, taped up, and discharged.
There’s a cheap plastic machine next to the exit, with smiley faces on it. How was your visit? the sign above it asks. I hit the red frown a dozen times with my good hand before I leave. The driver picks me up at the door.
The finger keeps thrum-thrumming to a slow beat, like a wave on a beach in Tahiti, which is where I’m starting to think I should be right about now.
I call Carlo, but he still doesn’t answer. It’s just after 6am. Sometimes he pretends to be one of those guys who wakes up at 3am to lift heavy, but mostly he doesn’t have the grit. Lazy shit.
My brain is foggy, still in a Japanese time zone, but at least my driver is functional. Someone who knows how to do their damn job. We slide smoothly past a bus, and I stare out the window watching it dump its load of passengers out into the rain. Carlo would probably make some comment about how if they worked harder, they’d have cars of their own, wouldn’t get so wet. But my boneless jelly sack finger pulses, and I lose interest.
I suck my teeth. I don’t want an amputation. It’s my finger. I need it. Neither the doctors nor the planet have the right to take it from me.
I pull out my phone again, lay it in my lap. My deboned finger is taped to its neighbour, and it feels weird to bend. It’s harder to type like this, but I’m more interested in doomscrolling through information on VBS. I skim the data and proposed solutions. There’s a lot of stuff in testing, the FDA and MHRA are overwhelmed by applications for novel uses for human growth hormones and experimental light therapies. There are specialist prosthetic companies popping up all over. There are claims from churches that they can save you from your one percent status, take your money and talk to God on your behalf. There are calls for acceptance and better beauty standards, pushed by vloggers and influencers who skipped over to Milan for a one day beauty event and woke up the next day missing some core internal infrastructure.
I’m fucked off, thinking I might get lumped in with them.
There seems to be some consensus in the academic literature. Like gout, this is an illness of wealth. There is a statistically significant link between privilege and bone loss.
Information has spiked over the last year, since VBS became a serious thing for people with money. It’s them funding the research, after all. Them who have had bone stolen from them. It used to just be menopausal women who lost bone density, but whatever, who cares about that. But after the Paris Agreement fell to pieces, after country leaders and major shareholders of oil, agribusiness, and tech decided to go ahead and change sweet fuck all, there was a sudden spike in rapid bone loss, and not just in crabby old ladies. VBS took out entire bones. It could be anything, from a toe or finger bone to a whole legs’ worth. Lots of money in R&D now.
The academic lit is all very preachy. Behave, or else.
Well, fuck that.
People know me by my name, because everyone and their fucking uncle uses my tech in their homes. Maybe they think I’m just some businessman. Like I’m just some techbro that shows up in box office cameos. But I’ve got a brain, too. VBS can’t steal that from me, even if it might be trying to steal my skull.
I keep scrolling, opening tabs, building a list of interesting trails to follow or fund. At some point, I realise that we aren’t moving anymore, that the driver has pulled into the carpark under my building, and has been sitting there idling, silently waiting for me. Electric car, so whatever. I shove my phone into my pocket, unbuckle my seatbelt. The driver hops into action, leaps out and opens my door.
###
The coffee machine in my kitchen spews out a perfect latte, and I carry it into the living room, then crash onto the sofa. One of the ibuprofen tablets slips out of my cupped clumsy hand, and sinks between the cushions.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a motherfucking bike.” I should have kept the driver around to help out.
I try calling Carlo again, but there’s no reply, so I call my PA instead. She picks up on the second ring, which is pretty good even if she does sound a little sleepy.
“Andessa, where’s Carlo?” I’m sure she’ll know, she’s the sort who knows everything about everything when it comes to people. “I’ve tried calling, like, half a dozen times.”
“Just a sec, I’ll check.” She sounds like she’s stifling a yawn. “How was your flight? I was going to text in an hour or so and check in.”
“I ended up in hospital.”
“After the flight?” Andessa sounds surprised. “What happened, food poisoning?”
“VBS.” I say it as flatly as I can. “Lost a finger.”
“Oh, crap. I’m so sorry, Taylor. That’s seriously awful. Maybe you shouldn’t be working today?”
“I know. That’s why I need to talk to Carlo.” I want to snap my fingers, tell her to keep up, but the phone is in my finger-snapping hand. I should have grabbed headphones, but they’re in the office, and I’m pretty sure the jetlag-post-hospital-trauma has melted me into my one-of-a-kind designer sofa. “I have research I need done, before they try and chop bits off my hand. He needs to handle clients.”
“Sorry, yeah. Well, he’s booked leave this week. Taking his mother to, uh, Bora Bora for Mother’s Day, it looks like.”
“Gross.” Carlo’s mother is a bitch. Being stuck in some gorgeous beachside hut with her for a week sounds like hell on earth. I’d honestly give another finger to never have to do that.
“Do you want me to book you out for today, Taylor? I’m sure I can field anything that comes your way in the short term.”
I’m sure she can, too. But it doesn’t look good for business, if neither of me nor Carlo are there. I can leave Andessa to do most of the grunt work, but I gotta show willing. Grit. Head of all the things, and whatever.
“No, I’ll come in. I need to talk to people, anyway. Tell whoever the head of manufacturing is to be in my office by, whatever. Noon. No, 2pm. Tell research and design to be there, too.”
I hang up as she says goodbye, then chug down the perfect coffee. My finger thrums.
###
I read up on a research group in Arizona trying to show that if people don’t sleep, they can’t get VBS. They have had good success, getting people to do all sorts of energy-demanding activities with no negative ramifications, barring the fact that everyone in their study seems to be going insane.
I talk to someone out of Canberrra, who has a website about sustainable climate change. It sounds interesting, but he’s really just angling for funding. No useful outputs. I don’t have time for that bullshit.
I read about animal bone replacements, and growing them in labs, and how none of that has been successful because the planet just sucks those out, too. I read about proposals for terraforming back to pre-industrial greenhouse gases. I even consider funding a dinosaur resurrection project, just so we can kill them off and put their bones back in the ground, or buying all of Ireland and turning it into a massive peat park. Like a fucking peace offering to Mother fucking Earth.
Clearly it takes a techbro to fix the important problems.
Design and Manufacture appear in my conference room right on time, both looking confused. I watch them on the camera link from my office, make them wait five minutes just to remind them it’s my time that’s important. Research doesn’t show up, and I shoot a message to Andessa to fire whoever it is. She says they’re on parental leave. I say too bad, tell her to find someone else, and ignore her reply. Then I walk into the conference room.
“Right, you’re Manufacture? And you’re Design? Cool, cool.” I’ve never met either of these people, but Andessa tells me they’re sharp. “I’m re-pointing your teams.”
Their faces twist into something that is probably surprise, but might also be nausea.
“We’re going to cure VBS,” I add, so they can keep up.
“What?” Design says.
“Bones! Disappearing bones.”
“Oh.” Design shrugs. “That weird illness? Yeah, I saw something about it on the news awhile back.”
“Besides,” Manufacture interrupts. “It’s not our lane. We don’t do medical. Just home tech and military.”
“And it’s a minority thing, right? There’s not many…” Design cuts off mid-sentence, as I hold up my hand, the top of my meat sack finger drooping.
They both look startled, which is fair enough because the finger is also an unsettling shade of purple, and they don’t know it, but it goes thrum-thrum whenever it jiggles, which is always.
“Oh. Shit,” Design mutters.
“Right?” I push my iPad across the table at them, tab open to one of our ongoing projects. “The carbon nanotubes. We’re going to repurpose those. Design internal and external support structures. Use medical grade non-conductive carbon nanotubing, and you two are going to head this up.”
“That’s a big shift.” Design says. “You want us to drop everything for this?”
“The military contracts are going to have to be fulfilled first. They’re really not good people to piss off,” Manufacture adds. “Maybe we could just do prosthetics?”
I wave my hand, and the finger makes a thwap sound. I regret it because it hurts, but maybe not as much as Design and Manufacture do. Design looks like they might be sick.
“Pass off the contract, and focus on this is what I’m saying. Fuck prosthetics, it’s a saturated market. Let’s fix this shit.” I’m done with this conversation. I hand them each a thumb drive. “Here. There’s details on these, rough specs, a list of policy people, potential medical partners. I want you two going through this, and come back to me by tomorrow with a plan.”
I get up and leave, hoping the stiffness in my shoulder is just a muscle ache.
###
It’s been fourteen hours and we have a preliminary plan.
I miss a call from the hospital about a surgery date, and tell Andessa to call back and cancel. The hospital tells her, and she tells me, it’s not a great idea, the waitlist is long. But Design and Manufacture are gearing up fast, and I want to be first on the prototype list. Fuck a nine-fingered future and the noseless influencers trying to sell new beauty standards.
There’s a carbon capture project we’re partnering with. We take their by-product, turn it into our product, use that to fix people. We replace vanished bones using the carbon we’re pumping out of the atmosphere. We’re basically carbon capture saviours. Boom. Fucking nailed it.
Suddenly, Design and Manufacture are super freaking keen.
It’s going to take a few months to run the tests, get approvals, whatever. I know all this because my education was expensive, and I can damn well read. We gotta jump through hoops, fine. So, before we test out the carbon nanotube bone replacement, I’m going to need an exoskeleton structure to hold up my finger, and attach it to the other fingers so it moves in tandem with them. Design is on it like white on rice.
Also, I need this sorted soon, because my jelly sack finger is starting to bulge. There’s a steady whoom-whoom pulsing coming from it, and shooting pains up my hand that I have to dull down with increasing amounts of pain meds.
###
It’s only a few days before I’m hospitalised anyway, and wake up without a finger. Emergency amputation, once it started going black, and the whole hand felt like fire.
Carlo says it’s a good thing, though, because now I have something to show when I get asked to do a TED talk about how our company saved the world, which’ll look great for the business. So will the story about his mother, and how her whole ribs and spinal column basically evaporated as soon as they arrived in Bora Bora, and she turned into a puddle of goo in their private beach hut. Carlo said the holiday turned out better than expected, once they’d shipped the body home.
I grin at him and nod. Good for business, for sure, all that sympathy.
But it still feels like my finger is there, pulsing. It does a constant thrum-thrum in my head, that empty spot on my hand, and I fucking hate the planet for stealing it.
###
I lose track of time with all the work. Maybe it’s a month or two later, and I’m running the company by myself since Carlo is gone.
People at Carlo’s funeral talk about his genius, his charisma, his kindness. I try not to snort-laugh. I give a moving eulogy, talk about giving his bones, what’s left of them, back to the earth, how maybe that’ll satisfy the needy bitch.
I don’t say that he shouldn’t have paid to strip an entire hill on a Caribbean island just to build a house. Shoulda let someone else build one, then buy it out from under them. That’s how I got the London house. And the Barcellona one. Outsource it, baby.
So now I’m steering this ship, which is just as well because at least I have a fucking clue. I’m not out there carving up the planet as a flex. I’m at my desk, slaving away using solar-powered data storage, just so I don’t die because suddenly the planet decides it wants to eat the rich.
###
Things move quickly. Weeks later and we’ve got emergency clearance from all the US and UK and EU health people. China’s close. Everyone who is anyone is desperate for a solve. Which is good, because all the metatarsals on my left foot are gone, and I have to walk with a stick so I don’t lose my balance.
It’s because of the meeting in Dubai. I figured I’d be safe on a normal flight. First class, but whatever. It wasn’t some six-seater. And it’s not like I could say ‘no’ to these people. Tycoons, warlords, presidents, all begging for a solution to VBS. They’re scared for themselves, and their families. Could be they even give a shit about their staff or something. I guess the foot could be worth the investment that came through from the meeting. Mostly win, in the end.
The carbon nanotube bone replacements aren’t ready soon enough to save my foot, though, which is Manufacture’s fault, because their production lines aren’t geared up. Also, the surgeon we found to do the trial surgery straight refused to fly, and didn’t get to me before the toes started turning black, and pain shot up into my leg and left me screaming.
So, the foot’s gone, too. The empty space beats in time with my missing finger, a thrum-thrum that sometimes vibrates through my whole body, like angry bees or the ticks of a clock beating time. The ward nurse shrugs, tells me I was lucky it wasn’t the whole leg, hands me a pamphlet on VBS.
###
Andessa’s arm is fucked because she loses a whole scapula, but her insurance won’t cover it, which is a shame because she’ll be a lot less efficient with just one arm. She says it doesn’t hurt much, as long as it’s bound up against her chest, not just hanging there, but if she can’t afford to get a carbon nanotube scapula, there will be permanent nerve damage in the arm. It’ll probably have to go. I tell her to start saving, because I need someone who can keep up with the work.
It’s not that I won’t cover Andessa’s surgery myself, if it looks like it’s necessary. I’m not some monster. Not like the shit I see online everyday. People call me a devil, an advocate for continued irresponsible consumerism. I get it. They’re salty because they were never at risk of VBS to begin with. Maybe Andessa wasn’t either, but it was her choice to go to that Red List: Medium Rare event. I said I wasn’t interested, we don’t need to do direct advertising. Those people would come to us soon enough. But she insisted. I heard they ate seven courses and not one of them below a critical threat level. Her choice.
Plus side, Design and Manufacture finally seemed to have got their shit together. Scan, build, pay a surgeon a fuckload of money to implant. Send them an e-car so they don’t freak out.
The carbon nanotube framework works fine for vascular whatevers, like bone does with all those blood vessels and the way straight up metal can’t do. And they can implant teeth or toenails or things once the area has healed. There’s a fucking waiting list a mile long, vloggers like gimme my nose back.
There’s stuff online every day, calling me an angel, a saviour. That’s the stuff I believe. I’ve been interviewed by the Times and the Guardian and the fucking Daily News of Whereveristan. People who are thrilled that approval was pushed through, and are saying I’m in line for the Nobel. Saviour of people, and the economy, and the motherfucking planet. It’ll look good hanging in my living room, but Andessa will have to get someone to replace the pure peacock feather wallpaper. Repaint. Get a matching gold sofa. Maybe a second-hand gold sofa. Good story for the journos.
I text Andessa, tell her we’ll cover her scapula replacement so she can keep the arm.
>>Thanks. Not that I’m not grateful, but why?
>>Optics, babe.
She doesn’t answer, but sends a thumbs up. Probably she’s trying to be funny. She won’t lose her arm and her job, so yeah, thumbs up. Plus we’ll look good, out there helping people who need it. Like, great story, bro. TPC for the Nobel. TPC for Pres. I send another text, tell her to set up a fund for helping poor people pay for bone replacements.
>>No one will use it, she replies. They don’t need it.
>>Cool.
Andessa’s back at work two days later, sorting out paperwork for a new building we’re putting up to deal with all the new orders. We’re in expansion mode. She’s smart, though. Learns fast. She’s outsourcing it through, like, 27 layers of contractors. None of us here are turning into jelly sacks for hacking and solving.
###
I’m on stage, on that recognisable red dot carpet. Phone screens flash up as people sneak a quick TPC pic before I start. The prompter in front of me has my notes, and everyone in the audience is someone. Like, really someone. My people. We’re all here to affirm our plans for saving the world. I’m up first.
Andessa booked me in for a national presentation, and I got here by all sorts of public transport. Only ate veggie food. Wore some big fashion designer’s reclaimed fiber line. Even if I can afford to be entirely carbon nanotube on the inside, it’s good optics. Like, I can be the everyday dude, too, you know.
The guy at the side gives me a nod, and I take a step forward on the dot. Everyone gets quiet.
“We have been pulling the bones out of the earth. Using them to power our lives for decades. But more and more, we’re finding that Mother Earth wants them back.” That bitch, I don’t add. “She’s been taking them from us, refilling the cavities, reclaiming what we’ve mined.”
I hold up my hand, the one with the missing finger. The people in the front rows, the ones I can see from the red dot on stage, look suitably impressed.
“VBS,” I say, keeping my hand up long enough for the cameras to zoom in for streaming. “Vanishing bone syndrome. No one fully understands it, but we do know that it’s linked to climate change, and our extraction of minerals and fossil fuels.”
The audience nods along, sanctimonious.
“The more we extract, the more is reclaimed from us. But we have been looking into ways forward, and I think we’ve found one. We can pull carbon out of the air, use it to build carbon nanotubes, which can be crafted into replacement frames. Into skeletons. We’re replacing calcium with carbon, restructuring the human body to resist the earth’s threat. Two birds, one stone. This is the future, a carbon-powered future.” I flick to the next slide. It’s a picture of the Vitruvian Man, dick out, the earth superimposed in the circle behind him. “People keep saying we need to slow down, embrace degrowth, let the world dictate the terms. But, if you’ll excuse me, I say that’s bullshit. This is our world. We control the flow of carbon, of calcium, of our destinies.”
I’m struggling to see beyond the first few rows, because of the light in my eyes, but it looks like someone in the front has slumped over. I’ve barely gotten started, and already someone has fallen asleep. Fuckers. Time to turn up the gas. I turn to the slide, open my mouth to speak again, say something exciting, but there is a cry from the middle of the audience, and then more, cries, and whump-whump sounds.
I stand on the stage, while the missing finger on my hand and my chopped off left foot go thrum-thrum, and look out at the audience. One after another, after another, bodies slide from seats, slapping to the floor. I’m half-disgusted, thinking what all these rich boomers and millennials must have done to earn this. I’m half-thrilled at all the new clients we’ll have.
But my sneer slides away as the thrum-thrum in my extremities suddenly stops, and is replaced by the nausea of a sudden descent as my skin and organs crash to the ground.
